"Vault of heaven" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... earth and the chord of the seven colours, 'Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.' And I said to my soul, 'Let the tempest rave in the world; let sorrow wail like a sea-bird in the midst thereof; and let thy heart respond to her shivering cry; but the vault of heaven encloses the tempest and the shrieking bird and the echoing heart; and the sun of God's countenance can with one glance from above change the wildest winter day into a summer evening compact ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... utmost violence of wind and wave; now it was but a slip of wood floating—on an unknown depth of black, fathomless water. The blue light, which, at its first flashing over the ocean, had made the very stars pale their lustre, and lighted up with ghastly radiance the enormous vault of heaven, was now only a point, brilliant and distinct it is true, but which by its very brilliance dwarfed the ship into insignificance. The Malabar lay on the water like a glow-worm on a floating leaf, and the glare of the signal-fire made no more impression ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Starry World.—In addition to the planets and comets that are found in the heavens, there are other bodies, countless in their number, which we know as stars. Who has not looked up into the heavens on some clear night, and noticed how the vault of heaven was spangled over with points of light, each point representing a huge sun that exists in far-off space? For it must be remembered that every star is a sun, which, reasoning by analogy, is the centre of a stellar system, just ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... a patient at these baths, I must now go to rest [a few words are here effaced by Beethoven himself]. Oh, heavens! so near, and yet so far! Is not our love a truly celestial mansion, but firm as the vault of heaven itself? ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... north wind to bear it to a secret place. His fathers saw it, rejoiced and shouted. Gifts and offerings to him they brought. The lord was appeased seeing her corpse. Dividing her body, wise plans he laid. Into two halves like a fish he divided her, Out of one half he made the vault of heaven, A bar he set and guards he posted, Gave them command that the waters pass not through. Through the heaven he strode, viewed its spaces, Near the deep placed Nudimmud's dwelling. And the lord measured the domain of the deep, A palace like it, Eshara, he ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the midst of the most serene day of summer, when all is light and laughing around, a thunderbolt were to fall from the clear blue vault of heaven and rend the earth at the very feet of some careless traveler, he could not gaze upon the smoldering chasm which so unexpectedly yawned before him, with half the astonishment and fear which Leicester felt at the sight that so suddenly presented ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... willow-tree, all barren, With neither fruit, nor flower. What could induce The dream of conquering Mazinderan? Hadst thou no friend to warn thee of thy folly? Hadst thou not heard of the White Demon's power— Of him, who from the gorgeous vault of Heaven Can charm the stars? From this mad enterprise Others have wisely shrunk—and what hast thou Accomplished by a more ambitious course? Thy soldiers have slain many, dire destruction And spoil have been their purpose—thy wild will Has promptly ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Greeks, Romans, Persians, and Hindus. This deity is Varuna, the most remarkable personality in the Veda. The name, which is etymologically connected with [Greek: Ouranos], signifies "the encompasser," and is applied to heaven—especially the all-encompassing, extreme vault of heaven—not the nearer sky, which is the region of cloud and storm. It is in describing Varuna that the Veda rises to the greatest sublimity which it ever reaches. A mysterious presence, a mysterious power, a mysterious ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... Scriptures. In his own peculiar manner he expressed himself once to Bruck, the chancellor of the Saxon Elector, his temporal adviser at Augsburg, and a man who did much to further the Reformation. 'I have lately,' he wrote, 'on looking out of the window, seen two wonders: the first, the glorious vault of heaven, with the stars, supported by no pillar and yet firmly fixed; the second, great thick clouds hanging over us, and yet no ground upon which they rested, or vessel in which they were contained; and then, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... level Alfoeld, and as early as four o'clock in the afternoon the dark-grey, lilac-coloured atmosphere begins to envelope the horizon all round about, rising higher and higher every moment, till at last the very vault of heaven is reached, and it is night. Only the snowy whiteness of the plain preserves some gleam of light ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... nervously pressed to it. At times sudden gleams appeared to pierce her closed eyelids, and amidst the radiance she imagined she saw monuments, steeples, and domes standing out in the diffuse light of dreamland. Then she lowered her hands and, opening her eyes, was dazzled. The vault of heaven expanded before ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... of daybreak was silently transfiguring the sky. The curtain of darkness had lifted softly upward along the edge of the horizon. The ragged crests of Mount Silpius were outlined with pale rosy light. In the central vault of heaven a few large stars twinkled drowsily. The great city, still chiefly pagan, lay more than half asleep. But multitudes of the Christians, dressed in white and carrying lighted torches in their hands, were hurrying toward the Basilica of Constantine to keep the latest holy day of the church, ...
— The Lost Word - A Christmas Legend of Long Ago • Henry Van Dyke
... azure of heaven. With the changes of the day these rocks and palm-trees are alternately illuminated by the brightest sunshine, or projected in deep shadow on the surrounding surge. Never does a breath of wind agitate the foliage, never a cloud obscure the vault of heaven. A dazzling light is ever shed through the air, over the earth enameled with the loveliest flowers, over the foaming stream stretching as far as the eye can reach; the spray, glittering in the sunbeams, forms a thousand rainbows, ever changing, yet ever bright, beneath whose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the room; but there was something more needed. The child was white, and that was a great objection. However, she hit upon a plan to remedy this which seemed feasible. The day was excessively warm. Not a single cloud floated over the blue vault of heaven; not a breath of wind seemed moving, and the earth was parched by the broiling sun. Even the bees had stopped humming, and the butterflies had hid themselves under the broad leaves of the burdock. Without a morsel of dinner, the poor child was put in the garden, and set to ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... his pall upon the plain, And crowned the mountain-peaks like monarchs dead; The vault of heaven was glaring overhead With pitiless light that filled my eyes with pain; And while I vainly longed, and looked in vain For sign or trace of life, my spirit said, "Shall any living thing that dares to tread This royal ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... with more enthusiasm. The calm had broken. The wind had come which was to carry them south into safety. With a wild cheer all sprang on deck. Working with mad haste, they flung out topsails, flying jibs and stay-sails. As they worked, the fog-bank lifted and the black vault of heaven, bespangled with the old familiar stars, rushed into view. When all was ship-shape, the Mary Thomas was lying gallantly over on her side to a beam wind ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... mighty solitudes once echoed to the whar-whoop of the savage, and looked upon his horrid rites beneath a midnight moon, or scowling sky; and, in the dim distance loom the granite-based mountains, like giant pillars to the vault of heaven, from whose tempest-beaten summits fifty centuries have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... those arches arrayed in the colors of the iris. There is a message written in the dyes of them, that once was written in blood; and a sound in the echoes of their vaults, that one day shall fill the vault of heaven,—"He shall return, to do judgment and justice." The strength of Venice was given her, so long as she remembered this: her destruction found her when she had forgotten this; and it found her irrevocably, because she forgot it without excuse. Never had city a more glorious Bible. Among the nations ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... stood gazing over the autumn-tinted country. A stray bird twitted among the trees, but the great silence was settling down every hour as the feathered immigrants mounted from copse and dell into the blue vault of heaven. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... of my father and of my mother, of whom I am the only son. All of which is nothing, nothing compared with my love for thee. A love as virgin as the snow upon the Everlasting Hills, swifter than Mother Ganges, deeper than the Indian Ocean, and higher than the vault of heaven. What matter custom, or law, or regulation, or colour, when such a love as mine is offered? Thou as my wife, thou, and thy children my only children. Am I not beautiful? even as beautiful a male as thou art a female? Would not the days and the nights, the months and ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... Berenice's hair, In stars adorns the vault of heaven, But they would ne'er permit thee there, Thou would'st ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... holy struggle for independence, first made on Bunker Hill. Dorchester Heights were to my youthful imagination almost as holy ground as Arthur's Seat or Salisbury Craigs. Beyond was Boston, her glittering spires rising into the blue vault of heaven like beacons to light ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... that her hands touched the earth. She represents the vault of heaven, and is the ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... of the countries we traversed, or of the towns and villages which appeared before us every moment. The whole surface of the earth for many leagues round showed nothing but scattered lights, and the face of the earth seemed to rival the vault of heaven with starry fires. Every moment in the earlier part of the night before men had betaken themselves to repose, clusters of lights appeared indicating ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... perceiving, from the sudden influx of light in the apartment, succeeding his application of the instrument, that, with a small labor and in little time, they should be enabled to effect their escape, at least into the free air, and under the more genial vault of heaven. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... o'clock she was in bed, but not asleep. She lay calmly gazing at the Southern Cross and other lovely stars shining with vivid but chaste fire in the purple vault of heaven. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... day was better suited to my complaint. The sun shone as in spring; not a stain appeared on the crystal vault of heaven; everywhere the unfailing grass gave rest to the eye with its verdure; and a light wind blew fresh and bracing in my face, making my pulses beat faster, although feebly still. Remembering my happy wood-cutting days, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... away.] Time was my dreams were glorious; great visions Rushed through my mind or swept before my gaze. I dreamed that, winged like Icarus of old, I flew aloft beneath the vault of heaven; I dreamed the gods endued my hands with strength Of giants, offered me the lightning flash. And this hand seized the lightning in its flight And hurled it at the city far beneath. And when the crimson flames lapped all, and rose As Rome fell crumbling ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... to some in the house of St. Martin, the sweets of the Holy Scriptures, Sanctarum mella Scripturarum: others I inebriate with the study of ancient wisdom; and others I fill with the fruits of grammatical lore. Many I seek to instruct in the order of the stars which illuminate the glorious vault of heaven; so that they may be made ornaments to the holy church of God and the court of your imperial majesty; that the goodness of God and your kindness may not be altogether unproductive of good. But in doing this I discover the want ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... Malcolm went on, "just look about you for a moment. See this great vault of heaven, full of golden light raining on trees and flowers—every atom of air shining. Take the whole into your heart, that you may feel the difference at night, my lady—when the stars, and neither sun nor moon, will be in the sky, and all the flowers they shine on will be their own flitting, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... three fingers on the young man's head, and turned his bloodshot eyes up to the vault of heaven. Then Hortensius Martius rose from his knees and went up to the Augusta Dea Flavia, and knelt down before her. She took no heed of him whatever. She did not look upon his bowed head as he stooped very low and kissed the hem of her gown; some who watched the scene ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... this subject in the most receptive spirit should begin his study by betaking himself on a clear, moonless evening, when he has no earthly concern to disturb the serenity of his thoughts, to some point where he can lie on his back on bench or roof, and scan the whole vault of heaven at one view. He can do this with the greatest pleasure and profit in late summer or autumn—winter would do equally well were it possible for the mind to rise so far above bodily conditions that the question of temperature should not enter. The thinking man who does this under circumstances ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... candle, Horace; I would rather speak in the dark. I went to sleep, and I dreamed the most vivid dream that ever came to me. I seemed to stand under the vault of heaven, it was black, black, not a star shone in it, and a great loneliness possessed me. Then suddenly high up in the vault, miles and miles away, I saw a little light and thought that a planet had appeared to keep me company. The light began to descend slowly, like a floating flake ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... all on the spot. I have a couple of platens in the shops here; but we shan't be able to take a pull until to-morrow morning, I'm afraid. You shall have a proof, Challis. We should get magnificent results." He looked benignantly at the vault of heaven, which had been so obligingly free from any ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... thoughts; at times he looked upwards into the air, like a person who is weary of waiting. Great black clouds, heavy, torn, split, hung like crape hammocks beneath the starry dome of night. One would have pronounced them spiders' webs of the vault of heaven. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... funerals in the Cemetery at Gueldersdorp, upon a night that no one will forget who stood in the packed throng of shadowy mourners about each of those open graves. The wind blew soft from the west, and the vault of heaven might have been hollowed out of the darkling depths of an amethyst of inconceivable splendour and planetary size. Myriads of stars, dazzlingly white, swung under this, the Mother's fitting canopy, shared with another, not like her holy, not noble or unselfish ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the reach of his voice, and as I turned my face toward the ship, there came a violent burst of thunder which seemed to fill the echoing vault of heaven, attended by a continual flashing of lightning. Mingled with its awful roar was a cry more terrible still, that of human agony uttering its wild appeal to heaven for mercy in the last dire extremity. The ship had struck, and hundreds were cast into ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... voice was rising up into the vault of heaven and falling over upon the horizon. It seemed to Skag the like ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... side jumped out, and buried his snout in the mud, like a porker in Spain nuzzling for acorns, and I felt more queerish than I would willingly have confessed to. I could have knelt and prayed. The noise of the thunder was a sharp ear—piercing crash, as if the whole vault of heaven had been made of glass, and had been shivered at a blow by the hand of ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... valiant Saum Became visible to the illustrious maiden, She opened her gem-like lips, and exclaimed: "Welcome, thou brave and happy youth! The blessing of the Creator of the world be upon thee; On him who is the father of a son like thee! May destiny ever favor thy wishes! May the vault of heaven be the ground thou walkest on! The dark night is turned into day by thy countenance; The world is soul-enlivened by the fragrance of thy presence! Thou hast travelled hither on foot from thy palace; Thou hast pained, to behold ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... Hercules; but as Eurystheus acknowledged only eight of them, Hercules was commanded to perform two more. The eleventh labour was to obtain the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides. Atlas, who knew where to find the apples, brought them to Hercules, who meantime supported the vault of heaven. The last labour was to bring from the infernal regions the three-headed dog Cerberus. When Hercules brought the dog to Eurystheus, the latter, pale with fright, ordered him to be set at liberty, whereupon Cerberus immediately sank into the earth. Hercules's servitude was now ended, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... rise swiftly into the sky, straight toward the blue vault of heaven. In two or three minutes it was disappearing. The glistening ship shrank to a tiny point of light; then it was gone! It must have been rising at fully three hundred miles ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... to live. His wretched appearance, impending fate, and shocking levity had chased away the peaceful feelings with which I had watched the quiet sunset; but as he hobbled off, night, like a pall, fell over the scene; the trembling stars peeped out from the vault of heaven, and soon a million distant orbs proclaimed that the world was but a grain of dust in the vast universe, that the things of earth were but for a moment, and, as a shadow, would ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... arguments, retired at last to the shore, attended by Cajetan and Guasto. He had scarcely time to reach the fort St. Maria at the end of the bridge when an explosion took place behind him, just as if the earth had burst or the vault of heaven given way. The duke and his whole army fell to the ground as dead, and several minutes elapsed before ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... these were the Islands of the Blessed, the gardens of the gods, the sources of nectar and ambrosia, on which the gods lived. Within this circle of water the earth lay spread out like a disk, with mountains rising from it, and the vault of heaven appearing to rest upon its outer edge all around." (Murray's "Manual of Mythology," pp. 23, 24, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... her, and left her standing behind the broom bushes. She passed out into the moonlight, and walked slowly back over the moor with her head drooping, an unusual thing for Morva, for from childhood she had had a habit of looking upwards. Up there on the lonely moor, the vault of heaven with its galaxy of stars, its blue ethereal depths, its flood of silver moonlight, or its breadth of sunlit blue, seemed so closely to envelop and embrace her that it was impossible to ignore it; but to-night she looked only at the gossamer spangles ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... caged him in; No lordly roof of stone;— High o'er his couch the vault of Heaven In star-bright splendour shone! The rustling leaves still murmur'd there; The rambling woodbine flower Its twilight breath, exhal'd to cheer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... traveled; there were the clouds themselves, shouldering up above the peaks, hurrying across the narrow sky,—the clouds out of which the wind came, and the lightning and the sudden dashes of rain; and there were days when the sky was ineffably blue and distant, a fathomless vault of heaven where the hen-hawk and the eagle poised on outstretched wings and watched for their prey. Can you say how these things fed the imagination of the boy, who had few books and no contact with the great world? Do you think any city lad could ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the low bed of Neptune an eon ago, its loftiest peaks peering from the long cloud-streamers a mile and a half above my eyes, and its valleys embracing caverns of shadow. It was a stupendous precipice suspended from the vault of heaven, and in its massive folds secreted the wonders I had come so far to see. Every minute the bewildering contours were transmuted by the play of sun and cloud and our swift progression toward ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... strangers. Their mountains abound in forests of magnificent walnut and box, where the enthusiastic sportsman will find the bear, hyena, and wolf, and plenty of smaller game, with seldom a roof to cover him other than the vault of heaven; but the ordinary traveller is likely to encounter difficulties and delays that he would prefer to avoid. Christianity was here introduced by Justinian, who constructed many churches that would have been notable specimens of Byzantine architecture, ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... Atlas. In mythology, the leader of the Titans, who fought the Gods, and was condemned by Zeus to carry the weight of the vault of heaven on his head and hands. In the sixteenth century the name Atlas was given to a collection of maps by Mercator, probably because a picture of Atlas had been commonly placed on the title-pages of ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... necessity I felt of pouring into some devoted bosom the overflowing fulness of my heart, that made me court in solitude those positions of danger with which the image of woman was ever associated. How often, while tossed by the raging elements, now into the blue vault of heaven, now into the lowest gulfs of the sea, have I madly wished to press to my bounding bosom the being of my fancy's creation, who, all enamoured and given to her love, should, even amid the danger that ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... pure, perfect; thy marble is spotless; but the temple of Hagia-Sophia, which is at Byzantium, also produces a divine effect with its bricks and its plaster-work. It is the image of the vault of heaven. It will crumble, but if thy chapel had to be large enough to hold a large number of worshippers it would ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... were heavy peals of thunder and vivid flashes of lightning, but, the darker it became and the more tremendous the crashes of the thunderbolts, the more the senseless and exasperated barber cursed and swore. After the shower and hail, I walked out into the pure fresh air and under the blue vault of heaven smiling down upon the refreshed vegetation, and tried to draw a picture of that profane man's mental panorama, but I never succeeded even to this day. Such behavior is not of rare occurrence, else I should not have related ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... revealing the excavations' wet entrails and conjuring up a file of heavy shadows, borne down by lofty burdens, tramping in a black and black-bunged impasse, and jolting against the eddies. When great guns were discharged all the vault of heaven was lighted and lifted ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... night" are at times sublimely beautiful. Her star-decked vault of heaven, absolutely free from all mists and fogs and damps, seems so high and vast. The stars glisten and twinkle with wondrous clearness. The flashing meteors fade out but slowly, and the moon is so white and bright that her shadows cast are ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... the pail of fire Against the vault of heaven. It fell As would a canopy of blue Burned by a soldier's careless torch. She dashed the water into hell, And a great steam rose up with the smell Of gaseous coals, which seemed to scorch All things which on the good earth grew. "Now," said the Graia, "loiterer, Awake ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... You only knew the town was there, because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as the wind rose and fell, or changed its quarter: a dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross light in it, that showed nothing but masses of darkness:- Coketown in the distance ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... closely to DEACON SIGURD).—I dreamed last night that I stood out of doors and looked up at the sky, and I thought I saw streams of blood run over all the sky. And down below on earth shone flames that licked up to the vault of heaven from all directions. ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... the gloom. No living thing moved before his vision. Silver rippling waves shimmered under that starlit sky; tall weird pines waved gently in the night breeze; slender cedars, resembling spectres, reared their heads toward the blue-black vault of heaven. He listened intently. There was a faint rustling of the few leaves left upon the oaks. The strange voices that had always haunted him, the murmuring of river waters, or whispering of maidens, or muttering of women were ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... waving above the throne which thy servant hath rebuilt,—then, when the trumpets are sounding thy rights without the answer of a foe; then, when from shore to shore of fair England the shout of thy people echoes to the vault of heaven,—then will Warwick kneel again to King Henry, and sue for the pardon he hath ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is changed into a crane. {46b} This is one of the many savage aetiological myths which account for the peculiarities of animals as a result of metamorphosis, in the manner of Ovid. It has been connected with the legend of Bunjil, who is thus envisaged, not as "Our Father" beyond the vault of heaven, who still inspires poets, {46c} but as a wandering, shape-shifting medicine-man. Zeus, the Heavenly Father, of course appears times without number ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... we turn from the unsightly telegraph to the graceful structure at whose portal we stand, and when the airy outline of its curves of beauty, pendant between massive towers suggestive of art alone, is contrasted with the over-reaching vault of heaven above and the ever-moving flood of waters beneath, the work of omnipotent power, we are irresistibly moved to exclaim, "What hath ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... spreading her light at once upon the mountain-circled gulf and upon the lake of Tunis, where flamingoes formed long rose-coloured lines amid the banks of sand, while further on beneath the catacombs the great salt lagoon shimmered like a piece of silver. The blue vault of heaven sank on the horizon in one direction into the dustiness of the plains, and in the other into the mists of the sea, and on the summit of the Acropolis, the pyramidal cypress trees, fringing the temple of Eschmoun, swayed murmuring like the regular waves ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... multitude that no man can number, harpers harping with their harps, a thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands. How white are their robes, washed in the blood of the Lamb! And the music rises higher, and rends the vault of heaven with its unutterable sweetness. And we, as we listen, ever and anon, as it sinks on the sweetest, lowest note, hear a groan of the damned from below. We shudder ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... by means of thunder-storms and earthquakes that would hurl the mountains into the seas and drive the waters of the lakes and rivers over plains and valleys, so that all life would become extinct. But he never imagined the end should come in this way: by the earth's burial under the vault of heaven with its inhabitants all dying from heat and suffocation! This, it seemed to him, was the ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... of the second day of Creation is to erect the vault of Heaven (Heb. Rakia; Gr. sterema Lat. Firmamentum,) which is represented as supporting an ocean of water above it. The waters are said to be divided, so that some are below, and some above the vault.... No quibbling about the derivation of the word Rakia, which is literally 'something beaten out,' ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... intensely cold, and the vault of heaven was very dark, and blazing with stars; the sir was electrical, and flash lightning illumined the sky; this was the reflection of a storm that was not felt at Dorjiling, but which raged on the plains of India, beyond the Terai, fully 120 miles, and perhaps 150, south of our ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the rim of the golden Caribbean, quivered for a moment like a fledgeling preening its wings for flight, then launched forth boldly into the vault of heaven, shattering the lowering vapors of night into a myriad fleecy clouds of every form and color, and driving them before it into the abysmal blue above. Leaping the sullen walls of old Cartagena, the morning beams began to glow in roseate hues on the red-tiled roofs of this ancient ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the door, disappeared from view. An instant after, she emerged into the open air. She stood within the roofless hall. It was filled with sunshine—with the fresh breath of morn. The ivied ruins, the grassy floor, the blue vault of heaven, seemed to greet her with a benignant smile. All was riant and rejoicing—all, save her heart. Amid such brightness, her sorrow seemed harsh and unnatural; as she felt the glad influence of day, she was scarcely able to refrain from tears. It was terrible to leave ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... mighty forests are sparkling with myriad fireflies. The lazy mist which lounges round the inner hills shines golden in the sunset rays; and, nineteen thousand feet aloft, the mighty peak of Horqueta cleaves the abyss of air, rose-red against the dark-blue vault of heaven. The rosy cone fades to a dull leaden hue; but only for awhile. The stars flash out one by one, and Venus, like another moon, tinges the eastern snows with gold, and sheds across the bay a long yellow line of rippling ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... almost as naked as the natives; and though most of my companions still used their tents, it was amply proved afterwards that the want of this luxury was attended with no ill consequences." All things are comparative; and to the Doctor, whose sole canopy during the whole expedition was the vault of heaven, the canvass covering enjoyed by his comrades ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... out, and turned up their tails and disappeared for his amusement. A comfortable low came at intervals from the cattle, revelling in the abundant herbage. All living things seemed to be disporting themselves, and enjoying, after their kind, the last gleams of the sunset, which were making the whole vault of heaven glow and shimmer; and, as he watched them, Tom blessed his stars as he contrasted the river-side with the glare of lamps and the click of balls in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... of starlight glittered in the cloudless vault of heaven, above the moonlit stillness of the valley. The clear-cut shadows of the balcony and the stone urns fell across the cold paths and whitened grass ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... the old palace Inns and old monastery Inns, in towns and cities of the same bright country; with their massive quadrangular staircases, whence you may look from among clustering pillars high into the blue vault of heaven; with their stately banqueting-rooms, and vast refectories; with their labyrinths of ghostly bedchambers, and their glimpses into gorgeous streets that have no appearance of reality or possibility. So to the close little Inns ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... any one might live at Angers on 250 Louis per annum, as well as in England for four times the amount. And were I to live in France, I know no place I should prefer to the environs of this town. The climate, in this part of France, is delightful beyond description. The high vault of heaven is clad in ethereal blue, and the sun sets with a glory which is inconceivable to those who have only lived in more northerly regions; for week after week this weather never varies, the rains come on at once, ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... morning. The sunshine brightened instead of dispelling these effects. At noon the sun's disc was not more than 1 deg. above the horizon, throwing a level golden light on the hills. The north, before us, was as blue as the Mediterranean, and the vault of heaven, overhead, canopied us with pink. Every object was glorified and transfigured in the ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... alleged that Moses describes the firmament as a solid vault.[Footnote: Essays and Reviews, p. 220.] "The work of the second day of creation is to erect the vault of heaven, which is represented as supporting an ocean of water above it." That the Greek and Latin translations in this place do seem to imply the idea of solidity seems indisputable; and from the Latin the word "firmament" has passed into our own language. But there is no reason to think that the Hebrew ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... think about modern problems,—Improved Tenements, Child Labour, Single Tax, Sweat Shops, and the Right Training of the Rising Civilization? Blue Lake Geneva!—blue as a woman's eye, blue as the vault of heaven, dropped into the lap of the green earth like a great sparkling sapphire! Mont Blanc you know to be just behind the clouds on the other side, and that presently, after hours or days of patient waiting, he may condescend to unveil himself to ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... declaration of your government were not respected, and Russia still did interfere, then you would be obliged by this previous declaration, to go to war; and you don't desire to have a war." That objection seems to me as if somebody were to say, "If the vault of heaven breaks down, what shall we do?" My answer is, "But it will not break down." Even so I answer. But your declaration will be respected—Russia will not interfere—you will have no occasion for war—you will have prevented ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... on one of Birdwood's trenches in the space of ten minutes. I asked him if that amounted to one shell per yard and he said the whole length of the trench was less than 100 yards. On the 18th fifty heavy shells, including 12-inch and 14-inch, dropped out of the blue vault of heaven on to the Anzacs. Everyone sorry to say good-bye to Thursby ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... eyes away from the beloved form, I began in a low voice the beautiful song (by Felix Marti) "By the River." As I sang I forgot all earthly sorrow and directed my thought above the earthly home into the blue vault of Heaven and I followed the young spirit into the everlasting gates of ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... stupidly mistaken I was when I hoped to be able to turn my eyes upward and behold the blessed vault of heaven. They will turn me over, on my stomach, with my neck in a clamp. And I shall be able to see nothing ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Berenice's hair, In stars adorns the vault of heaven; But they would ne'er permit thee there, Thou wouldst ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... grasped the lever, and, turning it swiftly to one side, there in the blue vault of heaven, a thousand miles from anywhere, that machine began executing the most remarkable flip-flaps the mind of man ever conceived. Not once or twice, but a hundred times did we go whirling round and round through the skies, until finally I got so ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... while we speak, more furious, wilder, higher, Dart from the circling batteries a hundred tongues of fire. The waves gleam red, the lurid vault of heaven seems rent above. Fight on! oh! knightly Gentlemen! for faith, and home, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... become heated and go off, and at last the ship suddenly sinks from our view, whilst the loud and awful death-cry of five hundred helpless beings, imprisoned in the burning vessel, rings in our ears, curdling our blood, and seeming as if it would burst the very vault of Heaven with its appalling tones. It was a fitting knell to be ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... stop on the steps either, but went quickly down; his soul, overflowing with rapture, yearned for freedom, space, openness. The vault of heaven, full of soft, shining stars, stretched vast and fathomless above him. The Milky Way ran in two pale streams from the zenith to the horizon. The fresh, motionless, still night enfolded the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the cathedral gleamed out against the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... star-sown vault of heaven, Over the lit sea's unquiet way, In the rustling night-air came the answer: 15 "Wouldst thou be as these ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... King Atlas, having in the olden time helped the Titans in their wars against the gods, was undergoing punishment for this offence, his penance being to hold up the starry vault of heaven upon his shoulders. This means, perhaps, that in the kingdom of Atlas there were some mountains so high that their summits seemed ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... I have an impulse to cry out, 'What wouldst Thou have me to do?' I would shout up into the empty vault of heaven: 'Ah, why plaguest Thou me so? What shall I do? Give me an answer unless Thou wilt have me consumed by inward fre, drying up the living liquid of life. Wouldst Thou have me to give up all? I have. I have no dreams to realize. I want nothing, have nothing, and am willing to die in any way. What ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... of years and surrounded by many friends, both black and white, who recognized and appreciated her sufferings and sacrifices and rejoiced that her old age was spent in freedom and plenty. The azure vault of heaven bends over us all, and the gleaming moonlight brightens the marble tablet which marks her last resting place, "to fame and fortune unknown," but in the eyes of Him who judgeth us, hers was a heroism which outvied ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... presentiment of the order and harmony pervading the whole universe, and from the contrast we draw between the narrow limits of our own existence and the image of infinity revealed on every side, whether we look upward to the starry vault of heaven, scan the far-stretching plain before us, or seek to trace the dim horizon across the vast expanse ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... of a Phoenician or a Chaldaean philosopher, start from his conception of the world, we shall fail to grasp the meaning of the Hebrew writer. We must conceive the earth to be an immovable, more or less flattened, body, with the vault of heaven above, the watery abyss below and around. We must imagine sun, moon, and stars to be "set" in a "firmament" with, or in, which they move; and above which is yet another watery mass. We must consider "light" and "darkness" to be things, the alternation of which constitutes ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... which He gave should be pointed to. But that, under the Old Testament dispensation, was the deliverance from Egypt, the strongest and most impressive of all those deeds by which the delusion was dissipated, that God was walking upon the vault of heaven, and did not judge through the clouds. In future, a still stronger manifestation of life is to take place. Hence the formula of the oath is altogether general; the deliverance from Egypt comes into consideration as a manifestation ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... that he expected the arrival of some person. By a sort of instinctive impulse, Franz withdrew as much as possible behind his pillar. About ten feet from the spot where he and the stranger were, the roof had given way, leaving a large round opening, through which might be seen the blue vault of heaven, thickly studded with stars. Around this opening, which had, possibly, for ages permitted a free entrance to the brilliant moonbeams that now illumined the vast pile, grew a quantity of creeping plants, whose delicate green branches stood out in bold relief against the clear azure of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the ground, and his shield was set up over him to ward off the sun. Then understood he that he would gain immortality when, like the stone, he was buried in the earth, and that his hour was come, for the earth beneath him was iron, and his iron buckler was his vault of heaven above. So ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... spontaneously in the green spots known to the gazelle, who repairs to them to drink. Although the dews are heavy, the Arab requires no more protection than that afforded by his blanket, and he lies down under the most glorious canopy, the broad vault of heaven with its countless spangles, no artificial object intervening throughout the large circle of that wide horizon. Here, his ablutions, prayers, and evening-meal concluded, he either sinks into profound ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... almost terrifying. The wind swept by noiseless, because it had nothing movable to startle into noise. The solid eternal granite lay heavy in its statics across the possibility of even a whisper. The blue vault of heaven seemed emptied of sound. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... sods and stones, Stream and streamlet hurry down— A rushing throng! A sound of song Beneath the vault of Heaven is blown! Sweet notes of love, the speaking tones 55 Of this bright day, sent down to say That Paradise on Earth is known, Resound around, beneath, above. All we hope and all we love Finds a voice ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... like dark shadows behind me, and on the other side, the long winding line of verdure at my feet, from beneath which rose the splashing, rippling, gushing sound of the stream, whilst overhead, the vault of heaven was thick inlaid with patterns of bright gold. But the plunge of my companion's horse in the water, and his voice calling out that all was right, soon drew me away, and in another moment I was fording in utter darkness the rapid though ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... invented for them, can never make them the personages mentioned in the playbill. On returning home, we stood at our balcony gazing on the lovely face of a true Naples night—a night beyond description!—the whole vault of heaven lighted by one light: a full moon, like a subdued sunshine over earth and water. A world of light, that shone on a world of darkness, tinging the air, gilding the mountain-tops, and making the sea run like melted phosphorus. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... miserable by reason of the lusts which war in my members; the peace which I shall gain in being freed from them will be its own reward. After all I give up little. All those things round me—the primeval forest, and the sacred stream of Ganga, the mighty Himalaya, mount of God, ay, the illimitable vault of heaven above me, sun and stars—what are they but "such stuff as dreams are made of"? Brahm thought, and they became something and somewhere. He may think again, and they will become nothing and nowhere. Are these eternal, greater than I, worth troubling my mind about? ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... dawn the "tears of sorrow" as represented by the rain ceased to flow. The sky cleared, showing the stars; suddenly the vault of heaven was suffused with a wonderful and pearly light, although on the earth the mist remained so thick that we could see nothing. Then above this sea of mist rose the great ball of the sun, but still we could see nothing that was more than a few ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... Curran—named for his red hair and innumerable freckles—an Irish boy with the face of a choir-singer, and eyes that must have been taken straight out of the blue vault of Heaven. This lad told about a "free speech fight" in a far Western city, and how the chief of police had led the clubbing, and how they had got back at him. "We bumped him off all right," said "Strawberry"; it was a favourite phrase ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... had the glass at my side, and for me nepenthe was mixed with a despair immense as the vault of heaven, my good God: for anon I would take it up to spy some perched hut of the peasant, or burg of the 'bonder,' on the peaks: and I saw no one there; and to the left, at the third marked bend of the fjord, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... personifying the vault of heaven, the sky, and the space, in which the sun was supposed to have been born. The scarab it must be remembered was in the Egyptian thought, ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... universe; earth, globe, wide world; cosmos; kosmos[obs3]; terraqueous globe[obs3], sphere; macrocosm, megacosm[obs3]; music of the spheres. heavens, sky, welkin|, empyrean; starry cope, starry heaven, starry host; firmament; Midgard; supersensible regions[obs3]; varuna; vault of heaven, canopy of heaven; celestial spaces. heavenly bodies, stars, asteroids; nebulae; galaxy, milky way, galactic circle, via lactea[Lat], ame no kawa [Jap.]. sun, orb of day, Apollo[obs3], Phoebus; photosphere, chromosphere; solar system; planet, planetoid; comet; satellite, moon, orb of night, Diana, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... were filled either with self-luminous suns, or planets capable of reflecting light, or luminous nebulae, or comets of gaseous consistency, at such distances as the Milky Way, or any other star-cloud demonstrates to be safe and practicable, we should see no blue sky at all; but the whole vault of heaven would present that whitish light resulting from the mingling of the rays of multitudes of stars, planets, and comets, which the Milky Way does actually exhibit. No matter how small or how distant these stars, if they were only infinitely numerous, it is impossible that there could be any point ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... letters), and to give me his blanket and clothing. He gave his life for me, and everything that he had. It was the last time that I ever saw him, but I know that away up yonder, beyond the clouds, blackness, tempest and night, and away above the blue vault of heaven, where the stars keep their ceaseless vigils, away up yonder in the golden city of the New Jerusalem, where God and Jesus Christ, our Savior, ever reign, we will sometime meet at the marriage supper of the Son of God, who gave His life for the ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... the prayer to the end, and then began it over again. She said it three or four times, and her appeal for daily bread and the forgiveness of trespasses expressed what her inarticulate nature could not have put into words. Beneath the entire vault of heaven's dark blue that night there was nowhere lifted to the Unknown a prayer more humbly passion-full and gratefully ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the shepherd class. Their manner of life upon the ocean of deserts and pastures gave breadth and freedom to their minds; the vault of heaven, under which they dwelt, with all its nightly stars, elevated their feelings; and they, more than the active, skilful huntsman, or the secure, careful, householding husbandman, had need of the immovable ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Marie had suddenly risen up and walked before him. The scene which he conjured up of Marie saved, Marie cured, affected him so deeply that he stopped short, his trembling arms uplifted towards the star-spangled vault of heaven. What a lovely night it was!—so deep and mysterious, so airy and fragrant; and what joy rained down at the hope that eternal health might be restored, that eternal love might ever revive, even as spring returns! ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... fearful task you flew, Where in the vault of heaven the high stars swing, Alone and upward, lost to mortal view, Winding about the assassin craft a ring Of fateful motion, till at last you sped Through the far tracts of gloom The bolt of doom, Shattering the dastard foe to earth ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... together Forming pieces two in number, One the upper, one the lower, Equal to the one, the other. From one half the egg, the lower, Grows the nether vault of Terra: From the upper half remaining, Grows the upper vault of Heaven; From the white part come the moonbeams, From the yellow part the sunshine, From the motley part the starlight, From the dark part grows the cloudage; And the days speed onward swiftly, Quickly do the years fly over, From the shining of the new sun From ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... was rejected, and a new one—that of the President of the Council adopted. Napoleon and his braves ought not to quit each other. Under the immense gilded dome of the Invalides he would find a sanctuary worthy of himself. A dome imitates the vault of heaven, and that vault alone" (meaning of course the other vault) "should dominate above his head. His old mutilated Guard shall watch around him: the last veteran, as he has shed his blood in his combats, shall breathe his last sigh near his tomb, and all these tombs shall sleep ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... groans and sighs, and oftentimes shrieks of despair on every side. Such sights I have seen in my youth, and I speak the language of some of the great preachers who have come down to these parts, and boldly put forth the gospel of salvation to perishing sinners under the blue vault of heaven. You only look at one side of the picture, and that quickly vanishes away; mine, unhappily, is too real to be wiped out quickly." The old man spoke in a tone he had not hitherto used, which showed that his education had ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... King Alfred, and bishop of Winchester. The monks wished to bury him in the chancel of the minster; but the bishop had directed that his body should be interred under the open vault of heaven. Finding the monks resolved to disobey his injunction, he sent a heavy rain on July 15, the day assigned to the funeral ceremony, in consequence of which it was deferred from day to day for forty days. The monks then bethought them of the saint's injunction, and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... to its rotation. Probably the greatest step ever made in astronomical theory was the placing of the sun, moon, and planets at different distances from the earth instead of having them stuck on the vault of heaven. It was a transition from "flatland" to a space ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... weird and mystic shadows, like the darkness of his passion, and farther on down the moon track and the glittering stretches that vanished in the cold, blue horizon. The moon soared radiant and calm, the white stars shone serene. The vault of heaven seemed illimitable and divine. The desert surrounded him, silver-streaked and black-mantled, a chaos of rock and sand, silent, austere, ancient, always waiting. It spoke to Cameron. It was a naked corpse, but it had a soul. In that wild solitude the white stars ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... I know of, And as many lakes extensive, And as many lofty mountains, Underneath the vault of heaven. Hallapyora is in Hame, Karjala has Kaatrakoski, 180 But they do not match the Vuoksi, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... three-story house, yet looking, beneath that sublime roof, of only ordinary size. You are near the reputed tombs of Peter and Paul, before which an hundred golden lamps burn day and night. And now the mighty dome opens upon you, like the vault of heaven itself. You begin to feel the wondrous magnificence of the edifice in which you stand, and you give way to the admiration and awe with which it inspires you. But next moment comes the saddening thought, that this pile, unrivalled as it is among temples made with hands, is literally ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... heart had been well disposed towards him; but when she asked of his house and his home, his answer had been hardly more satisfactory than that of Alan-a-Dale. There was little that he could call his own beyond "The blue vault of heaven." Had he saved any money? No,—not a shilling;—that was to say,—as he himself expressed it,—nothing that could be called money. He had a few pounds by him, just to go on with. What was his income? Well—last ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... choking with happiness and joy. He opened his window, and gazed long, with swelling heart, at the cloudless vault of heaven, and the moon, which shone like silver upon the two-fold stream flowing from far beyond the hills. He filled his lungs with the pure, sweet air, while his brain dwelt upon thoughts of happiness, and his heart overflowed with gratitude ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... of the village, a lone sentinel, guarding the gateway of the mountains with bold and unchanging brow. On the western side extends a long range of rocky hills, with the single spire-like summit of Chocorua far beyond, piercing the blue vault of heaven. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... his eldest brother, 'Relent!' And saying this he fell down on earth with heavy heart. And afflicted with grief that tiger among men, shedding his tears on the feet of his brother again said, 'This will never be! The earth may split, the vault of heaven may break in pieces, the sun may cast off his splendour, the moon may abandon his coolness, the wind may forsake its speed, the Himavat may be moved from its site, the waters of the ocean may dry up, and fire may abandon its heat, yet I, O king, may never rule the earth without thee.' ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... midnight—dark, dreary midnight. Black clouds hung in huge, portentous masses over, the vault of heaven. The forky lightning flashed, and the deep toned thunder reverberated peal on peal, while the shrieking winds rocked the tree tops, and poured their wild melody upon the ear. It was nature arrayed in awful sublimity, displaying the majesty ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... off, the sun began to show us verdant groves, watered by the majestic course of the river. His disk looked like a glorious lustre suspended in the azure vault of heaven. Our road was studded on both sides with lofty poplars, which seemed to shoot their pyramidal heads into the clouds. On our left was the Loire, and on our right a large rivulet, whose crystal waters every where reflected the bright beams of the sun. The birds, with their songs, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... tavern on New Year's Eve. But outside of the house the snow lay two feet deep on the level, and shoulder-high in the drifts. The sky was at last swept clean of clouds. The shivering stars and the shrunken moon looked infinitely remote in the black vault of heaven. The frozen lake, on which the ice was three feet thick and solid as rock, was like a vast, smooth bed, covered with a white counterpane. The cruel wind still poured out of the northwest, driving the dry snow along with it like a mist ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... authority: we must then imagine this head as bare (see St. Paul much on this) and covered, so to say, only with the sun and stars, of which the crown is a symbol, which is an ornament but not a covering; it has an enormous hat or skullcap, the vault of heaven. The foot is the day- labourer, and this is armed with hobnail boots, because it has to wear and be worn by the ground; which again is symbolical; for it is navvies or day-labourers who, on the great scale or in gangs and millions, mainly trench, tunnel, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... they had picked out took them every hour deeper into the unexplored heart of the country. On every side of them stretched the unbroken fastnesses of the primeval wilderness, sheer precipices dropping suddenly into infinite space, jagged peaks towering dizzily into the misty vault of heaven, quaintly situated valleys so masked by timber and brushwood that one came across them only by accident. There is something in the naked face of Nature, in the sheer magnificence of incredible heights and the marvellous ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... sun!" slowly repeated the old man, lifting his tall person from its seat with a deliberate and abstracted air, while he kept his eye riveted on the changing, and certainly beautiful tints, that were garnishing the vault of Heaven. "Rising of the sun! I like not such risings of the sun. Ah's me! the imps have circumvented us with a vengeance. The prairie ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... seemed as though the entire vault of heaven had exploded into living flame; the whole atmosphere was for a moment irradiated; our surroundings leapt out of the darkness and stood for a single instant vividly revealed; and there, too, away ahead of us, at a distance of perhaps ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... the vault of Heaven, Breaks up old marble, the repose of princes, Sees the graves open, and the bones ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... a wind that sprang up; the encircling and towering reds and pinks of a gigantic amphitheatre of rock in the Dolomites; a patch of flowers right against the snow in the high Rockies, so intensely blue that it seemed the whole vault of heaven could be tinctured with the pigment that one petal would distil. And, more inspiring than them all, there came the recollection of that wonderful sunrise and those blazing mountains of the Alatna-Kobuk portage. Every land has its glories, and the sky is everywhere a blank ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... and they remained silent. The red cliffs of Heligoland had long since disappeared in the distance. Hours passed, but nothing met the eyes of the eagerly gazing warriors, save the boundless, gently rippling sea and the crystal-clear blue vault of heaven, stretched above it ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... of the violent exercise of running,—the intense and almost unbearable pain caused by the reflection of the brilliant rays of the sun upon the snowy waste,—the bed in the hole in the snow with no roof above us but the star-decked vault of heaven,—were all cheerfully endured again and ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... passed away—all fetes, dances, games, and harvest-homes; but all these gaieties must end with the falling leaves. All things, in winter, assume a mournful aspect,—all beneath the vault of heaven becomes aged. ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... the world. They were heard in every home North and South, and their meaning was unmistakable. The flash of that mortar gun and of the others that followed was as the lightning burning its way across the vault of heaven, revealing everything with intense vividness, and rending and consuming all noxious vapors. The clouds rolled speedily away, and from the North came the sound of "a rushing, ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... surrounded by pillars, recording the number of the constellations, the signs of the zodiac, or the cycles of the planets; and each one was a microcosm or symbol of the Universe, having for roof or ceiling the starred vault of Heaven. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Dark vault of heaven, that greet his daily throne. Where flee the glories of your absent Sun? Ye starry hosts, who kindle from his eye, Can you behold him in the western sky? Or if unseen beneath his watery bed, The wearied God reclines his radiant head, When next his morning steps your courts inflame, And ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... when countless tempests roar, When from the height a hundred torrents pour, Like storm-clouds rushing through the vault of heaven, As when the mighty main on shore is driven, So wide, so loud, so dark, so fierce the strain When met the angry chiefs on Lena's plain. The king rushed forward with resistless might, Dreadful as Trenmor's awe-inspiring sprite, When on the ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... and wind have ceased. The barricade of cloud which veiled the moon's passage up the western sky has sunk riven at her feet. She herself shines forth in unbroken radiance, and a double lunar rainbow, in all its spectral grandeur, spans the vault of heaven. There is a sense as of a heavenly presence about to emerge upon the arc. Then the rapture overflows the spectator's brain, and the Master, arrayed in a serpentining garment, appears in the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... uprose and was lost in the immense vault of heaven. Not a breath stirred; there was nought but the silent ripple of the river past the willows. And Sandoz turned abruptly towards his companion, and said to him, face ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... theological theses learned twenty years before in his seminary. There was the sheet below his chin; there was a red coverlet (seen at first as a blood-coloured landscape of hills and valleys); there was a ceiling, overhead, at first as remote as the vault of heaven. Then, little by little, the confused roaring in his ears sank to a murmur. It had been just now as the sound of brazen hammers clanging in reverberating caves, the rolling of wheels, the tramp of countless myriads of men. But it had become now ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... steadfast Polar Star was called "Ilu Sar", "the god Shar", or Anshar, "star of the height", or "Shar the most high". It seemed to be situated at the summit of the vault of heaven. The god Shar, therefore, stood upon the Celestial mountain, the Babylonian Olympus. He was the ghost of the elder god, who in Babylonia was displaced by the younger god, Merodach, as Mercury, the morning star, or as the sun, the planet of day; and in Assyria by Ashur, as the sun, or Regulus, or ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... blue distance, towards unknown ports—known only in that they would surely prove themselves Ports of All Peril. At night the sea burned; a field of gold it ran to horizons jewelled with richer stars than shone at home. Above them, in the vault of heaven, hung the Great Ship, blazed the Southern Cross. Every hour saw the flight of meteors, and their trains, golden argosies of the sky, faded slowly from the dark-blue depths. When the moon arose she was ringed with colors, but the men who gazed upon her said not, "Every hue of the rainbow is ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... it is half finished another shriek exactly similar is coming through it. Another crash—apparently right on the crown of your head, as if the roof beams of the sky had been burst in. You can just hear, through the crash, the shriek of a third and fourth shell as they come tearing down the vault of heaven—crash—crash. Clouds of dust are floating over you. A swifter shriek and something breaks like a glass bottle in front of the parapet, sending its fragments slithering low overhead. It bursts like a rainstorm, sheet upon sheet, smash, ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... deployment the mist cleared for a moment and disclosed them amid a cloud of smoke and the furious flashes of guns. The moment had come, and all along the extended British battle-line the turret guns opened fire with a roar of angry sound that seemed to split the grey vault of heaven. As if to mock them in that supreme instant the mist swirled across again and hid the German Fleet wheeling round in ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie |
