"Spire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by its shrivelled and lean body that never will make right good Malt; or if it is mown at a proper time, and if it be housed damp, or wettish, it will be apt to heat and mow-burn, and then it will never make so good Malt, because it will not spire, nor come so regularly on the floor as that which ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... or disregards it, which ever may be most advantageous. During several days the tendrils, or internodes, or both, spontaneously revolve with a steady motion. The tendril strikes some object, and quickly curls round and firmly grasps it. In the course of some hours it contracts into a spire, dragging up the stem, and forming an excellent spring. All movements now cease. By growth the tissues soon become wonderfully strong and durable. The tendril has done its work, and has done it in ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... more liturgical question, and, in addition, a proposition boldly practical in the Kyrie, the spire of your Cathedral. The inspiration and structure of it are certainly admirable..."omnia excelsa tua et fluctus tui super me transierunt." Nevertheless, during these 300 bars, about, of a slow and almost continuous ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... treasures about him. There is a grey old castle upon the top of that mighty mound; and yonder, rising three hundred feet above the soil, from among those noble forest trees, behold that old Norman master-work, that cloud-encircled cathedral spire, around which a garrulous army of rooks and choughs continually wheel their flight. Now, who can wonder that the children of that fine old city are proud of her, and offer up prayers for her prosperity? I, myself, who was not born within her walls, offer up prayers ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... was almost as bright as day, and the mystic rays from the realm of Luna, shining on gate, arch, column, spire, tower, temple and dome, revealed to us the ghosts of vanished centuries, and from the depths of the Coliseum there seemed to rise the shouts of a hundred thousand voices, cheering the gladiator from Gaul, ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... butterflies and moths, white and brown and red, and clouds of the "blue skippers" that look like periwinkles blown to life. A bee shot past him so quickly that the thrum of it sounded short as a twanged string, and the next moment a late foxglove spire, naked save for its topmost bell, quivered beneath the onslaught of the arched brown and yellow body. The heat haze shimmered on the distant horizon like an insect's wing, but was tempered on the moorland height by the capricious wind, and Ishmael ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Lippershey by name, of Middleburg, had in his shop a curious toy, rigged up, it is said, by an apprentice, and made out of a couple of spectacle lenses, whereby, if one looked through it, the weather-cock of a neighbouring church spire was seen nearer and ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... and rode along the ridge whence the West became visible, and a washed edge of red over Beckley Church spire and the woods of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... easy to see that it was an avoided house—a house that was shunned by the village, to which my eye was guided by a church spire some half a mile off—a house that nobody would take. And the natural inference was, that it had the reputation of ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... on the hill's slopes, among the trees, stood the square white houses of the town folk. Beyond them, the white spire of the church with its weather vane atop. Joel marked that the wind was still northeast. The vane swung fitfully in the light air. He could see the masts and yards of the ships along the waterfront. The yards of the Nathan Ross were canted in mournful tribute to his brother. At ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... afforded by their several languages, have got at the English "genteel." Consider, a little, all the meanness that there is in that epithet, and then see, when next you cross the Channel, how scornful of it that Calais spire will look. ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Woodbourne, who, placing some benches in the aisle for the temporary accommodation of his new parishioners, made every effort to raise funds to build and endow an additional church. He succeeded, as we have heard; and it was the tall white spire of the now Church of St. Austin's, which greeted Anne Merton's delighted eyes, as on the 27th of August, she, with her father and mother, came to the top of a long hill, about five miles from Abbeychurch. What that sight was to her, ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... most interesting point in all Brussels is the Hotel de Ville. That marvellous edifice, that looks as though it ought to be preserved in a velvet-lined case, so delicate and elaborate are its multitudinous sculptures, lifts the exquisite tracery of its spire against the summer sky, as perfect in its beauty as when Alva and Egmont and Orange passed beneath its shadow ages ago. No spot in Europe, save perhaps the Tower of London, is more haunted by historic memories than is this perfect marvel of architectural beauty. The centuries roll ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... in the face, and finds this countenance in his memory. The man was right. He had, in fact, formed part of the gathering in the Rue Saint Spire. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Washington destroyed all of his letters. There is only one of them to be found which was written after their marriage. It is in an old book, printed in New York in 1796, when the narrow streets around the tall spire of Trinity were the centre of social life, and the busy hum of Wall Street was not to be heard ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... Above the sea-mist float, The river-arms, dividing, hurry forth; And Peter's fortress-spire, A slender lance of fire, Still sparkles back the splendor of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... week, two men appeared upon the wide, white-pillared Sherrill porch, smoking and idly admiring the bluish hills and the rolling meadowlands below bright with morning sunlight. To the east lay the silver glimmer of a tree-fringed lake; beyond, a church spire among the trees and a winding country road traveled by the solitary van of green ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... grand. Pointed arches, clustered columns, vaulted roof, spire buttress. Forms both ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... booke, like mouthe, unopened is dumbe. And there be some, perchance, will bidde you off To Conventre, or Yorke, or Jericho; But be not you, my booke, abashed by scoff, For I will teach you where you boun to go,— Which is in Gloucestershire, there unto Bisley, Where the church spire is spied long afarre; It is not either uncouth, square, or grisly, But soareth high, as if to catch a starre; Where shall the brother of the Christian Yeare, Keble, hereafter tend the seven springs, Above whose fountains doth The Grove uproar, Like to Mount Helicon, where Clio sings, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... annihilated; walls are lost in windows; aisles and columns, apses and chapels, are multiplied with a view to complexity of architectonic effect; flat roofs become intolerable. The whole force employed in the construction has an upward tendency, and the spire is the completion of the edifice; for to the spire its countless soaring lines—lines not of stationary strength, but of ascendent growth—converge. All this the Italians were slow to comprehend. The campanile, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... of the vast distance of the pillars from whence they turn the cupula, on which, they say, is a spire to be erected three hundred feet in height, whose towering pinnacle will stand with such stupendous loftiness above Bow Steeple dragon or the Monument's flaming urn, that it will appear to the rest of the Holy Temples like a cedar of Lebanon, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... down to Wall Street, Uncle," he continued, "and go into Trinity Church. There's a magnificent view from the spire." ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... sneering, self-satisfied, contemptuous, inhuman, like some cynical, debased speculator making a sure profit out of the innocent weaknesses of human nature. As she turned and looked she could see the whole ugly town with the spire of St. John's-Paul's ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... striated species, with an acute elevated spire. We have named it after Mr. T. Phillips, who has assiduously collected many new ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... the beauty of a bare rock, a down, a church spire, a sheet or line of horizontal water,—their necessity to the completion of a landscape. I recollect well having the value of a stern straight line in Nature brought home to me, when, during a long ride in the New Forest, after my eye had become ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... them up. He had his well eye on Sam, and crushed his head like an eggshell, with one bite! Then he made a sweep with his paw, and knocked Jack Habersham clean out the tent. He must have gone a hundred feet through the air, for he come down on top of the steeple, and is there yet with the spire sticking up through him. Then he hit Bill Dunham such a clip that he sailed out through the same hole in the tent that Jack passed through. When I left, Bill hadn't been seed by anybody. Guess he hasn't ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... of Coventry stands upon a little hill, with old St. Michael's steeple and the spire of Holy Trinity church rising above it against the sky; and as the master-player and the boy came climbing upward from the south, walls, towers, chimneys, and red-tiled roofs were turned to gold by the glow of ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... persons closed their doors, and said that Christmas would be cold. In a quarter of an hour they saw their chronology late by a day. In half an hour they noted a gray mist drive across the sky. There was a faint wavering and spreading and deflection at the top of the tallest spire of smoke. Somewhere, high above, there passed a ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... the shattered window at the gray spire of the cathedral. "There's your launching site. We don't know how they got up there, ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Pies! I attended high mass in the great Cathedral of Strasbourg, and was surprised and pleased at the sight of 10,000 soldiers, in review order, drawn up within its walls. It was tiresome enough work mounting to the top of the spire, (which I ascertained, by the steps I took, to be exactly 490 feet high, Strasbourg measure; and this is exactly eight feet higher than St. Peter's at Rome), but I made it out, notwithstanding the sulky looks of the jackanapes who ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... near E. by N. and W. by S., and is ten leagues long in that direction, and no where above three or four leagues broad. The coast is rocky, much indented, and seemed to form several bays or inlets. It shews a surface of craggy hills which spire up to a vast height, especially near the west end. Except the craggy summits of the hills, the greatest part was covered with trees and shrubs, or some sort of herbage, and there was little or no snow on it. The currents between Cape Deseada and Cape ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... very cold, the natives contrive to erect their houses in a very ingenious manner to defend themselves from the severity of the weather. Surrounding them by a deep trench, they raise great pieces of timber on its outer edge, which close all in a point at the top, like the spire of a steeple. Their fire is in the middle of this conical hut, and they sleep on the ground strewed with rushes, around the fire. The men go naked, but the women wear a kind of petticoat of bull-rushes, dressed in the manner of hemp, which is fastened round ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... nuptials was fixed; a joyous company assembled at Burley on the Hill, the mansion of the bride's father, which, from one of the noblest terraces in the island, looks down on magnificent woods of beech and oak, on the rich valley of Catmos, and on the spire of Oakham. The father of the bridegroom was detained to London by indisposition, which was not supposed to be dangerous. On a sudden his malady took an alarming form. He was told that he had but a few hours ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... English country. Purple hills hemmed in a broad, green, undulating plateau, scored across and across by the stone walls of the north, and all dappled with the shadows of rolling leaden clouds with silver fringes. Miles away a church spire stuck like a spike out of the hollow, and the smoke of a village dimmed the trees behind. No nearer habitation could I see. I have mentioned a hamlet which we passed in the spring-cart. It lay hidden behind some hillocks to the left. My landlady told me it ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... period, probably by John de Berwick, who was dean from 1286-1312, a spire was added to the central tower. This was for long in an unsafe condition, and at length, in 1600, it fell. The following is the description given by Coker, a contemporary writer: "Having discoursed ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... about 5 acres inclosed by the steep and rocky and lofty clifts of the river and that so closely had they kept themselves and horses within this little spot that there was not a track to be seen of them within a quarter of a mile of that place. every spire of grass was eaten up by their horses near their camp which had the appearance of their having remained here some time. his horse being much fatiegued with the ride he had given him and finding that the indians had at least 2 days ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... child from its earliest reminiscence up to old age: it is written upon every tangible and permanent object within the habitual cognizance of the eye—upon stone, and tree, and rivulet—upon the green hill, and the verdant plain, and the opulent valley—upon house, and garden, and steeple-spire—upon the soil, whether it be rough or smooth, sandy or ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... week out, the human writing-machines, and those other machines which are almost human (and better than human in some points) hurry through their allotted tasks, and ignore the saintly shadow cast upon them by the spire of St. Dunstan. This is indeed the centre of the world: the hub from whence spring the spokes of the vast wheel of life. For to this point all things over the world converge by a vast web of wire, railroad, coach road, ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... refused. Ascend to the top of this spire by this outer stair, and throw yourself down from it without hesitation. When you are at the earth, though you were in a thousand pieces, with one word I will set you upon your feet, straighter and with a better carriage ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... summits rear Still as its spire, and yonder flock At rest in those calm fields appear As ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... left there was a gleam of green, atoning for its spring thinness and scantiness by a vivid energy of colour; while straight across the court, beyond the rich patchwork of the roofs and the picturesque outlines of the chimneys, a delicate piece of white stone-work rose into air—the spire of one of Wren's churches, as dainty, as perfect, and as fastidiously balanced as the hand ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that is well known to every one; and Climping, that no one knows, set on a lonely beach and lost at the vague end of an impassable road; and Barlton, and Burton, and Duncton, and Coldwatham, that stand under in the shadow and look up at the great downs; and Petworth, where the spire leans sideways; and Timberley, that the floods make into an island; and No Man's Land, where first there breaks on you the distant sea. I never knew a Sussex man yet but, if you noted him such a list, would answer: 'There ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... touch, so marvellous and shining, A hundred steeples on the sky out-lining, Like network threads of fire; Above them all, with halo far outspreading, I saw a golden cross in glory heading A consecrated spire: ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... vessel dependent on its sails. The shock seemed to have shaken the berg itself, for at that moment a crashing sound was heard overhead. The terror-stricken crew looked up, and for one moment a pinnacle like a church spire was seen to flash through the air right above them. It fell with an indescribable roar close alongside, deluging the decks with water. There was a momentary sigh of relief, which, however, was chased away by a succession of falling masses, varying from a pound to a ton in weight, which came down ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... with trees, peaks bare and rugged, and glens with sparkling torrents dashing and foaming amid them; while on the other side, towards the ocean, he saw before him a wide and smiling valley, with a stream meandering through it, and green meadows and groves of trees, from among which a church spire reared its pointed summit; and near it a cheerful village of white-washed cottages and other dwellings of more pretension; and there were sheep feeding, and cattle wending their way slowly homeward, all ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... must be upright, hard, or else burning, either conical, or clubbed at one end. Thus—the torch, flame of fire, cone, serpent, thyrsus, triangle, letter T, cross, crosier, sceptre, caduceus, knobbed stick, tall tree, upright stone, spire, tower, minaret, upright pole, arrow, spear, sword, club, upright stump, etc., are all symbols of the generative force of the male energy in Nature ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... I went for a walk to a village lately shelled by German heavy guns. Their effect was awful—ghastly. It was impossible to imagine the amount of damage done until one really saw it. The church was terrible too. The spire was sticking upside down in the ground a short distance from the door. The church itself was a mass of debris. Scarcely anything was left unhit. In the churchyard again the destruction was terrific—tombstones ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... an old church, far unlike the brick and pine-built meeting-houses with which the children were familiar; a church, the stones of which were laid, every one of them, before the world knew of the country in which he was then speaking: and how it had a spire, the lower part of which was mantled with ivy, and up which, towards its very spire, the ivy was still creeping; and how there was a tradition, that, if the ivy ever reached the top, the spire would fall upon the roof of the old gray church, and crush it all ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a magnificent sight, those twelve chilly glasses entering the room on a waiter, the red and white custard rising from each glass like a church-steeple, and the spoon-handle shooting up from the apex like a spire. I doubt if a person of the nicest palate could have distinguished, with his eyes shut, which was the vanilla and which the strawberry; but if I could at this moment obtain a cream tasting as that did, I would give five dollars for a very ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of the most delightful afternoons I have ever spent," Douglas remarked. "What a beautiful place you have here, with the river right near, and the spire of the church showing above the tree tops. I wish I were an artist. By the way, I was around the church this morning, and everything shows signs of neglect. It struck me as ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... this rhinoceros hide, thank you. How exquisitely the mist is curling up, and showing the church-spire ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... robin mounted to a spruce-spire and acted as Job's comforter to all the birds of the garden by singing—ah, so plaintively and sweetly!—of the dismal days of frost and snow, he "preened"—i.e. went over and combed every feather, and tested and retested, cleaned and recleaned, each vital quill. Then, in one single, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... on hills our childhood wist, Woods, hamlets, streams, beholding! The sun strikes, through the furthest mist, The city's spire to golden. The city's golden spire it was, When hope and health were strongest, But now it is the churchyard grass We look upon the longest. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... stands in graceful strength; Its spire points upward to the sky; And nestled in its sheltering arms The birds of heaven ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... pen be scann'd. Thou see'st the saints and kings in stony state, As if with breath and human soul expand. Well may'st thou be astounded—view it well; Go not from hence before thou see thy fill, And learn the builder's virtues and his name. Of this tall spire in every country tell, And with thy tale the lazy rich men shame; Show how the glorious Canning did excel; How he, good man, a friend for kings became, And glorious paved at once the way to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... down among legions of lank, mossy trunks, toadstools and rank ferns, protruding roots, matted bushes, and rotting carcasses of fallen trees. A generation ago one might find here and there the rugged trunk of some great pine lifting its verdant spire above the undistinguished myriads of the forest. The woods of Maine had their aristocracy; but the axe of the woodman has laid them low, and these lords of the ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... Thompson, "or I'd offer to show you the way. But you can't miss it. You can see the spire from the window. It's the finest specimen of early Gothic in the north of France. The glass is superb. There's an altar piece by Raphael or Botticelli, I forget which. The screen is late Italian Renaissance, and there's a tomb ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... in the breeze that blew fitfully from the west. Fuselli was waiting. He took out his watch now and then and strained his eyes to see the time, but there was not light enough. At last the deep broken note of the bell in the church spire struck once. It must be ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... the distance, and the glint of a wide stream not very far off, seemed to spiritualize her "happy autumn fields," and bring them into a closer kinship with the blue over-arching sky. There was one large house or mansion in sight, but no town, nor even a hamlet, and not one solitary spire. In vain I scanned the horizon, waiting impatiently to see the distant puff of white steam from some passing engine. This troubled me not a little, for I had no idea that I had drifted so far from civilization in my search for specimens, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... love of rambling led, I turn my back on thy detested walls, Proud City, and thy sons I leave behind, A selfish, sordid, money-getting kind, Who shut their ears when holy Freedom calls. I pass not thee so lightly, humble spire, That mindest me of many a pleasure gone, Of merriest days, of love and Islington, Kindling anew the flames of past desire; And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on, To the green ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... begin walking leisurely round the enclosed garden, and looking outward from the eminence upon which the castle was built across the moat at the foot, and away over the sunny forest towards the village and little church, whose spire rose ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... the morning the sun gets up From behind the village spire; And the children dream that the first red gleam Is the ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... mountain chipmunk stared at him, flicked its tail, and dived under a flat ledge; a bird whose real home was a thousand miles off in the north faced the upland breeze and sang in its unknown tongue. Jim drew still nearer the rocky spire, rounded a ledge, and faced an unexpected sight. In a little open lodge of willows, bent and roofed with a canvas cover, sat an Indian youth, alone, motionless, beside him was a pot of water, and between him and the tall rock, a little fire, from ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... communication with it by a septum. The number of chambers is irregular, and they are generally wanting in the innermost whorl. The animal of the recent Turritella communis partitions off in like manner as it advances in age a part of its spire, forming a shelly septum. ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... anguish-struck, like men Who have seen the roaring torrent Sweep their happy homes away, And yet linger by the margin, Staring idly on the spray. But, without, the maddening tumult Waxes ever more and more, And the crowd of wailing women Gather round the Council door. Every dusky spire is ringing With a dull and hollow knell, And the Miserere's singing To the tolling of the bell. Through the streets the burghers hurry, Spreading terror as they go; And the rampart's thronged with watchers For the coming of the foe. From each mountain-top a pillar Streams ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... excluded any glimpse of the Bishop's garden, and beyond loomed the Cathedral, with two grey pigeons circling about its spire. ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... wide place Where love is frozen in marble, spire on spire, A snow-white nightingale with a heart of fire Soaring in space. We gaze, together, into the shining pool To catch the soul of beauty unaware Finding only the peaceful body there Of beauty drowned and still ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... in Nassau Street. While the British held New York the bell was taken down and secreted. When the Middle Dutch Church became the Post Office in 1845 the bell was removed, first to the Ninth Street Church, then to the Lafayette Place Church, and later to its present location. The crocketed spire of the Church of St. Nicholas is two hundred and seventy feet high. Within the edifice is a tablet to the soldiers and sailors of the Revolution, placed by the Daughters of the Revolution, and oil portraits of all the ministers of the church ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... chalets of the hamlet of Bel-Oiseau straggled towards me, and it was music in my ears to hear the cattle blow and rattle in their stalls under the sleeping lofts as I passed outside in the moonlight. Five minutes more, and the great zinc onion on the spire of the church glistened towards me, and I was in the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... face or scene; and the kind fingers which did the pasting-in; and the care with which we made portrait and landscape fit into and illustrate one another. And what memories, what impressions, strong and clear as yesterday's, clung to each succeeding view! The Spire—that "pinnacle perched on a precipice"—with its embosoming trees, as one had so often seen it from the North-Western Railway, while the finger of fate, protruding from the carriage window, pointed it out with—"That's where you will go to school." ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... the Metropolitan Building. Whatever artists may think of it the tower is, structurally, one of the wonders of the world. Exactly halfway between sidewalk and point of spire is the great clock ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... to me speaks as the roll of thunder that cannot be denied—you must hear it; and how can you shut your ears to what this lark sings, this violet tells, this little grey shell writes in the curl of its spire? The bitter truth that human life is no more to the universe than that of the unnoticed hill-snail in the grass should make us think more and more highly of ourselves as human—as men—living things that think. We must look to ourselves ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... college with your brother John. We had been visiting the prisoners in Bocardo. As we turned into the Turl between Exeter and Jesus colleges there, at the end of the street—it is little more than a lane—beyond the spire of All Saints' this planet was shining. John told me its name, and with a sudden accord we stood still for a moment, watching it. 'Do you believe it inhabited?' I asked. 'Why not?' he said. 'Then why not, as this world, by ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the sun on battlement and tower, and in the blue air overhead a Hock of clattering jackdaws flew around the gilded weather vane and spire. Then, in the brightness of the morning, the drawbridge fell across the moat with a rattle and clank of chains, the gate of the castle swung slowly open, and a goodly array of steel-clad men-at-arms, with a knight all clothed in chain mail, as white as frost on brier and ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... temple for Catholic worship, erected at Pointe a Puizeau about 1854, is very picturesquely located; its stained glass windows, its graceful new spire, frescoed ceilings, add much to its beauty. The Rev'd Messire George Drolet has succeeded to the Rev. Father Harkin, who had been in charge ever since the late Abbe Ferland was appointed secretary to the Archbishop of Quebec and Military Chaplain to the Forces. For some time in 1877, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Mississippi eastward, and southward to the Gulf, the Tubercled or Small Pale Green Orchis (H. flava) lifts a spire of inconspicuous greenish-yellow flowers, more attractive to the eye of the structural botanist than to the aesthete. It blooms in moist places, as most orchids do, since water with which to manufacture nectar enough to fill their deep spurs is a prime ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... St. Stiff the Martyr is calling to service, as it is wont to do at all times and hours—for mysterious purposes but little known:—it seems as if the bell disliked its little wooden cottage, on the unfinished spire; or was inspired, or in a towering passion to live in a tower, or saw no fun in waiting for funds; and so, continually pealed an appeal to the public:—however, it was a puny, little, curious bell, with a tongue of its own, now clacking for a charity sermon; and, curiously, Mr. Brown thinks ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... transcendent! Yet what impenetrable mystery too, what menacing ruin to the small remnant of human life still spared from the generations in ages past, already swallowed up! Peering around in this pensive mood, in which the joy of being mixed with the uneasy doubt of its tenure, my eye fell at last on the spire of a little church, rising like a pencil of light to heaven, out of the fathomless waste. And there my soul alighted and found rest. Like some sea mark to the voyager, that slender shaft, reared by the social religion of the world, stood to tell me where in the universe ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... terrified Danes now fled to the church and took refuge in its steeple, whither they were quickly followed. Only by dejected appeals and a promise not to injure Gustavus Vasa did they succeed in escaping from the tower, and the Dalmen, thinking that some of them might remain concealed in the narrow spire, shot their arrows at it from every side. For more than a hundred years after some of these arrows remained sticking in ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... spray, While the whole camp with little Nell, on English meadows, Wandered and lost their way. Lost is that camp and wasted all its fire, And he who wro't that spell; Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire, Ye have one tale to tell. Lost is that camp, but let its fragrant story Blend with the breath that thrills With hop vines' incense all the pensive glory That fills the Kentish hills. And on that grave where English oak and holly And laurel wreath entwine, ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... still older church, with its reverend screen of trees, and slowly ascending a hill side, from whence he obtained enchanting peeps of the spire and college of Harrow, he reached the cluster of well-built houses which constitute the village of Neasdon. From this spot a road, more resembling the drive through a park than a public thoroughfare, led him ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... same season. It was early; so early that the cross of Grace Church had, when I looked up, just caught the morning sun, and for a moment flamed like a crusader's symbol. And then the grace and glory of that exquisite spire became slowly visible. Fret by fret the sunlight stole slowly down, quivering and dropping from each, until at last the whole church beamed in rosy radiance. Up and down the long avenue the street lay in shadow; by some strange trick of the atmosphere ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... already made the open earth with its corn and grass more dear to him and wonderful. But when he left the park, and crossed the Hampstead Road into a dreary region of dwellings crowded and commonplace as the thoughts of a worshipper of Mammon, houses upon houses, here and there shepherded by a tall spire, it was hard to believe that the spring was indeed coming slowly ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... the departing sun was on his face. The music of the birds was in his ears. Sweet wild flowers bloomed about him. Thatched roofs of poor men's homes were in the distance; and an old grey spire, surmounted by a Cross, rose up between him and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... hoar summit, mildly bright [Footnote 16] With purple ether's liquid light, High o'er the world, the white-rob'd Magi gaze On dazzling bursts of heavenly fire; Start at each blue, portentous blaze, Each flame that flits with adverse spire. But say, what sounds my ear invade [Footnote 17] From Delphi's venerable shade? The temple rocks, the laurel waves! "The God! the God!" the Sybil cries. Her figure swells! she foams, she raves! Her figure swells to more than mortal size! Streams of ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... advancing into the most perfect of landlocked harbours. A great cliff rises on the left,—Quirpon Point they call it,—and clinging to its base like an overgrown limpet is a tiny cottage, with its inevitable fish stage. Farther along are more houses; then a white church with a pointed spire, and a bright-green building near by, while across the path is a very pretty square green school. Next are the Mission buildings in a group. Beyond them come more small houses—"Little Labrador" I learned later that this group is called, because the people living there have almost all come over ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... his immediate locality, but by no means as prominent or famous among his neighbors as he was in Europe. He was not so fertile in resources as to be in any sense inspired, and had privately waited for the finishing of a certain spire in the little town of Philadelphia so that he might use it to get nearer to the clouds to demonstrate his theory of lightning. It was in June, 1752, that this great exemplar of the genius of common-sense descended ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... rotting by the edge of the same mine-crater, to the same old sand-bags in the enemy's line, to the blasted tree sliced by shell-fire, the upturned railway—truck of which only the metal remained, the distant fringe of trees like gallows on the sky-line, the broken spire of a church which could be seen in the round O of the telescope when the weather was not too misty. In "quiet" sections of the line the only variation to the routine was the number of casualties day by day, by casual shell-fire or snipers' bullets, and that became part of the boredom. "What casualties?" ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... they came to St. Paul's and turned the corner to the gate. It was dark below, but some frenzied fools were burning tar-barrels far down Ann Street, and the light flickered on the top of the church spire. They crossed the churchyard to where a shallow grave had been dug, half way down the hill. The men lowered the body into it; the old negro gave them a little rouleau of coin, and they went hurriedly ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... next corner north of the Claxton place was a large church, with a tall spire, and an adjoining parish house. They were built of the same cream-colored stone, which had grown sallow under the smoke, with chocolate-brown trimmings, like a deep edging to a mourning handkerchief. Its appearance pleased Milly. She felt sure that the best ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... sandstone raised in colossal blocks. The spire, floriated richly and graduated with a precise symmetry, rises to an extreme altitude of 220 feet 6 inches. The extreme length is about 170 ft. The massive oaken front doors are carved handsomely, and contain the arms of the Stewart family, the Clinch family (Mrs. Stewart's maiden ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... centre of the old town is placed a square of considerable size, surrounded by high antiquated buildings of a most remarkable construction; and the Hotel de Ville, which occupies nearly one of its sides, is ornamented by a high Gothic spire of the lightest form, and the most exquisite proportions. The Cathedral is large, and has two massy towers in front; but the effect of the interior, which would otherwise be very grand, from its immense size, is much injured by statues affixed to the pillars, and an intermixture of red and white ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Frotte, who, as the pupil of my physician Dessault, was allowed free ingress and egress to the Temple. One day he entered my cell, motioned me to be silent, seized me, and dragged me to a cabinet under the spire of the tower. A sick child who had been given over by the faculty was substituted in my place, and he, dying two days after (8th June 1795), was buried as Louis XVII. At my supposed death, there being no more prisoners in the Temple, all the keepers ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... have been before the public until Monsieur Delvigue, in 1828, employed a solid conical ball, which, resting on the breech clear of the powder, he expanded by several blows with the ramrod sufficiently to make it take the grooves. Colonel Thouvenin introduced a steel spire into the breech, upon which the ball being forced, it expanded more readily. This spire is called the "tige." Colonel Tamisier cut three rings into the cylindrical surface of the bullet, to facilitate the expansion and improve its flight. These three ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... lightning is because they project up into the air, and according to their height, they remove a corresponding amount of the poorly conducting air. If the lower edge of a thunder-cloud is two thousand five hundred feet above the air, and the spire of a church is five hundred feet high, it follows that it is easier for a flash to jump two thousand feet than two thousand five hundred. So when the electricity-bearing cloud comes over the church spire the flash ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... for seen from the Black Hill it looks more like a huge park with a sprinkling of houses in it than anything else. The green foliage rolls over it like the waves of the ocean, and the houses rise up like isolated habitations. Now and then a red brick building, or the slender white spire of a church gave a touch of colour to the landscape, and contrasted pleasantly with the bluish-white roofs and green trees. Scattered all through the town were the huge mounds of earth marking the mining-shafts of various colours, from dark brown to pure white, and beside them, with the utmost regularity, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... one old heathen, pointing a withered finger to the handsome spire of the Bang-kah chapel, that lifted itself toward the sky, "Look now, the chapel towers above our temple. It is larger than ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... John and Jane, to Fred and Frank, To Theodore and Mary, To Willie and to Reginald, To Louis, Sue and Gary; To sturdy boys and merry girls, And all the dear young people Who live in towns, or live on farms, Or dwell near spire or steeple; To boys who work, and boys who play, Eager, alert and ready, To girls who meet each happy day With faces sweet and steady; To dearest comrades, one and all, To Harry, Florrie, Kate, To children small, and children ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... Saint-Just and Lebas, gave the chief command to Hoche, made terror and victory the order of the day; and generals Brunswick and Wurmser were very soon driven from Haguenau on the lines of the Lauter, and not being able even to maintain that position, passed the Rhine at Philipsburg. Spire and Worms were retaken. The republican troops, everywhere victorious, occupied Belgium, that part of Holland situated on the left of the Meuse, and all the towns on the Rhine, except Mayence and Mannheim, ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... naturally; on, on they flew over the trees, and over the houses, over the windings of the Nidda. Walter could hear the tinkle tinkle of sheep bells below, or was it possible that he could already hear the bells of fairyland ringing? Over the church spire of a little village they soared, and all the children shouted: "Zeppelin! Zeppelin!" because you see all this happened in modern times, when even the children no ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... pine logs, carefully dovetailed, with the ends protruding at the angles. There was no great originality of design, merely the delightful picturesqueness which unstripped logs never fail to yield. She knew that every detail of the building was to be carried out in the same way. The roof, the spire, the porches, even the fence which was ultimately to ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... Saint John's Church spire then I saw, An' I wor rare an' fain, Fer near it stood t'owd parsonage— I cuddant ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... line of the Houses of Parliament, as seen from the Lambeth Embankment, broken only by the two stark and stiff erections at each end. The two towers at the west end of Canterbury were not always uniform. At the northern corner an old Norman tower formerly uplifted a leaden spire one hundred feet high. This rather anomalous arrangement must have had a decidedly lopsided effect, and it is probable that the appearance of the cathedral was changed very much for the better when the spire, which had been taken down in 1705, was replaced by Mr. Austin in ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... many other heaps of atoms have already been, and passed away! Blown hither and thither—where? The universe reels with change. Star-dust and earth-dust are alike in ceaseless whirl. Little it profits to build the spire, the sea-wall, the dome, the bridge, the myriad-roofed town. A new era shall dawn upon them, and ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... been deemed sacrilege for mortal eyes to view the ancient writings. The single copy is kept in a great vault, built of indestructible metals, and protectively sheathed to last for all Time. The spot above its burial place is marked by a tall spire of stone. ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... the long straight street, and rocking the glossy boughs of an old magnolia tree in the yard From the shining leaves of the tree a few drops of water fell on the brick pavement, where several joyous sparrows were drinking, and farther off, as bright as silver in the clear wind, a solitary church spire rose above the huddled roofs of the town. When the wind lulled, as it did now and then, a warm breath seemed to stir in the sunshine, which grew suddenly brighter, while a promise of spring floated like a faint provocative scent on the air. And this ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... stand before it in daylight. Not a pane of glass is to be found in it; planks and old doors are nailed fast to the window frames; the balls alone still stand on the two towers, broad, heavy, and resembling colossal toadstools. The iron spire of the one still towers aloft in the air; the other spire is bent: like the hands on a sun-dial it shows the time—the time that is gone. The other two balls are half fallen down; lambs frisk about between the beams, and the space below is used as ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... led directly to the village, the sound of the well-known rookery gave that sentimental tinge to the varying sensations of my active soul, which only served to heighten the lustre of the luxuriant scenery. But spying, as I advanced, the spire peeping over the withered tops of the aged elms that composed the rookery, my thoughts flew immediately to the church-yard; and tears of affection, such was the effect of my imagination, bedewed my mother's grave! Sorrow gave place to devotional feelings. I wandered through ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... clearly outlined projectile of Fig. 10 to the indeterminate cloud of Fig. 8. We could hardly have a more marked contrast than that between the inchoate flaccidity of the nebulosity in Fig. 14 and the virile vigour of the splendid spire of highly developed devotion which leaps into being before us in Fig. 15. This is no uncertain half-formed sentiment; it is the outrush into manifestation of a grand emotion rooted deep in the knowledge of fact. The man who feels such devotion as this ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... embody,—these have nothing in common,—hardly two things could be named that are more unlike; yet in relation to man they have but one end: for who can hear the ocean when breathing in wrath, and limit it in his mind, though he think not of Him who gives it voice? or ascend that spire without feeling his faculties vanish, as it were with its vanishing point, into the abyss of space? If there be a difference in the effect from these and other objects, it is only in the intensity, the degree of impetus given; as between that from the ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... its setting, casting long shadows athwart the soil from every pebble, Jean Valjean sat down behind a bush upon a large ruddy plain, which was absolutely deserted. There was nothing on the horizon except the Alps. Not even the spire of a distant village. Jean Valjean might have been three leagues distant from D—— A path which intersected the plain passed a few ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... she looks," said Gerald, as Anna began collecting vases from the tables in a drawing-room not professionally artistic, but entirely domestic, and full of grace and charm of taste, looking over a suburban garden fresh with budding spring to a church spire. ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is the height of the schoolroom? Of the schoolhouse? Of the tallest tree near by? Of the nearest church spire? ...
— Home Geography For Primary Grades • C. C. Long
... of the sister towns in 1680, Buda was by far "the better half," and Pesth was a tiny spot. You may visit the tomb of Gul Baba, father of the roses, a shrine of pilgrimage to all good Turks. You may find a good quarter of an hour in the Church of St. Matthias, whose spire comes up white amid the green as you turn a corner; a curious monument, that was three centuries a-building; its interior suffused, like St. Mark's, by a golden glow, its coloured windows original in shape, and no two pillars or capitals alike in design, yet all contributing to a quaint ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... scene of my youth, Seat of Friendship and Truth, Where Love chac'd each fast-fleeting year, Loth to leave thee I mourn'd, For a last look I turn'd, But thy spire was ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... be a girl, he tells her to build only a spire, for "modesty beseemeth a woman." Well for Sir Asker that he did not live in our day of clamoring suffragists. He would have "views" without doubt. But no such things troubled him while he battled in foreign lands all summer. It was autumn when he returned and saw from afar the swell behind ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... The old time factory bell has not entirely given way to the steam whistle, nor the simple village spire to the more pretentious ecclesiastical tower of to-day, yet the energizing force of material prosperity has quickened the blood in nearly every hamlet, modernized the old, or built up a new, so that throughout ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... anything, because I'm not sure of myself. How can I be? It is that cher enfant, Lorimer, that said such brave words! See! . . . we arrive; we behold the shore—all black, great, vast! . . . rocks like needles, and, higher than all, this most fierce Jedke—bah! what a name!—straight as the spire of a cathedral. One must be a fly to crawl up it, and we, we are not flies—ma foi! no! Lorimer, he laugh, he yawn—so! He say, 'not for me to-day; I very much thank you!' And then, we watch the sun. Ah! that was grand, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... like a cloud o'er her brain. You gaze through a sort of traditional mist, And behold a mirage of God's laws which exist But in fancy. God made but one law—it is love. A law for the earth, and the kingdoms above, A law for the woman, a law for the man, The base and the spire of His intricate plan Of existence. All evils the world ever saw Had birth in man's breaking away from this law. God cancels a marriage when love flies away. "Till death do us part" should be altered to say, "Till disgust or ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... dispersed so as best to accommodate the population. Of these the smallest neighborhood has one for the morning devotions of its inhabitants, and even the solitary inn has its little consecrated building with its miniature spire, for the convenience of pious wayfarers. At Sterzing, a little village beautifully situated at the base of the mountain called the Brenner, and containing, as I should judge, not more than two or three thousand inhabitants, we counted seven churches and chapels within the ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... world like some vast cathedral which taunts the soul with its aloofness. If, on some sunshiny afternoon you look up from the camp and see a ghost-moon hanging, no more than a foot above the highest spire, you must surely be "citified" if you do not pause to drink in its weird sublimity and ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... produce has remained on the barbacues for several weeks, without the slightest advance in curing; and, unless it be frequently turned while in this wet state, it is sure to germinate; the berries first swell, then a thin white spire issues from the seam, and on opening the berry the young leaves will be actually seen formed inside, so rapid ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... is up. Hark! how it howls! Methinks Till now I never heard a sound so dreary, Doors creak and windows clap, and night's foul bird, Rocked in the spire, screams loud: the gloomy aisles, Black-plastered and hung 'round with shreds of scutcheons And tattered coats-of-arms, send back the sound, Laden with heavier airs, from the low vaults, The ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... is this that shows no sign of human habitation, that knows no village, nor any distant spire? The crops are like ours at home—wheat, lucerne, and the flowering bean that perfumes the air with its white blossoms. But there is an excess of light in the sky and, in the distance, an extraordinary clearness. And then these fertile plains, that might be those of some "Promised Land," seem ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... see. There were great springs of courage and tenacity in his nature, and he wished, moreover, to prove his new craft as a woodsman and mountaineer. He remained awhile in the bushes, watching the spire, and presently, to his amazement, it thinned quickly and was gone. It had disappeared swiftly, while the smoke from a fire usually dies down. It was Dick's surmise that the Sioux had put out their ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... clochier in Paul's Churchyard—a bell-house, four square, builded of stone, with four bells; these were called Jesus Bells. The same had a great spire of timber, covered with lead, with the image of St Paul on the top, but was pulled down by Sir Miles Partridge, Kt, in the reign of Henry VIII. The common speech then was that he did set L100 upon a cast at dice against it, and so won the said clochier and bells of the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... from its chambers. Through what a thicket of currant-bushes, and rose-bushes, and lilacs, and snow-balls, the path winds from the porch to the little gate—is it not a most charming spot? Now look over the brow of the hill—there, you can see the spire of the village church; and if you will walk a few paces further to yonder green knoll, you will see a cluster of pretty dwellings, and comfortable farm-houses, scattered through ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... construction, the south aisle flanked by two beautiful chapels and an ornate porch; transepts and a central tower, and choir with flanking chapels. The massive Norman tower contrasts strongly with the delicate Perpendicular spire rising upon it. The church contains many interesting memorials, and, in the nave, a Perpendicular shrine dedicated to St Peter. Near the church is the half-ruined priory house, built in the 17th century, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... dome, and arch, column, and spire, and obelisk, and lofty terraces, and many-windowed palaces, rose in all directions from a mass of building which appeared to him each instant to grow more huge, till at length it seemed to occupy the whole horizon. The sun lent additional lustre to the dazzling quays ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... the traveller might pass it by without notice, but withal retaining the massive piers and arches of the first half of the eleventh century. There is Evreux, with its Norman naves, its tall slender Gothic choir, its strange Italian western tower, and almost more fantastic central spire. All these are noble churches, sharing with those of our own land a certain sobriety and architectural good sense which is often wanting in the churches of France proper. In Normandy as in England, you do not see piles, like Beauvais, begun on too vast a scale for man's labour ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... presence, for 'company,' as she calls it—nice sort of company, indeed. And it is just the same way with storms. You remember that dreadful gale a month ago, the one that took down the North Grove and blew the spire off Rewtham Church. Well, just when it was at its worst, and I was a-sitting and praying that the roof might keep over our heads, I look round for Angela, and can't see her. 'Some of your tricks again,' thinks I to myself; and just then up comes Mrs. Jakes to say that Sam ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... a large room, with a wide window looking on to the garden and away across meadows and cornfields to Harrow Hill with its thin church spire. The window was guarded with iron bars. The wall-paper was designed in little circles; and in each circle there were figures of little boys and girls, absurd and gay. So many hundreds of little figures, and so absurd and gay, that to sit in that room surrounded by them, to look at them and ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... works of the Duomo, then in progress, "with a yearly salary of one hundred gold florins, and the privilege of citizenship." He designed the Campanile, in a more perfect form than that which now exists; for his intended spire, 150 feet in height, never was erected. He, however, modelled the bas-reliefs for the base of the building, and sculptured two of them with his own hand. It was afterwards completed, with the exception of the spire, according to his design; ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... keeping Christmas as presents or mince-pie, and gladly set off to walk through the frosty air to the ivy-covered church, shaded by ancient trees. It was situated on a hill, and was approached by numerous paths running across the fields; and as Ellen gazed upon its spire, standing in relief against the deep blue sky, she thought of that beautiful line ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... When she awoke, she found the sun streaming into the room. She walked to the window and gazed out into the lovely, sunny grounds and wooded walks surrounding the castle. In the distance, she could see the spire of the grand cathedral. ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... is of a brightly shining yellowish or greenish horn colour. The whorls of its spire are small, but the body whorl, whilst preserving a wide diameter throughout, gradually increases in trumpet-like manner to the round mouth. It belongs to the same group with H. olivetorum and H. nitida, and is allied to the Australian H. ptycomphala. It occurs ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... bestow a child on him." When her husband came back she told him what had happened. So he at once put on blue clothes, mounted a blue horse, and rode into the forest. He met the horse, dismounted, and began digging. At last he discovered a temple to Parwati, all of gold, with diamond pillars and a spire made of rubies. Inside was a statue of the goddess, and to it he prayed, saying, "I have houses and cottages, cattle and horses, money and goods of all kinds, but I am very sad because I have no son." The goddess pitied him and asked, ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... immense expanse of shimmering river, with long, rich meadows beyond, between which the wide flood breaks into three different branches. Red and white sails flit down them. Here and there rises a line of pollard willows or clipt elms, and now and then a church spire. On the nearest shore an ancient windmill, colored in delicate tints of gray and yellow, surmounts ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... fields before me which we had yet to cross, with the Dieben winding through them under his low, red-brick bridges, and beyond the little clustered village with its grey church spire standing shoulder ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... opportunities for climbing, as the sweetest and largest clusters were always at the very top of the trees. The limbs of the grey birch, although small, are very elastic and tough, making a sure footing for the climber. The danger was, that, as he approached the slender spire of the tree, it would suddenly bend or break and drop him into the water. This was all the more fun, if he could swim. When he reached home he was liable to have his jacket not only dried but "warmed," which was the colloquial for a thrashing. I usually sold grapes enough during the day of the ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... man can be. He rather stinted himself the pleasure of seeing her; and he would often walk half-way over to the parsonage, and then back again, as if to whet his appetite. Indeed there was one corner of the road, whence he could see the church-spire wedged into a crevice of the valley between sloping firwoods, with a triangular snatch of plain by way of background, which he greatly affected as a place to sit and moralise in before returning homewards; and the peasants got so much into the habit of finding ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... buffalo cart, and the hacks for hire, of which latter there are nine hundred licensed. The canal is filled with country boats of excellent model, and the warehouses are crammed with goods. Money seems to be abundant and things dear. They are just finishing a tasteful Gothic church, with a tall spire, which is a notable landmark as you approach; they are also completing officers' quarters on a hill which commands the town. Barracks for three or four regiments lie unoccupied a couple of miles outside the city, and a ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes |
