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Pleiades   /plˈiədˌiz/   Listen
Pleiades

noun
1.
(Greek mythology) 7 daughters of Atlas and half-sisters of the Hyades; placed among the stars to save them from the pursuit of Orion.
2.
A star cluster in the constellation Taurus.






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"Pleiades" Quotes from Famous Books



... be no surer way to set the world against me than to try to make it for me, and to make it my all They tell us that if you want to count those stars that 'like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid' make up the Pleiades, the surest way to see the greatest number of them is to look a little on one side of them. Look away from the joys and friendships of creatural things right up to God, and you will see these sparkling and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... are like old neighbours for whom we never look in vain, intimate though eternal, friendly and companionable though far off. There is Orion coming over the hill, and there the many-jewelled Pleiades, and across the great central dome of the sky the vast triangle formed by the Pole Star, golden Arcturus (not now visible), and ice-blue Vega. But these are not names for me. Better are those homely ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... not till people have betaken themselves to sowing and reaping crops that they begin to scan the heavens more carefully in order to determine the season of sowing by observation of the great celestial time-keepers, the rising and setting of certain constellations, above all, apparently, of the Pleiades.[188] In short, the rise of agriculture ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... is as teachable as the hand. Every one knows the most prominent constellations,—the Pleiades, the Great Bear, and Orion. Many persons can draw the figures made by the most brilliant stars in these constellations, and very many young people look for the 'lost Pleiad.' But common observers know these stars only as bright objects; they do not ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... indebted to Mr. Inglis for most of this information relating to the Khasias, which I have since found, with much more that is curious and interesting, in a paper by Lieut. Yule in Bengal Asiat. Soc. Journal.] (who is my authority) says that the Pleiades are called "the Hen-man" (as in Italy "the chickens"); also that they have names for the twelve months; they do not divide their time by weeks, but hold a market every four days. These people are industrious, and good cultivators of rice, millet, and legumes of ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... long into this mirror, the poignancy of what we behold is strangely softened. After all, it is something, whatever becomes of us, to have been conscious of all this. It is something to have outwatched Arcturus, and felt "the sweet influences" of the Pleiades. Congruous with such a mood is the manner in which, while Mr. Hardy opposes himself to Christianity, he cannot forget it. He cannot "cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart." It troubles and vexes him. It haunts him. And his work both gains and suffers. He ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... The Pleiades and the twenty millions of suns that form our own galaxy and the Milky Way, with all their varied colours, tints, and hues of white, golden, orange, ruby, red and blue, green and grey, silver, purple ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... springs at which the soul may allay the thirst to know which is forever unquenchable within it—since to quench it would be to extinguish the soul's self. Question me then, my Oinos, freely and without fear. Come! we will leave to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and swoop outward from the throne into the starry meadows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets, and heart's-ease, are the beds of the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... son of Zeus and Maia, the eldest and most beautiful of the seven Pleiades (daughters of Atlas), and was born in a cave of Mount Cyllene in Arcadia. As a mere babe, he exhibited an extraordinary faculty for cunning and dissimulation; in fact, he was a thief from his cradle, for, not many hours after his birth, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... were making for the north by looking at the Pole Star, so much lower than he was used to see it in Scotland that he hardly recognised his old friend; but, as he watched the studded belt of the Hunter and the glittering Pleiades, the Horatian dread of Nimbosus Orion occurred to him as a ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and affection lasted for twenty years without a collision or disappointment. Death alone could thin the numbers of the noble Pleiades, taking first Louis Lambert, later Meyraux ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister-beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glories ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... gaslight boundaries of existence! Pah! it is a courtyard, bounded by four square walls, a path or two to walk in, and the eyes of busybodies to order our doings and sneer us out of our souls. How they deny us that the centre of the systems is immeasurably off there in Pleiades! What fools we are. We follow trifles we value at the valuation of idiots; we cherish mean ideas; we believe contracted doctrines; we do things we are ashamed of; dropping at last like the animals, with ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... spreading, Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky, Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east, Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter, And nigh at hand, only a very little above, Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... and over them I flung my arms, as was my wont, and entwined the stem with my legs, and there hung, three hundred feet above the roofs of the houses. And as I hung the moon rose and cast the shadow of me Ahasuerus upon the cross, up against the Pleiades. And as if dull Nature were offended thereat, nor understood the offering of my poor sacrifice, the clouds began to gather, like the vultures—no one could have told whence. From all sides around they rose, and the moon was blotted out, and they gathered and rose until they ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... the season for sowing PADI by the observation of the stars. Thus the LONG KIPUTS (Klemantans) name the great square of Pegasus PALAI, the PADI storehouse (these houses are generally square); the Pleiades they call a well; and the constellation of which Aldebaran is a member they call a pig's jaw. They measure the altitude of a star by filling a tall bamboo vessel with water, inclining it until it points directly to the star, and then setting it upright again, and measuring the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... Similar ceremonies may have existed in Mexico and elsewhere, but in general, as is remarked above, the astronomical feature at solar epochs yielded to other associations. Occasional festivals occur in connection with the worship of stars (especially the morning star);[410] the Pleiades are objects of observation among some low tribes, and in some cases (Society Islands, Tahiti, Hawaii, New Zealand) the year began with the rising of these stars, but apparently no festivals are dedicated to them.[411] In the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... hand, if his natural relation to the white man be that of slave to master, our Southern brethren have wasted a great deal of time in prohibitory and obscurantist legislation; they might as well have been passing acts to prevent the moon from running away, or to make the Pleiades know their place. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... in the lead. The air was fine. The morning star shone tranquil on our right. Vega glittered overhead, and Capella in the far northeast, while at our front the handle of the Dipper cut the horizon. The atmosphere was so pure that I looked for the Pleiades, to count them; they had ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... where no man is; on the wilderness, wherein there is no man; To satisfy the desolate and waste ground; and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth? ... Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? ... Knowest thou the ordinances of Heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? ... Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go and say unto thee, Here we are? Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... pompous policeman yonder: I longed to go and say to him that there had been policemen before; that he was only the ephemeral example of a world-old type, and needn't take himself so seriously. It was an irresistible temptation to ask him: 'Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?' But I forbore, and just then, glancing into an oyster shop, I was fascinated by the oysterman. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... measurements of the diameters of celestial objects. It was successfully used by Gascoigne in determining the apparent diameters of the Sun, Moon, and several of the planets, and the mutual distances of the stars which form the Pleiades. ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... the Pleiades or the Big Dipper—no, get me Canis Major—'where Sirius, brightest jewel in the diadem of the firmament, holds sway'," she quoted. "There! Thought I'd forgotten all the astronomy you ever taught me, didn't you? Think you can ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... open road which showed white and deserted beneath the stars. Looking overhead, as she went on, her gaze swept the heavens with that sense of absolute stillness which comes under the solitude of the sky, and standing presently in the dust of the road, she fixed her eyes upon the Pleiades shining softly far above the jagged line of the horizon. Her feet ached beneath her, but her head seemed suddenly spinning through clear spaces among the stars, and while she stood there, she felt that the distance between her and the sky existed only in the hindrance of her body. With that laid ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... Separated from it now by a small drain is the old burial ground. Tradition connects this site with the Fire-ceremony of November, in British times, once prevalent in Asia, as well as Europe, and even in America. The beginning of the year was then fixed by the culminating of the constellation Pleiades, in November. On the first of the month bonfires were lighted, as they have been by the Welsh in quite recent times, and, along with the fire, the emblem of purity, offerings were made on behalf of the dead, the sacrifices of animals ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... expiation of the sins of our forefathers, there nourished seven poets at the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Royal favor and amiable dispositions united them in a club: public applause and self-appreciation led them to call it The Pleiades. In the middle of the sixteenth century, Pierre Ronsard, emulous of Greek fame, took to him six other poets more wretched than himself, and made up a second Pleiades for France. The third rising of this rhythmical constellation was seen in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... snake severed into sections; a Seneca tied to a post and a broken wampum belt at his feet. And on every tree they had also painted the symbol of their own clans and nation—pointed stones and the stars of the Pleiades; a witch-wolf and an enchanted bear; a yellow moth alighted on a white cross; a night-hawk, perfectly recognizable, soaring high above a sun, setting, bisecting the line of ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... Word clothed in Syllables of Unsurpassable Sweetness—He that holdeth the Pleiades in His Right Hand—Blissful Forecasts—Shall God weigh out Arcturus to Stop the Unreasoning Clamor of the Fool who Hath Said in His Heart there Is No God? Conclusion. ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... stories are told to you when more favored beings dwell here among you? While you are making sacrifices on the altar of Latona, why does my divine name remain unknown? My father Tantalus is the only mortal who has ever sat at the table of the gods, and my mother Dione is the sister of the Pleiades, who as bright stars shine nightly in the heavens. One of my uncles is the giant Atlas, who on his neck supports the vaulted heavens; my grandfather is Jupiter, the father of the gods. The people of Phrygia obey me, and to me and my husband belongs the city of Cadmus, ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... his sleep appears serene, Whatever dreams it has brought him— [Looks at the plans.] If he knows what those hieroglyphics mean, He's wiser than one who taught him. Why does he number the Pole-star thus? Or the Pleiades why combine? And what is he doing with Sirius, In the devil's name or in mine? Man thinks, discarding the beaten track, That the sins of his youth are slain, When he seeks fresh sins, but he soon comes back To his ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... among his personal friends the poet Callimachus, who had written a treatise on birds, and honourably maintained himself by keeping a school in Alexandria. The court of that sovereign was, moreover, adorned by a constellation of seven poets, to which the gay Alexandrians gave the nickname of the Pleiades. They are said to have been Lycophron, Theocritus, Callimachus, Aratus, Apollonius Rhodius, Nicander, and Homer the son of Macro. Among them may be distinguished Lycophron, whose work, entitled Cassandra, still remains; and Theocritus, whose exquisite ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... to us. Ought we to require of those whom we have served, that they should be always confessing their obligations to us? Why should we care about neglect? 'Seek Him that maketh the Pleiades and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into morning, and maketh the day dark with night; that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... the candle-power of an electric bulb. What do they mean? It cannot have the faintest glimmer of the real power of my candle. It would be as right to express, in the same inverted and foolish comparison, the worth of "those delicate sisters, the Pleiades." That pinch of star dust, the Pleiades, exquisitely remote in deepest night, in the profound where light all but fails, has not the power of a sulphur match; yet, still apprehensive to the mind though tremulous on the limit of vision, and sometimes even vanishing, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... imagination that you can get back. Once out in aether I met a battered, prowling spirit, that had belonged to a man whom drugs had killed a hundred years ago; and he led me to regions that I had never imagined; and we parted in anger beyond the Pleiades, and I could not imagine my way back. And I met a huge grey shape that was the Spirit of some great people, perhaps of a whole star, and I besought It to show me my way home, and It halted beside me like ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... is the great god; eight other gods were in heaven; one fell or descended into Java—seven remained above; one of these is named Sakarra, who, with his companions and followers, is (or is in) the constellation of a cluster of stars, doubtless the Pleiades; and by the position of this constellation the Dyaks can judge good and bad fortune. If this cluster of stars be high in the heavens, success will attend the Dyak; when it sinks below the horizon, ill luck follows; fruit and ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... Tuileries; but Paris could hardly fail to hit the mark, and Nevil waited for the reply, half expecting an appointment on the French sands: for the act of posting a letter, though it be to little short of the Pleiades even, will stamp an incredible proceeding as a matter of business, so ready is the ardent mind to take footing on the last thing done. The flight of Mr. Beauchamp's letter placed it in the common order of occurrences for the youthful author of it. Jack Wilmore, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... in this Paris Pandemonium, or City of All the Devils!—And yet the Night, as Mayor Petion walks here in the Tuileries Garden, 'is beautiful and calm;' Orion and the Pleiades glitter down quite serene. Petion has come forth, the 'heat' inside was so oppressive. (Roederer, Chronique de Cinquante Jours: Recit de Petion. Townhall Records, &c. in Hist. Parl. xvi. 399-466.) Indeed, his Majesty's reception ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... has been turned into a golden nightingale, and that there must be no noise or romping in the garden for three days, as not till then will he have arrived safely at the Appleiades. That is the name they give to the Pleiades—the seven golden islands whither pass the souls of dead mice and birds and dolls and where Scarlatti lives and where you, too, may expect to go if you please them. Even the black cat will probably go there—one's own black cat. But not the neighbour's cat—the ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... the wife of the great sage Vasishtha, and regarded as the pattern of conjugal excellence. She was raised to the heavens as one of the Pleiades. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... shining before they came home. Zena would look at the stars and say how infinitely far away they seemed, and Pupkin would realize that a girl with a mind like that couldn't have any use for a fool such as him. Zena used to ask him to point out the Pleiades and Jupiter and Ursa minor, and Pupkin showed her exactly where they were. That impressed them both tremendously, because Pupkin didn't know that Zena remembered the names out of the astronomy book at her boarding-school, and Zena ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... heard the voices of their five sisters, who from the sky stretched forth their hands and drew the two others in to live with them in the sky, and there you may see the seven sisters together. We know them as the Pleiades, but the black ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... of Attalus, founder and king of Fiesole, was of very brilliant origin, being no less than one of the Pleiades, and the only one of the sisters who seems to have married into a patriarchal family. "The reason why the seven stars are seven is a pretty reason"; but it is not "because they are not eight," as Lear suggests, but, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... straight line, or in an enormous orbit around some centre. The idea has been put forward that it may be moving around the centre of gravity of the whole visible stellar universe. Maedler, indeed, propounded the notion that Alcyone—the chief star in the group known as the Pleiades—occupied this centre, and that everything revolved around it. He went even further to proclaim that here was the Place of the Almighty, the Mansion of the Eternal! But Maedler's ideas upon this point have ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... feasts. But although the sun was the supreme deity, other objects were also worshipped as subordinate deities. These objects, however, were generally in some manner representative of sun attributes; for example, the Moon was worshipped as the spouse of the Sun, Venus as his page. The pleiades and other constellations, and single stars were also deified; the rainbow and the lightning were sun servants, the elements, the sun's offspring. Many animals and trees were reverenced as representatives of sun attributes. Above ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... Bridger meant the Pleiades. These stars, forming a cluster or nebula, sink below the western horizon in the spring and do not appear in the sky again until autumn; and the following is the reason why. They were once six children in a Blackfeet camp. The Blackfeet hunters had killed many buffalo, and among them some buffalo ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin

... double rainbow and four storms in action at once; or a wall of rain like sawn steel slowly drawing up one river while the Mazaruni remains in full sunlight; with Pegasus galloping toward the zenith at midnight and the Pleiades just clearing the Penal Settlement, I could not always keep on dissecting, or recording, or verifying the erroneousness of one of my recently ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... exposed side of the hotel, and made his windows rattle—the old, sad winds of Egypt. Henriot got out of bed to fasten the outside shutters. He stood a moment and watched the moon floating down behind the Sakkara Pyramids. The Pleiades and Orion's Belt hung brilliantly; the Great Bear was close to the horizon. In the sky above the Desert swung ten thousand stars. No sounds rose from the streets of Helouan. The tide of ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... moments in the war which filled the soul with a strange and wild delight. For months we had been preparing for this event, and now it was upon us. The sky was growing lighter, and the constellation of the Pleiades was beginning to fade in the sky above the outline of the distant trees. I looked at my watch. Nearer and nearer the hands crept to zero hour, but they move slowly at such times. Then at 4.20 the long barrage burst in all its fury. The hissing rain of shells through the air on ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... their serene spaces; like Eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man! Thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them any more; and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth; what art thou that sittest whining there? Thou art still Nothing, Nobody: ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... clear, that when the moon is young, I can often distinguish the whole circle, thus; O. You and Robert may look for this some fine night, but I do not remember ever to have observed it in England. The stars appear more brilliant here, but I often look up at the Pleiades, and remember how much happier I was when I saw them in Bristol. Fare you well. Let me know that my ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... sufficient to itself. Nevertheless, its self-sufficiency and the true salt savour of its life can only be appreciated by picturing it hemmed in by county. It lies on the face of the county like an insignificant stain, like a dark Pleiades in a green and empty sky. And Hanbridge has the shape of a horse and its rider, Bursley of half a donkey, Knype of a pair of trousers, Longshaw of an octopus, and little Turnhill of a beetle. The Five Towns seem to cling together for safety. Yet the idea of clinging together ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... silver altars and adoration the moon, which they call the consort of the sun, and certain stars, which they term the handmaids of the moon: but their most singular idea is that the Pleiades represent their grandfather; and "as that constellation disappears at certain periods from the sky of South America, upon such occasions they suppose that their grandfather is sick, and are under a yearly apprehension that he is going to die; but as soon as those seven stars are again visible ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... said. "The money has to be won tonight. I've already issued a check for this twenty-seven million, it will bounce as high as the Pleiades unless we deposit the money in the morning, so that's our ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison

... of the Mohawks loved a maid, and they sat by the lake at night, counting the Dancers in the sky—which we call stars of the Pleiades. ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... meteoric particles for example, before they combine to form stars. Such masses or clouds of non-shining or invisible matter are thought to exist in considerable profusion within the stellar system. The nebulosity connected more or less closely with the brighter Pleiades stars may be a case in illustration. Slipher has recently found that the spectra of two small regions observed in this nebula are continuous, with absorption lines of hydrogen and helium. This spectrum is apparently the same as that of the bright Pleiades stars. Slipher's ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... and she sat watching at the window-pane; overhead, constellations marched across the heavens in relentless splendor, careless of man or sorrow; Orion glittered in the east, and climbed toward the zenith; the Pleiades clustered and sparkled as if they missed their lost sister no more; the Hyades marked the celestial pastures of Taurus, and Lyra strung her chords with fire. Hitty rested her weary head against the window-frame and sent her wearier thoughts upward ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... hands the meshes of revenge Closed on the prey, and for one woman's sake Troy trodden by the Argive monster lies— The foal, the shielded band that leapt the wall, What time with autumn sank the Pleiades. Yea, o'er the fencing wall a lion sprang Ravening, and lapped his fill of ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... grey mist had entirely usurped the heavens, and the plash of weary rain resounded through the pluvious metropolis of the west. Fortunately, we were not ignorant of the fact, that Glasgow is under the peculiar tutelage of the Pleiades; and accordingly we proceeded to the railway, trusting that matters might mend so soon as we lost sight of the stupendous chimney-stalk of St Rollox. Notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, and the early ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... her sisters, gentle Alcyone, The peaceful, daughter of the King who rules the tempestuous winds; And, running in pursuit of these—the happy Pleiades— Aldebaran, "the Follower," shines from ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... you have {only} heard of, to those who are seen? or why is Latona worshipped at the altars, {and} my Godhead is still without its {due} frankincense? Tantalus was my father, who alone was allowed to approach the tables of the Gods above. The sister of the Pleiades[34] is my mother; the most mighty Atlas is my grandsire, who bears the aethereal skies upon his neck. Jupiter is my other grandsire; of him, too, I boast as my father-in-law.[35] The Phrygian nations dread me; the palace of Cadmus is ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... Heaven. In the serenity of such an hour, with the white tents reposing in the distance, and the "soul-like sound" of the rustling forest alone breaking the stillness, it would not be strange, as they gazed on flaming Orion and the Pleiades, if they had bowed with ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley

... pause, my quest forego; Enough for me to feel and know That He in whom the cause and end, The past and future, meet and blend,— Who, girt with his Immensities, Our vast and star-hung system sees, Small as the clustered Pleiades,— Moves not alone the heavenly quires, But waves the spring-time's grassy spires, Guards not archangel feet alone, But deigns to guide and keep my own; Speaks not alone the words of fate Which worlds destroy, and worlds create, But whispers in my spirit's ear, In tones of love, or warning fear, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... summit; and rest was given to the soldiers, exhausted with toil and fighting: and several beasts of burden, which had fallen down among the rocks, by following the track of the army arrived at the camp. A fall of snow, it being now the season of the setting of the constellation of the Pleiades, caused great fear to the soldiers, already worn out with weariness of so many hardships. On the standards being moved forward at daybreak, when the army proceeded slowly over all places entirely blocked ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... come again and fed The lily's lamp with light, And raised from dust a rose, rich red, And a little star-flower, white; He also guards the Pleiades And holds his planets true: But we—we know not which of these The easier ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill

... Wace speedily threw light. After sunset, the sky darkened rapidly—there was a very brief twilight interval indeed—and the stars shone out. They were recognisably the same as those we see, arranged in the same constellations. Mr. Cave recognised the Bear, the Pleiades, Aldebaran, and Sirius: so that the other world must be somewhere in the solar system, and, at the utmost, only a few hundreds of millions of miles from our own. Following up this clue, Mr. Wace learned that the ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... o'er his wounds," but almost all his tales were "tales of valour done." He told the number of his "stars," vividly described how he held them in his right hand, pointed out to us how one "star" differeth from another "star" in glory, and went to bed at last with the air of a man who had gilded the Pleiades, brushed up Castor and Pollux, ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... been in captive flight all day, but with no such vanishings as these. The dimmer constellations of the soft night are reserved by the skies. Hardly is a secondary star seen by the large and vague eyes of the stream. They are blind to the Pleiades. ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... began what our Egyptians called the Khamsin, and the Arabs El- Dufn (Bedawin, Dafn) generically; and specifically Dufn el-Suryy ("of the Pleiades""). Sky dark without clouds. At night, yellow clouds over moon. Gusts alternately hot and cold. Highly electrical; few could sleep at night. Tents left open. It was followed by damp and gloomy weather, which the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... far beyond the tree-tops and is peeping, chaste and pale, through the branches of the firs and giant pines, there is something arresting, enthralling, in the thought of the goddess Diana who now has for hunting-ground the blue firmament of heaven where the pale Pleiades ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... leaves and hawthorn flowers—from her thatched cottages, veiled with ivy—from the morning tread of the reapers, and the mower's lunch of bread and cheese under the meadow elm, and you take away a living and beautiful spirit more charming than music. You take away from English poetry one of its pleiades, and bereave it of a companionship more intimate than that of the nearest neighborhood of the stars above. How the lark's life and song blend, in the rhyme of the poet, with "the sheen of silver fountains leaping to the sea," with morning sunbeams and noontide thoughts, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... from a deceit of eye-sight—see how the light of this world blinded you to the immensity and the meaning of existence! See! over your head spreads the great firmament. There are Sirius, and Orion, and the glittering Pleiades. How harmoniously they are related; how calmly they roll! And now, O man! fresh from the reeking dust, and the cry of pained hearts, and the shadows of the grave, do not the scales of unbelief drop from your eyes, when you see the width of God's universe, and feel that His purpose girdles ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... sat at my grandfather's feet, near the statue of Phoebus in the portico, at early dawn, I heard music, of soft and various sounds, floating in the air; and I thought perchance it was the farewell hymn of the stars, or the harps of the Pleiades, mourning for their lost sister.—I had never spoken of it; but to-night I forgot the presence of all save Plato, when I heard him discourse so eloquently ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... to the larger and more luscious fruits, or the lily of the valley to glowing and stately flowers, or what the Pleiades are among the grander constellations, my sister's protegee is among women;—it is ridiculous to call her Kate's friend. Many men would find their ideal of loveliness in her. She would surely excite a tender, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... for thee, O cupbearer, O thou whom beauty's self From the bright parting of thy hair doth to the feet army! The full moon[FN7] from thy collar-folds rises, the Pleiades[FN8] Shine from thy mouth and in thine hands there beams the sun of day.[FN9] I trow, the goblets wherewithal thou mak'st us drunk are those Thou pourest to us from thine eyes, that lead the wit astray. Is ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous

... months is named Muan, and some of the glyphs appearing for this month in the codices certainly represent the Moan or screech owl. This is especially so with text figs. 3-6. Foerstemann (1904a) considers that the month Muan and, consequently, the sign as well, refer to the Pleiades. ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen

... the burning Libyan tract; The hot dry air will let thine axle down: Toward the seven Pleiades keep thy steadfast way." ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus

... the edge of the earth he caught the tapir and killed him; yet the creature's shadow arose from the body and kept on its flight with the wife. Straightforth she leaped into the blue vast, and there she hangs, only we call her the Pleiades. The brute is the Hyades. He glares and winks with his red eye: Aldebaran. The husband is Orion, who follows the others through ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... and range of vision that were perfectly surprising. He enjoyed, in common with Moestlin, Kepler's professor, the rare faculty of distinguishing the satellites of Jupiter with the naked eye, and of counting fourteen of the stars in the group of Pleiades, the remotest of them being only of the ninth magnitude. He presumed none the more for that; on the contrary, he made his bow to you, at a distance, and when occasion arose he bravely knew ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... of the vegetation, the rumpling of the leaves resulting in the turning of the under side toward the sun, and those trifling disarrangements which you or I would never notice, can be identified by what may be called an off-hand scrutiny, possibly on the same principle that a careless glance at Pleiades will reveal each of the seven stars, when if the gaze is fixed on the matchless group, one of them modestly shrinks ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... of Their Dawnchild all the gods made Themselves stars for torches, and far away through all the sky followed the tracks of Night as far as he prowled abroad. And at one time Slid, with the Pleiades in his hand, came nigh to the golden ball, and at another Yoharneth-Lahai, holding Orion for a torch, but lastly Limpang Tung, bearing the morning star, found the golden ball far away under the world near to the ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... system in the heavens was (strange to say!) referred to an orbit about a prodigious star in the centre of the galaxy. About this star, or at all events about a centre of gravity common to all the globes of the Milky Way and supposed to be near Alcyone in the Pleiades, every one of these globes was declared to be revolving, our own performing the circuit in a period of 117,000,000 of years! We, with our present lights, our vast telescopic improvements, and so forth, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Nature his study, While practice perfected his theory. Divine philosophy alone can teach The difference which the fish Glociscus[124] shows In winter and in summer: how to learn Which fish to choose, when set the Pleiades, And at the solstice. 'Tis change of seasons Which threats mankind, and shakes their changeful frame. This dost thou comprehend? Know, what we use In ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... of that universe which lies Between the four walls of this garden fair,— Whose constellations are the fireflies That wheel their instant courses everywhere,— 'Mid fairy firmaments wherein one sees Mimic Booetes and the Pleiades, Thou ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein

... night. Through the interlacing gum branches she saw a great coppery disk, and the moon rose slowly to be a lamp in her bridal chamber. How wonderful the stars were!... There was the Southern Cross with its pointers, and the Pleiades. And that bright star above the tops of the trees, which seemed to throw a distinct ray of light, must be Venus.... The moon was high enough to cast shadows—black—distorted. The low clumps of shrubs beyond the carpet of grass looked ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... born in Cilicia, is sometimes counted among the pleiades, or seven stars of Alexandria. His Phenomena is a short astronomical poem, without life or feeling, which scarcely aims at any of the grace or flow of poetry. It describes the planets and the constellations one by one, and tells us what stars are ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... (c. 800 B.C.), appears to be a curious blending of Hellenic and Phoenician thought. Although not an astronomical work, several constellation subjects are introduced. In the same author's Works and Days, a treatise which is a sort of shepherd's calendar, there are distinct references to the Pleiades, Hyades, Orion, Sirius and Arcturus. It cannot be argued, however, that these were the only stars and constellations named in his time; the omission proves nothing. The same is true of the Homeric epics wherein the Pleiades, Hyades, Ursa major, Orion and Booetes are mentioned, and also of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... always a plant of high reputation. The Plain of Marathon was so named from the abundance of Fennel (marathron) growing on it.[89:1] And like all strongly scented plants, it was supposed by the medical writers to abound in "virtues." Gower, describing the star Pleiades, says— ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... unwieldy bulk to the patient potency of the tiny herbs themselves that I have the sight. It is admirable, this potent patience of these wee things that are born in bogs yet in their own world grow stars the memory of which lasts as long in the consciousness of man as does that of the Pleiades. If you pluck them you will see by turning them over that these constellations are as whitely bright to small eyes that look from below, from the ooze of the bog or the roots of marsh grass, as they are to our great eyes that look from ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... the Thesmophoria in Athens women sit on the ground and fast. And the Boeotians open the vaults of the Sorrowful One, naming that festival sorrowful because Demeter is sorrowing for the descent of the Maiden. The month is the month of sowing about the setting of the Pleiades. The Egyptians call it Athyr, the Athenians Pyanepsion, the Boeotians the month of Demeter. . . . For it was that time of year when they saw some of the fruits vanishing and failing from the trees, while they sowed others grudgingly ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... bright in some of those Flemish nights. I saw the Milky Way clearly tracked across the dark desert. The Pleiades and Orion's belt were like diamonds on black velvet. But among all these worlds of light other stars, unknown to astronomers, appeared and disappeared. On the road back from a French town one night I looked Arras way, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... "The gentleman's eyes may twinkle like Castor and Pollux, twin stars; but he can't wink out of sight that town line of Blandford. He may place one foot on Orion and the other on Arcturus, and seize the Pleiades by the hair and wring all the water from their dripping urns; but he can't wash out that town line of Blandford." The local newspaper got hold of the speech and reported it, and it used to be spoken occasionally by the school boys for their declamation. Bishop is said to have been much disturbed ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... our voices, and an occasional crackle and splutter as a pine knot blazed up, there was no sound on the mountain side. The beloved stars of my far-off home were overhead, the Plough and Pole Star, with their steady light; the glittering Pleiades, looking larger than I ever saw them, and "Orion's studded belt" shining gloriously. Once only some wild animals prowled near the camp, when "Ring," with one bound, disappeared from my side; and the horses, which were picketed by the stream, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... it were not too cold, out into the little back yard of his cell and look at the sky, where, when the nights were clear, the stars were to be seen. He had never taken any interest in astronomy as a scientific study, but now the Pleiades, the belt of Orion, the Big Dipper and the North Star, to which one of its lines pointed, caught his attention, almost his fancy. He wondered why the stars of the belt of Orion came to assume the peculiar mathematical relation to each other ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... seen in the distance, experiment again, is the best judge. The human eye is so very different in each man that even the acute examination into what is known of the visual image of the Pleiades shows that the *average visual capacity of classic periods is no different from our own, but still that there was great variety in visual capacity. What enormous visual power is attributed to half-civilized and barbarous peoples, especially Indians, Esquimos, etc.! Likewise among our own people ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... moon's Across the Ocean's glassy, mottled floor, Far clouds uprear their gleaming battlements Drawn to the crest of some bleak eminence, When autumn twilight fades on the sere hill And autumn winds are still; To watch the East for some emerging sign, Wintry Capella or the Pleiades Or that great huntsman with the golden gear; Ravished in hours like these Before thy universal shrine To feel the invoked presence hovering near, He stands enthusiastic. Star-lit hours Spent on the roads of wandering ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... conquer the right wing of darkness. And there is Mercury, like a lighted cresset shaken by the winds, flapping his violet wings above the Northeastern horizon; and Mars, like a piece of gold held out by the trembling hand of a miser, is sinking in the blue of the sea with Neptune; the Pleiades are stepping on the trail of the blushing moon; the Balance lingers behind to weigh the destinies of the heroes who are to contend with the dawn; while Venus, peeping from her tower over Mt. Sanneen, is sending love vibrations to all. I would tell thee more if I knew. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... exclaimed, 'how rude he'll think me!' And he rubbed something out of his eyes. He gave one long, yearning glance at the spangled sky where an inquisitive bat darted zigzag several times between himself and the Pleiades, that bunch of star-babies as yet unborn, as the blue-eyed ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... hundreds of stars, as far as the eye could see, were but a mere vestige of the creation amidst which we lived. I got to know the names of some of the constellations the Greater Bear, with 'the pointers' which pointed to the Pole Star, Orion with his belt, the Twins, the Pleiades, and other prominent objects in the heavens. It was a source ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... constant monsoons, and in sailing from island to island coasted the Asiatic shores, trusting, when for a short time out of sight of land, not to the compass, though they were acquainted with it, but to known rocks, glimpses of headlands, the direction of the wind, and their observation of the Pleiades. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... small peculiar, though from human sight So farr remote, with diminution seen. First in his East the glorious Lamp was seen, 370 Regent of Day, and all th' Horizon round Invested with bright Rayes, jocond to run His Longitude through Heav'ns high rode: the gray Dawn, and the Pleiades before him danc'd Shedding sweet influence: less bright the Moon, But opposite in leveld West was set His mirror, with full face borrowing her Light From him, for other light she needed none In that ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... told! We must have seven, A cluster like the Pleiades, And lo! it happens, as with these, That one is missing from our heaven. Where is the Landlord? Bring him here; Let ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... represents a moral and spiritual force, which holds the earth in its orbit. This force is Spirit, that can "bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades," and 12 "loose the ...
— Rudimental Divine Science • Mary Baker G. Eddy

... incidentally brought into association with the moon-goddess, who had seven avatars, perhaps originally one for each day of the week. At a later period the number seven was arbitrarily brought into relationship with the Pleiades. ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... manifestations or expressions of one and the same force in the universe—that ultimate, all-encompassing, divine force (not to speak unscientifically) that upholds the order of the heavens, "binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades, brings forth Mazzaroth in his season, and guides Arcturus with ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... dying wind sighed his name: "Hogarth..."; and when Loveday before sleeping happened to ask: "When do we set out for London, Richard?" Hogarth with a laugh turned upon him, replying: "When do we set out for Arcturus and the Pleiades? Do give one time to look ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... ought to be about four hours right ascension, and something like plus twenty degrees declination. My figures aren't accurate, though, since I'm working purely from memory, so we'd better cover everything from Aldebaran to the Pleiades." ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... exhortation is urged, if we link verse 8 with verse 6, and supply 'Seek ye' at its beginning. Here the enforcement is drawn from the considerations of God's workings in nature and history. The shepherd from Tekoa had often gazed up at the silent splendours of the Pleiades and Orion, as he kept watch over his flocks by night, and had seen the thick darkness on the wide uplands thinning away as the morning stole op over the mountains across the Dead Sea, and the day dying as he gathered his sheep ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... daughters seven, She among them, if you please, Were translated to the heaven As the starry Pleiades! But amid their constellation One alone was always dark, For she shrank from ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... represented as the last of the rebellious Kami on the occasion of the subjugation of Izumo by order of the Sun goddess and the Great-Producing Kami. So far as the Records and the Chronicles are concerned, "the only stars mentioned are Venus, the Pleiades, and the Weaver," the last being connected with a Chinese legend, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... a fierce group of seven enkindled hills, In number like the mystic candles lighted Within his future temple. Then he bent Upon that mystic pleiades of flame His luminous regard, and spoke to it: "Thou art to be my Rome." The harmony Of that note to the nebulous heights supreme, And to the bounds of the created world, Rolled like the voice of myriad organ-stops, And sank, and ceased. The heavenly ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... chiding mistress. It happened once that I was benighted in a garden, in company with a friend. The spot was delightful: the trees intertwined; you would have said that the earth was bedecked with glass spangles, and that the knot of the Pleiades was suspended from the branch of the vine. A garden with a running stream, and trees whence birds were warbling melodious strains: that filled with tulips of various hues; these loaded with fruits of several ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... that rolls in dim eclipse Wide wheeling round its long ellipse,— His name Urania writes with these And stamps it on her Pleiades. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... were glorious with stars,—Arcturus and his host, the Pleiades, Orion, and all those worlds that shine out when ours is dark; but I did not care for them. Let them shine: they could not shine into me. I tried with feeble effort to lift my eyes to Him who is above the stars, and yet holds the sea, yea, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... geometry so well that he measured the circumference of the earth. Callimachus was in fact one of those erudite poets and wise men of letters whom the gay Alexandrians who thronged the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus called "The Pleiades." Apollonius Rhodius, Aratus, Theocritus, Lycophron, Nicander, and Homer son of Macro, were the other six. From his circle of clever people, the king, with whom he had become a prime favorite, called him to be chief custodian over the stores of precious ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... the hunter, or the hermit, whether of the wilderness of nature or the isolation of crowds, have read there of the mystery of the infinite, of the order and symmetry of the plan of creation, of the proof of the existence of a God, who controls the sweet influences of Pleiades and makes strong the bands of Orion. The unspeakable thought, the unformulated prayer, the poignant sense of individual littleness, of atomic unimportance, in the midst of the vast scheme of the universe, inform every eye, throb in every breast, whether it be of the savant, with all the appliances ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... world has brought the laurel-leaves to crown The star-discoverer's name with high, renown; Accept the flower of love we lay with these For influence sweeter than the Pleiades! ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke

... peculiar disposition of certain stars, visible to the unaided eye, has struck philosophical observers. Mitchell has already remarked how little probable it is that the stars in the Pleiades, for example, could have been contracted into the small space which encloses them by the fortuity of chance alone, and he has concluded that this group of stars, and similar groups which the skies present to us, are the necessary result of the condensation of a nebula, with ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... our atmosphere, they are not free from its desolating melancholy! Perhaps those who are transported there may adore the shining of new suns—but there are others not less dear whose light they must see extinguished! Will not the most glorious among the beloved constellation of the Pleiades there disappear? Like drops of luminous dew the stars fall one by one into the nothingness of a yawning abyss, whose bottomless depths no plummet has ever sounded, while the soul, contemplating these fields of ether, this blue Sahara ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... remnant of their conversation and then lay staring at the stars while his hulk of a partner, this great bear who in his awkward good nature had trampled upon holy ground, slept peacefully by his side. The Pleiades fled away before Orion, the Scorpion rose up in the south and sank again, the Morning Star blinked and blazed like a distant fire, such as shepherds kindle upon the ridges, and still Hardy lay in his blankets, fighting with himself. The great blackness which precedes the first glow of dawn ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... be used for the observation of any celestial body southing higher than 26 deg. 18' above the horizon; but not very effectively for objects passing near the zenith. The Pleiades could be well observed. They southed about 63-2/3 deg. above the horizon in the year 2140 B.C. or thereabouts when they were on the equinoctial colure.[46] But if I am right in taking the year 3300 B.C. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... after sunset: there was no moon visible, but an irradiance was omnipresent, and showed the muffled yew-tree walks, and the greater trees colossal, mountains overshadowing the land. Here and there, as you went, glimmered daffodils, like the Pleiades half-veiled, and long files of crocuses burned ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... giant Thjasse, he appeared in the heavens as Sirius. In India the ghosts of the "seven Rishis", who were semi-divine Patriarchs, formed the constellation of the Great Bear, which in Vedic times was called the "seven bears". The wives of the seven Rishis were the stars of the Pleiades. In Greece the Pleiades were the ghosts of the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione, and in Australia they were and are a queen and six handmaidens. In these countries, as elsewhere, stories were told to ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... to her and to her husband when she marries. Further, it is my will and pleasure that, beginning from her seventh year, you shall make, every month when the moon is in the constellation Krittika (or the Pleiades), a great festival, to be called the Festival of the Ball Dance, at which she shall publicly exhibit her skill before the people. I also will, that in reference to a husband, she shall have free choice without any pressure on your part, and that he whom she marries shall have equal ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob

... duly greased; He ran down hill in front of Jill like a summer-lightning flash— Till he suddenly tripped on a stone, or slipped, and fell to the earth with a crash. Then straight did rise on his wondering eyes the constellations fair, Arcturus and the Pleiades, the Greater and Lesser Bear, The swirling rain of a comet's train he saw, as he swiftly fell— And Jill came tumbling after him with a loud triumphant yell: "You have won, you have won, the race is done! And as for the ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... carried with them a noble victim, the flower of their captives, and an apparatus for kindling the new fire, the success of which was an augury of the renewal of the cycle. On the summit of the mountain, the procession paused till midnight, when, as the constellation of the Pleiades[11] approached the zenith, the new fire was kindled by the friction of some sticks placed on the breast of the victim. The flame was soon communicated to a funeral-pyre on which the body of the slaughtered captive ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... in his East the glorious Lamp was seen, Regent of Day; and all th' Horizon round Invested with bright Rays, jocund to round His Longitude through Heavns high Road: the gray Dawn, and the Pleiades before him danced, Shedding sweet Influence. Less bright the Moon, But opposite in level'd West was set, His Mirror, with full face borrowing her Light From him, for other Lights she needed none ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... ideas of "duty" and "interest" whatever may have been the origin of those ideas. No one pretends that ingratitude may, in any past abyss of time, have been a virtue, or that it may be such now in Arcturus or the Pleiades. Indeed, a certain eminent writer of the utilitarian school of ethics has amusingly and very instructively shown how radically distinct even in his own mind are the two ideas which he nevertheless endeavours to identify. Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his examination of "Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... the timid approach of the twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... along the broad road beside a river. There were hills in the distance and the air from them was in the key of the Pleiades. There were gardens everywhere full of sunlight translated into flowers, and without an effort one divined the harmony of growing things. I felt that something was about to happen; I knew it, but I did not care to ask what it might be. Perhaps ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... seize, And take the liquid labours of the bees, Spurt draughts of water from your mouth, and drive A loathsome cloud of smoke amidst their hive, Twice in the year their flowery toils begin, 300 And twice they fetch their dewy harvest in; Once, when the lovely Pleiades arise, And add fresh lustre to the summer skies; And once, when hastening from the watery sign, They quit their station, and forbear to shine. The bees are prone to rage, and often found To perish for revenge, and die upon the wound Their venomed sting produces ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... literature in 1819. I look abroad on these stars of our literary firmament,—some crowded together with their minute points of light in a galaxy, some standing apart in glorious constellations; I recognize Arcturus and Orion and Perseus and the glittering jewels of the Southern Crown, and the Pleiades shedding sweet influences; but the Evening Star, the soft and serene light that glowed in their van, the precursor of them all, has sunk below the horizon. The spheres, meanwhile, perform their appointed courses; ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... sculptor—another sculptor—an elemental bit of nature, original and, better still, aboriginal. He used to sleep out under the stars so as to wake up in the night and see the march of the Milky Way, and watch the Pleiades disappear over the brink of the western horizon. He wore a flannel shirt, thick-soled shoes, and overalls, no hat, and his hair was thick and coarse as a horse's mane. This man had talent, and he had sublime conceptions, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard



Words linked to "Pleiades" :   Greek mythology, nymph, clump, clustering, bunch, Taurus, Sterope, cluster, Asterope



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