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Firmament

noun
1.
The apparent surface of the imaginary sphere on which celestial bodies appear to be projected.  Synonyms: celestial sphere, empyrean, heavens, sphere, vault of heaven, welkin.



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"Firmament" Quotes from Famous Books



... heaven, and in quantity poured forth like flights of arrows.[1] I repaired, and built, and completed my work. Outside the temple I fashioned (everything with the same care) as inside. The mound of earth (on which it was built) I enlarged like the firmament of the rising stars, and I beautified the entire building. Its cupolas I raised up to heaven, and its roofs I built entirely of brick. An inviolable shrine for their noble godships I laid down near at hand. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... had what it is to be blinded suddenly, helplessly. With a little stretch of the imagination I knew then what it must be when the great curtain shuts out suddenly the light of day, the stars, and the firmament itself. I see the blind man's eyes strain for the light, as he fearfully tries to walk his old rounds, until the unchanging blank that everywhere spreads before him stamps the reality of ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... fell flat upon the ground, "when his eyes were so fast locked up by magic art, and his waking senses drowned in such a dead slumber, that it was as impossible to recover himself from sleep as to pull the sun out of the firmament." ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... unwilling to lose the advantage of the favourable breeze which was now blowing, and the smooth water which would render our voyage easy. We lost sight of the Cowlitz just as the sun sunk in the western wave. We were now gliding calmly over the starlit sea—the beautiful firmament above us shining with a splendour peculiar to the torrid zone. The boats sailed well, and ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... astonished, served and enriched as we are by these splendid legions of mechanism, the danger is that material achievement will seem to us the supreme achievement; that all life will become machinery; and the higher interests of being, and the great firmament of immortality, be eclipsed by these flashing wheels. We are in danger of being drawn away from the sanctities of the inner life and the still work of the soul, by this maelstrom of excitement and power. No religious man can ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... were lifted up. Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creatures (or of life) was in the wheels." And above the living creatures was the firmament and the throne of God. So Nature may be material, but it is material interpenetrated by the divine; if you call it a fabric, the woof may be material but the warp is God. This view contains all the truth of materialism ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... mortal eyes the face of Infinite Love; that Love which gave the ever-blessed light, and filled the earth with music of bird, and breeze, and sea; that Love whose melodies we sometimes faintly catch, like spirit voices, from the souls of orators and poets; that Love which inlaid the arching firmament of heaven with jewels sparkling with eternal fires. But thank God, their fall was not like the remediless fall of Lucifer and his angels, into eternal darkness. Thank God, in this "night of death" hope does ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... splendid, fresh and green. And among them fair and virtuous ladies, fragrant garland of beauteous flowers. The eye swoons, drunken with gazing, the poet's song grows mute before such splendour of loveliness. He fixes his eyes, then, upon one only of the stars in that dazzling firmament. His spirit is forced to worship and bow in prayer. And, behold, the vision he has of a miraculous fount, from which his spirit may draw sacred joys, his heart receive ineffable refreshment. And never would he wish to trouble that ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... ladies had withdrawn it was just the same. The soul of Avice—the only woman he had NEVER loved of those who had loved him—surrounded him like a firmament. Art drew near to him in the person of one of the most distinguished of portrait painters; but there was only one painter for Jocelyn—his own memory. All that was eminent in European surgery addressed him in the person of that harmless and unassuming fogey whose hands had been ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... the mountains that were before me, like a barrier shutting out the living world. There, as I lay in an agony of fear, my soul seemed to be whirled on the wind into the bosom of a thundercloud. I felt the weight of the rolling vapours. I saw a blaze. I was stunned by a roar that shook the firmament. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... attitude towards Flossy because she had the same love-blind sickness and could see no one but Fred. Far from being jealous, Manfred viewed his wife in the light of a white man's burden which he could not shake off. Christian's burden was fiction beside it. Flossy was the only star in his firmament—the only ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... serve every exigency of man's welfare, with the picture earlier quoted from Bertrand Russell as the natural scientist gives it to us. It is no longer easy to say the Heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. As far as we can see natural processes go on without the slightest reference to the welfare of man, who is but an accidental product of their indifferent forces. The universe is a system of blind regularities. "Omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way." Nature is ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... deep-flowing Oceanus. There is the land and the city of the Cimmerians, shrouded in mist and cloud, and never does the shining sun look down on them with his rays, neither when he climbs up the starry heavens, nor when again he turns earthward from the firmament, but deadly night is outspread over miserable mortals. Thither we came and ran the ship ashore and took out the sheep; but for our part we held on our way along the stream of Oceanus, till we came to the place which Circe ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... crises as rabbits create their young, nine at a time. In those fuddled incompetent days before the Great War the crisis was a little-known phenomenon. Here and there in the drab routine of peaceful corpulent years there flashed in the prosperous firmament the baleful light of a great anxiety. Agadir was one; CARSON and his gun-runners was another. But they were few; they came like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various

... shall be to thee a garland of roses in the land of the unbeliever.' And the star floated down from the palm-branches and touched me with his hand, and breathed upon my lips the cool breath of the outer firmament, and departed. Then I awoke and saw him again in his place far down the horizon, and he was alone, for the dawn was in the sky and the lesser lights were extinguished. And I rose from the stony stairway that seemed like a bed of ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... crawling millions of patiently wearing years, while stars grew old and perished from the firmament, with cloud, and frost, and wind, and water, and sharp cutting sands, these strata of the old earth's crust were chiseled into gigantic outlines, and all the worn-down, crumbled atoms of debris were swept through long, tortuous leagues of distance toward the sea by a mad river swirling through ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... blow, and the thunder without the bolt, signifies just nothing at all.... Are then your lightnings of so short a sight, that they don't know how to hit, unless a mountain stands like a barrier in their way? Or perhaps so many eyes open in the firmament make you lose your aim when you shoot the arrow? Is it this? No! but, my dear Lord, it is your custom never to take hold of your arms till you have first bound round your majestic countenance with ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... to bed, but soon got up again, stifling, feeling such a need of fresh, free air that he opened the window wide in order to lean out. But the night was black as ink, the darkness had submerged the horizon. A mist must have hidden the stars in the firmament; the vault above seemed opaque and heavy like lead; and yonder in front the houses of the Trastevere had long since been asleep. Not one of all their windows glittered; there was but a single gaslight shining, all alone and far away, like a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... all these strange things, and of the Hart Hall "Hob" who worked so hard with his flail, and of many other curious folk who frequented the Yorkshire moors in olden days. The last witch had just died before he went to Danby, but he found the whole atmosphere of the folklore firmament so surcharged with the being and work of the witch, that he seemed able to trace her presence and her activity in almost every nook ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... is the firmament; His breath the rush of the breeze. Earth's loveliest sprite, the frost queen at night, Lures him silvery ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall

... dawned—a sullen, overcast, threatening December day. A watery sun looked out of a lowering sky, and then retreated altogether, and a leaden dullness overspread the whole firmament. An icy wind curdled your blood and tweaked your nose, and feathery snowflakes whirled drearily through the ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... upon the icy battlements and snowdrift towers of the castles that the frost had built them. He would ride by slowly, and shoot his gun in the air to see them rise and wheel upward, appearing snow-white against the blue firmament; and watched them sink again, growing dark as they alighted among the snow and ice. His warning that he himself must be nearing home was to see the return of such members of the bird-colony as had been out for the deep-sea fishing. When he saw them come from afar, flying high, often with ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... gentlemen, although not one of the heavenly bodies, indeed altogether terrestrial, one feels, naturally, rounder in his orbit, and a little more likely to see stars, after such a dinner as this, than before. Do I not, indeed, see around me now, all the stars of the intellectual firmament? Are not SIRIUS and ARCTURUS here, in their glory, as well as ORION and the rest? As my old friend CRISPIN would say, their name is legion! I would blaze, gentlemen, too, if possible, in honor of the occasion; but, as I can't Comet, meteors fall in lamentation ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various

... a solid dome or roof. This firmament, the sky, was supposed to be the floor of Heaven. The firmament had four corners and rested on the mountains, as the eye could plainly see. When God's car was rolled across the floor we heard thunder, and his movements were always accompanied by lightnings, winds, black clouds ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... enough, it seemed as though two great hosts were there embattled. They could discern the legions, the wind-blown standards, the charging chariots, and the squadrons of impetuous horse. The firmament had become a battle-ground, and lo! it was red as with the blood of the fallen, while the air was full of strange and dreadful sounds, bred, perhaps, of wind and distant thunder, that came to them like the wail of the vanquished and the dull roar ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... beheld a swift procession of mine-and-cattle scenes troop past for swift review. He lived again whole months of nights spent out alone beneath the sky, with the snow and the wind hurled down upon him from a merciless firmament of bleakness. Once more he stumbled blindly forward in the desert—he and Gettysburg—perishing for water, giving up their liquid souls to the horribly naked and insatiate sun. Again he toiled in the shaft of a mine till his ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... of Osiris, and Isis, And Apis! that mystical lore, Like a nightmare, conceived in a crisis Of fever, is studied no more; Dead Magian! yon star-troop that spangles The arch of yon firmament vast Looks calm, like a host of white angels On ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... scarlet in my cradle; I, on whose woes they vainly lavish stars, Who only wear two crosses, not the One! I, exiled, prisoner, sick, who may not ride Along the front of pompous regiments Scattering stars among my heroes; yet I hope—I think—the son of such a father— Into whose hands a firmament was given— I think, in spite of shadows and dead days, A little of the star clings to my fingers:— John Seraph Peter Flambeau, I ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... I could not see that the impartial sunbeams, tempered by this skylight, had burned away the insignia of the malecontent States. Nor had any rampant Secessionist thought to punch any of the seven lost Pleiads out from that firmament with a long pole. Crimson and gold are the prevailing hues of the decorations. There is no unity and breadth of coloring. The desks of the members radiate in double files from a white marble tribune at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... existed. That same race, side by side with the unparalleled growth of its industry produces Shakspeare, Milton, Bacon, and Newton, all four at the summit of human thought,—and then, just below these unapproachable fixed lights, a whole firmament of glories, lesser than they, as all created intelligence must be, yet in whose superior rays the age of Augustus, of Leo X., of Louis XIV., all but the age of Pericles, the culture of Greece, pale and fade. And ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... this one described by Howard Henderson. "A quiet Sunday in the deep woods is a golden day to be remembered for many a year. All nature combines to assist the camper in directing his thoughts to the great Author of all the beauty that he beholds. 'The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork.' The trees under which one reclines rear their heads heavenward, pointing their spire-like minarets far up toward the blue-vaulted roof. It inspires the very soul to worship in these unbuilt cathedrals with wilderness of aisle and pillars, which for elegance and ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent On either side, pitying the sad death Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath Of Zephyr slew him; Zephyr penitent, Who now ere Phoebus mounts the firmament, Fondles the flower amid ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... Scorpionis, and immediately above this is the fifth-magnitude star 19.) The nebula we seek lies between 19 and [omega], nearer to 19 (about two-fifths of the way towards [omega]). This nebula is described by Sir W. Herschel as "the richest and most condensed mass of stars which the firmament offers ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... { Creation of Firmament. Expulsion from Paradise. { Two Angels in red, as the Adam and Eve walking { ministers of Creation. In sorrowfully in the Spandrels { centre, bright sun with direction of the Dome, { inscription, "Fiat lux, which represents the { et facta est lux." ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock

... careering swiftly through the air. The dense curtain which had overhung and obscured the horizon was now broken, and large sections of the sky were clear, and thinly studded with stars that looked dim and watery, as did indeed the whole firmament; for in some places black clouds were still visible, threatening a continuance of tempestuous weather. The road appeared washed and gravelly; every dike was full of yellow water; and every little rivulet ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... indeed, it is the mystery of the eternal, divine, and blessed life, to which God of His mercy bring us all. And therefore Good Friday, Easter Day, Ascension Day, are set as great lights in the firmament of the spiritual year,—to remind us that we are not animals, born to do what we like, and fulfil the sinful lusts of the flesh, the ways whereof are death; but that we are moral and rational beings, members of Christ, children of ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... that respect from the Indian scouts, because the Indians have no words or signs for expressing any large number, which, when it exceeds their reckoning, they signify by pointing to the stars in the firmament, or to the hair of their head; and this they often do to denote a number less than a thousand, as well as to signify ten ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... heights to the zenith, that balanced the crescent,— Up and far up and over,—the heaven grew erubescent, Vibrant with rose and with ruby from the hands of the harpist Dawn, Smiting symphonic fire on the firmament's barbiton: And the East was a priest who adored with offerings of gold and of gems, And a wonderful carpet unrolled for the inaccessible hems Of the glistening robes of her limbs; that, lily and amethyst, Swept glorying on and on through temples ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... American journalistic firmament in Berlin is Karl Heinrich von Wiegand, the special representative of the New York World. The New York World is not pro-German, but von Wiegand is of direct and noble German origin. Apart from his admitted talents as a newspaper man, his Prussian "von" is of no inconsiderable value ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... struck for De Beriot and Mlle. Garcia, the mold of which was broken immediately. Pauline Garcia, in company with De Beriot, gave a series of concerts through Belgium and Germany, and it soon became evident that a new star of the first magnitude was rising in the musical firmament. In Germany many splendid gifts were showered on her. The Queen of Prussia sent her a superb suite of emeralds, and Mme. Sontag, with whom she sang at Frankfort, gave the young cantatrice a valuable ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... this vast herd of elephants as they drifted on and away, following a leader as does a herd of sheep. They browsed from growing herbage which they encountered as they traveled, and now and again shook the firmament ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson

... the focal point of America's most self-sufficient summer colony, and that all these subdued and inarticulate masqueraders were personages daily exploited by the press as the brightest stars in the social firmament, the incongruity of this dumb gathering seemed as glaring, as bizarre as ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... buried in angry reverie. If he spoke to me, on these excursions, it was a pain to me to answer him. I could talk on easy terms with him indoors, seated in my high chair, with our heads on a level, but it was intolerably laborious to look up into the firmament and converse with a dark face against the sky. The actual exercise of walking, too, was very exhausting to me; the bright red mud, to the strange colour of which I could not for a long while get accustomed, becoming caked about my little shoes, and wearying me extremely. I would grow ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... It is, however, notable that—doubtless on account of that very common-sense which has nearly always kept him right on great questions—Punch has usually in art been nearly as much a Philistine as the public he represents. When Sir Edward Burne-Jones burst forth into the artistic firmament, Punch joined, if not the mockers, at least the severer critics. "BURN JONES?" said he; "by all means do." Of the exquisite "Mirror of Venus" and "The Beguiling of Merlin" he ignored the poetry, and saw little ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... its mad, but, to me, harmless fury.—And then,—to look at it with that inward eye,—who does not love to shuffle off time and its concerns, at intervals,—to forget who is President and who is Governor, what race he belongs to, what language he speaks, which golden-headed nail of the firmament his particular planetary system is hung upon, and listen to the great liquid metronome as it beats its solemn measure, steadily swinging when the solo or duet of human life began, and to swing just as steadily after the human chorus ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... strange light of the setting moon, while everybody's attention was engrossed by the excitement, the swift oncoming of a thunder-cloud had not been observed by any but Andrew, and it had already climbed half-way to the zenith, blotting out a third of the firmament. This inverted thunder-bolt produced a startling effect upon the over-strained nerves of the crowd. Some cried out with terror, some sobbed with hysterical agony, some shouted in triumph, and it was generally believed that Virginia Waters, who died a maniac ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... darkness flies far from the bosom of the waters. Suddenly rays of glorious light break forth from heaven and pour their golden glory on the sea, the sun rises in his glowing strength above the bank of purple clouds, and as they disperse themselves over the azure firmament, various are the shapes, whether beautiful or grotesque, that they assume. One can imagine he sees towns, hills, castles with tall towers, ships, and a thousand other objects in their flitting shapes, but yet scarcely formed ere they lose ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... That didn't soften the smart any. And to think of the circumstances! the first statesman of the age, the capablest man, the best-informed man in the entire world, the loftiest uncrowned head that had moved through the clouds of any political firmament for centuries, sitting here apparently defeated in argument by an ignorant country blacksmith! And I could see that those others were sorry for me—which made me blush till I could smell my whiskers scorching. Put yourself in my place; feel as mean as I did, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the inn he used to say that there was no one who could show him any one else's mountain boots that could compare with his own. "They don't know," he was accustomed to add, "and they have never learned it in all their life, how such a shoe is to be made so that the firmament of the nails shall fit well on the soles and contain the proper amount of iron, so as to render the shoe hard on the outside, so that no flint, however sharp, can be felt through, and so that it on its inside fits the foot as snug ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... tier, and peak over peak, the finest mountains of the world are soaring into the purple firmament. Like northern lights, they flash, or flush, or fade into a reclining gleam; like ladders of heaven, they bar themselves with cloudy air; and like heaven itself, they rank their white procession. Lonely, feeble, puny, I look up with awe and reverence; ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... how my book has sped. It is full of theories—I trust not unsupported by facts: some thought out on the plains of Southern Australia; some during many a solitary sleigh drive over frozen lakes in North America; some in the great forests of Central and South America; some on the wide ocean, with the firmament above and below blending together on the horizon; and some, again, in the bowels of the earth when seeking for her hidden riches. The thoughts are those of a lifetime compressed into a little book; and, like the genie ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... eagle's vision cannot take it in. The lightning's wing, too weak to sweep its space, Sinks half way o'er it like a wearied bird;— It is the mirror of the stars, where all Their host within the concave firmament, Gay marching to the music of the spheres, Can ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various

... voice of armies rose With rallying shout through the starred firmament, And with a mighty war-cry both the hosts Encountering closed. Nor longer then did Jove Curb down his force, but sudden in his soul There grew dilated strength, and it was filled With his omnipotence; his whole of might Broke from him, and the godhead rushed abroad. The vaulted sky, the Mount ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... shall be in eternal restless change Self-fed and self-consumed. If this fail, The pillared firmament ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... were paling in the firmament when I opened my window. Mists clothed the horizon. The rushing wind soon tore them aside, and drove them into the gorges, whence descend, in the shape of a fan, the unformed masses of the lower glacier, soiled ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... mount aloft unto the skie, 505 And looke into the christall firmament; There we behold the heavens great hierarchie, The starres pure light, the spheres swift movement, The spirites and intelligences fayre, And angels waighting on ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... alabaster, called Mary Queen of Scots' column, because it is said she reached so far; beyond which is a steep ascent for nearly a quarter of a mile, which terminates in a hollow in the roof, called the Needle's-eye, in which, when the guide places his candle, it looks like a star in the firmament. You only wonder when you get out how you attained ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various

... he and his only, but the very barbarous nations of the Poictevins, Bretons, Manceaux, and those that dwell beyond the isles of the Canaries, and that of Isabella, have thought it as easy to pull down the firmament, and to set up the depths above the clouds, as to make a breach in your alliance; and have been so afraid of it in their enterprises that they have never dared to provoke, incense, or endamage the one ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... few prettier things than Carlsbad by night from one of the many bridges which span the Tepl in its course through the town. If it is a starry night, the torrent glides swiftly away with an inverted firmament in its bosom, to which the lamps along its shores and in the houses on either side contribute a planetary splendor of their own. By nine o'clock everything is hushed; not a wheel is heard at that dead hour; the few feet shuffling stealthily ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Orion rising if he sits up nights," Gow Johnson said. "The game is with Terry—at last." Then he called to the dispersing gossiping crowd: "Hold on—hold on, you people. I've got news for you. Folks, this is O'Ryan's night. It's his in the starry firmament. Look at him shine," he cried, stretching out his arm towards the heavens, where the glittering galaxy hung near the zenith. "Terry O'Ryan, our O'Ryan—he's struck oil—on his ranch it's been struck. Old Vigon found it. Terry's got his own at last. O'Ryan's in it—in it alone. Now, let's hear ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... fifteenth century had done its best to foster the delusion now expressed the altered tone of thought. Raphael, in the cupola of the Capella Chigi, represents the gods of the different planets and the starry firmament, watched, however, and guided by beautiful angel-figures, and receiving from above the blessing of the eternal Father. There was also another cause which now began to tell against astrology in Italy. The Spaniards took no interest in it, not ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... the firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, Were made by God's creative power Six thousand years ago or more. Man, too, was formed to till the ground; Birds, beasts, and fish to move around; The fish to swim, the birds to fly, And all to praise the Love most high. This world ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton

... this eternal order cannot believe the Epicurean doctrine. Human generations pass away, but the earth and the stars abide for ever. Surely the universe is divine. Passing on to the milky way, he gives two fanciful theories of its origin, one that it is the rent burnt by Phaethon through the firmament, the other that it is milk from the breast of Juno. As to its consistency, he wavers between the view that it is a closely packed company of stars, and the more poetical one that it is formed by the white-robed souls of the just. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... the coroner, with a pleased laugh. "To me the castin' vote is ez phee-nomenal an' ez astonishin' ez the comet." He chuckled—the fat man's unctuous laugh. "Something like the comet, too: it has its place in the legal firmament, but 't ain't often ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... gale was raging through the town, touzling its thatch of chimney-pots, doing violence to the demureness of its respectable streets. Night was falling, and in Piccadilly those strange, gay hats that greet the darkness were coming out like eager, vulgar comets in a dim and muttering firmament. It was just the moment when the outside mood of the huge city begins to undergo a change, to glide from its comparative simplicity of afternoon into its leering complexity of evening. Each twenty-four hours London has its moment of emancipation, its moment in which the wicked begin to breathe ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... not attempted to fix the precise spot in which Charles Lamb is to shine hereafter in the firmament of letters. I am not of sufficient magnitude to determine his astral elevation—where he is to dwell—between the sun Shakespeare and the twinkling Zoilus. That must be left to time. Even the fixed stars at first waver ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall

... without delay. To free himself Bailly was obliged to sell his library, to abandon to the chances of an auction that multitude of valuable books, from which he had sought out, in the silence of his study, and with such remarkable perseverance, the most recondite secrets of the firmament. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament, and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... from the rest of the crew. She came to the conclusion that the matter could be related jocularly, or—why not pretend fear? At that moment the brig's yard-arm light she was looking at trembled distinctly, and she was dumfounded as if she had seen a commotion in the firmament. With her lips open for a cry she saw it fall straight down several feet, flicker, and go out. All perplexity passed from her mind. This first fact of the danger gave her a thrill of quite a new emotion. Something had to be done at once. For some ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... messages; and the earth itself would bring forth clouds—clouds of a whiter breed—which formed in shallow valleys and followed the courses of the streams. It seemed the beginning of life. Again God said, "Shall we divide the waters from the land or not? Was not the firmament labour and glory sufficient?" At all events it was the beginning of life pastoral, ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... Rose-cheek'd Adonis, kept a solemn feast: Thither resorted many a wandering guest To meet their loves: such as had none at all, Came lovers home from this great festival; For every street, like to a firmament, Glister'd with breathing stars, who, where they went, Frighted the melancholy earth, which deem'd Eternal heaven to burn, for so it seem'd, As if another Phaeton had got The guidance of the sun's rich chariot. But, far ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman

... at the beauties of the light summer night he suddenly began to wonder. Could it be that he saw aright? But it actually looked as if the firmament were sinking. Anyway, to his vision it was much nearer to ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof

... light of day diminished on the approach of twilight, and then myriads of stars shone in the firmament, like sparks sown by the sun as he quitted the horizon. At length, as on that evening to which so many recollections belonged, when Fabian, wounded, reached the wood-rangers by their fire, the moon illumined the summits of the trees and the ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... suffice it to say that though I entertain the highest reverence and love for Baha'ullah's son, Abdul Baha, whom I regard as a Mahatma—'a great-souled one'—and look up to as one of the highest examples in the spiritual firmament, I hold no brief for the Bahai community, and can be as impartial in dealing with facts relating to the Bahais as with facts which happen to concern my own beloved mother-church, the ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne

... a profusion of bounty, and as colors deepen or fade, and beauties augment or diminish, I bow with admiration at the object, and increased love to Him whose hand garnished the heavens, and whose goodness is as manifest "in these his lower works" as in the constellated glories of the firmament, whose systems combine to enrich with heatless light worlds of space—and the infinite seems exhausted to gem with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... seem to bear a proportion to our vague estimates of the spiritual hosts. All this Roswell was very capable of feeling, and in some measure of appreciating; and never before had he been made so conscious of his own insignificance, as he became while looking on the firmament that night, glowing with its bright worlds and suns, doubtless the centres of other systems in which distance swallowed ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... one potentate whom even Tamburlaine cannot overcome—Death. Zenocrate dies, nor will 'cavalieros higher than the clouds', nor cannon to 'batter the shining palace of the sun, and shiver all the starry firmament', restore her. Tamburlaine himself must die, defiantly, it may be, yielding nothing through cowardice, but as certainly as time must pass and age must come. Techelles seeks to encourage him with the hope that his illness ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... unflinching advocate of the oppressed, regardless of the sacrifices which he was obliged to make on their behalf, we are disposed to view him as one of that noble band whose lives have been consecrated to deeds of charity and benevolence, and whose names will illumine the moral firmament, so long as virtue and truth shall ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... flushes of color were as false notes of the earth, as harmonies of summer thrust into the wrong places and become discords. The time for them was not yet. The hour called for hardy adventurous things, awakened out of their cold sleep on the rocks. The blue of the firmament was not dark summer blue but seemed the sky's first pale response to the sun. The sun was not rich summer gold but flashed silver rays. The ground scattered no odors; all was the budding youth of Nature on ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen

... into the starry deeps, mail-clad, young and strong, resolute and still. Then the light had passed, and he was no more than a great black outline against the starry sky—a great black outline that threatened with one mighty gesture the firmament of heaven and all ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... alone to destruction. The humble walk hand in hand with Providence to immortality. Their works survive. When the people of the Colonies were defending their liberties against the might of kings, they chose their banner from the design set in the firmament through all eternity. The flags of the great empires of that day are gone, but the Stars and Stripes remain. It pictures the vision of a people whose eyes were turned to the rising dawn. It represents the hope ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge

... finding out which beliefs are the true ones would have to be answered for before the throne of Almighty God, at the sure risk and peril of everlasting damnation. To what quarter in the large historic firmament can we turn our eyes with such certainty of being stirred and elevated, of thinking better of human life and the worth of those who have been most deeply penetrated by its seriousness, as to the annals of the intrepid spirits whom the protestant doctrine of indefeasible ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... the direction in which the clouds are carried by the wind, but it is here used to denote the firmament. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... narrow banks art pent: The stream I love unbounded goes Through flood and sea and firmament; Through light, through life, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... has elevated our country to its present condition of power and prosperity. Do not let us sacrifice peace, and suffer violence and discord to usurp its reign. We have a magnificent future if we can only preserve the Union as our fathers constructed it. While it lasts there is a great light in the firmament in which all may walk in security, hope, and happiness. It is a light reaching far down the depths of futurity cheering and guiding the steps of our children. It is a light shining to the remotest corner of the earth—raising up the down-trodden and ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... sacrificed his loyalty to the new dynasty, how utterly unfit the Senate would have been to take its old place as ruler of Italy, if Byzantine Emperor and Ostrogothic King could have been blotted out of the political firmament. ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... done when the root of a forget-me-not caught the drop of water by her hair and sucked her in, that she might become a floweret, and twinkle brightly as a blue star on the green firmament of earth. ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.

... climbed the spire; we gained the roof. What a magnificent terrace! A world itself; a panoramic view sweeping the horizon. Here I saw the names of Goethe and Herder. Here they have walked many a time, I suppose. But the inside!—a forest-like firmament, glorious in holiness; windows many hued as the Hebrew psalms; a gloom solemn and pathetic as man's mysterious existence; a richness gorgeous and manifold as his wonderful nature. In this Gothic architecture we see earnest northern races, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... encounter their assailants. There was a fierce action for a few moments, the shouts of the combatants, the heavy discharge of cannon, the rattle of musketry; the tramp of heavy-aimed foot soldiers, the rush of cavalry, being distinctly heard. The firmament trembled with the shock of the contending hosts, and was lurid with the rapid discharges of their artillery. After a short, fierce engagement, the north-western army was beaten back in disorder, but rallied again, after ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... having lamed his fingers, he turned from a pianist's career to composition and musical criticism. In becoming his wife Clara gave him both hands in more senses than one, and they shone together as a double star in the art firmament. Madame Schumann had acquired a splendid foundation for her career through the wise guidance of her father, whose pedagogic ideas every piano student might consider with profit. Her playing was distinguished by its musicianly intelligence and fine artistic feeling. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... have stretched too far; Amidst heavens peace thy beauty makes a war: For when, last night, I to Jove's palace went, (The brightest part of all the firmament) Instead of all those gods, whose thick resort Filled up the presence of the thunderers court; There Jove and Juno all forsaken sate, Pensive, like kings in their declining state: Yet (wanting power) they would ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... descended like a star going down into another firmament of as deep and dark a blue as that above; and as Saxe watched he saw it reflected from the dark walls. Then lower, lower, and down and down, ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn

... the earth and sky, Ruling the firmament on high, Clothing the day with robes of light, Blessing ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... radiant as soon as the sun set each evening, there being no twilight to speak of—the night and its glories coming upon us as quickly as the last scrap of daylight fled. In the morning it was the same, the firmament being still bright with starlight when the glorious orb of day rose in all his majesty and paled into insignificance his lesser rivals, who, however, twinkled up to the ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... child in the vicinity of Pleasant River was on the way to the circus,—Boomer's Grand Six-in-One Universal Consolidated Show; Brilliant Constellations of Fixed Stars shining in the same Vast Firmament; Glittering Galaxies of World-Famous Equestrian Artists; the biggest elephants, the funniest clowns, the pluckiest riders, the stubbornest mules, the most amazing acrobats, the tallest man and the shortest man, the thinnest woman and the thickest woman, on the habitable globe; and no connection ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the lower animals surpass man in some of their attributes, so it may be that not every angel's eye can see as broadly and as deeply into the material works of God as man himself, looking at the firmament through an equatorial of fifteen inches' aperture, and searching into the tissues with a twelfth of ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... says Mr. Fenety, "set in semi-darkness on the day that Mr. Wilmot left the forum for the bench. He was the light of the House for sixteen years, the centre from whence radiated most of the sparkling gems in the political firmament. It was at a time of life (comparatively a young man) and a period when talents such as his were most wanted by his party and his country. Notwithstanding his supposed mistake in having joined a Conservative government, the Liberals were always willing to receive ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay

... that "the stars of our firmament, instead of being scattered in all directions indifferently through space, form a stratum of which the thickness is small, in comparison with its length and breadth; and in which the earth occupies a place somewhere about the middle of its thickness, between the point where it subdivides ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale

... a prophet, least of all regarding the weather. But I think it may not be doubted that the fine weather, at least, has passed for Darwinism. So having carefully scanned the firmament of science for signs of the weather, I shall for once make a forecast for Darwinism, namely: Increasing cloudiness with heavy precipitations, indications of a violent storm, which threatens to cause the props of the structure to totter, and to ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not: Like stars to their appointed height they climb, And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, And love and life contend ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... Just as the light of all the stars is not worth one sixteenth of the light of the moon: as in the last month of the rains in the season of autumn, when the sky is clear and cloudless the sun mounts up on high and overcomes darkness in the firmament: as in the last hour of the night when the dawn is breaking, the morning star shines and gives light and radiance: even so does love which sets free the soul and comprises all good works, shine and give light and radiance." So, too, the Sutta-Nipata bids a man love not only his neighbour ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... of Ezekiel—the storm-wind out of the North, the vast cloud, the fire infolding itself, the brightness round about and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber; the rush and whirl of life that followed, wheels and wings and rings full of eyes; and over this the likeness of a firmament of the colour of the terrible ice and the sound of wings like the noise of many waters, as the Voice of the Almighty and above the firmament a Throne and on the Throne the Appearance of a Man, the Appearance ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... other the conception of a spherical earth was gradually grasped, and the heavenly bodies were perceived all to revolve round it: some moving regularly, as the stars, all fixed together into one spherical shell or firmament; some moving irregularly and apparently anomalously—these irregular bodies were therefore called planets [or wanderers]. Seven of them were known, viz. Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and there is little doubt that this number seven, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... memorable figure, and he, alas! cannot possibly be more near than a collateral. It was on August 12, 1678, that he heard Mr. John Welsh on the Craigdowhill, and "took the heavens, earth, and sun in the firmament that was shining on us, as also the ambassador who made the offer, and the clerk who raised the psalms, to witness that I did give myself away to the Lord in a personal and perpetual covenant never to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... encourage him by admitting him to a gracious audience, and by permitting him to enjoy some glimpses of the glory of those realms of light where "they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... the great performance. The frogs are only beginning to feel a little lively. It is when the sun has gone quite down, and the stars begin to twinkle upon the water, that the ball really opens. Then the gay tumult seems to extinguish every other sound, and to fill the firmament. Oh! they must have a high time of it, these little green-backed frogs that make so much noise throughout the warm nights of June. Sometimes I creep into my canoe and paddle by the light of moon or stars ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... number of Carlyle's Latter-Day Pamphlets, issued by Harper and Brothers, is a mere seven-fold repetition of the ancient discontent of the author, whose mirth is changed into a permanent wail, and for whom the "brave o'erhanging firmament has become only a foul and pestilential congregation of vapors." The subject of this number is the "Statue of Hudson," the great deposed Railway King. It says much more of statues in general, than of this particular one of Hudson's. Like all the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... public life and started a boarding-house, as you may still remember, and I was with her a good while, and almost every day added a few stars to the firmament, as Mr. Dog calls it. Once she flung the milk-pitcher at my head, and when it hit and broke, it seemed to add some to the Milky Way. Several of those fancy designs up there I can remember making. They are ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine

... hypocrite—far from it! He was in some measure even a devout man. But in his whole presentation of God and our relation to him, there was neither thought nor phrase germane to sunrise or sunset, to the firmament or the wind or the grass or the trees; nothing that came to the human soul as having a reality true as that of the world but higher; as holding with the life lived in it, with the hopes and necessities of the heart and mind. If "the hope of the glory of God" must be fashioned ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... giving Clarissa introductions to some of her dearest friends among the old French nobility—people who had known Lord Calderwood in their days of exile—and more than one dearest friend among the newer lights of the Napoleonic firmament. Then there were a Russian princess and a Polish countess or so, whom Lady Laura had brought to Mrs. Granger's receptions in Clarges-street: so that Clarissa and her husband found themselves at once in the centre of a circle, from the elegant dissipations ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... brief, restoring the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England, and dividing it territorially into twelve sees, and in October Cardinal Wiseman, as Archbishop of Westminster, issued his Pastoral, claiming that Catholic England had been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament. The Duchess of Norfolk, writing from Arundel, had criticised the proselytising action of certain Roman Catholic clergy. See the Queen's reply, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... whom he himself shall reveal it, in so far as he will, as he hath revealed it, to his Prophets and Apostles? But we learn it, so far as in us lieth, by their teaching, and from the very nature of the world. For the Scripture saith, 'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork;' and, 'The invisible things of him from the creation Of the world are clearly understood by the things that are made, even his eternal ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... would have thickened to opacity or not, I cannot tell. I dare not imagine that it might. I rather hope that by degrees my love would have got the victory, and melted it away. But now came a cloud which swallowed every other in my firmament. The next morning brought a letter from my aunt, telling me that my uncle had had a stroke, as she called it, and at that moment was lying insensible. I put my affairs in order at once, and Charley saw me away ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... the Hudson, whose bold summits rise Into the upper ether of the skies, Cleaving with calm content The cloudless crystal of the firmament. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... our foe till with victory crown'd, And the balm of compassion is pour'd in his wound; And still to our bosom be honesty dear, And still to our loves and our friendships sincere; And, till heaven's last thunder the firmament shakes, May happiness beam on the dear land ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... the order of the variable winds. How can we penetrate the law of our shifting moods and susceptibility? Yet they differ as all and nothing. Instead of the firmament of yesterday, which our eyes require, it is to-day an eggshell which coops us in; we cannot even see what or where our stars of destiny are. From day to day, the capital facts of human life are hidden from our eyes. Suddenly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... and personal life of our Presidents cannot fail to remember how few have left the office as happy men as when they entered it, how darkly the shadows gathered around the setting sun, and how eagerly the multitude would turn to gaze upon another orb just rising to take its place in the political firmament. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... adoration of the Christ, at which my teachers scoff. But I was caught up in a mighty wave of organ-music that surged from this low earth heavenwards to break against the footstool of God in the crystal firmament. And suddenly I knew what my soul was pining for. I knew the meaning of that restless craving that has always devoured me, though I spake not thereof, those strange hauntings, those dim perceptions—in a flash I understood the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Dunlop street, who in a letter to the writer remarks especially upon Chopin's pale, cadaverous appearance. "My emotion," he says, "was so great that two or three times I was compelled to retire from the room to recover myself. I have heard all the best and most celebrated stars of the musical firmament, but never one has left such an ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... arms." The hosts whose invitation includes the announcement "special dances by Miss —— or Mr. ——" know that there will be few declinations because of other engagements. The fortunate ones who are able to command the presence of any of the well known stars in the dancing firmament at a social gathering, are assured that their guests will carry away with them only pleasant ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... Congress began on November 13, 1797. The words of the President's address, "We are met together at a most interesting period, the situation of the powers of Europe is singular and portentous," was not an idle phrase. The star of Bonaparte already dominated the political firmament. Europe lay prostrate at the feet of the armies of the Directory. England, who was supposed to be the next object of attack, was staggering under the load of debt; and the sailors of her channel fleet had risen in mutiny. Even the Federalists, the aristocrats ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... pattered upon the leaves, and then it seemed as if the windows of Heaven had been opened. The rain descended in torrents, the firmament flamed with a blinding intensity—and the earth trembled with the reverberating thunder. The vivid sheets of electric fire made the darkness and gloom deeper by contrast. The trees, with their swaying branches, and the spear-like columns of rain, stood out and vanished again so rapidly ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... deep, and on the firmament, the orderly withdrawal of the stars, the calm promise of coming day, the rosy suffusion of the sky and waters, the ineffable splendour that then burst forth, attuned my mind afresh after the discords ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens

... point it out to me. Both he and the first mate, however, said that they had never heard of it, and the second mate was the only one to whom it did not appear entirely unknown. With his help, we really did discover in the spangled firmament four stars, which had something of the form of a somewhat crooked cross, but were certainly not remarkable in themselves, nor did they excite the least enthusiasm amongst us. A most magnificent spectacle was, on the contrary, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... make war upon my senses, and treat them as my enemies. My eyes, which have drawn me into a thousand difficulties, see no longer either gold or precious stones, or ivory, or purple; they behold nothing save the water, the firmament and the rocks. The only female who comes within their sight is a swarthy old woman, dry and parched as the Lybian deserts. My ears are no longer courted by those harmonious instruments and voices ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... happily ended has added new names to the galaxy of naval worthies. New stars are in the firmament. The records indicate that your naval representatives have been faithful to the lesson of their traditions, that they have been true to their history, whilst the men of our Navy have shown that they have lost none of the skill and none of the tact that they have inherited. But they have proven ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... and there again, heaps of dead bodies lying unburied, and the like, just as the imagination of the poor terrified people furnished them with matter to work upon. So hypochondriac fancies represent Ships, armies, battles in the firmament; Till steady eyes the exhalations solve, And all to its ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... first from Tiamat." "The gods came into being in long succession, but, at length, enmity arose between them and Tiamat, who created monsters to oppose them. Merodach, a solar deity, vanquished Tiamat, cut her body in two, and with one-half of it made a firmament supporting the upper waters in the sky, etc., etc." The Babylonian gods, like even those of the classics, were criminals fit only ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... floated on the primordial waters, thou subsequently becamest Hari,[18] and Brahma and Surya and Dharma, and Dhatri and Yama and Anala and Vasu, and Vaisravana, and Rudra, and Kala and the firmament the earth, and the ten directions! Thyself increate, thou art the lord of the mobile and the immobile universe, the Creator of all, O thou foremost of all existences! And, O slayer of Madhu, O thou of abundant energy, in the forest of Chitraratha thou didst, O Krishna, gratify with thy sacrifice ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... during the Middle Ages, and to her alone must be given credit for an advancement in civilization by no means small, considering the difficulties to be met and the obstacles to be overcome. During this long period there were many bright spots in the educational firmament, many brilliant leaders of the Church who also were conspicuous educators, and many important movements toward higher civilization. An examination of this period has led recent historians to abandon the term "Dark Ages." A more careful study of some of these ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... easy to describe the personal attraction of Tennyson as it is difficult to describe that of any one of his great contemporaries, we do not find the same relations existing between him and them as regards his place in the firmament of English poetry. In a country with a composite language such as ours, it may be affirmed with special emphasis, that there are two kinds of poetry; one appealing to the uncultivated masses, whose vocabulary is of the narrowest; the other ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton



Words linked to "Firmament" :   zodiac, apex, zenith, celestial point, solar apex, surface, nadir, apex of the sun's way



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