"Topmost" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... silvery sound, and settles upon some tall tree, and waves his wings, and sinks to the swaying twigs. I hear too a quail piping from the meadow fence, and another trilling his answering whistle from the hills. Nearer by, a tyrant king-bird is poised on the topmost branch of a veteran pear-tree, and now and then dashes down, assassin-like, upon some homebound, honey-laden bee, and then with a smack of his bill ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... his menials to clamber back into his plundered carriage. Gabinius drove his horse at topmost speed, and before morning was saluted by the remainder of the banditti, near their mountain stronghold. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... been in the Roman Forum. The arena at Arles, with its great magnitude, is less complete than that of Nimes; it has suffered even more the assaults of time and the children of time, and it has been less repaired. The seats are almost wholly wanting; but the external walls, minus the topmost tier of arches, are massively, ruggedly complete; and the vaulted corridors seem as solid as the day they were built. The whole thing is superbly vast and as monumental, for a place of light amusement—what ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... to our most sombre hours, and put a point on the imagination. As for the superstition of the tales of ceilidh and buaile-mhart I have little to say. Perhaps the dullest among us scarce credited the giant and dwarf; but the Little Folks are yet on our topmost hills. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... into the gallery," she gasped; and on she went to the topmost of the large branches. There she paused, and from her lap ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... pine is lifted high Against the twilight sky, The same low, melancholy music grieves Amid the topmost leaves, As when I watched and mused and dreamed with him ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... is one vast museum. In ensemble, it stands majestic on its hills, with its long lines of palaces and convents terraced around the rocky slope, and on the height the soaring steeples of a swarm of churches piercing the blue, and the huge cube of the Alcazar crowning the topmost crest, and domineering the scene. The magnificent zigzag road which leads up the steep hillside from the bridge of Alcantara gives an indefinable impression, as of the lordly ramp of some fortress ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... results that all the life of human beings, in all ages and stages of culture, is primarily controlled by a vast mass of folkways handed down from the earliest existence of the race, having the nature of the ways of other animals, only the topmost layers of which are subject to change and control, and have been somewhat modified by human philosophy, ethics, and religion, or by other acts of intelligent reflection. We are told of savages that "it is difficult to exhaust the customs and small ceremonial usages of a savage people. Custom ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the unpleasant-looking houses on the West Cliff, we will shut our eyes to these shortcomings, and admit that the task is not difficult in the presence of such a superb view over Whitby's glorious surroundings. We look over the chimney-stacks of the topmost houses, and see the silver Esk winding placidly in the deep channel it has carved for itself; and further away we see the far-off moorland heights, brown and blue, where the sources of the broad river ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... to crawl to land for their nightly ramble. And it died, at last, upon the highest peaks. Then the brief twilight, ephemeral as the flight of a moth, came and went; the Southern Cross peeped with its topmost eye above a row of palms, and the fire-flies heralded with their torches the approach of ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... very hard. I saw a woman in the indefinable seasons past fifty. In my vague mental condition, the impression of her came slowly. First it was as though I saw three cubes, one above the other, the largest in the middle. Then these took on clothing, blue calico with large polka dots, and the topmost one crowned itself with thin wisps of hair, parted in the middle and plastered down at the side. So, little by little, John Shadrack's widow grew on me, till I saw her a square little old woman, with a wrinkled, brown face, a perpetual ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... and the mender of roads, being found already dozing on the topmost stair, was advised to lay himself down on the pallet-bed and take some rest. He needed no persuasion, and ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... had been saying. That thought arrested his steps. On that hypothesis there was no reason whatever why he should go on to the station and London. Instead——He stopped short, saw a convenient gate ahead, went to it, seated himself upon its topmost rail and attempted a calm survey of the situation. He had somehow to continue that ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... rode through the woods and up the hill seeking his false bride. High and low he searched, but no sign of his lost mistress did he discover. Out in the distance he saw the shining city of Baile-ata-Cliat, on the near wood side of which his gray towers stood. He could see the flag on its topmost turret waving in the breeze like a beckoning finger calling him back from his futile search. He turned him about, and on every side of him were the shadowy mountains watching him and appalling him with their ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... ostriches," retorted Sergeant Archelaus, as he gained the topmost step and, after a fearful glance behind him, sank against a ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... rose over the topmost letter and a moist silence prevailed till a sudden jerk fished up the bag, and before the dolls could recover their wits they were spread out on the floor of a mail car to dry, while several busy men sorted and saved such papers and letters as still ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... hour. The course changed. The yacht was around behind Walden. The whole planet lay between it and its intended prey. The course of the small ship curved, now. It would pass almost close enough to clip the topmost tips of Walden's atmosphere. There was nothing for Hoddan to do but think ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... now and then a quick turn displayed their brown throats and white breasts. They were darting hither and thither, so rapidly that the eye could hardly follow them, catching the many-winged insects as they flew by. Then they would suddenly dart off to the topmost gables of the old mansion, where their compact mud nests could be plainly seen ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... laughed and shook out the folds of the topmost garment. "Nightgown!" she said, and ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... those of the airplane, are in the control of men; and there may be still a chance of bringing about a better state of affairs than now exists. While the war correspondents were actually in France, and while they were often forced to write at topmost speed, there was excuse for avion and camion, vrille and escadrille, and all the other French words which bespattered the columns of British and American, Canadian and Australian newspapers. I doubt if there was ever any necessity for hangar, the shed which sheltered the ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... canoe up the bank, a few moments later, to carry it around the dam, when something away up along shore attracted their notice. There, perched in a birch tree, in the topmost branches, with her weight bending it over till it nearly touched the water, they espied a girl, swinging. Then, as they looked, she waved a ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... and above it the great Babyan Peak towered up towards the heavens. The space of ground, embraced thus in the arms of the mountain, as it were, was laid out, as though by the cunning hand of man, in three terraces that rose one above the other. To the right and left of the topmost terrace were chasms in the cliff, and down each chasm fell a waterfall, from no great height, indeed, but of considerable volume. These two streams flowed away on either side of the enclosed space, one towards the north, and the other, the course of which we had been ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... Then from the topmost bough falls calm reply: "Hush, hush, I see the coming of the morn; Swiftly the silent night is passing by, And in her bosom rosy Dawn is borne. 'Tis but your own dim shadows that ye see, 'Tis but your own low moans that ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... getting poultry to the great market, by means of carts of four stages or stories, one above another, to carry the birds in, drawn by two horses, which by means of relays travelled night and day, and covered as much as 100 miles in two days and one night, the driver sitting on the topmost stage. ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... owls delight to hoot, the bats go whirring past, the moonbeams surely cast their kindest rays; by day the pigeons coo from the topmost boughs their tales of love, while squirrels sit blinking merrily, or run their Silvios on ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... Who, beyond measure, dar'd on earth." I then: "If soul that to the verge of life delays Repentance, linger in that lower space, Nor hither mount, unless good prayers befriend, How chanc'd admittance was vouchsaf'd to him?" "When at his glory's topmost height," said he, "Respect of dignity all cast aside, Freely He fix'd him on Sienna's plain, A suitor to redeem his suff'ring friend, Who languish'd in the prison-house of Charles, Nor for his sake refus'd through every vein To tremble. More I will not say; and dark, I know, my words ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... he refused to drink. He devoured all the books at home and ransacked the neighbouring book-cases. He found at Clavering an old cargo of French novels which he read with all his might; and he would sit for hours perched on the topmost bar of Dr. Portman's library steps with an old folio ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... gorilla. He had a great, lazy, smiling face, with a square cleft chin which stuck out beyond the rest. His brow retreated and the stubby back of his head ran forward to meet it, while his neck below bulged out over his collar. His head was exactly the shape of a pear with the sharp end topmost. ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... one the stars died out as the yellow turned to a deeper glow that shot forth in long streamers, the rosy fingers of the dawn, from the horizon to the zenith. Cold and ghostly lay the snows on the mighty cone; till at last there came upon their topmost slope, six thousand feet above us, a sudden blush of pink. Swiftly it floated down the eastern face, and touched and kindled the rocks just above us. Then the sun flamed out, and in a moment the Araxes valley and all the hollows of the savage ridges ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... his son Naram-Sin. He found also the ancient wall of the city, which had been built by Naram-Sin, 13.7 metres wide. The debris of ruined buildings which lies below the pavement of Sargon is as much as 9.25 metres in depth, while that above it, the topmost stratum of which brings us down to the Christian era, is only 11 metres in height. We may form some idea from this of the enormous age to which the history of Babylonian culture and writing reaches back. In fact, Professor Hilprecht quotes with approval Mr. Haynes's ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... clambering up a raspberry-bush, eating the raspberries as he went along. He would climb up by the little branches, and pull in the raspberries in succession, until he got to the topmost one, when the bush would bend over with his weight until it almost ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... of his weight and trained to run the trail, kept right on ahead, and he, skillfully handling the reins, for he was a fine driver, drove on at the topmost speed of the six animals drawing ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... these insects stood erect on their two lower pairs of legs, which were of different lengths so that all four feet touched the ground when the shell was vertical. The two upper pairs of legs were used as arms, the topmost pair[A] being quite short and splitting out at the end into four flexible claws about five inches long, which they used as fingers. These upper arms, which sprouted from a point near the top of the head, were peculiar in that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... see him," went on Mr. Bobbsey. "He must have gone inside." But Freddie was not there, nor was he anywhere on the outside platform that surrounded the topmost peak of the ...
— Bobbsey Twins in Washington • Laura Lee Hope
... the top of the second mast, was a white figure, standing on a rope under the topmost sail, and holding on with one hand and waving the other down at the passengers. Mr. Toby waved his white derby, and Mr. Hanlon began to come down. Freddie trembled with alarm, but Mr. Hanlon was obviously having the time ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... supper dishes were washed, and Amos was attending to the chickens, Lydia came slowly out to the front steps where Levine was sitting. He reached up and catching her hand pulled her down beside him on the topmost step. She leaned her head against his arm and they sat in silence, Lydia with her eyes on the dim outline of ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... me. The conquest of the mountains is ours. We are now as nearly as possible on a level with the topmost peak of Everest, the most lofty projection on the earth's surface; and in due time I hope we shall have the unique felicity of planting our feet on that as yet untrodden spot, and of leaving a record ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... he came back, and with him a she, And the acorn was grown to a tall oak tree. They built them a nest in the topmost bough, And young ones they had and were happy enow. But soon came a woodman in leathern guise, His brow, like a pent house, hung over his eyes. He'd an axe in his hand, not a word he spoke, But with many a hem! ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... in every moment to fetch away your Articles, Captain. Here they are all ready for you.' And turning to a pile of agreements lying at his elbow he took up the topmost of them. From where I stood I could read the words: 'Ship Ferndale' written in a large round hand on ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... to proceed from the same path, they would destroy the whole world. It hath never happened that a path hath been misplaced. Should I, then, have mistaken Job for another? The gazelle gives birth to her young on the topmost point of a rock, and it would fall into the abyss and be crushed to death, if I did not send an eagle thither to catch it up and carry it to its mother. Were the eagle to appear a minute earlier or later than the appointed time, the little gazelle would perish. ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... At the center of the southerly blocks towers a gray quadrangular wall, the last of a large building. At the western terminus of the village, where the slope falls away to the valley, is a gigantic ruin. Its walls are thirty feet high and six feet thick. The roof has fallen, and the topmost layers of the bluish-gray limestone are ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... Boudier, from a photograph taken in the British Museum. The chariot speeding along at a gallop in the topmost series of pictures carries a soldier bearing the head of Tiumraan in his hand; behind him, under a tent, scribes are registering the heads which are brought in. In the two lower bas-reliefs are displayed the closing ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... foliage was bursting from the trees; and below, the little stream was pursuing its busy way by a devious but certain path to its unknown future. Then my eyes turned to the tree-clad ascent on the opposite side: through the topmost of its trees, shone a golden spark, a glimmer of yellow fire. It was the vane on the highest tower of the Hall. A great desire seized me to look on the lordly pile once more. I descended in haste, and proposed to my companions that we should climb through ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... partly by burning charcoal, for the purpose of smelting the ore from the neighbouring mines; it was distant about two miles from any other habitation. I can call to mind the whole landscape now: the tall pines which rose up on the mountain above us, and the wide expanse of forest beneath, on the topmost boughs and heads of whose trees we looked down from our cottage, as the mountain below us rapidly descended into the distant valley. In summer-time the prospect was beautiful: but during the severe winter, a more desolate scene could not well ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... or is not, he is universally recognized as an inspired song-composer and those who do not know his songs are cut off from one of the greatest joys music has to offer. As Huneker so well says, "Although his topmost peaks are tremendously remote, and glitter and gleam in an atmosphere almost too thin for dwellers of the plains, in his songs he was as simple, as manly, as tender as Robert Burns." In Brahms's songs we ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... be that chap," said father, sitting down in his old armchair under the tree and looking up at Jocko, who had released 'Ally Sloper' on our approach and gone up aloft in one of the topmost branches. "I'd bet 'arf-a-crown now, Sarah, as how them two youngsters here could tell us summat o' the monkey ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... took out a dozen cigars in the layer on top and one from the layer next the bottom; then, rearranging the underlying layer so as to fill in the empty space, he replaced the others in perfect order in the topmost row, and thus had one cigar left over to substitute for the one he had ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... near our house, under the chestnut trees, deep in the shade. The full moon could not pierce the closely woven foliage. All her beams were caught on the topmost boughs which waved in silver. A lovely night to stain with murder! Oh ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... which probably varied in number—never, how-ever, so far as appears, exceeding seven. The sculptured example before us, which is from a bas-relief found at Koyunjik, distinctly exhibits four stages, of which the topmost, owing to the destruction of the upper portion of the tablet, is imperfect. It is not unlikely that in this instance there was above the fourth a fifth stage, consisting of a shrine like that which at Babylon ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... should be selected near bodies of fresh water and tremendous excavations made. The walls and floor of the excavations should be lined with concrete, through which the water is piped. The cities could be on many levels, the topmost peraps several miles in the air—glass enclosed—and with pipes reaching still igher to bring air in, and completely tight against the Grass. They should be selfcontained, generating their own power and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... bird that Nat spied after they left the meadows was perching on the topmost wire of a fence by the roadside. Every once in a while he darted into the air, snapped up an insect, and returned to the same perch on the wire whence he had started. He was a very smart-looking bird, with ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... going down; but all that one associates with summer days, spent in sweet rural scenes. There is great variety in summer days. There is the warm, bright, still summer day; when everything seems asleep, and the topmost branches of the tall trees do not stir in the azure air. There is the breezy summer day, when warm breaths wave these topmost branches gently to and fro, and you stand and look at them; when sportive winds bend the green corn as they swiftly sweep ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... wind of the West, wandering to and fro, Chant your songs in our topmost boughs, that the sons of men may know The peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... against the dome of the Statehouse. The strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner" burst upon the ear; and amid cheers and cries of "Old Glory! Old Glory!" that echoed to the distant hills the old sea flag unfurled and floated above the topmost pinnacle of the Capitol of Tennessee. And thus Old ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... saddle again an hour before sunset, our next point being a log-hut on the very topmost ridge of the Alleghanies, wherein dwelt a man said to be better acquainted than any other in the country round, with the passes leading into the Shenandoah Valley. We ascertained, beyond a doubt, that a company was ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... The approach was entirely new. Two fresh wings had been added, and the front was all over scaffolds and cement, in all stages of colour, from rich brown to permanent white. Robert explained that nothing was so nice as to watch the workmen, and showed Lucilla a plasterer on the topmost stage of the scaffolding, who, he said, was the nicest man he knew, and could sing all manner ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... above Balder's head. It was such a note as might have been uttered by a paradisical cuckoo with the breath of a brighter world in his throat. Looking up, he saw a beautiful little fowl perched on the topmost twig of the birch-tree. It had a slender bill, and on its head a crest of splendid feathers, which it set up at Balder in a most coquettish manner. The next moment it flew over the wall, and from the farther side warbled an invitation ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... temperature below zero, are brought in by railroad from the lakes, and are placed on board the ships with a rapidity which must be seen to be appreciated. The blocks are packed in sawdust, which is used very much as mortar is used in a stone wall. Between the topmost layer of ice and the deck there is sometimes a layer of closely packed hay, and sometimes one of barrels of apples. It has occasionally happened that the profit upon the apples has paid the freight upon the ice, which ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... surrounding the court. She still sat at her sons' pillow, never removing her eyes from them for a moment, nor thinking of sleep. Already the horses, divining the approach of dawn, had ceased eating and lain down upon the grass; the topmost leaves of the willows began to rustle softly, and little by little the rippling rustle descended to their bases. She sat there until daylight, unwearied, and wishing in her heart that the night might prolong itself ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... talk of years evanished, let me harp upon the time When we trod these sands together, in our boyhood's golden prime; Let me lift again the curtain, while I gaze upon the past, As the sailor glances homewards, watching from the topmost mast. Here we rested on the grasses, in the glorious summer hours, When the waters hurried seaward, fringed with ferns and forest flowers; When our youthful eyes, rejoicing, saw the sunlight round the spray In a rainbow-wreath ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... by handfuls, bewitched court and city, and induced Councillor d'Epremesnil to say, "The friendship of M. de Cagliostro does me honor." At the same time splendid works in the most diverse directions maintained at the topmost place in the world that scientific genius of France which the great minds of the seventeenth century had revealed to Europe. "Special men sometimes testify great disdain as regards the interest which ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... topmost partition, and revealed a number of small drawers. Eagerly he drew out the topmost one, and looked inside. Then he knew the worst. It was empty. There was no longer any doubt whatever. His cottage had been entered by no ordinary housebreaker, ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... seer to stone; to hide thine eyes from the horror. Kiss me but once, and I go.' Then lifting her neck, like a sea-bird Peering up over the wave, from the foam-white swells of her bosom, Blushing she kissed him: afar, on the topmost Idalian summit Laughed in the joy of her heart, far-seeing, the queen Aphrodite. Loosing his arms from her waist he flew upward, awaiting the sea-beast. Onward it came from the southward, as bulky and black as a galley, Lazily coasting ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... spirit of the hive that fixes the hour of the great annual sacrifice to the genius of the race: the hour, that is, of the swarm; when we find a whole people, who have attained the topmost pinnacle of prosperity and power, suddenly abandoning to the generation to come their wealth and their palaces, their homes and the fruits of their labour; themselves content to encounter the hardships and perils of a new and distant country. This act, be it conscious or ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... possible—if she could put her hand in his and trust to him for safety in all the coming years they might live together—what man of woman born would dare to interfere? There was a blue light coming in through the shutters. He went to the window: the topmost leaves of the trees were quivering in the cold air far up there in the clearing skies, where the stars were fading out one by one, and he could hear the sound of the sea on the distant beach, and he knew that across the gray plain of waters the dawn was breaking, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... the androecium.—Dunal[500] alludes to a curious instance in a species of Verbascum, the lower flowers of which had hairy stamens as usual, but the filaments of the topmost flower were quite destitute of hairs, and dilated ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... topmost story they heard a considerable noise overhead. It was a one-sided altercation; broken and piteous on the one hand, voluble and angry on ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... Starkey) was held on to his pony by a serving-man. A woman past middle age walked, with a firm and strong step, by the cart that held much of the baggage; and, high up on the mails and boxes, sat a girl of dazzling beauty, perched lightly on the topmost trunk, and swaying herself fearlessly to and fro, as the cart rocked and shook in the heavy roads of late autumn. The girl wore the Antwerp faille, or black Spanish mantle over her head, and altogether her appearance was such that the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... on, a quiet undertone of perfect confidence, freedom without reserve as to another self, suddenly discovered in the working identity of a fellow-creature. It ripples on just thus, all the distance of the walk along the topmost down, in the evening sunlight, and then comes a pause to negotiate the descent to their handy little forest below. Then a sense that they are coming back into a sane, dry world, and must be a lady ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... to see the regions beyond, he had the intensest desire to climb upward—so that without shifting his horizon, he could yet extend it, and take in a far wider sweep of vision. "I envied every bird," he goes on, "that sat singing on the topmost bough of the great, century-old cherry tree; the weathercock on our barn seemed to me to whirl in a higher region of the air; and to rise from the earth in a balloon was a bliss which I would almost have given my life to enjoy." His desire to ascend soon took the ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... must through the creature's brain have past! Even from the topmost stone, upon the steep, [24] Are but three bounds—and look, Sir, at this last— O Master! it has ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... their comely cheeks, Wind-play tossed their hair, Creeping things among the grass Stroked them here and there; Meggan piped a merry note, A fitful, wayward lay, While shrill as bird on topmost twig Piped merry May; Honey-smooth the ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... their coffee in Anna's sitting-room, seated in easy-chairs drawn up to the wide-flung windows. The topmost boughs of some tall elm trees rustled almost in their faces. Away before them spread the phantasmagoria of a wilderness of London roofs, softened and melting into the dim blue obscurity of the falling twilight. Lights were flashing out everywhere, and ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... terminated, like the other sides of the palace, by a circular tower enclosing a staircase, up which we mounted, winding round and round, and emerging at various heights, until at last we found ourselves at the very topmost point of the edifice; and here there is a small pepper-box of a turret, almost as entire as when the stones were first laid. It is called Queen Margaret's bower, and looks forth on a lovely prospect of mountain and plain, and on the old red roofs of Linlithgow ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... summit of the topmost of those gigantic mountains, the peak of which is lost high in the depths of the cloudless sky, a female stands, ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... plane beneath. Even so, the One does not directly touch even the highest of these seven planes. (Theosophy is, first of all, a study in descents and not in ascents; ascent comes later.) There are between the One and the topmost plane three emanations (but perhaps we would better let Mrs. Besant speak to us herself): "The self-unfolding of the Logos in a threefold form: the first Logos the root of all being, from Him the second manifesting the two aspects of life and form, then the ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... morrow of still greater festival, when their sultan and their god took to himself this stranger beauty as a wife. Doubtless, too, he would soon weary of her, and they would be called together to see her cast from some topmost tower and hear her frail bones break on the cruel rocks below, or—as had happened to the last queen—to watch her writhe out her life in the pangs of poison upon a charge of sorcery. It was indeed a night of ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... board, some twelve feet high, between which the whole crew, their ammunitions, and provisions, were housed roomily, rose the enormous trunk full forty feet in girth, towering like some tall lighthouse, smooth for a hundred feet, then crowned with boughs, each of which was a stately tree, whose topmost twigs were full two hundred and fifty feet from the ground. And yet it was easy for the sailors to ascend; so many natural ropes had kind Nature lowered for their use, in the smooth lianes which hung to the very earth, often without a knot or ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... stood still and Userti sat herself down on the topmost step, resting her chin upon her jewelled hand. There he stood searching the place with his eyes. He lifted his sceptre and all rose, hundreds and hundreds of them throughout the hall, their garments rustling as they rose like leaves in a sudden ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... is that singular-looking bird, the Leatherhead, or Bald-headed Friar (Tropidorhynchus corniculatus); it is commonly seen upon the topmost branches of lofty trees, calling 'Poor Soldier,' 'Pimlico,' 'Four o'clock,' and uttering screaming sounds. It feeds upon insects, wild fruits, and any sweets it can procure from the flowers ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... of the failing light. The Quay was covered by a carpet of white that made the waters beyond look doubly dark and cold. The trees on the opposite shore looked as if they had been painted from the topmost twig to the root. Down in the lane, two of the workers in the distillery were pelting each other with snowballs while a third one was shouting at the top of ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... and crumbling away piecemeal, converted into a common sewer for all its inmates. Up stair after stair we went, while wails of children, and curses of men, steamed out upon the hot stifling rush of air from every doorway, till, at the topmost story, we knocked at a garret door. We entered. Bare it was of furniture, comfortless, and freezing cold; but, with the exception of the plaster dropping from the roof, and the broken windows, patched with rags ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... God's holiest charge, The minister of praise at large, Which thou mayst now receive; From thy blest mansion hail and hear, From topmost eminence appear To this the wreath ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of the old fir, bearing its heavy mantle of ivy from base to topmost twig, and not twenty yards from the window, a thrush sits and sings. You must watch him carefully ere you assure yourself that those sweet, trilling notes of peerless music come from that tiny throat. A rare lesson in voice production he will teach you. Deep breathing, headnotes clear as a ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... under an olive tree, Which by the reins two Sarrazins do lead; Those messengers have wrapped them in their weeds, To the palace they climb the topmost steep. When they're come in, the vaulted roof beneath, Marsilium with courtesy they greet: "May Mahumet, who all of us doth keep, And Tervagan, and our lord Apoline Preserve the, king and guard from harm the queen!" Says Bramimunde "Great foolishness I hear: Those gods of ours ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... exclaimed Captain Hunnewell, who stood by; "not paint the figure-head of the Cynosure! And what sort of a figure should I cut in a foreign port with such an unpainted oaken stick as this over my prow! She must, and she shall, be painted to the life, from the topmost flower in her hat down to the silver spangles on ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an oak tree resting, I heard a roundelay, The nightingale was singing On the oak tree's topmost spray. ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... himself, and he sought now to trace the exact lineage of the human family as no one had hitherto attempted to fathom it. Utilizing his wide range of zoological and anatomical knowledge, he constructed a hypothetical tree of descent—or, if you prefer, ascent—from the root in a protozoon to the topmost twig or most recent offshoot, man. From that day till this Haeckel's persistent labors have been directed towards the perfection of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... 'bout star and cradle and 'gain he speak his thought. He say: "What is cradle, Sensei? I know 'bout star. Every night at my honorable home I open shoji to see old priest strike bell and make him sing. Then I see big star hang out light over topmost of mountain." One more time he say, like thinking to himself: "Cradle. Maybe him shrine for new God of ...
— Mr. Bamboo and the Honorable Little God - A Christmas Story • Fannie C. Macaulay
... the topmost branches spread out and drooped in all directions, and many poles supported the ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... failure. We saw nothing save a Scotch mist, which wetted us to the bones; and we shivered standing in a slush of snow which would have been quite at home in Upper Norwood. On this topmost peak were found roots of the Madeiran cedar (Juniperus Oxycedrus), showing that at one time the whole ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... rows of nests and the beautiful brown eggs in them. Jimmy Skunk couldn't climb, and so he could have gotten only the eggs in the lower nests. Now if he, Unc' Billy, had been there, he could have climbed to the very topmost nest and—but what was the use of thinking about it? He hadn't been there, and he couldn't go now, ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... all outward prosperity, Ortnit was lonely and unhappy. One day, while he was strolling along the seashore at sunset, he saw a misty castle rise slowly out of the waves. On its topmost tower he beheld a fair maiden, with whom he fell deeply in love at first sight. As he was gazing spellbound at the lady's beauty, castle and maiden suddenly vanished; and when Ortnit asked his uncle, Ylyas (Elias), Prince of the Reussen, what ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... the poet Verlaine. The singer of the sweetest verses in the French language—a sort of ambling song like a robin's. You have heard the robin singing on a coral hedge in autumn-tide; the robin confesses his little soul from the topmost twig; his song is but a tracery of his soul, and so is Verlaine's. His gift is a vision of his own soul, and he makes a tracery as you might of a drawing with a lead pencil, never troubling himself to inquire if what he traces is good or ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... that he must look to the impoverished people of the high mountains for a food supply in this his sore extremity. Therefore, instead of crossing the range by way of any of the main-traveled passes, he pushed his grass-refreshed steed straight up Mount Pleasant to its topmost heights. ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... in the steerage, by Wolf Larsen's bunk. I looked at him, the man who had been hurled down from the topmost pitch of life to be buried alive and be worse than dead. There seemed a relaxation of his expressionless face which was new. Maud looked at ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... which to spend a summer's day; for, though they reach unto the heavens, they are, like most of their kind, somewhat stuffy, the dust of the great city in all their nooks and corners, and the noise of the crowded life penetrates even to the topmost flat. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... you?—such vague projects for the perfecting of corrupt societies seem to me to crawl far below the devotion of love. When the whole soul vibrates with that one thought, it has no room for the nice calculation of general interests; the topmost heights of earth are ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... lie low a-deck"; and he went up the companion ladder when I got my flannels and rubber-shod shoes upon me. But at the topmost step he stood awhile, and then he fell flat on his hands, and backed again down the stairway, so that he came almost on top of me; but I saw what prompted his action, for, as he moved, there was a shadow thrown from the deck light down to where ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... might be classed as perfunctory, an essential part of the occasion. But at night the spirit of the people showed beyond mistake. Not only were the streets arched and bordered with festoons of colored incandescent lights, not only were the battleships in the harbor strung with fiery beads to the topmost spar, but every window in every house in the city bore its light. Fine houses had candelabra behind the glass, and the poorest mere tapers, but everywhere the same fire ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... never did no sich a thing; I was a-making of your bed, sir, when I sees the tag of a stay-lace hanging out of your topmost drawer, sir—("I am a married man, sir," to the dean apologetically, "and I know the tag of a stay-lace, sir")—and so I took it out, sir; and knowing my duty to the college, sir, though I should be very sorry to bring you into trouble, Mr ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... group and Portugal the plummet of your human navigators finds no bottom, I have often heard them say, till it reaches 2,500; and out of this profound sea-bed the volcanic energies pushed up my islands as a small submarine mountain range, whose topmost summits alone stood out bit by bit above the level of the surrounding sea. One of them, the most abrupt and cone-like, by name now Pico, rises to this day, a magnificent sight, sheer seven thousand feet into the sky ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... shafts are driven upwards from them to the surface, and other levels driven sixty feet higher than the first. This process is continued until the lode lying above the lowest level has been divided off into horizontal bands, each about sixty feet in depth. The quartz is then excavated above the topmost level, and thrown down the shafts to the lowest, where it is received into waggons and conveyed to the reduction works. As both the ore and the enclosing rocks are greatly decomposed and very soft, the whole of the ground has to be securely timbered ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... infinite:- Which is so strong, my strongest throes And the rough world's besieging blows Not break it, and so weak withal, Death ebbs and flows in its loose wall As the green sea in fishers' nets, And tops its topmost parapets:- Which is so wholly mine that I Can wield its whole artillery, And mine so little, that my soul Dwells in perpetual control, And I but think and speak and do As my dead fathers move me to:- If this born body of my bones ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... service, for this gush of sentimental feeling is a transient and fluctuating thing; it gives out just as soon as it meets with difficulty and occasion for self-sacrifice. And this attempt to live forever on the topmost wave of emotional excitement defeats itself by the satiety and ennui which it brings. Whether in courtship, or society, or business, it behooves us to be on our guard against this insidious sham which cloaks selfishness ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... illume The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor, By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore, A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb, The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea— For these alone the finials fret the skies, The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free, While from the triple portals, with grave eyes, Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity, The cloud of witnesses ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... opportunities slipped by me, left an' right. It makes me hate myself to-day when I on Fancy's ferry Have crossed the current of the years to olden days gone by, T' think of all the lips I've missed, ripe-red as topmost cherry, The lips I might have tasted if I'd had ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... a fresh star-shell lit up the trench they saw a man in khaki thrust his head and shoulders over the topmost bag and look under his hand ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... childhood; how he had played among the little rustics, and been at once the wildest and the sweetest of them all; and how, in his very infancy, he had plunged into the deep pools of the streamlets and never been drowned, and had clambered to the topmost branches of tall trees without ever breaking his neck. No such mischance could happen to the sylvan child because, handling all the elements of nature so fearlessly and freely, nothing had either the power or the will to do ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... house. At the same moment there rose up a babel of sounds, followed by two pistol shots, and a roaring, gasping hubbub, with clash of swords and storm of oaths. At this sudden uproar we all three ran at our topmost speed up the pathway and peered in through the open door, where we saw a scene such as I shall never forget while this old memory of mine can conjure up any ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ascended to the topmost of its 12,349 feet, still in the Southern Alps the peaks are many which are yet unsealed, and the valleys many which are virtually untrodden. Exploring parties still go out and find new lakes, new passes, and new waterfalls. It ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Cross looks down upon lover and tourist as we all foregather on the topmost terrace of ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... stone balustrades, he noticed a black cat seated on the top of a pillar, its head thrown far back, and its wide-open eyes, looking like balls of yellow fire, fixed on a sparrow perched high above on the topmost twig of a tall slender tree. "Puss, puss," said Eden, speaking to the animal almost unconsciously, and without pausing in his walk. Down instantly leapt the cat, inside the wall, and dashing through the shrubbery, shot ahead of ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... to stay, no matter how the sun beat down into their narrow streets and small stifling rooms. There had been no rain for a long time; many people were sick and dying, and the world looked very dark to some of them. Mrs. Holmes lived high up in the topmost rooms of a tall block of buildings. Her rooms were small and hot, for the sun shone into her windows and upon the roof all the long day. She was a seamstress and a widow with ...
— Sunshine Factory • Pansy |
