"Opal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Inarticulate dreamers both, they expressed in monosyllables the glory of bluewater before them, the tradition of R. L. S. and Frank Norris, the future of aviation. They gave up the attempt to explain the magic of San Francisco—that city-personality which transcends the opal hills and rare amber sunlight, festivals, and the transplanted Italian hill-town of Telegraph Hill, liners sailing out for Japan, and memories of the Forty-niners. It was too subtle a spirit, too much of it lay in human life with ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... thus long without learning that though, blessed be God! there do come in all our lives long periods of halcyon rest, when 'birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave,' and the heavens above are clear as sapphire, and the sea around is transparent as opal—yet the little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, may rise on the horizon, and may thicken and blacken and grow greater and nearer till all the sky is dark, and burst in lightning and rain and fierceness of wind, till 'through the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... order. She could enchain twenty people at once, and keep all their intellects in active exercise. It was with difficulty she did that now; she was thinking so entirely of the golden head, with its opal stars. Then came another stir among the brilliant groups—the entree of a prince, beloved and revered by all who knew him. Leone, with her quick, artistic eye, thought she had never seen a more brilliant picture ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... alarm-bell rang, and I actually began to slide backwards. My sopped and dripping wings had made me heavier than I thought, but presently I was in lighter cloud, and soon had cleared the first layer. There was a second—opal-coloured and fleecy—at a great height above my head, a white unbroken ceiling above, and a dark unbroken floor below, with the monoplane labouring upwards upon a vast spiral between them. It is deadly lonely in ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... raise me; I can see the West then: I would see the sun set once before I go." So he lay a-gazing, seemed to be at rest then, Quiet as a spirit in the golden glow. So he lay a-watching rosy castles crumbling, Moats of blinding amber, bastions of flame, Rugged rifts of opal, crimson turrets tumbling; So he lay a-dreaming till ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... of gentle Mrs Constable, were Jasper, otherwise John; Sapphire, whose real name was Robert; Garnet, baptised Wallace; Opal, whose name was Andrew; and Emerald, ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... ring carefully, but could see nothing remarkable about it. The stone was an opal, set in a heavy gold band, peculiarly chased; but, aside from the popular superstition with regard to opals, there was nothing which would lead me to suppose that ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... garrets at the tops of the houses, and the grisettes in the streets, abandon garrets, grisettes, umbrellas, and overshoes to men who pay for their dinners with tickets; and you must also comprehend Love to be a principle which develops in all its grace only on Savonnerie carpets, beneath the opal gleams of an alabaster lamp, between guarded walls silk-hung, before gilded hearths in chambers deadened to all outward sounds by shutters and billowy curtains. Mirrors must be there to show the play of form ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... worst, and desisted; Jennie had piped through her repertoire and was now graciously accepting the support of Amiel's arm. Dorothea and the Monster, somewhat withdrawn from the circle, watched a crooked moon lift itself above the horizon and lay a trail of opal glory on the waves. Still awaiting inspiration, she regarded it with as little interest as Lucretia Borgia might have given the sunset that preceded one of her little ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... no mistake. But, bless my soul, this is a fairy spot! A way-up place, surely! From the depths of Africa and the society of Boers and Kaffirs to an enchanted palace! This must be the bridal chamber of the establishment. I believe they have made a mistake and think me the King of the Pearl and Opal Islands. I wish dear old Jordan could see this. I wish, O God, I wish my Grace, my queen, could see this, that I might first crown her with flowers, and then fall down ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... upon the table. "I know." And it climbed upon my arm which lay across the table. The fire shone fair upon its little form, so that in silhouette its outline was delicate and keen as an image cut from the fiery heart of a noble opal stone. ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... and he, sitting silently opposite her, dreamed—the old dream that comes to most good men and true once in their lives. He scarcely moved until the dawn lightened with opal the dreary plain, bringing back the horizon and day, when he woke from his dream with a sigh, and then a laugh. Then he listened for the sound of distant hoofs, and hearing them, crept noiselessly from the coach. A compact body of horsemen were bearing down upon it. He rose quickly to meet ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... intaglio or cameo, or a natural rarity, such as a black pearl, is a possession more distingue than a large brilliant which any one who has money enough can buy as well as yourself. Of all precious stones, the opal is the most lovely and commonplace. No merely vulgar woman purchases ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... out on a rock in the opal surf,—a little scarlet mermaid, combing her hair with her thin fingers, from which the water almost washed the wedding ring. It was—who knew how long, since the pretty bathing-suit had been taken down from the garret nails? What sudden yearning for the wash of waves, ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... undeterred by fearful rumours, were all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole career of these events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted. The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... motors; no click of the horses' feet on the asphalt pavement—no pavement, indeed, and no horses, no twentieth-century rush of life. It is Venice, it is June, and the two combine to make an illuminated chapter. To live in Venice is like being domesticated in the heart of an opal. How wonderful it is to drift—a sky above and a sky below—on still waters at sunset, with the Dream City mirrored in the depths, every shade of gold and rose and amber mirrored back,—the very atmosphere ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... tired of searching for my olivine and opal pin, just find it, for a change. I'd like to wear that pin for a day or two if it would ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... the least idea of the variety of colours mixing, merging, and intermingling with one another we must go to the opal, though even there there is not the intensity of colour, and of course not the change nor extent. From an orange—especially a blood orange—we get a notion of the combined reds and yellows of the sunsets, though the reds may range deeper than orange into the reds of the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... O high, from the opal sky, Shouting against the dark, "Why, why, why, must the day go by?" Fell ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... ocean, I was spell-bound amid the ceaseless ebb and flow, the endless melody of the waves glowing and scintillating with myriad gem-like hues from the amethyst, the emerald and the diamond, to the many-hued opal, its varied and changing beauty bearing all the brilliant glory of the fabled dolphin, born ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... of the greenhouse is luminous yet With quivers of opal and tremors of gold; For the sun is at rest, and the light from the west, Like delicate wine that is ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... King Prigio, into the silver dawn of the moon. All now became clear and silvery; the coasts of the moon came into sight, with white seas breaking on them; and at last the king reached the silver walls, and the gate of opal. Before the gate stood two beautiful ladies. One was fair, with yellow locks, the colour of the harvest moon. She had a crown of a golden snake and white water-lilies, and her dress now shone white, now red, now golden; and in her hand was the golden pitcher that ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... diapason of Corybantine brass, to my taste, wonderfully in unison with the funeral mole of the defunct Arsenal, the repose of the purple mountains, and the fainting splendour of that twinned vault and pavement, the opal sea and sky, smooth, soft, and bright enough for Juno and Amphitrite to hold a gossip, each from her own ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... bodies in that wicker effect. Now, what's your favorite jewel? I haven't had time to get your ring yet—this whole day was upside down. Everything had closed before I opened up, but to- morrow we'll paw through Tiffany's stock, and you can choose what you like. I'm going to select a black-opal set for you—they're the newest thing and the price is scandalous." He paused, eying her curiously, then with a change of tone inquired, "Say, are ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... is determined, and is square. It is bounded by battlements of living sapphire, and towers of opal. In the midst is situated a Mount, the dwelling place of the Most High, surrounded by golden lamps, which diffuse night and day alternately—for without twilight and dawn, his dearest memories, Heaven would have been no Heaven to Milton. On a mountain far ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... dogs stood staring at him; but the pedlar was too cunning for them. He looked out of the window, and said, "I think I see the master coming," upon which they both turned to look across the heath, and the pedlar snatched up the opal ring, and hid it in his vest. When they turned around he was folding up his trinkets again as calmly as possible. "One cannot be too careful to count one's goods," he said, gravely. "Honest people often get cheated in houses like these, and honest as ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... off—small spewings of age-old volcanos dead before man was born—seemed fascinating, unknown islets anchored in a sea of enchantment. Across the valley to the west nearer mountains, all amethyst and opal tinted, stood bold and inscrutable, with jagged peaks thrust into the blue to pierce and hold the little clouds that came floating by. Even the gulch at hand had been touched by the enchanter's wand and smiled mysteriously in the vivid sunlight, the very air a-quiver with that indescribable ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... An opal light played over the group of the dainty maids of honor, yet each showed, for her only color, the arms of her ancient Venetian house wrought large upon the creamy fabric of her tunic, the threads of gold and gleam of jewels half lost within its folds as she ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... from a pale cloud of incense, like some seraphic apparition. Her hair, of velvet blackness, fell in curls half-way down her shoulders; her brow, white as alabaster and polished as a mirror, reflected the rays of the sun; her beautiful and finely arched black eye-brows melted into the opal of her temples; her eyelids were fast down, and the curled black fringe of lashes veiled a glowing and liquid glance of divine emotion; the nose, straight, slender, and cut by two easy nostrils, gave ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the light, and clear clear water overhead; and up he came a thousand fathoms, among clouds of sea-moths, which fluttered round his head. There were moths with pink heads and wings and opal bodies, that flapped about slowly; moths with brown wings that flapped about quickly; yellow shrimps that hopped and skipped most quickly of all; and jellies of all the colours in the world, that neither hopped nor skipped, ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... had navigated all day, gradually widened as we advanced; the shores as they receded were covered with opal tints; the vessel began to roll, and we entered the sea of Marmora. At sunset the Mussulmans with whom the deck was crowded collected in groups, and devoutly said their evening prayer. Their countenances were wrapped in deep devotion, and they appeared to take no ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... peacock's back—smooth as a lake when all winds sleep; and then the mighty river was snuffed out in gulfs of angry gray. Capricious river draughts, sucking up the damp defile, whipped upward into the blistering sunlight gray spiral towers that leaped into opal fires and dissolved in showers of diamond and pearl ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... the water of a pregnant woman is white and has little specks in it, like those in a sunbeam, ascending and descending in it, of an opal colour, and when the sediment is disturbed by shaking the urine, it looks like carded wool. In the middle of gestation it turns yellow, then red and lastly black, with a red film. At night on going to bed, let her drink water and honey, and if afterwards she feels a beating pain in her ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... had been attracted; here were all kinds of beautiful things and splendors—tiaras, coronets, necklaces, pendants, bracelets, earrings, bangles, brooches—set with all manner of precious stones, the clear, radiant diamond, the purple amethyst, the sea-green emerald, the mystic opal, the blue-black sapphire, the clouded pearl. Her raptured vision wandered from tray to tray, but it was a comparatively trifling article that finally claimed her attention—a tiny finger-ring set ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... been, since Pliny speaks of murrha as "hardened in the earth by heat," and the poet may only have meant the same thing, though the expression in that case would be somewhat strained. To us, Pliny's description appears to clearly point to some opaline substance; the precious opal has never in modern times been found in masses approaching to the size necessary to make vessels such as we have spoken of. The question is not likely to be settled, and it is not improbable that the material of these murrhine vases is entirely unknown to us, as the quarries of many marbles used ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... you so silent, Opal? You haven't said a word to-day that you didn't absolutely have to say. If all American girls are as dreamy as you, I wonder why our English lords are so irresistibly attracted across the water when ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... woman laughed. Defiantly she touched the nearest image, with formal ancient gestures, and you could see the black stone Schamir taking on the colors of an opal. Under her touch the clay image which had the look of Alianora shivered, and drew sobbing breath. The image rose, a living creature that was far more beautiful than human kind, and it regarded Manuel scornfully. Then it passed limping from ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... more? Oh! many an hour I lingered to watch their gorgeous dyes In soft and shadowy outlines against the purple skies; Through their regal halls, air-woven, the parting radiance streamed, Ever varying like the opal's hue: and often have I deemed They were come with tender message, in the holy hush of even, From the Loved of years departed, spirit-guardians ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... hair was tawny with gold, her eyes with purple were dark, Her cheeks' pale opal burnt with a red and ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... and then instead of turning down the river, kept an easterly course along the low woody shore which stretched back from the point. As they went on, and as the clouds lost their glory, the sky in the west over Wut-a-qut-o's head tinged itself with violet and grew to an opal light, the white flushing up liquidly into rosy violet, which in the northeast quarter of the horizon melted away to a ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... was quite a little lake, and amid the rocks and weedy stones the clear water flowed as it might in an aquarium, the liquid surface reflecting as perfectly as any mirror the sky's blue, with clouds going by and many delicate opal tints, and the forms of the ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... sea-breeze ruffles the sheet upon which we write, and the "white caps" are tossing up as if in greeting to Him who walks the pavements of emerald and opal: ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... I followed Attalano, my guide, down the narrow Mexican street of Tampico to the bank of the broad Panuco. Under the rosy dawn the river quivered like a restless opal. The air, sweet with the song of blackbird and meadowlark, was full of cheer; the rising sun shone in splendor on the water and the long line of graceful palms lining the opposite bank, and the tropical forest ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... were conducted by chief officers of the court to a pavilion which faced the western sky, now glowing like an opal with every shade of the iris, and then becoming of a light green colour varied only by some slight clouds burnished with gold. A troop of maidens brought flowers as bright as themselves, and then a company of pages advanced, and kneeling, offered to ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Alps, and a distant view of the isles of Greece worked on the flounces, until it was impossible to wait longer. I meant to wear it at dinner the first day they came, with the pearl necklace and the opal studs, and that heavy ruby necklace (it is a low-necked dress). The dining-room at the "United States" is so large that it shows off those dresses finely, and if the waiter doesn't let the soup or the gravy slip, and your neighbor, (who ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... too, our woods show wond'rous sights Such as are read of in "Arabian Nights," When branch and bough are all laden with gems Bright as those that deck Eastern diadems; And the sun sheds a blaze of dazzling light On ruby and opal and diamond bright. ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... noonday haze; the lowlands at the mouth of Brenta marked by clumps of trees ephemerally faint in silver silhouette against the filmy, shimmering horizon. Form and colour have disappeared in light-irradiated vapour of an opal hue. And yet instinctively we know that we are not at sea; the different quality of the water, the piles emerging here and there above the surface, the suggestion of coast-lines scarcely felt in this ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... light And like a weather-beaten Vessel holds Gladly the Port, though Shrouds and Tackle torn; Or in the emptier waste, resembling Air, Weighs his spread wings, at leasure to behold Farr off th' Empyreal Heav'n, extended wide In circuit, undetermind square or round, With Opal Towrs and Battlements adorn'd Of living Saphire, once his native Seat; 1050 And fast by hanging in a golden Chain This pendant world, in bigness as a Starr Of smallest Magnitude close by the Moon. Thither full fraught with mischievous revenge, Accurst, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the opal ring, which he always wore since the day Walpole had given it to him, and there was something so significant in the glance that the other ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... river rushed down, a stupendous torrent of foam-crested billows and swirling whirlpools, impatient to make its leap into the depths at their feet where it was presently to be swallowed up in a bank of mist, which shimmered beneath the two adventurers like a giant opal lighted by all the colours of the rainbow. Below the rainbow-coloured mist the river again appeared, rushing in fearful power past beetling, frowning cliffs, which directly hid it from view. The ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... many happy excursions up the Peak, never was one so exquisitely enjoyed as this had been. The sun had dropped behind the hill when the tired party reached the Red House, and a big moon was coming up serenely in the opal sky. Mr. and Miss Goldthwaite paused at the avenue gate, saying they would not come any further; so the good-nights were said ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... shone like the leaf of a palm seen at midnight in the glow of a fire. And her hair was massed like that of an ascetic high over her brow, and on its dull black cloud there shone a gem that resembled a star, shooting and flickering and changing colour like a diamond mixed with an opal: while underneath, her eyes, that resembled pools filled with dusk instead of water, were fixed on me as if in meditation, as if half in doubt as to whether I was I. And yet her lips were smiling, not as if they meant to smile, ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... space. Still another form is that of a whirling ring, like that emitted from a smokestack of a locomotive, or the mouth of a smoker—the familiar "ring" of the smoker. Others have the form and appearance of semi-luminous globes, glowing like a giant opal. ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... to moralize over precious stones, and see in them the petrified souls of men and women. There is no stone so sympathetic as the opal, which one might fancy to be a concentration of Mrs. Browning's genius. It is essentially the woman-stone, giving out a sympathetic warmth, varying its colors from day to day, as though an index of the heart's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... still, my heart! Now Nature holds her breath To see the solar flood of radiance leap Across the chasm, and crown the western rim Of alabaster with a far-away Rampart of pearl, and flowing down by walls Of changeful opal, deepen into gold Of topaz, rosy gold of tourmaline, Crimson of garnet, green and gray of jade, Purple of amethyst, and ruby red, Beryl, and sard, and royal porphyry; Until the cataract of colour breaks Upon the blackness ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... who had set himself up to be the holy terror of a country-side and put his heel on the necks of all the tribes for miles around, would have made use at least of the caves and tombs to strengthen his position. There were thousands of them all among those opal-colored cliffs, to say nothing of ruined buildings; yet not one was occupied. Ayisha had told most of the truth when she said in El-Kalil that ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... likewise beheld that the lady was of a very extraordinary appearance, being clad altogether in green that glistered and shone with a wonderful brightness. And she beheld that around the neck of the lady was a necklace of gold, inset with opal stones and emeralds; and she perceived that the lady's face was like ivory—very white and clear—and that her eyes, which were very bright, shone like jewels set into ivory. And she saw that the lady was very wonderfully beautiful, so that the beholder, looking upon her, felt ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... far (But also to the owls the visions change)— No dawn is like the next, and nothing sings Of sameness—very hours have wings And leave no word of whose hand touched the range Of Kara Dagh with opal and with ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... the observation, from above, of any chance passer-by; and, settling comfortably into the soft hollow, lay back, watching, through half-closed lids, the fleeting shadows, the blue sky, the gently moving sea. Little white clouds blushed rosy red. An opal tint gleamed on the water. The moving ripple seemed too far away to break the ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... exclusively claret. When the dinner had reached its conclusion, a stand of liqueurs was placed upon the table, one of the few art-treasures left to the impoverished adventuress, rare and fragile Venetian flacons, and tiny goblets of opal and ruby glass. These glasses were the especial admiration of Douglas Dale, and Paulina filled the ruby goblet with curacoa. She touched the edge of the glass playfully with her lips as she handed it to her lover; but Victor observed that she did ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the sacred pyre Of sacrifice or holy death, Pale twisting wreaths of opal breath, From ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... sea is flowing, 'Mid long peninsulas of shining sand, From opal unto pearl the moon is growing, Dropped like a shell ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... which have made his name immortal. Even poverty, which has been a hardship to the individual, has proved a boon to himself and to the cause of humanity. Science teaches us that ordinary mud has in it elements which, arranged according to the higher laws of nature, produce the opal, the sapphire, and the diamond. Likewise does history teach us that from the morass of poverty the commonest types of men have passed from stage to stage through the refining processes of experience till ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... and its pallid disk was slowly flushing to the wakefulness of fiery rose. The sky overhead was livening to turquoise light and here and there along the upper slopes were gossamer dashes of opal and amethyst, but this beauty of unveiling turrets and gold-touched crests was lost on eyes in which dwelt a nightmare from which there was ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... and at last arranges itself in mysterious, infinitely fine parallel lines, which have the power of reflecting, not merely the blue rays, but the blue, green, purple, and red rays, in the greatest beauty in which they can be seen through any hard material whatsoever. We call it then an opal. ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... certain of all sensible ideas peculiar to each sense; for whatever of each kind is present in any subject, excludes all other of that sort: v.g. no one subject can have two smells or two colours at the same time. To this, perhaps will be said, Has not an opal, or the infusion of LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM, two colours at the same time? To which I answer, that these bodies, to eyes differently, placed, may at the same time afford different colours: but I take liberty also to say, that, to eyes differently placed, it is different parts of the object ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... summer sky above Who could pourtray the mountains' purple smiles— And all the opal hues of earth and heaven, Foam fringing forests, heather-tufted Isles; The roseate dawn—purpureal pomps of even— And young Atlantic's petulant, shifting wiles? Who could do aught but mar the true expression Where all is change? Then why a record shape Of scenes whose nature glories in succession ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... "My opal ring!" cried Mollie, staring at it unbelievingly. "Oh, I can't believe it. Give it to me, Betty; it has my initials on the inside. Yes, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... for it was snowing and I have only one good dress; and every few minutes I would slip on the ring and pull it off, watching the rainbow lights that flashed and paled in the heart of the stone, and smiling because John had chosen an opal; I wonder if he knows it's the gem ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... of the High North, the wild sky is blazing; Islands of opal float on silver seas; Swift splendors kindle, barbaric, amazing; Pale ports of amber, golden argosies. Ringed all around us the proud peaks are glowing; Fierce chiefs in council, their wigwam the sky; Far, far below us the big Yukon flowing, ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... distempered chocolate; gaselier with opal-tinted globes; two cast-iron Cavaliers holding gas-lamps on the mantel-piece. Oil-portrait, enlarged from photograph, of Mrs. TIDMARSH, over side-board; on other walls, engravings—"Belshazzar's Feast," "The Wall of Wailing at Jerusalem," and DORE'S "Christian Martyrs." The guests have just sat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various
... last paled slowly, the horizon lines came back,—a thin streak of opal fire. A solitary bird twittered in the bush beside the spring. Then the back door of the house opened, and the constable came forth, half-awakened and apologetic, and with the bewildered haste of a belated man. His eyes were level, looking for his missing leader as he went on, until at ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... cloud-picture in the stream now whose hues are as manifold as those in an opal and as delicate as the tintings of a sea-shell. But now a muskrat is swimming through it and obliterating it with the turmoil of wavelets he casts abroad from ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... just rising above the crests of a group of the White Mountains called long ago by the indians "Waumbek" because of their snowy foreheads. But this morning, instead of shining like crystal, the snow at their summits was opal tinted rose, yellow and violet from the early rays ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... jade green, All singing in the sun,—as deep and brown As Taka's eyes,—the pool disclosed itself. Across the clear light of the morning, showers Of fiery jewels shone against the trees,— Rubies, bright sapphires, purple amethyst, Topaz, fierce opal, grass-green emeralds Flitting and darting;—were they only birds! Flower made bird or bird made flower, they seemed To eyes newborn upon a world of love. The air was heavy with strange scents, the old Familiar ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... Pomponia, was admiring the view of the setting sun, the garden, and the people standing near the fish-pond. Their white garments on the dark background of the myrtles gleamed like gold from the evening rays. On the sky the evening light had begun to assume purple and violet hues, and to change like an opal. A strip of the sky became lily-colored. The dark silhouettes of the cypresses grew still more pronounced than during bright daylight. In the people, in the trees, in the whole garden there reigned an ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... imparted to me will, I dare say, appear at first very extravagant, but before you laugh at it, give me time to explain. It is the existence of a marvelous opal mine in the interior; the precise location of which is known to no one save Adele ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... odd things about the whole affair were that the lowest third of the case was filled with a liquid, thickish and emerald green and possessing a curious iridescence, and that just beneath the niche was fixed a strip of ebony tilted upwards and bearing in distinct opal lettering ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... attack Red Chicken, he had prepared a decoction from the hollow joints of the bamboo, which he administered in frequent doses from a cocoanut-shell. It was milk-white, and became translucent in water, like that beautiful variety of opal, the hydrophane. There was a legend, said the tatihi, that the knowledge of this medicine had been gleaned from a dark man who had come on a ship many years before, and with this clue I recognized it as tabasheer, a ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... ice-girdled peaks that hold serene Each its own star, far out at sea to mark Thy westward way, O Princess, through the dark. The rose-red sunset dies into the dusk, The silver dusk of the long twilight hour, And opal lights come out, and fiery gleams Of flame-red beacons, like the ash-gray husk Torn from some tropic blossom bursting into flower, Making the sea bloom ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... smothered in a sea of emerald and opal, Down a dazzling gulf of dreams I sank and sank away, Wound about with twenty thousand yards of silken rope, all Shimmering into crimson, glimmering into grey, Drowsing, waking, living, dying, just as you regards it, Buried in a sunset-cloud, or ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... reddish to brownish-red, yellow to reddish-yellow or colourless on cooling, unaltered in the reducing flame; bismuth, yellowish-brown, light-yellow or colourless on cooling; in the reducing flame, almost colourless, blackish-grey when cold; silver, light yellowish to opal, somewhat opaque when cold; whitish-grey in the reducing flame; manganese, amethyst red, colourless in the reducing flame. If the hot bead is colourless and remains clear on cooling, we may suspect the presence of antimony, aluminium, zinc, cadmium, lead, calcium and magnesium. When present ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... countrymen—Australians—men with whom I had hunted for silver in the desolate backblocks of New South Wales; men with whom I had scoured the interior of West Australia seeking for gold; men who had been with me on the tin fields and opal fields. I had never doubted that they would keep their country's name unsullied when they met the foe on the field of war, yet when I heard the tale the enemy told I felt my eyes fill as they have seldom filled since childhood, for I was proud of the western diggers, ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... of guests, tankards, gilt and parcel gilt or shining with silver, perfectly swarmed along the board, and the meanest of the guests present drank from silver-rimmed cups of horn, while for the very greatest were reserved the tall, slender, opal Venice glasses, recently purchased by the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the sunshine. The tide was low; and the wet foreshore gleamed with opal tints; there were wandering tracks on the sea, as of great serpents winding their way beneath the surface; and away to the west the archwayed, tawny rock that cut off the line of coast was like a dream-shape. All was dreamy. And, suddenly her heart began beating to suffocation and the colour ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... away, and the frost-fish, collecting at a chance of civil war, mingled in the melee, tooth and nail, or rather fin and tail. Then the vapors would darken round them again, till, with the stray rays caught and refracted in their fleece, it seemed like living in an opal full of cloudy color and fire. Far off they heard the great ground-swell of the surf upon the beach, or there came the dull report of the sportsmen in the marsh, or they exchanged first a laugh and then a yawn with some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the steps, and at the foot told him to put on his slippers, as if be were a child. Then, hurrying as if those opal eyes of hers were indifferent to dark or daylight, she picked her way among boulders that he could feel but not see, along a floor that was only smooth in places, for a distance that was long enough by two or three times to ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... meantime he was not a little disappointed. Was this all the great mystery of the berimed horse? It was as if a supposed opal had burst, and ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... overhanging the heaving sea, where it rustled away from the vessel's sides. At dawn you would see through sleepy eyes an exquisite sky, colouring for sunrise, and just at reveille the golden rim would rise out of a still sea swimming and shimmering in pink and opal. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... deepen to a pale rose. Angela's little body was as slender as a flower-stem. Her limbs showed but the faintest of curves, her skin but the faintest of tints. Almost transparent in the sunlight, she had in the shadow the coloring of the opal, pale rose-pinks and pale violet-blues. Her hair floated free to her shoulders; and that, more than any other detail, seemed to accent the quality of faery in her personality. In calm it clung to her head like a pale-gold mist; in breeze it floated away like a pale-gold ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... slowly poured some drops of the lemonade from the decanter into the cup, and in an instant a light cloudy sediment began to form at the bottom of the cup; this sediment first took a blue shade, then from the color of sapphire it passed to that of opal, and from opal to emerald. Arrived at this last hue, it changed no more. The result of the experiment left no doubt whatever ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... seemed aflame as if a fountain of fire rose up, and fell, and rose again with sparks like stars for drops. Dyson gave a long deep sigh, and dropped into his chair, and put his hands over his eyes to think. The jewel was like an opal, but from a long experience of the shop windows he knew there was no such thing as an opal one quarter or one eighth of its size. He looked at the stone again, with a feeling that was almost awe, and placed it gently on the table under the lamp, and watched the wonderful flame that shone and sparkled ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... pivot to see how many substances he could find which, like amber, on being rubbed affected the needle. In this way he discovered that light substances were attracted by alum, mica, arsenic, sealing-wax, lac sulphur, slags, beryl, amethyst, rock-crystal, sapphire, jet, carbuncle, diamond, opal, Bristol stone, glass, glass of antimony, gum-mastic, hard resin, rock-salt, and, of course, amber. He discovered also that atmospheric conditions affected the production of electricity, dryness being unfavorable and ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... life as serious, and as earnest, not living for pretence or show, but for the most rational and religious ends. Now, when all this goodness is silvered over, as it were, reflecting like mother-of-pearl or opal, a thousand fanciful shades and changes, is not the result beautiful? Some families into which I have entered, some persons with whom I have talked, have left a most delightful impression upon my mind; and I have ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... preened his opal breast; And o'er the meads the bobolink, With vexed perplexity confessed His tinkling gutturals in a kink, Or giggled ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... her berth, trailing exquisite silk and lace (for the woman must always frame her beauty worthily, even for her own eyes alone), poured out half a glass of absinthe, dropped in her allowance of the drug, added water, till the mixture looked like liquid opal, and sipped the beverage with a kind of ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... Meanwhile, during the afternoon, a sail had hove in sight in the north-western board, steering south-east; and when the sun went down in a clear haze of ruddy gold, the sails of the stranger, reddened by the last beams of the luminary, glowed against the clear opal tints of the north-western sky at a distance of some eight miles, broad on ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... gleam, the waves light up With radiant momentary hues,— Amber and shadowy pearl and gold, Opal ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... you, and I often believe that you love me. But how can I count on you? I am your mistress, alas! but you are not my lover. It is for you that Shakespeare has written these sad words: 'Make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal.' And I, Octave," she added, pointing to her mourning costume, "I am reduced to a single color, and I shall not change it ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... lilies blow Beside the flow of languid streams, Within that vale of opal glow, Where bright-winged dreams flutter to and fro, Fain am I ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... of all. Although he tried hard not to show it, he, too, could scarcely refrain from enthusiastic comment. The sight of an opal-globed chandelier over the dining-room table was ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... return of the eye, which has on the Continent most unfairly brought my fair countrywomen under criticism, is quite as common to her more carefully-guarded, tradition-hedged German sisters? No, it is not that. Is it any thing in these emerald and opal tinted skies, which seem so unreal to the American eye, and for the first time explain what seemed the unreality of German art? in these mysterious yet restful Rhine fogs, which prolong the twilight, and hang the curtain of romance even over mid-day? Surely not. Is it not rather, O Herr Professor ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... her white dress against the sinking sail, said nothing, but stared at the lights that outlined the yacht against the deep distance of the sky, and that seemed, as the shadowy hull swung dark on the water, to start out from nowhere in pin-pricks of diamonds set in opal moonlight. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... little nervous—truly. Frank himself would be critical. She went about looking into the dining-room, which, by the caterer's art, had been transformed into a kind of jewel-box glowing with flowers, silver, gold, tinted glass, and the snowy whiteness of linen. It reminded her of an opal flashing all its soft fires. She went into the general reception-room, where was a grand piano finished in pink and gold, upon which, with due thought to her one accomplishment—her playing—she had arranged ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... A flashing opal brilliancy shot across the light in which I rested, and I beheld an Angel, grand, lofty, majestic, with a countenance in which shone the lustre ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... a moment;—this single sentence, spoken like the expression of the experience of a lifetime, produced an effect which all his logic could not. He had rubbed some talismanic opal, pronouncing the spirit-compelling sentence engraved thereon, and a new world of doubts and mysteries, marvels and revelations burst on me. One phase of existence, which had been hitherto a reality to me, melted away into the thinness of an uncompleted dream; but as it melted away, there appeared ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... me—for a hundred or two kilometres away men are killing one another—women are searching for some trace of their homes—the ground is teeming with corpses—the air is foetid with the smell of death! And yet we enjoy the opal sunset at Versailles and smile at the quaint appearance of ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... so," said Monte-Cristo sternly, as he took a greenish, strongly smelling pastil from a box cut from an opal. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... seemed to come from the live heart of a jewel. Each icy tree and bush emitted thin threadlike flames, high and aerial in tone, but of a piercing intensity. It was as if the quiet valley had been flooded all at once with dust of emerald and opal, of sapphire and amethyst and diamond. And as the light grew the miracle changed slowly, one keen gleam dying out ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... was sealed with red wax, and when she removed the enveloping pasteboard, she found a heavy gold ring, bearing a large beautifully tinted opal, surrounded with small diamonds. On the inside was engraved "Douglass and Regina," with the date of the day on which he had left the parsonage ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... sunsets that burn themselves into the consciousness with a joy akin to pain, and of which only a few are allotted to each human life. I stood watching the sinking sun throw a crimson net over the snow mountains as the shadow of night crept slowly up the hillside. The sky took on an opal light in which were merged and transcended all the colours of the day. Every pinnacle and rock was lit up as by a heavenly fire, the pines were outlined like black sentinels against the sky, guardians of that merciful green life from which we spring and to which we return. ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Aleardi has written, and I have named them nearly all. He has in greater degree than any other Italian poet of this age, or perhaps of any age, those qualities which English taste of this time demands—quickness of feeling and brilliancy of expression. He lacks simplicity of idea, and his style is an opal which takes all lights and hues, rather than the crystal which lets the daylight colorlessly through. He is distinguished no less by the themes he selects than by the expression he gives them. In his poetry ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... lying between the Koenigsee and the Obersee, that tiny lake that faithfully gives back as a mirror all the crags, peaks, and snowy heights which hide it away there as if it were indeed the precious opal you may fancy it to be when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... waned. Still the hunter lay quiet. From time to time the calf struggled and bellowed. Lank, gray wolves appeared on all sides; they prowled about with hungry howls, and shoved black-tipped noses through the grass. The sun sank, and the sky paled to opal blue. A star shone out, then another, and another. Over the prairie slanted the first ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... metropolitan life, but the creatures are amazingly unfamiliar. They have horns and hoofs, halos and wings, or fins and tails. An esoteric band of fabulous monsters these: harpies and vampires take tea at Sherry's; succubi and incubbi are observed buying opal rings at Tiffany's; fairies, angels, dwarfs, and elves, bearing branches of asphodel, trip lightly down Waverly Place; peris, amshaspahands, aesir, izeds, and goblins sleep at the Brevoort; seraphim and cherubim decorate drawing rooms on Irving Place; griffons, chimeras, and sphynxes ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... could well judge of the feat we had accomplished in our descent. Up to the level of the cave there were shrubs and brush-wood. Higher up, orchids, with their bright flowers and opal-green leaves; higher still rose a perpendicular and almost smooth rampart, utterly impassable except through the fissure which had afforded us egress. Sumichrast guided us through the thicket, where the frangipanni-plants, covered with their sweet-scented flowers, predominated, announcing our ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... missing constituent. The larger mobile species were, then, practically anhydrous. Their blood consists of short-chain silicones, with quartz reinforcing for the soft parts and their armor, teeth, etc., of pure amorphous quartz (opal). Most of these parts are of the milky variety, variously tinted with metallic impurities, as are the ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... hearts that break in twain! — And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime? So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time. Ah, not in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays The one red Sweet of gracious ladies'-praise. Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye — Says, 'Here, you Lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy: Come, heart for heart — a trade? What! weeping? why?' Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery! I would my lover kneeling ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... span. There were four holes in it, in each of which an empty ball was fastened, hollow within, and open o' top, like a little lamp; its circumference about two hands' breadth. Each ball was of precious stone; one an amethyst, another an African carbuncle, the third an opal, and the fourth an anthracites. They were full of burning water five times distilled in a serpentine limbec, and inconsumptible, like the oil formerly put into Pallas' golden lamp at Acropolis of Athens by Callimachus. In each of them ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... sea—a goblet thick inlaid With jewels wrought in golden filigree, An opal from some elfin treasury Burning with fire and flashing every shade; While round the dim horizon, wide displayed The clouds pile up their largess tenderly As if to clothe the beauty of the sea In filmy gossamer and ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... help of her valuable little library, her industrious pencil, and her accomplished guides, laid up a store of precious souvenirs as they visited the celebrated spots that lie like a necklace of pearls around the lovely lake, with Mont Blanc as the splendid opal that fitly clasps the chain. Calvin and Geneva, Voltaire and Ferney, De Stael and Coppet, Gibbon's garden at Lausanne, Byron's Prisoner at Chillon, Rousseau's chestnut grove at Clarens, and all the legends, relics, and memories of Switzerland's heroes, ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... succeeded by a dull afternoon. Every opal and diamond of the opening day had vanished. Low sullen clouds drifted over the dim-colored earth, and the wind was chill and dreary. Elizabeth's mood was in perfect accord with the grayness. She was about to give herself ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... "Bruce, the opal globe is a direct link to those devils themselves! Break it, Bruce, break it—for Ruth's sake as ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... again—tricked out as a Nautch girl in veils of purple, saffron, gold-tinsel, and grass-green. She postures shamelessly before the delighted tourists with woven skeins of homeward-flying pelicans, fringes of wild duck, black spotted on crimson, and cheap jewellery of opal clouds. 'Notice Me!' She cries, like any other worthless woman. 'Admire the play of My mobile features—the revelations of My multi-coloured soul! Observe My allurements and potentialities. Thrill while I stir you!' So She floats through all Her ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... gauntlet, Colina displayed to Marya a ring set with a gleaming opal. It was Marya's she let her understand, ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... said Cecil. "I do not know what was made by the raffles. How I do hate them! Fancy that lovely opal Venetian vase going to that big bony Scotswoman, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lashing of the fierce rain on the window-panes sound almost pleasant as one basked in the light and warmth of the apartment and contrasted it with the state of cold and wet and misery which reigned supreme outside. A dozen opal-shaded gas- burners brilliantly lighted the room, and revealed the fact that it was handsomely and liberally furnished with luxurious divans, capacious easy-chairs, a piano, a table loaded with the papers and periodicals of the day, an enormous mirror over the black marble mantel-piece, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the jewels we found more difficulty in estimating. There were diamonds—some of them exceedingly large and fine—a hundred and ten in all, and not one of them small; eighteen rubies of remarkable brilliancy;—three hundred and ten emeralds, all very beautiful; and twenty-one sapphires, with an opal. These stones had all been broken from their settings and thrown loose in the chest. The settings themselves, which we picked out from among the other gold, appeared to have been beaten up with hammers, as if to prevent identification. Besides all ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... their counterparts in the heavens, presenting in a jewelled form contrasts of colour, pleasing harmonies, and endless variety of shade. The diamond, sapphire, emerald, amethyst, topaz, and ruby sparkle among crowds of stars of more sombre hue. Agate, chalcedony, onyx, opal, beryl, lapis-lazuli, and aquamarine are represented by the radiant sheen emanating from distant suns, displaying an inexhaustible variety of colour, blended in tints of ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... the valleys that upon the sun Broke from their opal veils, are veiled again, And the last light upon the wolds is done, And silence falls on flock and fields and men; And black upon the night I watch my hill, And the stars shine, and there an owly wing Brushes the night, and all again ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... beauty—if a stranger should come in to him, and, opening his hand, exhibit a new unknown gem, splendid as ruby or as sapphire, yet manifestly no mere variety of any familiar stone, but differing as widely from all others as diamond from opal or cat's-eye; and then, just when he is beginning to rejoice in that strange exquisite loveliness, the hand should close and the stranger, with a mocking smile on his lips, go forth and disappear from sight in the crowd. A feeling such as that would be is not unfrequently experienced ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... rumors, were all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole career of these events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted. The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... passage above quoted! Is there no remedy, and no physician for the frailties and degradations of poor Jack, who, whatever be his faults, 'leads the way aloft on dark and stormy nights?' 'If the constituents of London mud can be resolved, if the sand can be transformed into an opal,' to use the noble simile of a great living writer, 'and the water into a drop of dew or a star of snow, or a translucent crystal, and the soot into ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... crimson. Leach's big hands were locked over his knee. Now and then his lips moved as if in prayer. He smiled; he laughed; he chuckled. The sun sank lower and finally went out of sight. The sky along the horizon was an ocean of pink and purple, with shores of shimmering opal. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far away;—a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long low pyramid of colored light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,—sculpture fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates, and ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... little picture! The sun was gaining colour as it neared setting, and it set not over the sea, but over the land. The sea had the dark and rather stern, but not cold, blue of that aspect—the dark and not the opal tints. The sky was also deep. Everything was very definite, without mystery, and exceedingly simple. The most luminous thing was the shining white of an edge of foam, which did not cease to be white because it was a little golden and a little rosy in ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... sometimes sauntering along in the lovely summer twilight, now resting on some grassy hedge-row bank, or standing still, looking at the great barges, with their crimson sails, lazily floating down the river, making ripples on the glassy opal surface of the water. They did not talk very much; Ellinor seemed disinclined for the exertion; and her lover was thinking over Mr. Wilkins's behaviour, with some surprise and distaste of the habit so evidently ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... below presented to us new charms which we could not obtain before. In the first place the enormous height of the cataract may be better realized from beneath; then the emerald and opal translucence of the waters, as they pass in their swift career, was here especially effective; since the sun, shining through the mists of spray from a station in the heavens most advantageous for our prospect, crowned the entire scene ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... books a much higher poetic level is reached. In the first, Guido speaks; in the second, Caponsacchi; the third, that lustrous opal set midway in the "Ring," is Pompilia's narrative. Here the three protagonists live and move before our eyes. The sixth book may be said to be the heart of the whole poem. The extreme intellectual subtlety of Guido's plea stands quite unrivalled in poetic literature. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... Would sweep them as the sun and wind's joined flood Sweeps a greening-sapphire sea; Or they would glow enamouredly Illustrious sanguine, like a grape of blood; Or with mantling poetry Curd to the tincture which the opal hath, Like rainbows thawing in a moonbeam bath. So paled they, flushed they, swam they, ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... drifting across; the air was elixir; and the blue waters, capped here and there with white, ran joyously to meet the green sloping shores, where the haze still lingered. Ahead, an island glowed like an opal. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... emptier waste, resembling air, Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold Far off the empyreal heaven, extended wide In circuit, undetermined square or round, With opal towers and battlements adorned Of living sapphire, once his native seat; And fast by, hanging in a golden chain, This pendant world, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... him with new eyes and a newer understanding. Harpeth Valley lay like the tender palm of a huge master hand with the knuckles of rough blue hills knotted around it, and dotted over the fostering meadows were comfortable homes, each with its morning altar fire sending up opal wreaths of mist smoke from the red brick or stone chimneys. Long creek lines marked their way across the fields which were growing tender green with the upbringing of the ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and turning with her thumb an opal ring on her finger, she began to use the blandishments which had never failed with ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... was costly, the inspector did not touch. There were magnificent pearl studs, a watch fob, set with a black opal and pearl cufflinks. Examination of his hat showed the pierced letters R. S., but nothing gave clue to ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... it was an opal sea I looked on of mist, shot along its upper surface with the rosy gold and pinks of dawn. Then, as that soft, translucent lake ebbed, jutting hills came through it, black and crimson, and as they seemed to mount into the air other lower hills showed through the veil ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... Norfolk, said Jimmy was with him, and though very sick at first, was now in good health. The first news in all that long time! When the city was evacuated, George went with his regiment seven miles from Richmond, Jimmy to the city itself, as aide to Com. Hollins. This lady brought George's opal ring and diamond pin. Howell and Mr. Badger, who had just joined the guerrillas as independents, spent the day with me. We were all in such confusion that I felt ashamed: every one as dirty as possible; I had on the same dress I had escaped in, which, though then perfectly ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson |
