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Sceptre   Listen
noun
Sceptre, Scepter  n.  
1.
A staff or baton borne by a sovereign, as a ceremonial badge or emblem of authority; a royal mace. "And the king held out Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand."
2.
Hence, royal or imperial power or authority; sovereignty; as, to assume the scepter. "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sceptre" Quotes from Famous Books



... everything was of marble and gold, and there were many curtains with great golden tassels. Then he went through the doors of the saloon to where the great throne-room was, and there was his wife sitting upon a throne of gold and diamonds, and she had a great golden crown on, and the sceptre in her hand was of pure gold and jewels, and on each side stood six pages in a row, each one a head shorter than the other. So the man went up ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... Antonius or Octavius. To the pursuit of fame he sacrificed many interests and friendships. He was not less jealous of a rival in his chosen career than any of the leaders of party and candidates for popular favor. He could not endure competition for the throne of eloquence and the sceptre of persuasion. It was on this account perhaps that he sought his associates among the young, from whose rivalry he had nothing to fear, rather than from his own contemporaries, the candidates for the same prize of public ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... (R.C.) My most redoubted father, It is most meet we arm us 'gainst the foe: And let us do it with no show of fear; No, with no more than if we heard that England Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance: For, my good liege, she is so idly king'd, Her sceptre so fantastically borne By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth, That fear ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare

... of her diplomacy, the exit of the enraged Bruno, was at once achieved. He had already handed his spear in a lordly style, like a sceptre, to the piteous Parkinson, and was about to assume one of the cushioned seats like a throne. But at this open appeal to his rival there glowed in his opal eyeballs all the sensitive insolence of the slave; he knotted his enormous brown fists for an instant, ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... his power was gone, but Fear, The nurse of Vengeance, bade him wait the event— That perfidy and custom, gold and prayer, And whatsoe'er, when force is impotent, 3580 To fraud the sceptre of the world has lent, Might, as he judged, confirm his failing sway. Therefore throughout the streets, the Priests he sent To curse the rebels.—To their gods did they For Earthquake, Plague, and Want, kneel in the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... satisfaction: yet so much were men displeased with the present conduct of affairs, and such apprehensions were entertained of futurity, that the people, overlooking their theological disputes, expressed a general and unfeigned joy that the sceptre had passed into the hand of Elizabeth. That princess had discovered great prudence in her conduct during the reign of her sister; and as men were sensible of the imminent danger to which she was every moment exposed, compassion ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... did not obey him. Her beauty had betrayed her into the hands of misery. She had wedded it, and there was no escape for her. One day, when her despair and suffering was very great, some tempting devil brought her a glass of brandy, and she drank it. It gave her back for a few hours her departed sceptre; but at what a price! Her slave soon became her master. Stimulus and stupefaction, physical exhaustion and mental horrors, the abandonment of friends and the brutality of a coarse and cruel husband, brought her at last to the day of reckoning. She died, seven years ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... a straight and narrow robe, cut low beneath her breast. Her face was mild and beautiful, and in her right hand she held a looped sceptre. Her hair descended in many long plaits on to her shoulders. For head-dress she wore two horns, supporting between them a burnished disc of gold like to that of the moon when it ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... sovereign He may spare you the hour of grief I have just passed.' Yet the defeat of Solferino and the loss of Lombardy were the first steps in the transformation of Radetsky's pupil from a despot, who hourly feared revolution in every land under his sceptre, to a wise and constitutional monarch ruling over a contented Empire. To some individuals and to ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... England, the author renewed his impressions of Stratford (the grateful landlady of the Red Horse Inn showed him a poker which was locked up among the treasures of her house, on which she had caused to be engraved "Geoffrey Crayon's Sceptre"); spent some time at Newstead Abbey; and had the sorrowful pleasure in London of seeing Scott once more, and for the last time. The great novelist, in the sad eclipse of his powers, was staying in the city, on his way to Italy, and Mr. Lockhart asked Irving to dine with him. It was but a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... there, that I am no Roman patriot,—I! I, who am of the House of Austria, that House that wears the crown of the Caesars, those Caesars who swayed the very imperial sceptre, who trailed the very imperial purple of old Rome! I endure the cause because it is yours. I beseech you to be faithful to it; because I should despise you, if for any woman you swerved from an object that had previously been with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... flag. In the afternoon there are sports; and in the evening continuous dancing in a large marquee. One of the chief sports of the afternoon is "Shooting at the Eagle" with a cross-bow, and trying to knock off the crown or sceptre from the effigy of a bird, crowned with an eagle and holding a sceptre, stuck up on the top of a high pole. The crown or the sceptre represents a high prize, and each feather struck off represents a prize of some value ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles

... caught sight of this modern Ahasuerus. He came forward, unattended—in solitary grandeur—exhibiting the proud gait and majesty of an eastern monarch. His dress was rich but not distinctive, and he carried in his hand the gold-sheathed sword, which seems to have taken the place of the sceptre of ancient times. But it was his high aspect and commanding eye, that chiefly rivetted our attention. He strided on. Every head excepting ours, was now in the dust. We remained kneeling, our hands ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... my soul, this instant yield; Let the light its sceptre wield. While thy God prolongs His grace, Haste thee ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... quoted, where (v. 17, sqq.) mention is made of all the posterity of Jeconiah, and compare it with the Septuagint version to see clearly that these books were not published, till after Maccabaeus had restored the Temple, the sceptre no longer belonging to the ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza

... doors of several of the wards were thrown open for these parties, and as Jack passed, he could not help glancing at the wretched inmates. Here was a poor half-naked creature, with a straw crown on his head, and a wooden sceptre in his hand, seated on the ground with all the dignity of a monarch on his throne. There was a mad musician, seemingly rapt in admiration of the notes he was extracting from a child's violin. Here was a terrific figure gnashing his teeth, and howling like a wild beast;—there ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the new political party of America which would be triumphant in 1872. "The producers, the working-men, the women, the Negroes," The Revolution declared, "are destined to form a triple power that shall speedily wrest the sceptre of government from the non-producers, the land monopolists, the bondholders, and ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... thirteenth child, in a hovel, with no education, no chance, gave his spinning model to the world, and put a sceptre in England's right hand such as the queen ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... Creon, lo! proceeds, Son of Menoekeus, newly rais'd The sceptre of this land to sway. Now at new tokens of the gods, Methinks, some sage device he plies. Therefore to special parliament Hath he by general summons fetch'd ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... what wage holds love in fee? Might half my kingdom serve? Nay, mock not me, Fair uncle: should I cleave the crown in twain And gird thy temples with the goodlier half, Think'st thou my debt might so be paid again - Thy sceptre made a more imperial staff Than ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... strong, stone room, in which are kept the crown jewels, regalia, such as the golden orb, the golden sceptre with the dove, St. Edward's staff, State salt-cellar, sword of mercy, golden spurs, the golden eagle and golden spoons, also the silver font used at the baptism of the royal family, the State crown worn by her Majesty in Parliament. A large collection of ancient ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... reign in one of his kingdoms, as George III. did in America, and George IV. may in Ireland.[53] Now, we have nothing to do out of our own realms, and when the monarchy was gone, his majesty had but a barren sceptre. I have cut away, you will see, and altered, but make it what you please; only I do implore, for my own gratification, one lash on those accursed quadrupeds—'a long shot, Sir Lucius, if you love me.' I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... of the Gulf; from the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky Mountains,—a region of savannahs and forests, sun-cracked deserts, and grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand warlike tribes, passed beneath the sceptre of the Sultan of Versailles; and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... can be deemed worth mentioning happened to Mamsell Fredrika before New Year's night. Life and death, like day and night, reigned in quiet concord over the earth during the last week of the year, but when New Year's night came, Death took his sceptre and announced that now old Mamsell Fredrika should belong ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... was used as a cover to his real designs in life. Influential in the local politics of Harrisville he had experienced the keen pleasure of wielding the silver sceptre of power, and he longed not only to be the "power behind the throne," but to sit on the throne itself and guide the ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... whereas the others had only twelve hundred each, and his name ran first in all the royal warrants. Nevertheless, Sir Gregory, could he have had it so, would, like most other kings, have preferred an undivided sceptre. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... is the same which, in long ages gone, Roused up your great sires, so gallantly known, When, braving the tyrant, the sceptre and throne, They rushed to the conflict, despising the odds; Armed with bow, spear, and scythe, and with sling and with stone, For their ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... should send two angels down from heaven, and should tell one of them to sit on a throne and rule a kingdom, and the other to sweep the streets of a city, the latter would feel that he was serving God as acceptably in handling his broom as his brother angel was in holding his sceptre. And this is true. We see the same illustrated in ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton

... Lora Rewbush was again heard from the wings; it sounded bloodthirsty. Penrod released his victim; and the Child King Arthur, somewhat disconcerted, extended his sceptre and, with the assistance ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... who was over eighty years of age, had served as announcer for every big boxing contest in San Francisco since—well, let's say, since San Francisco was born. He always ends his ring announcement with the words, "Let her go!" The reporters say that in the crown and sceptre, the velvet and ermine of a king, he opened the Fillmore Street Carnival with "Let her go!". And for myself, I choose to believe that story. The queen of this carnival—her first name was Manila, by the way—a pretty girl of course, was ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin

... Eagle Tower, not then built), April 25, 1284; crowned at Westminster Abbey, August 6, 1307, by the Bishop of Winchester, acting as substitute for the Archbishop of Canterbury. The gilt spurs were borne by William le Mareschal; "the royal sceptre on whose summit is the cross" by the Earl of Hereford (killed in rebellion against the King) and "the royal rod on whose summit is the dove" by Henry of Lancaster, afterwards Earl: the Earls of Lancaster, Lincoln, and Warwick—of whom the first was beheaded for treason, ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... of art and letters. The civilisations of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, North Africa, and Italy were ushered into the calendar of mankind, and were ready to bear the burden when the mighty city on the Tiber let the sceptre fall ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... revolution brought about by affidavits; an army employed in executing an arrest; a town besieged on a note of hand; a prince dethroned for the balance of an account. Thus it was they exhibited a government, which united the mock majesty of a bloody sceptre, and the little traffic of a merchant's counting-house, wielding a truncheon with one hand, and picking a pocket ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... muttered 'catalepsy'. My mother pitying made a thousand prayers; My mother was as mild as any saint, Half-canonized by all that looked on her, So gracious was her tact and tenderness: But my good father thought a king a king; He cared not for the affection of the house; He held his sceptre like a pedant's wand To lash offence, and with long arms and hands Reached out, and picked offenders from the mass For judgment. Now it chanced that I had been, While life was yet in bud and blade, bethrothed To one, a neighbouring Princess: she to me Was proxy-wedded with a ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... I kin stay free till night, anyhow," said Aun' Suke, pausing in her work to make a dab at a little darky with her wooden spoon sceptre. "Firs' Marse Scoville whirl in en say I free; den old miss whirl in en say I ain'; now conies de gin'ral ob de hull lot en I'se free agin. Wat's mo', de freer I git de harder I has ter wuk. My haid gwine roun' lak dat ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... spoilt. The throne was deserted, the sceptre laid down. They did not care to be King or ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... of having some recognised chief was soon felt by the Crusaders, and Godfrey de Bouillon, less ambitious than Bohemund or Raymond of Toulouse, gave his cold consent to wield a sceptre which the latter chiefs would have clutched with eagerness. He was hardly invested with the royal mantle before the Saracens menaced his capital. With much vigour and judgment he exerted himself to follow up the advantages he had gained, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... upon the outlines of a draped female form, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by two lions, or of a man clothed in a short tunic, holding a sort of straight sceptre in his hand, and we fancy that we have the image of a god before our eyes, though we cannot say which of the deities handed down by tradition it may represent. The religion of the Phrygians is shrouded in the same mystery as their civilisation ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... of the sixteenth century there were living in Ferrara (it was at that time flourishing under the sceptre of its magnificent archdukes, the patrons of the arts and poetry) two young men, named Fabio and Muzzio. They were of the same age, and of near kinship, and were scarcely ever apart; the warmest ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... infideles, vous ont acquis la veneration de tous les peuples; et la France doit a vos travaux et a vostre piete l'inestimable tresor de la sanglante et glorieuse couronne du Sauveur du monde. Priez-le incomparable Saint qu'il donne une paix perpetuelle au Royaume dont vous avez porte le sceptre; qu'il le preserve d'heresie; qu'il y face toujours regner saintement vostre illustre Sang; et que tous ceux qui ont l'honneur d'en descendre soient pour ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... than the Olympic whereof to utter our voice: for hence cometh the glorious hymn and entereth into the minds of the skilled in song, so that they celebrate the son[1] of Kronos, when to the rich and happy hearth of Hieron they are come; for he wieldeth the sceptre of justice in Sicily of many flocks, culling the choice fruits of all kinds of excellence: and with the flower of music is he made splendid, even such strains as we sing blithely at the table of ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... least, under our censure. I say, my lord, that my grandfather and my father, in their wisdom, debarred the nobles of this civilized land from travelling with such disorderly retinues; and think you, that because I wear a coif, their sceptre has in my hand been changed into a distaff? I tell you, no king in Christendom will less brook his court to be cumbered, his people oppressed, and his kingdom's peace disturbed, by the arrogance of overgrown ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... to the south seem pressing down to meet and clash as two vast armies contending for the plain—as so many times have the men of the north with the men of the south until the Master of All, drawing a line with His sceptre, said: 'Thus far only.' Then He made the river which surges forward in a straight flight from Valenza to the sea and swarthy barefooted peasants of the plain ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... his Zuleika had been murdered, Barbara?—that, taking advantages of the cover of night, the blind old Kouchoum had, in Ermak's absence, broken into the latter's tent, and stabbed his own daughter in mistake for the man who had robbed him of sceptre and crown? ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... sandy hair, his eyes turned down, it was hard to realise that this almost slouching fellow held the attention of the shrewd in these matters as the certain head of them all, when the present great leader should have dropped his sceptre. But this was the Webb in whose labyrinthine meshes the cartoonists delighted to picture the unhappy flies of their country's financial system; this was the weaver whose warp was of railroads and his woof the unhappy populace, in yet other pictorial fancies. This was that ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... everything was of real marble and gold, with velvet covers and great golden tassels. Then the doors of the hall were opened, and there was the court in all its splendor, and his wife was sitting on a high throne of gold and diamonds, with a great crown of gold on her head, and a sceptre of pure gold and jewels in her hand, and on both sides of her stood her maids-in-waiting in a row, each of them always one head shorter ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... overtook a heavy laden waggon, and they were obliged to go step by step behind it, whilst, enjoying the gentleman's impatience much, and the postilion's sulkiness more, the waggoner, in his embroidered frock, walked in state, with his long sceptre in his hand. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... there was a great wrong, and she said I will die or I will bring my complaint before the king. Should the king of the United States be greater, or more crueler, or more harder? But the king, he raised up his sceptre and said: "Thy request shall be granted unto thee—to the half of my kingdom will I grant it to thee!" Then he said he would hang Haman on the gallows he had made up high. But that is not what women come forward to contend. The women want their rights as Esther. She only wanted to explain her rights. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... prospective shillings to his view, and Ratty bowed before the altar of Mammon. But even Mammon failed to keep Ratty loyal; for that heathen god, Momus, claimed a superior allegiance; Ratty worshipped the "cap and bells" as the true crown, and "the bauble" as the sovereign sceptre. Besides, the secret became troublesome to him, and he determined to let the whole house know what "gran" and he were about, in a way ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... bright friend, with thee through this labyrinth which we call the world will I carve my way! Fairest and speediest of earth's levellers, thou makest the path from the low valley to the steep hill, and shapest the soldier's axe into the monarch's sceptre! The laurel and the fasces, and the curule car, and the emperor's purple,—what are these but thy playthings, alternately thy scorn and thy reward! Founder of all empires, propagator of all creeds, thou leddest the Gaul and the Goth, and the gods of Rome and Greece crumbled upon their altars! Beneath ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... operator followed him. The soldier had been following the Kaiser several days so His Majesty recognised him, ordered him to put up his camera and prepare to make a special film. When the camera was ready His Majesty danced a jig, waved his sceptre and then his helmet, smiled and shouted greetings to the camera man—then went ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream. Sabrina is her name, a virgin pure; Whilom she was the daughter of Locrine, That had the sceptre ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... from captivity. He passed the night before at S. Swithun's Priory, and was brought thence in the morning to the Cathedral "clothed in his royal robes, with the crown upon his head, holding in his right hand a royal sceptre which terminated in a cross, and in his left hand a golden wand with a figure of a dove at the top of it, ... being conducted on the right hand by his chancellor, the Bishop of Ely, and on the left by the Bishop of London" (Roger de Hoveden). The Bishop ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant

... and haughty scion of the Roman Catholic house of Stuart. This singular and renowned rebellion, although premature in its beginning, and short in its duration, caused during its continuence, the Hanoverian incumbent of the English sceptre to tremble for the permanence of his seat on the throne, and though he at first pretended to despise both it and its authors, he was finally compelled to use vigorous and extraordinary means to bring it to ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker

... of Charlemagne, in A.D. 814, the crown and the sceptre of the empire passed to his son Louis (the later form of Clovis). This feeble son of Charlemagne, known as Louis the Debonnaire, struggled under the weight of the crumbling mass until his death in 840. Then Charlemagne's three ambitious grandsons fought for the great ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... towns and chateaus, which were the cradles of the Harcourts, Vernons, Tancarvilles, Gurneys, Bruces, Bohuns, Grenvilles, St. Johns, and many others of the most illustrious English families, are still in existence; and, of more modern date, when the British Edwards and Henrys resumed the Norman sceptre, numerous buildings of the highest beauty are every where to be met with. In his researches after these, Mr. Cotman had the advantage of being assisted by the kindness of three of the most distinguished antiquaries of the present day, M. le Prevost, M. Rondeau, ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... Duke of Saxony is to carry the sword; the Count Palatine, the globe; the Margrave of Brandenburg, the sceptre. In celebrating mass before the Emperor, the benedictions are to be pronounced by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... as no unfit model for the state; at least, the kirkmen laboured to impress, upon their followers and hearers, the fundamental principle, that the church should be solely governed by those, unto whom God had given the spiritual sceptre. The elder Melvine, in a conference with James VI., seized the monarch by the sleeve, and, addressing him as God's sillie vassal, told him, "There are two kings, and two kingdomes. There is Christ, and his kingdome, the kirke; whose subject King James ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott

... have had temptation to make use of, especially at such a time, and in such exigencies, as then did compass her about; but, I say, she made not use of them to thrust herself into his presence, but knew, and kept her distance, standing in the inward court of his palace until he held out the golden sceptre to her; then Esther drew near, and touched the top thereof; Esth. ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan

... scarcely be doubted; but unfortunately the tomb of Stephen still exists, which proves tolerably conclusively that his death was of a more speedy, if not of a more cruel, nature. An inscription is upon it to the effect, 'Here lies Stephen, King of Bosnia, without his kingdom, throne, and sceptre, and without his skin.' Of all the family of the unfortunate monarch, the only one who escaped was his Queen, Cattarina, who fled to Rome, where she lies buried in the Chapel ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... Reform, or better still, abolish governments, and to what heights of virtue might not men aspire? We need not say with Rousseau that men are naturally virtuous. The child, as Helvetius delighted to point out, will do that for a coral or a doll which he will do at a mature age for a title or a sceptre. Men are rather the infinitely malleable, variable stuff on which ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... kneeling, and nearly fainting, she looks up to Solomon with tears in her eyes; he, startled by fear for her, stoops forward from the throne, opening his right hand, as if to support her, so as almost to drop the sceptre. At her side her first maid of honour is kneeling also, but does not care about Solomon; and is gathering up her dress that it may not be crushed; and looking back to encourage a negro girl, who, carrying two toy-birds, made of enamel and jewels, for ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... sport—to make sport of Saronia the beautiful, my love! Polluted by the touch of a coarse gaoler. A sight to gratify the Romans, a jest for the rabble of Ephesus, and a cruel death ending all. She who has wielded the sceptre of power, highest and brightest among the women of Ionia, commanded spirits in legions from the underworld, stopped the eagles in their flight, turned the courses of the clouds, baring the face of the silvery ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... the Celtic rule, the traditions of the past. Some of the chroniclers indeed assert that Malcolm was illegitimate and Donald Bane the rightful heir to the crown. He was, at all events, a pretender kept in subjection while Malcolm's strong hand held the sceptre, but ready to seize the first opportunity of revolution. No doubt the news of the King's death, and of that of his heir, would run like wildfire through the country; but it would seem that the attempt of Donald must have been already organised, since his siege ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... another, King Minos called these pale, frightened youths and sobbing maidens to his footstool, gave them each a poke in the ribs with his sceptre (to try whether they were in good flesh or no), and dismissed them with a nod to his guards. But when his eyes rested on Theseus, the king looked at him more attentively, because his ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... French throne, by the death of the Duke of Alencon, 1584. Only the King, Henry III., a man without children, and the last of the male line of the house of Valois, stood between Henry of Navarre and the throne. The possibility that he, a Protestant, might wield the sceptre of Saint Louis, his ancestor, increased the bitterness and animosity of the Catholics. All the forces which the Government could raise were now arrayed against him and his party. The Pope, Sixtus V., in a papal bull, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... of the town. The palace erected by Maria Theresa in 1748-1771 was partly burned in 1849, but has been restored and largely extended since 1894. In the court chapel are preserved the regalia of Hungary, namely, the crown of St Stephen, the sceptre, orb, sword and the coronation robes. It is surrounded by a magnificent garden, which descends in steep terraces to the Danube, and which offers a splendid view of the town lying on the opposite bank. New ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... Keep orb and sceptre. Give us up your souls That our long fingers wake them verily Like dulcimers and citherns and violes; Or at the burning disk of ecstasy Impose rare sigils ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor

... and queenly presence of her Majesty would have rendered her conspicuous above the rest, even if her tiny golden crown and sceptre, tipped with a diamond that blazed like a meteor, had not indicated that she was a monarch; and the acclamations that rose on all sides attested the attachment her subjects felt for ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... government had far more acrimonious and more pertinacious enemies in the Parliament House than in the Castle. When the Estates reassembled after their adjournment, the crown and sceptre of Scotland were displayed with the wonted pomp in the hall as types of the absent sovereign. Hamilton rode in state from Holyrood up the High Street as Lord High Commissioner; and Crawford took his seat as President. Two Acts, one turning the Convention into ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... princes, simply because there was no other but himself. There were doubtless a few outlying rulers, of unknown names and titles upon the margins of his empire, there were tributary lieutenants and barbarous reguli, the obscure vassals of his sceptre, whose homage was offered on the lowest step of his throne, and scarcely known to him but as objects of disdain. But these feudatories could no more break the unity of his empire, which embraced the whole oichomeni;—the total habitable world as then known to geography, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... were earthly things begun; When His mandate all created, Ruler was the name He won, And alone He'll rule tremendous when all things are past and gone; He no equal has nor consort, He the singular and lone Has no end and no beginning, His the sceptre, might, and throne; He's my God and living Saviour, rock to which in need I run; He's my banner and my refuge, fount of weal when call'd upon; In His hand I place my spirit at night-fall and rise of sun, And therewith my body also; God's ...
— Targum • George Borrow

... gave the Norman Duke That victory, whence he Englands sceptre took.* Third Edward, after he had Calais won, (The mean whereby he France did over-run) Returning home, by raging tempests tost, (And near his life (so fortunes) to have lost) Arrived safe on shore the self-same date. (This day to them afforded so fair fate.) Great Duke, rejoice in ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey

... sometimes called the Adamic law or covenant, was suited to beings perfectly innocent and pure, but not to fallen beings, as it made no provision for pardon or moral restoration. Under its authority the sinner could have no hope. Another decree provides that the Son of God shall bear the sceptre of authority—that the government shall be upon his shoulders. To this arrangement we suppose the words of the Psalmist to refer: "Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson

... six hundred years before this first Indian voyage of the Portuguese was undertaken. El Mas'udi, who was one of these travelers, used very strong terms to describe its extent, intelligence, and power. Speaking of its sovereign, he said, "The islands under his sceptre are so numerous that the fastest sailing vessel is not able to go round them in two years," implying that his sway was acknowledged by the island world over a large portion of the Pacific. This Malayan empire was maritime and commercial; ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... smiled. An imperturbable gravity possessed him from the prim black-satin cockade on his three-cornered hat to the silver buckles on his square-toed shoes. In his right hand he carried a gold-headed cane which he wielded as solemnly as a pontiff might wield a sceptre, and as he dismounted from his flea-bitten mare and unswung his ponderous saddlebags he never once suffered the gold head of his impressive cane to lapse from its accustomed ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field

... up my staff, as a knight would his lance, And said, "Here 's my sceptre, my baton, my spear, And there's my prime minister far in advance, Who serves me with truth for his food by the year." So I slept without care till the dawning of day, Then trimm'd up my woodbines and whistled amain; My minister heard as he bounded ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield

... and four months. Elizabeth's reign lasted forty-four years and four months. The younger sister, therefore, swayed the sceptre of authority nearly nine times longer than the elder; and the number of Catholics who suffered for their faith during the long administration of Elizabeth may be safely said to exceed in the same proportion the victims of Mary's reign. Hallam asserts that "the rack seldom ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... the children's feet Each his kingly crown, Each, the conquering power to greet, Laying humbly down. Sword and sceptre as is meet." ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... as an anvil unto sorrow, Which beats upon it like the Cyclops' hammers, And with the noise turns up my giddy brain, And makes me frantic for my Gaveston. Ah, had some bloodless Fury rose from hell, And with my kingly sceptre struck me dead, When I was forc'd to leave my Gaveston! Lan. Diablo, what passions call you these? Q. Isab. My gracious lord, I come to bring you news. K. Edw. That you have parled with your Mortimer? Q. Isab. That Gaveston, my lord, shall ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe

... beat back the inroads of the Mercians and even conquer Strathclyde, before the anarchy of his own kingdom he could only fling down his sceptre and seek a refuge in the cloister of Lindisfarne. From the death of Baeda the history of Northumbria became in fact little more than a wild story of lawlessness and bloodshed. King after king was swept away by treason and revolt, the country fell ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... Lower Egypt. His son, Ra, the Sun-God, had his temple at On, near by, which the Greeks called Heliopolis, or City of the Sun. The cat is sacred to Ra. As Pthah is the god of all beginnings in Lower Egypt, so Ra is the vitalizing god, the active ruler of the world, holding a sceptre in one hand and the sign of life in ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... through achievements wrought on this soil. We have asserted the principles of political liberty, and established them above the reach of overthrow. It remains for us to vindicate the principles of political virtue. We have placed the sceptre in the hands of freedom; let us enthrone religion in still loftier state. American patriotism! be it such as the world has never yet seen. American statesmanship! be it such as mankind shall wonder at, till their admiration subsides into imitation. American ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett

... looked around him in vain for a great noble, and found only courtiers. The great rebellion, which, for nearly two centuries, agitated France, almost entirely disappeared under the ministry of the cardinal. The Guises, who had touched with their hand the sceptre of Henry III., the Condes, who had placed their foot on the steps of the throne of Henry IV., and Gaston, who had tried upon his brow the crown of Louis XIII.,—all returned, at the voice of the minister, if not into nothingness, at least ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... Slowly, slowly, though surely, is the world ascending, through the wondrous secret chain of influences binding her to the moral order of the universe, to the height of this supernal law of love; and there, in that new and holy kingdom, woman's crown and sceptre await her. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... these O'Neills or Hy-Nials seem to have been but a supine race. For centuries they were titular kings of Ireland, yet during all that time they seem never to have tried to transform their faint, shadowy sceptre into a real and active one. Malachy or Melachlin, the rival of Brian Boru, seems to have been the most energetic of the race, yet he allowed the sceptre to be plucked from his hands with an ease which, judging by the imperfect light shed by the chroniclers ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... said he, "these magnates, to kiss the hand of this emperor of seven months, and wallow in the dust before the cradle of a whimpering nurseling! I shall nevertheless be the real emperor, and both sceptre and crown will remain ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... Unworthy, he will stray from David's footsteps, Yea, let him be as fruit whilst growing, plucked, Or blighted in its bloom by hostile blast! But if this child, obedient to Thy rule, Is to be useful aid in Thy designs, Restore the sceptre to the rightful heir; Give into my weak hands his potent foes; Confound the councils of the cruel queen! Deign, deign, my God, on Mathan and on her To cast the spirit of vanity and falsehood, Fatal forerunner of the fall of kings! Adieu; the hour is pressing. Unto ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley

... hanging about him, he wears a pair of breeches like the Moors and Barbary Jews, and has a kind of white turban on his head, pointing up, and strung with different kinds of ornaments. His feet are covered with red morocco shoes. He has no other weapon about him than a large white staff or sceptre, with a golden lion on the head of it, which he carries in his hand. His countenance is mild, and he seems to govern his subjects more like a father than a king. All but the king go bareheaded. The poor have only a single piece ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... was dead, but his bright dream of France enthroned on the Mississippi, holding in her hand the sceptre of the great West, was too vital to die. It was growing more and more into the consciousness of sea-going Europe, that the nation holding the mouth of the Great River would grasp the key to the undeveloped ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... quite good enough, but not for a spoiled young wife. Everything old-fashioned and no room. You shall have a better house in Berlin, with a dining hall, but different from the one here, and in the hall and on the stairway colored-glass windows, Emperor William with sceptre and crown, or some religious picture, a St. Elizabeth or a Virgin Mary. Let us say a Virgin Mary; we ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... and distant world where I am at home and not a stranger as in this book[12] where a ravenous tiger devours the delicate image of spiritual love. I do not understand this cruel riddle; I cannot comprehend why they all make themselves unhappy and why they all serve a malicious demon with a thorny sceptre, why Charlotte, who strews incense before him daily, yes, hourly, should prepare misfortune for them all with mathematical precision! Is not love free? Are those two not affinities? Why should she prevent them from living this innocent life with and near each other? ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... spoke his eyes flashed, and his whole countenance irradiated with a spirit that might not have been suspected when in the act of reading, but which evidently only slept till awakened by an all-sufficient call. "Let the tyrant Edward exult in the possession of our country's crown and sceptre—he may find we need not them to make a king; aye, and a king to snatch the regal diadem from the proud usurper's brow—the Scottish sceptre from his ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... and the People bled: With publick Scorn, Atrides had disgrac'd The Reverend Chryses, Phoebus' chosen Priest. He to redeem his Daughter, sought the Shore, Where lay the Greeks, and mighty Presents bore: Deckt with the Ensigns of his God, he stands, The Crown, the golden Sceptre in his Hands; To all he su'd, but to the Princes most, Great Atreus's Sons, the Leaders of the Host: Princes! and Grecian Warriors! may the Gods (The Pow'rs that dwell in Heav'ns sublime Abodes) Give you to level Priam's haughty Tow'rs, And safely ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson

... Jerusalem: it will be in the Plain of Sharon, in the outgoings of Mount Ephraim, in the green pastures of Gilead, in the lovely region of "Galilee of the Gentiles." It will not be by the sword of Gideon nor by the sceptre of Solomon, but by the sign of peace on earth and good-will ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... once in glory reign'd, And laws for Scotland's weal ordain'd; But now unroof'd their palace stands, Their sceptre's sway'd by other hands; The injured Stuart line is gone, A race outlandish fills their throne; An idiot race, to honour lost; Who know them ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... belted knights; they have armorial bearings; they are Lancasterian to the backbone; they are exceedingly indignant against heretics; they burn the Lollards; they have places in the household of Queen Joan, who was called a witch,—but a witch is a very good friend when she wields a sceptre instead of a broomstick. And in proof of its growing importance, the House of Vipont marries a daughter of the then mighty House of Darrell. In the reign of Henry V., during the invasion of France, the House of Vipont—being afraid of the dysentery which ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... free to follow my own chosen vocation, and for a brief wondering while I deemed myself happy, ... happy as Keats must have been when the fragment of 'Hyperion' broke from his frail life as thunder breaks from a summer-cloud. I was as a monarch swaying a sceptre that commanded both earth and heaven; a kingdom was mine-a kingdom of golden ether, peopled with shining shapes Protean,—alas! its gates are shut upon me now, and I shall enter ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... be contented: must he lose The name of king? O! God's name, let it go: I'll give my jewels for a set of beads; My gorgeous palace for a hermitage; My gay apparel for an alms-man's gown; My figur'd goblets for a dish of wood; My sceptre for a palmer's walking staff; My subjects for a pair of carved saints; And my large kingdom for a little grave, A little, little grave, an obscure grave:— Or I'll be buried in the King's highway, Some way of common trade, where subjects' ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... high, made of costly marble and carved with the images of the gods who formed the council of Zeus on Olympus. The feet of the god rested on a footstool supported by lions, and with the combat of Theseus and the Amazons in a bas-relief on the front and sides. In one hand Zeus held the sceptre, and in the other a winged Victory. His head was crowned with a laurel wreath; his mantle, falling from one shoulder, left his breast bare and covered the lower part of his person with its ample folds of pure gold enamelled with flowers. The ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... the prince, at last, "since you absolutely refuse to ascend the throne with me, I abandon it and all royal power in order to live with you as before in solitude and happiness. Without your sweet presence, the sceptre would be a heavy burden; with you at my side, our little farm will be a paradise! Say, dear Violette, shall it ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur

... Romans lay, until the tide of Greek Art broke on them after the fall of Syracuse, wholly under the influence of the Etruscans.... Etruria gave them kings, augurs, doctors, mimes, musicians, boxers, runners; the royal purple, the royal sceptre, the fasces, the curule chair, the Lydian flute, the straight trumpet, and the curved trumpet. The education of a Roman youth received its finishing touches in Etruria: Tuscan engineers had girt Rome with walls; Tuscan engineers ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... and prepare yourselves; for the elder among you are to be kings, and the younger princes." As he said this, they saw near each pillar a throne, and on each throne a silken robe, and on each robe a sceptre and crown; and near each pyramid a seat raised three feet from the ground, and on each seat a massive gold chain, and the ensigns of an order of knighthood, fastened at each end with diamond clasps. After this they heard a voice, saying, "Go ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... or of those otherwise illustrious in their day. My recollection of what I saw here is very dim and confused; more so than I anticipated. I remember somewhere within the choir the tomb of Edward II. with his effigy upon the top of it, in a long robe, with a crown on his head, and a ball and sceptre in his hand; likewise, a statue of Robert, son of the Conqueror, carved in Irish oak and painted. He lolls in an easy posture on his tomb, with one leg crossed lightly over the other, to denote that he was a Crusader. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... very expensive, and easily managed."—Education Reporter. "The conspiracy was the more easily discovered, from its being known to many."—Murray's Key, ii, 191. "That celebrated work had been nearly ten years published, before its importance was at all understood."—Ib. p. 220. "The sceptre's being ostensibly grasped by a female hand, does not reverse the general order of Government."—West's Letters to a Lady, p. 43. "I have hesitated signing the Declaration of Sentiments."—Liberator, x, 16. "The prolonging of men's lives when the world needed to be peopled, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... Yet by common consent, in which Mr. Polk had gracefully concurred in advance, it was admitted that he was not available for re-election. He had sown the dragon's teeth, and the armed men who sprang forth wrested his sceptre from him. But it would not be candid to ascribe his disability solely to events connected with the war. He had pursued the most unwise course in dealing with the New-York Democracy, and had for himself hopelessly divided the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... looking into the mirror. MEPHISTOPHELES stretching himself out on the settle and playing with the brush, continues speaking.] Here sit I like a king upon his throne, The sceptre in my hand,—I want ...
— Faust • Goethe

... ship captain for two thousand pounds, and by him it was resold to a Jew for twelve thousand pounds. From him it was transferred for a large sum to the Greek merchant. This diamond now surmounts the imperial sceptre. ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... of Italy being placed exclusively beneath her control. Austria united too many and too diverse nations beneath her sceptre to be able to pursue a policy pre-eminently German, and found it more convenient to round off her territories by the annexation of Upper Italy than by that of distant Lorraine, at all times a possession ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... which amid the Alps would be buried in an avalanche of snow, but within the tropics enjoys an eternal spring, palaces more beautiful than the Alhambra were erected, glittering with the gold and emerald of the Andes. But all this splendor passed away with the sceptre of Atahuallpa. Where the pavilion of the Inca stood is now a gloomy convent, and a wheat-field takes the place of the ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... right, and ex debito justitiae. The crown, if every other resource has failed the prisoner, has always the power of exercising the most amiable of its prerogatives. Though the sovereign herself condemns no man, "the great operation of her sceptre is mercy," and the chief magistrate, in the words of Sir William Blackstone, "holding a court of equity in his own breast, to soften the rigour of the general law, in such criminal cases as merit an exemption from punishment," is ever at liberty to grant a free, unconditional, and gracious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... matter of offence may be one finds it difficult to discover. Mr Balfour very properly characterises as the utterance of a statesman, this passage in which Parnell declines to usurp the throne and sceptre of Providence. But Mr Smith complains that it deprives Home Rule of the note of "finality." With the suggestion that Home Rule is not at all events the end of the world we are, of course, in warm agreement. But if Mr Smith has entered public affairs in pursuit of static ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... himself.] Mark your divorce, young sir, Whom son I dare not call; thou art too base To be acknowledged: thou a sceptre's heir, That thus affects a sheep-hook!—Thou, old traitor, I am sorry that, by hanging thee, I can but Shorten thy life one week.—And thou, fresh piece Of excellent witchcraft, who of force must know The royal fool ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare

... trains, crowns, ball, and sceptre were put together in the corner of the dell, and then the king and the queen were ready for a good game of play with the rest of ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various

... all, the power of the magistrate worketh only politically or civilly, according to the nature of the sceptre or sword, maketh and guardeth civil laws, which sometimes also he changeth or repealeth, and other things of that kind he effecteth with a secular power: but the ecclesiastical power dealeth spiritually, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... (notably at universities). True dignity is content to prevent the domination of the affections, to keep the instinct within just limits, but there only where it pretends to be master in the involuntary movements; false dignity regulates with an iron sceptre even the voluntary movements, it oppresses the moral movements, which were sacred to true dignity, as well as the sensual movements, and destroys all the mimic play of the features by which the soul gleams forth upon the face. It arms itself ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... chariots of Marius and Caesar, had long mouldered into dust. The laurelled fasces—the golden eagles—the shouting legions—the captives and the pictured cities—were indeed wanting to his victorious procession. The sceptre had passed away from Rome. But she still retained the mightier influence of an intellectual empire, and was now to confer the prouder reward of an intellectual triumph. To the man who had extended the dominion of her ancient language—who had erected the trophies of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... new problems and the new posture of their affairs they might have led both races into the promised land of freedom and peace and Southern industrial expansion and greatness. Had they seized their golden opportunity for progressive and constructive statesmanship, the sceptre of their ascendency in the governments of their section could not have been wrested from them by another class of whites, risen since the war, who distrust and hate them, but they might instead have transmitted their ascendency undiminished to their descendants, who ought ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke

... wrought with pen and tongue, and pined in dungeons, and died on scaffolds, that you might obtain this symbol of freedom, and enjoy this consciousness of a sacred individuality. To the ballot have been transmitted, as it were, the dignity of the sceptre and the potency of the sword. And that which is so potent as a right, is also pregnant as a duty; a duty for the present and for the future. If you will, that folded leaf becomes a tongue of justice, a voice of order, a force of imperial law; securing ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... theology became professors of a faith which announced that Portugal was soon to be the head of the Fifth and Universal Monarchy; Sebastian was speedily to come from the Secret Island; the Queen would resign the sceptre into his hands; he would give Bonaparte battle near Evora, on the field of Sertorius, slay the tyrant, and become monarch of ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... that the king was coming to wait upon him, and desired to have a token of peace, and assurance of safe conduct. This being given to their satisfaction, the whole train began to move towards the admiral, in good order, and with a graceful deportment. In front came a very comely person, bearing the sceptre before the king, on which hung two crowns, and two chains of great length. The crowns were made of net-work, ingeniously interwoven with feathers of many colours, and the chains were made of bones. Next to the sceptre-bearer came ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... child this day is born, A child of great renown; Most worthy of a sceptre. A sceptre and ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... this side and that; {137} but it is always twisting, in its own inner mind and force; hence it is especially proper to use the word 'stem' of it—[Greek: stemma], a twined wreath; properly, twined round a staff, or sceptre: therefore, learn at once by heart these ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... wounded or young, or could not easily be carried with them. They took all the goods that were in the castle; went into the Cross church, and plundered it of all its ornaments. The priest Andres gave King Rettibur a silver-mounted gilt sceptre, and to his sister's son Dunimiz he gave a gold ring. They supposed from this that he was a man of great importance in the town, and held him in higher respect than the others. They took away with them the holy cross, and also the tables ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... to break thick heads with his golden sceptre, "but ordinary people have neither your intellect nor your charity. No one heeds our sorrows, our toil is unrecognized. The gold-digger working in the mine does not labor as we to wrest metaphors from the heart of the most ungrateful of all languages. If this is ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... slab in the floor on which are the words CAROLO MAGNO, indicating the spot where the tomb of Charlemagne was located. It was probably a little chapel above ground. It was opened in 1165, and the body was found sitting on a throne, clothed in imperial robes, a sceptre in the hand, and a copy of the Gospels on the knee. The crown was on the bony brow, and his sword and other articles near him. All these relics were subsequently used at the coronation of the emperors, but are now kept at Vienna, except the throne, ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... His words were noble, good, and wise; With the calm sceptre of his pen He ruled the minds and thoughts of men; Some scoffed, some praised—while many heard, Only a few obeyed ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... immovable, like beings of another world. For some time they gazed in awe at this strange sight, till at length one of the Gauls ventured to go up to M. Papirius and stroke his white beard. The old man struck him on the head with his ivory sceptre; whereupon the barbarian slew him, and all the rest were massacred. The Gauls now began plundering the city; fires broke out in several quarters; and with the exception of a few houses on the Palatine, which ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... the masculine sceptre cease to sway, And to a spinster the whole land obey; Who to the Papal monarchy shall restore All that the Ph[oe]nix had fetched thrice before. Then shall come in the faggot and the stake, And they ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... would have a sceptre, a symbol of dignity, to play with; the girl, a tile, the symbol of woman's work, as, sitting with a tile on her knee, she twists the threads ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... read the Bible; yet was he fond of gaudy mummeries, fond of talking about them. Did he believe that the Stuarts were a good family, and fit to govern a country like Britain? He knew that they were a vicious, worthless crew, and that Britain was a degraded country as long as they swayed the sceptre; but for those facts he cared nothing, they governed in a way which he liked, for he had an abstract love of despotism, and an abhorrence of everything savouring of freedom and the rights of man in general. His favourite political picture was a joking, profligate, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... way, to call himself the Autocrat of the table,—meaning, I suppose, that he had it all his own way among the boarders. I think our small boarder here is like to prove a refractory subject, if I undertake to use the sceptre my friend meant to bequeath me, too magisterially. I won't deny that sometimes, on rare occasions, when I have been in company with gentlemen who preferred listening, I have been guilty of the same kind of usurpation which my friend openly justified. But I maintain, that I, the Professor, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... advantages for bearing the orator's sceptre were a voice of singular fulness, depth, and variety of tone; a falcon's eye with strange imperious flash; features mobile, expressive, and with lively play; a great actor's command of gesture, bold, sweeping, natural, unforced, without exaggeration or a trace ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... she had a full right to be called if she cared for the definition, arrested all the local attention when she emerged into the summer-evening light with that diadem-and-sceptre bearing—many people for reasons of heredity discovering such graces only in those whose vestibules are lined with ancestral mail, forgetting that a bear may be taught to dance. While this air of hers lasted, even the inanimate ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... King of England. It was indeed and, alas! a novelty. How many, counting back to the day when the country first knew a ruler, could be so described? Had not the sceptre of England passed, almost without exception, down a line of usurpers, murderers, robbers, and butchers, and was it not a fact that the few kings who had not been knaves had ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... dirty, and swarming with cockroaches. They were towed by three horses, ridden by three men. In England one would have answered the purpose. The Canal itself is an extraordinary work, worthy of the country of the Pyramids, and one of the prodigies which despotism sometimes exhibits when the iron sceptre is combined with a vigorous intellect. It is ninety feet wide and forty-eight miles long, and yet was completed in six weeks. But it took the labour of 250,000 men, who worked, if the story be true, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... before-dawn chill from the air without having swallowed all the diamonds that spangle bush and twig and grass-blade after a night's soaking rain, it is good to ride over the hills of Idaho and feel oneself a king,—and never mind the crown and the sceptre. Lone Morgan, riding early to the Sawtooth to see the foreman about getting a man for a few days to help replace a bridge carried fifty yards downstream by a local cloudburst, would not have changed places with a millionaire. The ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... over the circle of anxious faces and realized, more than at any time in her young life, that she was frail and weak beyond all comparison. How small she was to rule over those strong, wise men of hers; how feeble the hand that held the sceptre. ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... that if you could have ruled without the Gospel, it would have been doubtful whether the Gospel should be established or not; for now that you are established in your throne by the Gospel, you suffer it to reach no farther than the end of your sceptre limiteth unto it." Of a milder, and more melancholy cast, is the touching language, when the hope of life, but not the firmness of his cause had deserted him. "I look not to live this week to an end. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... sanctions Love; Your charter is more liberal. Let that pass. I am no stranger to my duty, sir, And read it thus. The blood that shares my sceptre Should be august as mine. A woman loses In love what she may gain in rank, who tops Her husband's place; though throned, I would exchange An equal glance. His name should be a spell . To rally soldiers. Politic he should be; And skilled in climes ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli

... I remember, The homely village school, The dame with spelling book and rod, The sceptre ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... being in England in the spring. If there is a row, by the sceptre of King Ludd, but I'll be one; and if there is none, and only a continuance of 'this meek, piping time of peace,' I will take a cottage a hundred yards to the south of your abode, and become your neighbour; and we will ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... had been in his mind; to him it seemed natural that at the consummation of all things Christ's Vicar should dwell at Nazareth where His King had come on earth—and that the Armageddon of the Divine John should be within sight of the scene where Christ had first taken His earthly sceptre and should take it again. After all, it would not be the first battle that Megiddo had seen. Israel and Amalek had met here; Israel and Assyria; Sesostris had ridden here and Sennacherib. Christian and Turk had contended here, like Michael and Satan, over the place where God's ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... the Cubo Sama then being, beholding the sceptre of Japan in the hands of a Dairy, who was cowardly and effeminate, revolted from him, and got possession of the regal dignity. His design was to have reduced the whole estate under his own dominion; but he was ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... When the sceptre passed from Federalist to Republican in 1801, Hamilton gave himself to his profession with renewed zeal, earning fifteen thousand dollars a year, and a reputation as a lawyer scarcely surpassed by Daniel Webster. "In creative ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... both of Scotland and of Ireland which might well excite the painful apprehensions of a farsighted statesman. As yet, however, there was the appearance of tranquillity. For the first time all the British isles were peaceably united under one sceptre. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... been my most earnest desire to insure the happiness of all classes of the subjects whom divine Providence has placed under my imperial sceptre; and since my accession to the throne I have not ceased to direct all my efforts to the ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson

... pillars of the French throne became a heap of coals, which it was impossible to distinguish from those of any other wood. Let me add, however, that I noticed one of the exiled Poles stirring up the bonfire with the Czar of Russia's sceptre, which he afterwards ...
— Earth's Holocaust (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... stringently and laboriously imposed by custom and police on Roman poetry stifled its very breath, Not without reason might Naevius declare the position of the poet under the sceptre of the Lagidae and Seleucidae enviable as compared with his position in free Rome.(23) The degree of success in individual instances was of course determined by the quality of the original which was followed, and by the talent of the individual editor; but ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... magnificently, that foreigner or native, without any expense, is free, if he can find a chair empty, to dine at his table, where there is always the greatest plenty. When the mayor goes out of the precincts of the city, a sceptre, a sword, and a cap, are borne before him, and he is followed by the principal aldermen in scarlet gowns, with gold chains; himself and they on horseback. Upon their arrival at a place appointed for that purpose, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... we for ever be the dupes of superstition, or the slaves of upstart authority? Are we doomed never to enjoy, in the ascendancy of our benevolent sympathies, a medium between the bigotry of the Crozier, the pride of the Sceptre, and the cruelty ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips



Words linked to "Sceptre" :   reign, staff, scepter, verge, bauble



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