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Sheen   Listen
verb
Sheen  v. i.  To shine; to glisten. (Poetic) "This town, That, sheening far, celestial seems to be."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sheen" Quotes from Famous Books



... interest. High overhead, dimly visible through the tops of the trees, the sky wears an almost supernatural aspect during these long summer nights. A soft golden glow flushes upward from the horizon, and, lying outspread over the firmament, gives a spectral effect to the gentler and more delicate sheen of the moon; the stars seem to shrink back into the dim infinity, as if unable to contend with the grosser effulgence of the great orbs that rule the day and the night. Unconscious whether the day is waning into the night, or the night into the morning, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... man's gaze have rested on a scene more rich and bright: Agate and porphyry—precious gems—cedar and ivory white, Marbles of perfect sheen and hue, sculptures and tintings rare, With sandal wood and frankincense perfuming all ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... one; and you look down into the basin in which Rome reposes, where many a cupola, and tower, and pillared facade, rises proudly out of the red roofs that cover the Campus Martius. If it is toward sunset, you can see the sheen of the villas which are sprinkled over the Sabine and Volscian hills, and are much struck with the fine amphitheatre which the mountains around the city form. What must have been the magnificence of ancient Rome, with her seven ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... the moonlight sheen, Whisper dimly in the ears Of the flowers words so sweet That their hearts are turned to musk And to honey; things that beat In their veins of gold and blue: Ouphes, that shepherd moths of dusk— Soft of wing and gray of hue— Forth to ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

... the straight column-like boles of eighty feet, and on amidst topes of wild mango and wild date, down, down, to the lower levels where the dhak jungles gave way to feathery bamboo and plantain and waving grass, the sun, like a great ball of molten gold, was splashing its yellow sheen upon the waters of a stream that ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... After their retirement to Sheen and Moor Park, Surrey, we know nothing distinctively of Lady Temple, and little is known of their family life. They had only two children living, having lost as many as seven in their infancy. In 1684 one of these children, their only daughter, died ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... when the shawes be sheen, And leaves be large and long, It is full merry in fair forest To hear the fowles song; To see the deer draw to the dale, And leave the hilles hee, And shadow them in the leaves green Under ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... projecting spur or platform shaded by a few grandiose umbrella pines. Near at hand, on a slightly lower level, rose a group of flame—like cypresses whose shapely outlines stood out against the sea, shining far below like a lake of pearl. The milky sheen of morning, soon to be dispelled by the breeze, still hung about the water and distant continent—it trembled upon the horizon in bands of translucent opal. His eye roved round the undulating garden, full of sunlight ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... dark cloak and hat, she ran downstairs and out into the avenue. Lady Arabella had moved, but the sheen of her white dress was still to be seen among the young oaks around the gateway. Keeping in shadow, Mimi followed, taking care not to come so close as to awake the other's suspicion, and watched her quarry pass along the road in the ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker

... Victory-famed king, throughout the wide crowd, If any there were, elder or younger, Who him in truth was able to tell, 160 Make known by speech, what the god were, The giver of glory,[5] "whose beacon this was, That seemed me so sheen, and saved my people, Brightest of beacons, and gave to me glory, War-speed against foes, through that beautiful tree." 165 They him any answer at all were unable To give in reply, nor could they full well Clearly declare of that victory-sign. Then did the wisest speak out in words Before ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous

... In the lurid sheen of them she saw the lad leap from his rock and rush towards her. A flash fell and split a boulder not thirty paces from him, causing him to stagger, but he recovered himself and ran on. Now he was quite close, but the water was closer ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... sea Answers to the Eastern sky; Wide and featured gloriously With swift billows bursting high. Nearer, nearer, oh! the sheen On a thousand waves at once! Oh! the changing crowding green! Oh ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... after sundown, and he came up to the house, hot, dusty, his shirt wringing wet with sweat, and his neck aching with the work of looking down all day at the cornrows. His mood was still stern. The multitudinous lift, and stir, and sheen of the wide green field ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... her fascination we are not critics, but lovers. We see the pathos, not the scars of her desolation, and the splendor of her past is too much a part of her to be forgotten, though the gold is dim upon her palace-fronts, and the sheen of her precious marbles has lost its bloom, and the colors of the laughing Giorgione have ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... sat laving her feet in the genial waters of the Pacific, her lap verdant with beautiful foliage and delicious fruits; her head raised with peerless majesty to brilliant skies, while sunbeams playing upon a brow encircled by eternal snows reflected a sheen of glorious splendor; when, conscious of her immense wealth in coal, minerals, and fisheries, her delightful climate and geographical position, she bid for commercial supremacy. It is said of States, as of women, they are "fickle, coy and hard to please." For, changed ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... 1831, half-past-ten.—On Friday last Lord Grey sent for Tom. His note was received too late to be acted on that day. On Saturday came another, asking him to East Sheen on that day, or Sunday. Yesterday, accordingly, he went, and stayed the night, promising to be here as early as possible to-day. So much depends upon the result of this visit! That he will be offered a place I have not the least doubt. He will refuse a Lordship ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... notes of the song suited the sunshiny weather, the sheen of the river, the azure skies. A light wind brought from the orchard a vagrant troop of pink and white petals to camp upon the silken sleeve of Mistress Evelyn Byrd. The gentleman sitting beside her gathered them up and gave ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... Already the evening was approaching, and as we had not found water during the day, we were eagerly looking out for a stream or pond at which we and our animals might quench our thirst. The sun was shining brightly, and, late in the day as it was, the heat was considerable. Presently I caught the sheen of water, but it appeared to be much below the level on which we were riding. I pointed it out to Mr Tidey, and as we galloped on we saw the summit ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston

... rise upon wings of a sapphire sheen, and toss myself up in the wind and shake down showers of golden light into thy wondering ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair

... a tremor through the vessel, which ceased when the anchor touched bottom, and they rode head to wind. Coruscations of bluish light seemed to play about the masts, and balls of electric fire tipped the yards, throwing for a short time a ghastly sheen over the ship and crew, for the profound darkness had again settled down, owing, no doubt, to another choking ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... brilliancy and sheen of day With youthful hours have faded all away; What though the fresh and roseate bloom of spring A fragrance in our path no more shall fling; Yet there's a foretaste pure of joys divine, A quiet, holy calm in life's decline, A moonlight of the soul in mercy ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney

... the town by the east road, proceeded to the second, or stone bridge, and thence struck into this path of solitude, following its course beside the stream till the dark shapes of the Ten Hatches cut the sheen thrown upon the river by the weak lustre that still lingered in the west. In a second or two he stood beside the weir-hole where the water was at its deepest. He looked backwards and forwards, and no creature appeared in view. He then took off his ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... it mean? She caught now, as her eyes were more used to the darkness, the sheen of light upon a peaked cap such as would be worn by a chauffeur. It filled her mind that this man was in uniform. But if so, why? From whom should the letter come? He ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... a dark ashen grey, or smoky brown color in others. Sometimes the cap is entirely smooth, as I have seen it in some of the silvery grey forms, where the delicate fibres coursing down in lines on the outer surface cast a beautiful silvery sheen in the light. Other forms present numerous small scales on the top or center of the cap which are formed by the cleavage of the outer surface here into large numbers of pointed tufts. In others, the delicate tufts cover more or less the entire surface, giving the plant a coarsely granular aspect. ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... the sheen of the sound, he spied a curious black mark, far out and vague. Gradually it seemed to steal nearer, till Estein, looking at it keenly, forgot his thoughts in a rising curiosity. Then it took shape, and faintly across the water came the splash of oars ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston

... serene, Crowns ever with fresh laurels, nor less green Than garlands dewy from your verdurous prime; Heir of the riches of the whole world's rhyme, Dow'r'd with the Doric grace, the Mantuan mien, With Arno's depth and Avon's golden sheen; Singer to whom the singing ages climb, Convergent;—if the youngest of the choir May snatch a flying splendour from your name Making his page illustrious, and aspire For one rich moment your regard to claim, Suffer him at your feet to lay his lyre And touch ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... beautiful trees, the "kai-kateas" with persistent leaves and red berries; "dracaenas australis," the "ti-trees" of the natives, whose crown is a graceful counterpart of the cabbage-palm, and "huious," which are used to give a black dye to cloth. Large doves with metallic sheen on their plumage, and a world of starlings with reddish carmeles, flew away at the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... the dais seat?" The father loudly cried. "She hath not finished her robing yet," A lady quick replied. And now a shout rang all about, Ho! ho! there comes apace, A Cataphract[A] of noble mien, With armour bright as silver sheen, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... of, that lies around you in the golden sunset like a dream of a fairy landscape. See how the slanting rays just tip the crest of that distant ridge, making it glow like a coronet of gold, and then, leaping into the river beneath; spangle its bosom with dazzling sheen, save where a part rests in the purple shadow of the mountain. Look to the right, and see how those crimson clouds seem bending from heaven to kiss the yellow corn-fields that stretch along the horizon. ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... her red velvet gown; her eyes have a greenish sheen. Her upper lip is slightly raised. One glimpses her teeth and marvels at their whiteness. The face is fresh and the complexion clear. Her beautiful forehead is not hidden beneath her hair; she carries it sweetly and candidly, like a nun. A couple of rings flash on her fingers. She breathes ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... been his truest friends. These things I can only imagine. But that fine promises have been made to him, that pictures of plenty have been unfolded to his gaze, that the glitter of gold and the sheen of silver have dazzled his young eyes, there can be little doubt. So he has seen visions and dreamed dreams, at will; he has endured terrible temptations, and fought great moral battles, by special request, ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... Madame Guix and I sought a moment's rest in the open. A door in the corridor led out into a lovely old-world garden, surrounded on four sides by a delicately plastered cloister. The harvest moon shone down, covering everything with a silver sheen, and such quiet and calm reigned that it was almost impossible to believe that we were not visitors to some famous landscape, leisurely enjoying a ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard

... light instead of resting on the surface, and the opposite lighthouse spreads its cloth of gold across the bay,—I can imagine that I discern the French and English vessels just weighing anchor; I see De Lauzun and De Noailles embarking, and catch the last sheen upon their lace, the last glitter of their swords. It vanishes, and I see only the lighthouse gleam, and the dark masts of a sunken ship across the neighboring island. Those motionless spars ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... honey heaves Him blinded midst the underleaves. For raiment, Fays shall weave for thee— Out of the phosphor of the sea And the frayed floss of starlight, spun With counterwarp of the firm sun— A vesture of such filmy sheen As, through all ages, never queen Therewith strove truly to make less One fair line of her loveliness. Thus gowned and crowned with gems and gold, Thou shalt, through centuries untold, Rule, ever young and ever fair, As ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley

... the Arabian warriors see themselves and dress themselves in their swords as in a glass, so did Valiant-for-truth see the thoughts and intents, the joints and the marrow of his own disordered soul in his Jerusalem blade. In the sheen of it he could see himself even when the darkness covered him; and with its two edges all his after-life he slew both all real error in other men and all real evil in himself. "Thou hast done well," said Greatheart the guide. "Thou hast resisted unto blood, striving ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... are staggered at the scene, That splendour so unspeakably intense, And dazzled by its brilliancy of sheen, The senses reel with its magnificence; Below the surgy yeast was boiling, whence Rose on the summer air its restless roar, It smote the broken cliff's bold battlements, Unmoted like the warriors of yore, And plunged upon the moss-clad ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... ear to listen to the roll of battle at Westminster. I am often distraught between the attractions of interludes in the lives of CINCINNATUS and of WILLIAM OF ORANGE's great Minister. Of the two I think I am more drawn towards the rose-garden at Sheen than by CINCINNATUS's unploughed land. Before I die I should like to create a new rose and call it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various

... what appeared a shower of bluish pearls suddenly projected underneath the water, and enveloping both the dead body of the sailor and the living form of the shark. Through the dimness could be distinguished gleams of a pale phosphoric sheen like lightning flashes through a sky cloud; and soon after froth and bubbles rose effervescing upon the surface of ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... slowly to the window and looked down the fair prospect of the hillside over a forest of cork oaks alive with fresh green shoots to the silver sheen of the river a mile away. The storms of the preceding week had spent their fury—the travail that had attended the birth of Spring—and the day was as fair as a day of June in England. Weaned forth by the generous sunshine, the ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... knolls, the score or two of little haycocks dotting the meadow, the loaded-up wagons, the patient horses, the slow-strong action of the men and pitchforks—all in the just-waning afternoon, with patches of yellow sun-sheen, mottled by long shadows—a cricket shrilly chirping, herald of the dusk—a boat with two figures noiselessly gliding along the little river, passing under the stone bridge-arch—the slight settling haze of aerial moisture, the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... to any consideration save that of artistic endeavor. With a swift accuracy that was nearly marvelous he put on the canvas the sheen of faultless limbs and slender neck. He even secured the spun-gold glint of hair tightly coifed under a bathing cap—a species of head-dress which had puzzled him at the first glance—and there was more than a suggestion of a veritable portrait of the regular, lively and delicately ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... would think it was a shower of pearls that were set in his mouth; his lips were rubies; his symmetrical body was as white as snow; his cheek was like the mountain ash-berry; his eyes were like the sloe; his brows and eye-lashes were like the sheen of ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... a greyish sheen in certain lights; snout nude; eyes apparently wanting. Jerdon says there is no perforation of the integument over the eyes, but this I doubt, and think that by examination with a lens an opening would be discovered, as in the case of the Apennine mole, which M. Savi considered ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... day's fair sheen,— Soon fouled and spoiled By the storm's spite, Shows to the sight ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... many, and perhaps no man does. They are of all shapes and sizes, and the majority of them are handsomely wooded. The sombre green of the woods, stretching between the sombre blue-green of the water and the opaline sheen of the sky, forms a picture—a momentary picture,—the chief features of which change almost as suddenly and quite as completely as the transformations in a kaleidoscope. We are forever turning corners; and no sooner are we around ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... into the shouting, onsweeping throng. He was borne swiftly with it down a broad avenue lined with grand old trees and decked with flying flags and streamers, to the margin of a noble river, as still as liquid amber in the wide sheen and heat of the noonday sun. A splendid marble embankment, adorned with colossal statues, girdled it on both sides,—and here, under silken awnings of every color, pattern and design, an enormous multitude was assembled,—its white attired, closely packed ranks stretching ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... overwhelming in its richness, was so carelessly arranged, that no one could doubt it was all her own; it was almost golden, but with such a bright sheen, that at every motion sparks seemed to start from its dark masses. Her large, soft eyes were overshadowed by long lashes; and as she now opened them wide, and now half closed them again, they changed from the ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... made glad the hearts of those who had in faith dropped their seed into the brown soil, and the whole earth, down to the sun-kissed edge of the sea, rejoiced with a great joy. Nor was the sea less lovely, with the silvery sheen of early summertide on its placid bosom, and the white wings of many boats glistening in ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... some of those Pagan rites forbidden to the monarchs by the revised constitution. His successor, MURKERTACH, son of Ere, was a professed Christian, though a bad one, since he died by the vengeance of a concubine named Sheen, (that is, storm,) whom he had once put away at the instance of his spiritual adviser, but whom he had not the courage—though brave as a lion in battle—to keep away (A.D. 527). TUATHAL, "the Rough," succeeded and reigned for seven years, when he was assassinated by ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... drifted away, the sun came back, the sunshine was like gold that had been washed and polished. The landscape smiled with a new radiance, gay as if it had never gloomed. The grass was greener, the flowers were brighter, the birds sang louder and clearer. The sea, with its shimmer and sheen, was like blue silk; the sky was like blue velvet. The trees lifted up their arms, greedy for the returned light and warmth, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... and soon Like a broadened moon It passes in sheen Aso'pus green, And bursts in Cithae'ron gray. The warden wakes to the signal rays, And it swoops from the hills with a broader blaze: On—on the fiery glory rode— Thy lonely lake, Gorgo'pis, glowed— To Meg'ara's mount it came; They feed it again, And it streams amain— A giant beard of flame! ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... plunged sheer into deep water below. The river narrowed down at the brink, and the volume of water was stupendous. The drop was over one hundred feet. The water was of the colour of strong tea, and as it fell it drew over its brown sheen a lovely, creamy fleece of foam. Tight little curls of spray puffed out of the falling water like jets of smoke, and, spreading and descending, merged into the white cloud that rolled about the foot of the falls. This cloud itself billowed up in successive undulations like full draperies, only ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... gorgeous trappings of the horses glistened in the sunbeams, pennons and banners flashed and fluttered in the wind, and the axes, and morions, and gorgets of polished steel, surging and plunging, as the chargers reared, made the Christian army appear like a billowy sea of silver sheen. Before them stood a host of turbaned Moslems, defending the gates of Jerusalem. The crescents upon their turbans gleamed, and long lines of myriads of scimitars offered a barrier of naked steel against ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray

... Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars of the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... days Flora had gone singing through these woods, plucking a posy of wild flowers and finding a mirror in every pool, as young girls will; but now she trembled and was afraid. The rustling of the trees in the darkness, the hooting of an owl, the awful purity of the moonlight in the glades, the cold sheen of the water, were to her troubled conscience omens of judgment. Had it not been for the kindness of Peter Bruce, which was a pledge of human forgiveness, there would have been no heart in her to dare that wood, and it was with a sob of relief she escaped from the shadow and looked upon the ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... see the summer fields Not yet disrobed of all their green; While westerly, along the hills, Flame the first tints of frosty sheen. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... long to wait, or they either. They scarcely had thrown their lines into the calm, cold water in fact, before they drew in huge heavy fish, of a steel-grey sheen. And time after time the codfish let themselves be hooked in a rapid and unceasing silent series. The third man ripped them open with his long knife, spread them flat, salted and counted them, and piled up the lot—which upon their return would constitute their fortune—behind them, ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... by choice; one who had fought against Parthian and Jew, who had triumphed through Pannonia and made it his own; a general whose hair had whitened on the field; a consul who had frightened nations, was afraid of the sheen of that purple which dazzled, corroded and killed. He bore it, indeed, but at arm's-length. He kept himself free from the subtlety of its poison, from the microbes of Rome ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... stood up in his stirrups and looked ahead, hoping to catch the sheen of water. At last we began to have some uncomfortable suspicions that, although our black attendant professed to know the way, he had managed to lose it—a circumstance not at all unlikely to occur— and that we were wandering far out of our proper course. Though the sun was of some assistance, ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston

... the whole surface of the cascade; but he could see nothing but the glistening sheen of the water, and the mass of white foam where it broke ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... woodlands to the right of the pike and beyond it. Here the air was cool and light. As they ascended higher, and oaks gave place to chestnut and mountain-birch, wide views opened around and far beneath. In the south spread the green fields and red fallows of Clearwater, bathed in the sheen of the lingering sun. Miles away two white points were ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... a tartan sheen, 'Till half a leg was scrimply seen: And such a leg! my bonnie Jean Could only peer it; Sae straught, sae taper, tight, and clean, Nane ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... decision of a mother obliged to lay her eggs under exceptional conditions. With this object in view, I employed small jars, each baited with a bit of butcher's meat. The respective lids were made of different-coloured paper, of oil-skin, or of some of that tin-foil, with its gold or coppery sheen, which is used for sealing liqueur-bottles. On not one of these covers did the mothers stop, with any desire to deposit their eggs; but, from the moment that the knife had made the narrow slit, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... few softly whirling foam clusters. Light airs, perfumed with birch and balsam and warm scents of the sun-steeped sward, drew over the pool from time to time, wrinkling and clouding its glassy surface. Birds flew over it, catching the small flies to whom its sheen was a ceaseless lure. And huge dragon-flies, with long, iridescent bodies and great jewelled, sinister eyes, danced ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... fatigue and he was making the journey more rapidly than old Trimble Rogers, for all his cunning woodcraft, had been able to accomplish it. Almost at the end of his endurance, the plucky lad discerned the sheen of a broad water in the twilight and so came ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... was a hidden and roomy little house with hemlock tips drooping over its doorway for a curtain. "A pretty place for a den," I thought; "for no one could ever find you there." Then, as if to contradict me, a stray sunbeam found the spot and sent curious bright glintings of sheen and shadow dancing and playing under the fallen roots and trunk. "Beautiful!" I cried, as the light fell on the brown mold and flecked it with white and yellow. The sunbeam went away again, but seemed to leave its brightness behind it; for there were still the ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... down-hanging fringe, a tremendous curtain, ragged with inconceivable delicacy at the foot, between which, and the water-line, the peep o' day stared blankly. The whitish light, which made the sea look deathly cold, was changed to a silvery sheen where the hidden cliffs stood. From immaterial shadows, looming over the surf-line, the cliffs themselves brightened to an insubstantial fabric, an airy vision, ruddily flushed; till, finally, ever becoming more ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... walls shining in the sun, His garden trees all shadowy and green; He heard his rivulet's light bubbling run, The distant dog-bark; and perceived between The umbrage of the wood so cool and dun The moving figures, and the sparkling sheen Of arms (in the East all arm)—and various dyes Of colour'd ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... for some time; she was examining, with a newly acquired, but very intense interest, the texture of the sheen of the blouse which she was wearing. At last she raised her eyes, and saw how Ella was looking at ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore

... church. At one end of an aisle, Against a wall where mystic sunbeams smile Through painted windows, orange, blue, and gold, The Christ's unutterable charm behold. Upon the cross, adorned with gold and green, Long fluted golden tongues of sombre sheen, Like four flames joined in one, around the head And by the outstretched arms, their glory spread. The statue is of wood; of natural size Tinted; one almost sees before one's eyes The last convulsion of ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray

... ye desire, her eies are plaine; If Rubies, loe, hir lips be Rubyes sound; If Pearles, hir teeth be Pearles, both pure & round; If Yvorie, her forehead Yvory weene; If Gold, her locks with finest Gold abound; If Silver, her faire hands have Silver's sheen. ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... fifty yards or so in width, led from the scene of the disruption to the precipice against which the Ray had played. The face of the cliff itself seemed covered with a white coating or powder which gave it a ghostly sheen. Moreover, the rain had turned to snow and already the entire aspect of ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... declined, these all became lost in lightly timbered country. These grassy glades were fair to see, reminding one somewhat of Merrie England's glades and Sherwood forests green, where errant knight in olden days rode forth in mailed sheen; and memory oft, the golden rover, recalls the tales of old romance, how ladie bright unto her lover, some young knight, smitten with her glance, would point out some heroic labour, some unheard-of deed of fame; he must carve out with his ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... all this? The gulf seemed like a marble vase purposely rounded to receive the sea. The satin sheen of a flower, the soft luminous petals of the velvet orris with shimmering sunshine on their pearly borders, such are the images that fill the mind, and which accumulate in vain and are ever inadequate. The water at the base of these rocks is now a transparent emerald, reflecting ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... very obscure; inside, it was quite dark. Edit could see the outline of a large window and the white sheen of the clergyman's surplice; nothing ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... to be a pepper tree—an importation from China. It has a silky sheen, soft and rich. I saw some that had long red bunches of currant-like berries ambushed among the foliage. At a distance, in certain lights, they give the tree a pinkish tint ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Anoint our bodies with the fragrant oil, And plait our garlands gathered from the grave, And wear the wreaths that sprung from out the brave. But lo! night comes, the Mooa[371] woos us back, The sound of mats[372] are heard along our track; 30 Anon the torchlight dance shall fling its sheen In flashing mazes o'er the Marly's[373] green; And we too will be there; we too recall The memory bright with many a festival, Ere Fiji blew the shell of war, when foes For the first time were wafted in canoes.[fg] Alas! for them the flower of manhood bleeds; Alas! for them ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... and crests of the coast-hills in Southern California heighten these chameleon effects of the spring verdure; they are like nothing in nature except the glitter of a brilliant lizard in the sun or the iridescent sheen of a peacock's neck. ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... was the goal toward which this mass of flesh was striving so frantically? Above the apex of the pyramid, amid the sheen of the lightning, was revealed a vast figure, naked and indeterminate, dim and yet seeming of a denser texture than the most abysmal beasts, a figure at the same time human and serpentine, that twisted in attitudes of human anguish, yet appeared, like a maddened ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... was one lovely she-fish of about 23 lb., with a ventral fin literally as purple as the dorsal of a grayling, and for suggestions of pearls and opals, maiden blushes, and the like, nothing could have been more perfect than the sheen of this Tay salmon. In another hour the glory would have faded away. And all those fish had been taken by the net. The angler who was lusting for one of them under his rod spake not, and went ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... moment longer; then he took from his pocket a heavy object and dropped it upon the slope and it rolled over and over, down and down, until its metallic sheen was lost in ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns

... thinking of at her age; with her pretensions to a fine figure, an ethereal carriage, and beauty? And yet it must be admitted that her complexion is not made up. She has the sheen of the lily mingled with that of the rose, and her eyes exhibit a smiling vivacity which leaves our great coquettes of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... wheat field lies, A marvel of yellow and russet and green, That ripples and runs, that floats and flies, With the subtle shadows, the change, the sheen, That play in the golden hair of a girl,— A ripple of amber—a flare Of light sweeping after—a curl In the hollows like swirling feet Of fairy waltzers, the colors run To the western sun Through the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... flashed again to him, and he met it with his own. He felt himself standing cold and motionless in the moonlight. He saw her, wonderful, with the deep, shadowy eyes, and a silver sheen on her hair. And as he looked she released her hand and lifted it, with the other, to her hood. He saw the shiny hair darken and disappear—and then the lovely face with its sad eyes and ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... window to sniff in that damp, sweet scent of unseen flowers, to feel the white moonlight on her hand. She had often wished that, by some magic, the world might be enabled to spin out its whole time in such a gossamer, irradiant sheen as this—a sort of moon-haunted night-without-end, keeping you tingling with beautiful, ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... him like beautiful buttressed gates, so glistening that he half expected to see fantail pigeons puffing like white irises in the niches, and white peacocks with dark green feet stepping down the terraces, trailing a sheen ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... charger, who knows every movement of her mistress's hand. She is betrothed to the scion of a noble house, and will shortly be led to the hymeneal altar, when we shall attend as maids of honour, clad in the sheen of satin and glimmer of pearls. Gabriella, the second, is mignonne in stature, with a ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... night they ford the flood; With guns held high they silent press, Till shimmers the grass in their bayonets' sheen— On Morning's banks their ranks they dress; Then by the forests lightly wind, Whose waving boughs the pennons seem to bless, Borne by the cavalry ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... shoulder; Lash it fast, rolled tight like a log. The bundle falls, red shows the pali; The children shout, they scream in derision. 50 The a'o bird shrieks itself hoarse In wonder at the pa-u— Pa-u with a sheen like Hi'i-lawe falls, Bowed like the rainbow arch Of the rain ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... beheld the entrance. There was the ogre himself, high bred, almost handsome, as long as he was not too closely scrutinised, and on his arm the well-known figure, metamorphosed by delicately-tinted satin sheen and pearls, and still more by the gentle blushing gladness on the fair cheeks and the soft eyes that used to droop. Then followed a stately form in mulberry moire and point lace, leaning on Gerard's more especial abhorrence,—'that ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... willow and osier Flicker in diffident green; Now, when the poplars are rosier, When the first daisies are seen, And the windows of draper and hosier Are bright with their 'Varsity sheen. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 29, 1890 • Various

... square of darkness that yawned suddenly as to engulf us. Taking a torch, Atlamatzin led us down steps and along a broad passage beneath the temple and so into a vasty chamber where lay that which gave back the light he bore; everywhere about us was the sheen of gold. In ordered piles, in great heaps, in scattered pieces it lay, wrought into a thousand fantastic shapes, as idols, serpents, basins, pots and the like,—a ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... alive Wi' tother bells to meaeke the vive. But up at woone pleaece we come by, 'Twere hard to keep woone's two eyes dry; On Steaen-cliff road, 'ithin the drong, Up where, as vo'k do pass along, The turnen stile, a-painted white, Do sheen by day an' show by night. Vor always there, as we did goo To church, thik stile did let us drough, Wi' spreaden eaerms that wheel'd to guide Us each in turn to tother zide. An' vu'st ov all the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... Impurpled, well denoted our ascent. With all the heart, and with that tongue which speaks The same in all, an holocaust I made To God, befitting the new grace vouchsaf'd. And from my bosom had not yet upsteam'd The fuming of that incense, when I knew The rite accepted. With such mighty sheen And mantling crimson, in two listed rays The splendours shot before me, that I cried, "God of Sabaoth! that does prank them thus!" As leads the galaxy from pole to pole, Distinguish'd into greater lights and less, Its pathway, which the wisest fail to spell; So thickly studded, in the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... information," replied Stone. "From each of the three ships we received reports right up to the instant when the red area was approached. From each of the three came a vague description of the peculiarity of the ground ahead of them: it seems to glitter with a queer metallic sheen. Then, from each of the three, as they passed over the boundary—nothing! All radio communication ceased as abruptly as though they'd ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst

... of the fountain— Seen when earth was yet a child— Leaping, white-armed, from the mountain, Laughing, beckoning, water-wild, Sheen of mist her beauty veiling, Which she only half can hide, Garments o'er her white feet trailing, ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles

... were here! Yet the moon would lose her duty, Though her sheen be soft and clear, Softer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... sunk her to this trance, in which she lay like a creature flung on shore by the waves. She heard her brother's voice and Nevil's, and the pacing of their feet. She saw the long shaft of moonlight broken to zigzags of mellow lightning, and wavering back to steadiness; dark San Giorgio, and the sheen of the Dogana's front. But the visible beauty belonged to a night that had shivered repose, humiliated and wounded her, destroyed her confident happy half-infancy of heart, and she had flown for a refuge to hard feelings. Her predominant sentiment was anger; an anger that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... stretch of sea, acres in extent, was churned into white foam, looking like some fairy ice- or snow-field. Above this, at a height of about ten feet, glittered a palpitating silver canopy, almost blinding in its sparkle and its sheen. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... slope to the bluffs on that side, and to stand by the rude scaffolding whereon were bleaching the bones of some Dakota brave, could easily see the gleaming, glistening sides of the grand old peak, fully forty miles away,—all one sheen of frosty white that still defied the melting rays. Somebody was up there this very afternoon,—two somebodies. Their figures were blacked in silhouette against the sky close by the Indian scaffolding; but even at the distance one could see they ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King

... vision of Crystal de Cambray: of her blue eyes and soft fair hair, done up in a quaint mass of tiny curls; of the scarf of filmy lace which she always liked to wrap round her shoulders, and through the lace the pearly sheen of her skin, of her arms, and of her throat. The air around him had become pure and rarified: that horrible stench of powder and smoke and blood no longer struck his nostrils—it was roses, roses all around him—crimson roses—sweet and caressing and ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... whiteness of lawn and long, straight street and roofs of seeming marble. The burdened branches of crystal-coated trees swayed in the wind, and here and there, in the light cast from tall poles at long intervals apart, they gleamed in dazzling brilliance and flashing sheen. Past streets and houses on to open fields, her eyes, through the whirling, fast-falling snow, followed the Calverton road which led to Tree Hill, and in the darkness she saw the lights in the house twinkle faintly in the ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher

... fairy mere Embosomed in the leafy screen, And streaked with tints of heaven's sheen, Where'er the water's surface clear Bore not the hues of verdant light From myriad boughs on mountain height, Or near the shadowed banks were seen The sparkles that in circlets bright Told where ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... some salmon with the least possible delay, and hurry away. Windy nights were good for the sport, and I can still see the river lit up with the lumps of light that a torch makes in a high wind. The torches, of course, were used to attract the fish, which came swimming to the sheen, and were then speared. As little noise as possible was made; but though the men bit their lips instead of crying out when they missed their fish, there was a continuous ring of their weapons on the stones, and every irrepressible imprecation was echoed up and down the black glen. Two ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... V. the mother takes the "fruits" and places them upon the ground, "but when darkness set in, a light shone from them like the rays of a lamp or the sheen of the sun." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton



Words linked to "Sheen" :   sheeny, lustre, shine, refulgency, radiancy, luster, refulgence, effulgence, radiance, shininess



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