"Alabaster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of his faint smile to increase to become scornful. These poor sidewalk creatures little knew what seethed inside the alabaster of the young Augustan noble! What was it to THEM that this was Miss Pratt's last night and that he intended to dance and dance with her, ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
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... occasionally and by good fortune, nuggets of gold; and in the other stream bed, certainly and without hazard, you could dig up little caskets, containing talismans which gave length of days and peace; and alabaster vases of precious balms, which were better than the Arabian Dervish's ointment, and made not only the eyes to see, but the mind to know, whatever it would—I wonder in which of the stream beds there would ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
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... her tears rained upon them. Seemingly oblivious of her surroundings and of disapproving eyes watching her movements, she shook out her tresses and wiped the Lord's feet with her hair. Then, opening an alabaster box of ointment, she anointed them, as a slave might do to his master. Jesus graciously permitted the woman to proceed unrebuked and uninterrupted in her humble service inspired by ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
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... chairs of an hour-glass pattern, which never stood upright, probably, and have now all a confirmed droop to one side, as from having been fallen heavily asleep in, upon breezy porches, of hot summer afternoons. In the windows are small vases of alabaster, fly-specked Parian and plaster figures, and dolls with stiff wooden limbs and papier- mache heads, a sort of dolls no longer to be bought in these days of modish, blue-eyed blondes of biscuit and sturdy india-rubber brunettes. The show-case is full of an incredible variety, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
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... There was no screen,—nothing between the vestibule and the altar to break the long vista; even the organ stood aside,—though it by-and-by made us aware of its presence by a melodious roar. Around the walls there were old engraved brasses, and a stone coffin, and an alabaster knight of Saint John, and an alabaster lady, each recumbent at full length, as large as life, and in perfect preservation, except for a slight modern touch at the tips of their noses. In the chancel we saw a great deal of oaken work, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
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... was wet and then baked in, solid. And the method of impressing them was very simple; the workman merely pressed the end of his graver or wedge into the moist clay, thus giving rise to triangular marks which were arranged in the shapes of various letters. When alabaster, or any other hard material, was substituted for clay, the sculptor imitated these natural dabs or triangular imprints; and that was the origin of those mysterious and very learned-looking cuneiforms. This, I admit, is a palpable digression; but inasmuch as ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
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... refreshments. They said, "No, thank you, we really don't want anything, we are just trying to see if there are the same ornaments on the table as when Britannia was married." I found out afterward that the ornaments were three beautiful alabaster groups of classic figures. The two old ladies were Miss Mary and Miss ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
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... linen traced Here lakes of love:—there names entwined were placed; Magnificence like this the nuns admired, And such amusements ardently desired. Their beauty too incited to be free; A thousand matters filled their souls with glee; In height the belles were pretty much the same Like alabaster fair; of perfect frame; In num'rous corners Cupid nestling lay: Beneath a stomacher he'd slyly play, A veil or scapulary, this or that, Where least the eye of day perceived he sat, Unless a lover called to mystick bow'rs, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
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... (many-breasted), 'we are told, was borrowed from the East, a large term.' I say 'she is even blended in ritual with a monstrous many-breasted divinity of Oriental religion.' {139b} Is this 'large term' too vague? Then consider the Artemis of Ephesus and 'the alabaster statuette of the goddess' in Roscher's Lexikon, p. 558. Compare, for an Occidental parallel, the many- breasted goddess of the maguey plant, in Mexico. {140} Our author writes, 'we are told that Artemis's most ancient history is to be studied in Arkadia.' My ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
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... the limitless fields of snow. It was like a world of alabaster. The light came from every corner of the heavens. It came from the glory of a full moon, hard-driven to retain supremacy over its satellites. It came from the myriads of burnished stars, gleaming with a ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
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... with tarnished gold-lace, and an album of venerable hue filled with hyperbolic apostrophes to the charms of some ancient beauty; which, with the dilapidated window-curtains, the obsolete sideboard, the wooden effigy of a red-faced man with a spyglass under his arm, and the cracked alabaster clock-case on the mantel, all bespoke an impoverished establishment, so devoid of taste that the beautiful and artistic portrait seemed to have found its way there by a miracle. It represented a young and spirituelle woman, in the costume, so elegant in material and formal in mode, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
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... elegance. If any exceptions can be made, they are very few: Haddon and Ascham, the pride of Elizabeth's reign, however they have succeeded in prose, no sooner attempt verse than they provoke derision. If we produced any thing worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, it was, perhaps, Alabaster's Roxana[27]. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
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... of angels." The first thing to be said on the art of deportment is that what is becoming at one age would be most improper and ridiculous at another. For a young girl, for instance, to sit as grave and stiff as "her grandmother cut in alabaster" would be ridiculous enough, but not so much so, as for an old woman to assume the romping merriment of girlhood. She would deservedly draw only contempt and laughter ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
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... flee to the haunts of gore,— Each Cyclopean Dragon's goal! And groaning cries from maidens fair Is heard by spectral, gangrel forms,— The writhing thin is flayed some more! Its secret sins,—Black deeds of Soul— Is scourged as copper-burnished hair Hangs from her alabaster head, Both feet and arms are screwed till black— A sign that Hell reigns on, unstunned. Then incense swung by priestesses, Salute the newly, plunder'd dead, The bloody sight upon the wrack, Where cringing groans once rose unsummed, ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
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... brought from France to this country. Hanging in my bedroom is a set of engravings entitled "Diligence and Dissipation," after Hogarth, and also a handsome old print of the Savior in the Pharisee's House, all of which were purchased at the same time. Two alabaster ornaments are memories of my earliest childhood, one of which was a column casting a shadow that formed a likeness of ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
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... catastrophe, although with much of heart throbbing. Hatszegi observed the jewels in the ears and round the neck of his bride and paid her the compliment of saying that they contrasted admirably with the snowy whiteness of her alabaster neck. ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
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... West's Awake," and "Dear Land," and then we all arose and sang together, "God bless the Pope, the great, the good." I was going to say "sang in unison," but I am afraid I should be trespassing on the sacred precincts of truth; yet if that grand old man in Rome, that electric spark in the vase of alabaster, sitting in that lonely chamber, behind the long, empty, gas-lit state apartments, could hear those voices there above the western seas, he would surely realize more keenly what he understands already, that he can always call upon his Irish reserves to ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
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... alabaster hair came to take my order. I asked for jaco and bunlets, and carried the food to a wall shelf near the Dry-towners. Their dialect fell soft and familiar on my ears. One of them, without altering the expression on his face or the easy tone of his voice, began to make ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
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... stone, and could be used in the solid; therefore it was possible for carving in the North to be rendered as deeply and as roundly as the sculptor desired. In Southern countries, however, and chiefly in Italy, the stone used for building was not ordinary, but semi-precious stone. Marble, porphyry, and alabaster were available; and the use of such material led to a different ideal in architecture and decoration,—that of incrustation instead of solid piling. These valuable stones of Italy could not be used, generally speaking, in vast blocks, into which the chisel was at ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
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... midst of the supper Mary brought an alabaster box of very precious and costly perfume, and poured it upon the head of Jesus and also upon His feet, wiping them with her long hair. Judas, one of the twelve, frowned upon her, and said it was a waste, for the perfume might have been ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
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... opportunity and depart at once. This at the time, and indeed generally, has been construed into a proof of their guilt. It may have been so, but, on the other hand, it may just as well not have been. Had their innocence been purer than alabaster or whiter than the driven snow they were probably well advised under existing circumstances in not remaining to ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
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... by the passionate exultation of the antiquary whose studies and researches are about to be rewarded with unexpected treasure. Towards sunset the men came upon a large oblong piece of what appeared to be alabaster, closely inlaid with patterns of worn gold and bearing on its surface the sculptured emblems of a cross, a drawn sword and a crown of laurel leaves intertwisted with thorns, the whole most elaborately wrought, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
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... of all the new things. In weary haste she undressed, and ascending with some difficulty the high four-post bed which stood waiting for her like an altar of sleep for its sacrifice, was presently as still and straight and white as alabaster lady lying ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
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... Palace are some tables which you may know where marble intazzio can no further go. Alabaster does not appeal to me, it is somewhat sugary in results. If you are fortunate enough to have a sculptor who is a sort of nineteenth century Donatello, let him work his will on statuary or such ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
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... shrine that, the cedar door having rotted away, was filled with fine, drifted sand. Basketful by basketful we got it out and then, my friend, there appeared the most beautiful life-sized statue of Isis carved in alabaster that ever I have seen. She was seated on a throne-like chair and wore the vulture cap on which traces of colour remained. Her arms were held forward as though to support a child, which perhaps she was suckling as one of the breasts was bare. But ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
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... are some monumental brasses and a handsome tomb of marble and alabaster. One of the former is to the memory of Nicholas Ansley, or Annesley, Esq. who died in 1593; with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
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... Hebrew woman took the foreskin (others say she took the navel-string), and preserved it in an alabaster-box of ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
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... unclean villages of the Alban Hills, or where the shadows of deserted palaces fall black, broken, and jagged on the red earth of Granada, there she companions him. She shows him, that, after all, Venice is hers, and gives him the white marble enriched with subtilest films of gold, alabaster which the processes of her incessant years have changed to Oriental amber, a city made opalescent by the magic of her sunsets. At Rome she opens vistas away from the sepulchral, out into the wine-colored light of the Campagna, into the peace gladdened ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
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... graves, were a precious offering to Christ. They were all missionaries, and did not go home till their work was done. Each one had a place to fill among the instrumentalities employed by the Master to promote his kingdom in Persia. There was no waste in the breaking of those alabaster boxes of precious ointment. Nestorian parents looked on, to learn how to lay their children into the arms of Jesus, and become more Christ-like themselves. No years of mature toil have been more blessed than the years of those thus early called home; and in ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
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... death had within twelve months removed both a husband and a child, made preparations for her own demise by recording her intention to repose beside their remains: and to her husband's memory she raised, in Fulham Church, a monument 'of alabaster, inlaid and ornamented with various-coloured marble,' leaving a space after her name for the insertion of the date of her death and age, which appear ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
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... off to observe. "Papa was called in to see her the other day. He isn't their doctor, but she was taken ill suddenly, so they sent for him because he was at hand; and he says her shoulders are like alabaster." ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
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... a distracted gesture. Silence brooded over the dinner table, covered with spoons bearing the Forsyte crest—a pheasant proper—under the electric light in an alabaster globe. And outside, the river evening darkened, charged with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
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... splendid than the palace of the king. He laid out vast gardens of the most exquisite beauty, in which there were fountains as white as snow, trees of rare fruit and flowers that filled all the air with their perfume, summer-houses of alabaster and ebony. ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
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... are three painted windows over the altar, the central containing scenes from the life of Christ, those to the north and south representing the Old and New Testaments respectively. To the north of the recess forming the sanctuary there is an alabaster pulpit,[4] and on the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
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... peeping forth; As if King Winter had dropped and left— Stumbling and tripping the steep hills down— Had clutched his robe and dropped his crown: Or as if the very snow had power, Out of itself to fashion a flower; So vase-like, slender, and exquisite, Like an alabaster lamp alit,— ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
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... and laughing at the beldam's loathly semblance. So the damsel leisurely rose and, taking a sash of Yamani stuff, passed it twice round her waist, then she tucked up her trousers and displayed two calves of alabaster carrying a mound of crystal, smooth and rounded, and a stomach which exhaled musk from its dimples, as it were a bed of Nu'uman's anemones; and breasts like double pomegranates. Then the old woman leant towards her, and the two laid hold either of each, while Sharrkan raised his head ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
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... sumptuously decorated, will exclaim: Would it not have been better to give to the poor the money spent in purchasing these things? So complained Judas (though caring not for the poor(432)) when Mary poured from an alabaster vase the precious ointment on the feet of an approving Savior. Why should not we imitate Mary by placing at His feet, around His sanctuary, our vases with their chaste and fragrant flowers, that the Church may be filled with their perfume, as Simon's house was filled ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
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... derived all its culture. The palaces were probably only one story in height. Their principal splendor was in their interior decoration of painted stucco, enameled bricks, and, above all, painted reliefs in limestone or alabaster. ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
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... O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimm'd by human tears! America! America! God shed His grace on thee. And crown thy good with brotherhood. From sea to shining sea! America! America! God ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
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... stripped bare of ornament. On the other side of the entrance lies a royal Prince of English birth, John of Eltham, the second son of Edward II., and thus grandson to Henry III. To the student of armour the alabaster effigy is of special interest as a specimen of the military costume of the fourteenth century; while the coronet is the earliest known example of ducal form—the title of Duke was not introduced into England till rather later. The small crowned images of royal personages, John's relations, ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
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... its neighbourhood. Excavations in the mounds of Balaw[a]t, called Imgur-Bel by the Assyrians, 15 m. east of Mosul, resulted in the discovery of a small temple dedicated to the god of dreams by Assur-nazir-pal III. (883 B.C.), containing a stone coffer or ark in which were two inscribed tables of alabaster of rectangular shape, as well as of a palace which had been destroyed by the Babylonians but restored by Shalmaneser II. (858 B.C.). From the latter came the bronze gates with hammered reliefs, which are now in the British Museum. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
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... it is full of Early Victorian furniture, and horrid alabaster statuette things, under glass cases, and then a few modern armchairs covered in gorgeous brocade, but it is all clawed by the cats, and soiled by the dogs' muddy feet, and you are unable to make up your mind where it will be safe to sit. When tea came in, which it did immediately, ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
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... clear looking-glass, ornamented with columns and little images of alabaster; a portrait of Edward VI., brother to Queen Elizabeth; the true portrait of Lucretia; a picture of the battle of Pavia; the history of Christ's passion, carved in mother-of-pearl; the portraits of Mary Queen of Scots, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
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... where a man is borne By stalwart charger, to the sounding horn— The sheeny silk, the bed of leaves of rose, Made more to soothe the sight than court repose; The mighty palaces that raise the sneer Of jealous mendicants and wretches near— The spacious parks, from which horizon blue Arches o'er alabaster statues new; Where Superstition still her walk will take, Unto soft music stealing o'er the lake— The innocent modesty by gems undone— The qualms of judges by small brib'ry won— The dread of children, trembling while they play— The bliss ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
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... love to quote lofty examples. Hammond has described her, and I should say from his description she is what Barry Cornwall would call 'a golden girl' in everything except fortune. Hammond speaks of her as though she were made of precious metals and gems. She has golden hair, alabaster brow, sapphire eyes, pearly teeth, and ruby nose. Or, stay—perhaps it was ruby lips and chiselled nose. Chiselled, sounds as though her olfactory organ was of marble or granite, doesn't it? And she's three-and-thirty years of age. I found that out for myself ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
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... walls were alabaster, the roof gold, Ivory the doors, the sapphire windows lent Whence on my heart of old Its earliest sigh, as shall my last, was sent; In arrowy jets of fire thence came and went Arm'd messengers of love, whereof to think As then ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
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... the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat. And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee which ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
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... minute, ere, looking around him, he beheld a grotto, or natural cavern, composed of the most splendid spars and crystals, which returned in a thousand prismatic hues the light of a brilliant flame that glowed on an altar of alabaster. This altar, with its fire, formed the central point of the grotto, which was of a round form, and very high in the roof, resembling in some respects the dome of a cathedral. Corresponding to the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
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... date, and near it are the parish stocks, once devoted to the confining of unruly legs. In the Lady Chapel, south of the chancel, where an abortive stairway points to the former existence of a rood-gallery, is a lovely altar, constructed mainly of pure alabaster, and the flooring before both altars is of highly polished marble. Here, too, are some fine old brasses to members of a family that has played its part in the nation's history; one member of which family, the duellist ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
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... you sorer," said Jakin genially, and got home on Lew's alabaster forehead. All would have gone well and this story, as the books say, would never have been written, had not his evil fate prompted the Bazar-Sergeant's son, a long, employless man of five-and-twenty, to put in an appearance after the first ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
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... striking contrast than that presented by the woman of fashion and the recluse. Lady Maulevrier was almost as handsome in the winter of her days as she had been when life was in its spring. The tall, slim figure, erect as a dart, the delicately chiselled features and alabaster complexion, the soft silvery hair, the perfect hand, whiter and more transparent than the hand of girlhood, the stately movements and bearing, all combined to make Lady Maulevrier a queen among woman. Her brocade ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
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... "holy hour" strike, and as the last stroke sounded he fancied he saw the Cupid and Psyche surmounting his clock entwine their alabaster arms about one another. At the same moment two timid taps ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
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... mountain-tops, toward the west. Loath to part from scenes of such impressive beauty,—scenes, alone paralleled in our recollection by fabulous tales of Oriental enchantment,—we gazed behind us at those flashing crests of alabaster, until they grew small in the distance, and finally were wholly lost to our sight. With them disappeared the last vestige of the solid earth, and we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
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... into the renowned Court of Lions. There is no part of the edifice that gives us a more complete idea of its original beauty and magnificence than this; for none has suffered so little from the ravages of time. In the center stands the fountain famous in song and story. The alabaster basins still shed their diamond drops, and the twelve lions which support them cast forth their crystal streams as in the days of Boabdil. The court is laid out in flower-beds, and surrounded by light Arabian arcades of open filigree work, supported by slender ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
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... dazzling creature. She had a head of beautiful form, perched like a bird upon a throat massive yet shapely and smooth as a column of alabaster, a symmetrical brow, black eyes full of fire and tenderness, a delicious mouth, with a hundred varying expressions, and that marvelous faculty of giving beauty alike to love or scorn, a sneer or a smile. But she had one feature more remarkable than all, her eyebrows—the actor's feature; they ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
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... alabaster box was broken that its fine fragrance filled the house, and spread out into all the world. Somebody prayed, "O Lord, take me, and break me, and make me." That is the usual order as a matter of fact. Yet if the strength of stubbornness that must be broken down to change its ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
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... dead body of Richard III., naked, trussed behind a pursuivant-at-arms, all dashed with mire and blood, was there brought and homely buried; where afterward King Henry VII. (out of royal disposition) erected for him a fair alabaster monument, with his picture cut out, and made thereon."—Quoted in Nichols's Leicestershire, vol. i. p. 357.: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
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... sweet kind voice restored him to consciousness. Muttering a few words of incoherent recognition, he sank upon a sandalwood settee, as Goliath, the little slave, brought aromatic coffee in cups of opal, and alabaster spittoons, and pipes of ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
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... It is calculated that it seats 800 people. The organ was built by Hill. The brass lectern was erected in 1888 in memory of Bishop Claughton. The east end is in the form of an apse, with seven deeply-set windows, of which only two are coloured. The walls of the chancel are inlaid with alabaster. Round the walls are glazed tiles to the memory of the men of the Guards who have died. The oak pulpit is modern, and the font, cut from a solid block of dark-veined marble and supported by four pillars, stands on a small platform of tessellated pavement. ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
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... extensive, and in a beautiful style; the colonnade of the court is splendid. This palace contains a large collection of paintings, rare works of sculpture, valuable tables, and utensils of rich workmanship, of red porphyry, alabaster, and other materials. The upper hall is unrivalled; the great landscapes of Vernet, with which it is adorned, are so true to nature, that, upon entering, one imagines himself transported into real scenes. The palace Albani, the situation ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
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... finished. All that part of the church between the choir and the door del Perdon was occupied by this showy and ponderous fabric. According to their traditional custom all the Toledans gathered to admire—the steps covered with rows of burning lights, the Roman legionaries in alabaster leaning on their lances, and the rich curtain with its innumerable folds that hung from the vaulting down to ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
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... to move amid it without being touched with a single spark of poetic fire. They tell of the glory of the cardinals, in litters, on horseback, in glittering carriages, blazing with jewels and shaded with gorgeous canopies; of marble palaces, grand walks, alabaster columns, gigantic obelisks, villas, gardens, grottoes, flowers, fountains, cascades; of churches adorned with polished pillars, gilded soffits, mosaic floors, altars sparkling with diamonds, and gorgeous pictures from master-hands looking down ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
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... ornamented with mosaic heads of all the popes, chiefly modern, from the government studios, but there are a few ancient ones among them. It seems as though the whole civilized world had united to do honour to this noble edifice and the great Apostle in memory of whom it was erected. The alabaster pillars of the high altar were presented by the infidel Pacha of Egypt; a detached altar in the transept was a gift from the heretic Emperor of Russia; the granite pillars in the nave came from the ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
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... (197) and I must write to you. 'Tis the top of a black barren mountain, a vile little town at the foot of an old citadel: yet this, know you, was the residence of one of the three kings that went to Christ's birth-day; his name was Alabaster, Abarasser, or some such thing; the other two were kings, one of the East, the other of Cologn. 'Tis this of Cofano, who was represented in an ancient painting found in the Palatine Mount, now in ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
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... and when he got there the whole palace was made of polished marble with alabaster figures and golden ornaments, and soldiers were marching before the door blowing trumpets, and beating cymbals and drums; and in the house, barons, and counts, and dukes were going about as servants. Then they ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
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... grand room are curtained by alabaster drapery in vertical folds and present to the eye a scene of unexampled ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
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... Bath," had the calamity of being wooed and won by Sheridan. Never was there a more touching and instructive history than hers. Her beauty was rare, even amid the belles of a period rich in attractive women. Dark masses of hair, drawn back on her brow, fell in curls on a neck of alabaster. Her features were delicate and regular; the expression of her eyes was exquisitely soft and pensive. Her charms have been transmitted to her female descendants, Mrs. Norton, the Duchess of Somerset, and Lady Dufferin, whilst they have also inherited her musical ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
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... the snowy sheets which covered all but that lily face; and but for the quivering of the little frill of her cap, and the slow movement of her large blue eyes, it would have been difficult to believe that it was not the alabaster figure of some saint that reposed there. The superior looked kindly and sadly upon her, bent down, kissed her pale forehead, and went on; and though the sufferer did not move or speak, nor the feeble head ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
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... fully aware, but for the Irish of it, she would have to be referred to as Miss Dodworth. And this wisp of a girl with her big black-fringed gray eyes peering up and out over her gray knitted shawl, but for the holes in her white stockings and the fact that the alabaster of her neck was a shade off color—faith, an' it might have been Eleanor hersilf! It is obvious that any juryman who allows his mind to be influenced by the mere fact that one of the witnesses for the defense is a pretty woman—even if she recalls to him his wife or sweet-heart—is ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
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... N.E. from Knebworth Station, G.N.R.) has an ancient church restored in 1883. There is E.E. work in parts of nave and chancel, but other portions are largely Perp., especially the tower, which is embattled. The alabaster reredos and several memorial windows are worth notice; nor should visitors overlook the brass at the foot of the chancel steps to one John Kent, his wife and ten children. This worthy died in 1592; ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
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... "the better half," "the rising generation," "tripping the light fantastic toe," "the cup that cheers but does not inebriate," "in the arms of Morpheus," "the debt of nature," "the bourne whence no traveler returns," "to shuffle off this mortal coil," "the devouring element," "a brow of alabaster." ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
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... things that we have seen till we have utterly ceased to see them, the things that nobody who really lives in Florence ever dreams of buying, are new to these people. They love them. As a result, you can guess. There will be in their apartments alabaster plates with profiles of Dante and Michelangelo on a black center. There will be mosaic tables with magnolias and irises. There will be Pliny's doves. Think of it! There will be green ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
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... section is succeeded by limestone without fossils, a great variety of sandstone, consisting principally of red sandstone and fine conglomerates. The red sandstone is argillaceous, with compact white gypsum or alabaster, very beautiful. The other sandstones are gray, yellow, and ferruginous, sometimes very coarse. The apparent sterility of the country must therefore be sought for in other causes than the nature of the soil. The face ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
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... comprising mahogany, dining, loo, card, and Pembroke tables; sofa, couch, and chairs in hair seating; cheffonier, with plate glass; book-case; flower-stands; pianoforte, by Collard and Collard; music-stool and Canterbury; chimney and pier-glasses; mirror; ormolu time-piece; alabaster and wax figures and shades; china; Brussels carpets and rugs; fenders and fire-irons; curtains and cornices; Venetian blinds; mahogany four-post, French, and camp bedsteads; feather beds; hair mattresses; ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
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... beneath the sparkle) seldom seen but in the French—and widely distinct from the unintellectual languish of the Spaniard, or the full and majestic fierceness of the Italian gaze. Her dress of black velvet, and graceful hat with its princely plume, contrasted the alabaster whiteness of her arms and neck. And what with the eyes, the skin, the rich colouring of the complexion, the rosy lips and the small ivory teeth, no one would have had the cold hypercriticism to observe ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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... Death-Angel's shoulder. But in her battle for the child, Persis catched at the chain about the child's neck, and the chain brake and remained in her hand, and upon the chain was the little cross of fair alabaster which an holy man had put there when Theodoric was baptized. So the Death-Angel went his way with that best-beloved lamb, and Persis fell upon her face ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
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... import the barge of Caterina should not be without the benediction of its tutelary saint, since every gondola was wont to have its shrine; and behind them under the canopy, from a mass of roses on an altar of alabaster, rose a noble Madonna by Bellini, painted with exquisite grace—the votive picture which later kept within the Chapel of the Lady Fiorenza in the Palazzo Cornaro, the ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
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... the district eastward to Gloucester Road has no old association. St. Jude's Church, in Courtfield Gardens, was built in 1870. The reredos is of red-stained alabaster, coloured marble, and mosaics by Salviati. St. Stephen's, in Gloucester Road, is a smaller church, founded in 1866. Beyond it Gloucester Road runs into Victoria Road, once Love Lane. General Gordon was at No. 8, Victoria Grove, in 1881. Returning again ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
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... paid it the tribute of unwilling renunciation. It is so nearly a perfect relic of ancient Rome and so much more impressive, in its all but unbroken peristyle, than the later but recumbent claimant to its identity that I am sure the owners of the little bronze or alabaster copies of it scattered over the world must share my pious reluctance. The custodian is still very proud of it, and would have lectured me upon it much longer than I let him; as it was, he kept me while he could cast a blazing ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
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... the opera house the petals trace For modesty a fitting aureole; An alabaster wreath to lay, methought, In dusky hair o'er some fair woman's face Which kindles ev'n such love within the soul As sculptured marble forms ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
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... for several subsequent nights. Amelia and the tearful mother took me up the dark little stairway, and introduced me to Death. They showed me Amelia's sister, Jinny, who died (of consumption, I believe) on the day before our visit. I still can see the alabaster white face, with its pronounced vein-markings; the straight, thin form, outlined beneath a sheet, in that tiny, low-ceiled, airless garret. What a picture to place before an infant on a sunny Sunday afternoon! It might be supposed that I had asked to see it, for I remember Amelia ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
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... came before his eyes. He seemed in a new world. The music sounded like a distant and charming melody. Around him breathed the sweetly perfumed flowers, and alabaster lamps half hidden in luxuriant foliage shed a delicious twilight over the scene, while through the interlacing leaves of tropical plants could just be seen the leafless gloomy trees beyond, and the snow ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
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... beauty; and innocence, Its dulcet notes breathed forth in every word, Was seen in every motion that she made. Her form was faultless, and her golden hair In long luxuriant tresses floated o'er Her shoulders, that as alabaster shone. Her very look seemed to impart a sense Of matchless purity to all it met. I saw her in the crowd, yet none were there That seemed so pure as she; and every eye That met her eye's mild glance shrank back abashed, It spake such innocence. One ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
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... where stood a pot with pretty flowers; and I had my eyes fixed upon this, when, all on a sudden, the window opened, and a young lady appeared, whose beauty was dazzling. Immediately she cast her eyes upon me; and, in watering the flower-pot with a hand whiter than alabaster, looked upon me with a smile that inspired me with as much love for her as I had formerly an aversion for all women. After having watered all her flowers, and darting upon me a glance full of charms that quite pierced my heart, she shut up the window again, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
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... an old pit amongst the Christian graves to the south-east of the camp, and below the left jamb of the "Gate." Here also the Bedawin had been at work; and, when unable to work deep enough, they told us wonderful tales of an alabaster slab, which doubtless concealed vast treasures. In Arabia, as in Africa, one must look out for what there is not, as well as for what there is. After spending a morning in sinking a twelve-feet shaft, we came upon a shapeless coralline-boulder, which in ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
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... never constant to a single wave. They all have it; they all lose it. Now she is dull and thick as bacon; now transparent as a hanging glass. The fixed faces are the dull ones. Here comes Lady Venice displayed like a monument for admiration, but carved in alabaster, to be set on the mantelpiece and never dusted. A dapper brunette complete from head to foot serves only as an illustration to lie upon the drawing-room table. The women in the streets have the faces of playing ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
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... of her body, molded on that of the Polyhymnia of antiquity, her pale face gently inclined upon her brother's shoulder, her long golden hair floating around her snowy shoulders, her arm thrown around her mother's neck, its rose-tinted alabaster hand drooping upon the red shawl in which Madame de Montrevel had wrapped herself; such was Roland's sister as she ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
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... heavy With the scent of mignonette and rose, And from the beds of flowers the tall White lilies point like angel fingers upward, Casting on the air an incense sweet, That brings to mind the old, old story Of the alabaster box that loving Mary Broke upon the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
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... she loved much, not only much was forgiven her: but that beside that blessed blessing of having her sins pardoned, and the joy of knowing her happy condition, she also had from him a testimony, that her alabaster box of precious ointment poured on his head and feet, and that spikenard, and those spices that were by her dedicated to embalm and preserve his sacred body from putrefaction, should so far preserve ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
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... man went back, and when he got to the door, he found that the whole palace was made of polished marble, with alabaster figures and golden decorations. Soldiers marched up and down before the doors, blowing their trumpets and beating their drums. Inside the palace, counts, barons, and dukes walked about as attendants, and they opened to him the doors, which were ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
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... little foot, you always flee from me, yet I always took good care of you. I bathed you with perfumed water in a bowl of alabaster; I smoothed your heel with pumice-stone mixed with palm oil; your nails were cut with golden scissors and polished with a hippopotamus tooth; I was careful to select tatbebs for you, painted and embroidered and turned up at the toes, which were the envy ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
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... specimens, two of which are reproduced in Plate IV, Figs. 3 and 4. The former is very small and composed of compact white limestone, the details being pronounced, and the whole specimen finished with more than usual elaboration. The latter is unusually large, of compact gypsum or alabaster, and quite carefully carved. The eyes have been inlaid with turkoises, and there is cut around its neck a groove by which the beads of shell, coral, &c., were originally fastened. A large arrow-head of chalcedony has been ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
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... entered in the gay Wallachian costume. The first who took her place, in a sort of decorated chair in front, and who was familiarly greeted by his Majesty, was a young lady, as it seemed to me even then, of most surpassing beauty. Her dark raven hair was held back from a brow as white as alabaster by a circlet of gorgeous emeralds, whose pale mild light added to the pensive melancholy of her features. I have no heart to describe her further, although that image stands before me now, as clearly as when I first riveted these longing ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
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... feelings), to have witnessed those three nor'-westers enjoying their supper in the snowy camp. The fire had been replenished with logs, till it roared and crackled again, as if it were endued with a vicious spirit, and wished to set the very snow in flames. The walls shone like alabaster studded with diamonds, while the green boughs overhead and the stems around were of a deep red colour in the light of the fierce blaze. The tea-kettle hissed, fumed, and boiled over into the fire. A mass of pemmican simmered in the lid ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
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... creature, not even able to drop a tear at so meeting with her humiliated parent, who, from the moment that she was known, could only gaze like the effigy of some extraordinary consternation carved in alabaster stone. ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
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... beautiful for patriot dream That sees, beyond the years, Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! America! America! 5 God shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
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... grace; this white satin robe falls in full voluptuous folds from the slender waist over the well-made form; it contrasts well with these shoulders, of which my maids have often said 'they were white as alabaster;' with this throat, of which Madame Morien says 'it is white and graceful as the swan's.' This foot, which peeps out from the silken hem of my robe, is small and slender; this hand is fair and small and well formed. ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
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... winds amid the great walls of the Causses—to our left the spurs of the Causse Mejean; to our right those of Sauveterre. We are gradually realizing the strangeness and sublimity of these bare limestone promontories—here columns white as alabaster—a group having all the grandeur of mountains, yet no mountains at all, their summits vast plateaux of steppe and wilderness, their shelving sides dipping from cloudland and desolation ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
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... Serjeant Buzfuz's pathetic allusion to little Bardell's "Alley Tors and Commoneys; the long familiar cry of 'knuckle down' is neglected." Who sees a boy playing marbles now in the street or elsewhere? Mr. Lang in his edition gives us no lore about this point. "Alley Tors" was short for "Alabaster," the material of which ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
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... arms. But here is a love that is mighty to help, and on which we can rely without disappointment or loss. Human excellence is always limited and imperfect, but here is One whom we may imitate and be pure. So let us do like that poor woman in the Gospel story—bring our precious alabaster box of ointment—the love of these hearts of ours, which is the most precious thing we have to give. The box of ointment that we have so often squandered upon unworthy heads—let us come and pour it upon His, not unmingled with our tears, and anoint Him, our beloved ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
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... glide like a falling star, there ran down from the right horn of the Cross to the foot of it, one of the lights of this cluster of splendours, distinguishing itself, as it went, like flame in alabaster. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
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... forward as to speak, Her lips half-open, and her finger up, As though she said, "Beware!" her vest of gold, Broidered with flowers, and clasped from head to foot, An emerald stone in every golden clasp; And on her brow, fairer than alabaster, A coronet of pearls. But then her face, So lovely, yet so arch, so full of mirth, The overflowings of an innocent heart,— It haunts me still, though many a year has ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
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