"Solstice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... though some English fruits will turn the winter solstice of Bengal (November to May) into summer, and then flower and fruit, neither these nor others will thrive in the summer of 7000 feet on the Sikkim Himalaya, (though its temperature so nearly approaches that of England,) on account of its rain and fogs. Further, they are ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... The white mill and the grey manor stood out with ghostly vividness in the light of the rising moon. Yet there were times innumerable when they looked like cool retreats for those who wanted rest; when, in the summer solstice, they offered the pleasant peace of the happy fireside. How often had Jean Jacques stood off from it all of a summer night and said to himself: "Look at that, my Jean Jacques. It is all yours, Manor and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a very literal and real sense, the creator-god in whom this world lives, moves and has its being; and he is the saviour-god who was born of a virgin nebula, and every winter descends into hell and rises from the dead (the southern solstice) by a new birth and ascends into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the father (the sky) at the northern solstice, and finally he is the illuminator god who lighteth every man that cometh into ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... golden-rods were the livery which nature wore at present. The latter alone expressed all the ripeness of the season, and shed their mellow lustre over the fields, as if the now declining summer's sun had bequeathed its hues to them. It is the floral solstice a little after midsummer, when the particles of golden light, the sun-dust, have, as it were, fallen like seeds on the earth, and produced these blossoms. On every hillside, and in every valley, stood countless asters, coreopses, tansies, golden-rods, and the whole race of yellow flowers, like ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... the winter solstice; then the bonders get ready to go fetch the fat beasts for slaughter from the island; so they manned a great barge, and every owner had one to go in his stead, ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... day towards the end of March when the hedgehog awoke. Gradually, since the winter solstice, the shadows of noon, cast from the wooded slope across the meadows in the glen, had become shorter; and now, when the sun reached its meridian, its beams fell directly on the spot where the hedgehog rested among the littered leaves. She felt the ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... by, each longer and more terrible to endure than the one before it as the heat steadily increased. Summer solstice arrived and there was no escape from the heat, even in the deepest caves. There was no night; the blue sun rose in the east as the yellow sun set in the west. There was no life of any kind to be seen, not even ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... send out another army and navy, drawn partly from the Athenians on the muster-roll, partly from the allies. The colleagues chosen for Nicias were Demosthenes, son of Alcisthenes, and Eurymedon, son of Thucles. Eurymedon was sent off at once, about the time of the winter solstice, with ten ships, a hundred and twenty talents of silver, and instructions to tell the army that reinforcements would arrive, and that care would be taken of them; but Demosthenes stayed behind to organize the expedition, meaning to start as soon as ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... with dazzling whiteness. The reader can judge of them by the accompanying figure, which sums up the author's observations during one of the recent oppositions of Mars (1900-1901). The size of the polar cap diminished from 4,680 kilometers to 840. The solstice of the Martian summer was on April 11th. The snows were still melting on July 6th. Sometimes they disappear almost entirely during the Martian month that corresponds to our month of August, as never happens with our polar ice. Hence, though this planet is farther away ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... the use of the Argonauts; and places the Solstitial and Equinoctial Points in the fifteenth degrees or middles of the Constellations of Cancer, Chelae, Capricorn, and Aries. Meton in the year of Nabonassar 316, observed the Summer Solstice in the eighth degree of Cancer, and therefore the Solstice had then gone back seven degrees. It goes back one degree in about seventytwo years, and seven degrees in about 504 years. Count these years back from the year of Nabonassar 316, and they will place the Argonautic ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... northern climate may fairly be said to extend from the middle of March to the middle of June. At least, the vernal tide continues to rise until the latter date, and it is not till after the summer solstice that the shoots and twigs begin to harden and turn to wood, or the grass to lose any ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... in 1408, and repaired by A.Ximines in 1756. The line drawn on the true pavement, under the present boarded floor, runs in a direction nearly at right angles to the nave (the nave being nearly east and west). It is only about 30 feet long, and receives the image of the sun, at and near the solstice, in June and July; at other seasons the image is lost on the sides of the cupola. The short diameter of the image in July is about 36 inches. The height of the aperture, through which the ray enters by a window of the cupolina, is 277 feet 4 inches, 9.68 lines French measure; so that, as the inscription ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... Dom Manuel, "Now Horvendile informs me that you were duly born in a cave at about the time of the winter solstice, of a virgin mother and of a ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... epoch of the two equinoxes. This arises from the great angle made by the magnetic meridian at this place, with the terrestrial meridian—the variation being by Barlow's tables, 30d to the westward. The sun varies in declination 47d throughout the year. At the southern solstice, therefore the radial stream strikes the circular current on the southern side, and deflects it towards the equator, rendering the declination to the westward in the morning; but at the northern solstice the radial stream strikes the current on its northern side, and the deflection is eastward ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... times. Our age has, in some sort, arrived at the summit of perfection. And since for some years the rate of the progress is much slower and appears almost insensible—as the days seem to cease lengthening when the solstice is near—it is pleasant to think that probably there are not many things for which we need ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... central Andes, never seems to have troubled writers who regarded Sacsahuaman essentially as a fortress. It may be that Sacsahuaman was once used as a place where the votaries of the sun gathered at the end of the rainy season to celebrate the vernal equinox, and at the summer solstice to pray for the sun's return from his "farthest north." In any case I believe that the enormous cost of its construction shows that it was probably intended for religious rather than military ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... gave way in a gradual, delicious coolness, which again mellowed at the edges, as it were, and dissolved in a gentle, tentative rain. But how far the rain might finally go, we did not stay to see: we had fled from the "anguish of the solstice," as we had felt it in London, and by the time the first shower insinuated itself we were in the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... determined to secure them for the night in the prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful name of the Black Hole. The space was only twenty feet square. The air-boles were small and obstructed. It was the summer solstice, the season when the fierce heat of Bengal can scarcely be rendered tolerable to natives of England by lofty hills and by the constant waving ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... lake, which is 32 feet above the level of the sea; Ben Venue, and Ben Ledy, or the hill of God, in Perthshire, 3,009 feet in height, so called from the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, in former times, meeting on its summit at the summer solstice, three days and nights for the purpose of devotion. These three mountains, with their vicinities are enshrined in Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake; and the village of Balquidder, at the foot of Ben Ledy, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... amusement open to the voyagers. They were near the coast and supplied with everything that could render their life comfortable in that latitude. They could take sleigh-rides and see in the distance the whales enjoying their diversions. The summer solstice was approaching. Since the fifteenth the occupants of the "Alaska" had beheld a new and astonishing spectacle, even for Norwegians and the natives of southern Sweden; it was the sun at midnight touching the horizon without disappearing and then mounting ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... upon the fell; Enough remains of glimmering light 5 To guide the wanderer's steps aright, Yet not enough from far to show His figure to the watchful foe. With cautious step, and ear awake, He climbs the crag and threads the brake; 10 And not the summer solstice there, Tempered the midnight mountain air, But every breeze that swept the wold, Benumbed his drenched limbs with cold. In dread, in danger, and alone, 15 Famished and chilled, through ways unknown, Tangled and steep, he journeyed ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... blazing at all the windows. The public places were as bright as at noonday. All the great avenues were barricaded. More than twenty thousand pikes and muskets lined the streets. The late daybreak of the winter solstice found the whole City still in arms. During many years the Londoners retained a vivid recollection of what they called the Irish Night. When it was known that there had been no cause of alarm, attempts were made to discover the origin of the rumour which had produced so much agitation. It appeared ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... In his approach to the northern solstice, the sun, having passed the equator on the 21st of March, reaches the south of Ceylon about the 5th of April, and ten days later is vertical over Point Pedro, the northern extremity of the island. On his return he is again over Point Pedro ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... intercalations, at the direction of the Sacred College. But the Sacred College during the last distracted century had neglected their office. The lunar year was now sixty-five days in advance of the sun. The so-called winter was really the autumn, the spring the winter. The summer solstice fell at the beginning of the legal September. On Caesar as Pontifex Maximus devolved the duty of bringing confusion into order, and the completeness with which the work was accomplished at the first moment of his leisure shows that he had found time ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... of antiquity[A] always had a tendency to worship the sun, under different names, as the giver of light and life. And their festivals in its honor took place near the winter solstice, the shortest day in the year, when the sun in December begins its upward course, thrilling men with the first distant promise of spring. This holiday was called Saturnalia among the Romans and was marked by great merriment and licence which extended even to the slaves. ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... its appropriate festival, or rather festivals. The four principal had reference to the Sun, and commemorated the great periods of his annual progress, the solstices and equinoxes. Perhaps the most magnificent of all the national solemnities was the feast of Raymi, held at the period of the summer solstice, when the Sun, having touched the southern extremity of his course, retraced his path, as if to gladden the hearts of his chosen people by his presence. On this occasion, the Indian nobles from the different ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... worship paramount and universal in England, Ireland and Scotland, as well as in Bretagne and the northwest of France. So thoroughly has the religion of Baal been fastened upon the peoples of these regions that portions of them at this day salute the arrival of the Summer Solstice, June twenty-fourth, with burning fires, the precise meaning of which is forgotten, but through those fires in all the early portions of the present century the inhabitants have jumped with their ...
— Prehistoric Structures of Central America - Who Erected Them? • Martin Ingham Townsend
... likewise purchased a Chaise fit for two, at least for two waiting-maids; further, certain necessary horses: one would say, he is himself quitting France, not without outlay? We observe finally that their Majesties, Heaven willing, will assist at Corpus-Christi Day, this blessed Summer Solstice, in Assumption Church, here at Paris, to the joy of all the world. For which same day, moreover, brave Bouille, at Metz, as we find, has invited a party of friends to dinner; but indeed is gone from home, in the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... in Peru is Piura (lat. 5 deg. S.), which was founded by Pizarro himself. The climate is very hot, especially in the three or four months following the southern solstice. In March 1843 the temperature only once fell as low as 83 deg. during the whole month, the usual lowest night temperature being 85 deg. . Yet people of all colours find it very healthy, and the whites are very prolific. I resided in the town itself nine months, and in the neighbourhood ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... yourselves from this province Be transported to other lands. God grant you may dwell there Ever as faithful subjects, a happy and peaceable people! Prisoners now I declare you; for such is his Majesty's pleasure!" As, when the air is serene in sultry solstice of summer, Suddenly gathers a storm, and the deadly sling of the hailstones Beats down the farmer's corn in the field and shatters his windows, Hiding the sun, and strewing the ground with thatch from the ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... true principles of astronomy have now taught us the reason why, at a certain latitude, the sun, at the summer solstice, appears never to set: and at a lower latitude, the evening ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... yourselves from this province Be transported to other lands. God grant you may dwell there Ever as faithful subjects, a happy and peaceable people! Prisoners now I declare you; for such is his Majesty's pleasure!" As, when the air is serene in the sultry solstice of summer, Suddenly gathers a storm, and the deadly sling of the hailstones Beats down the farmer's corn in the field and shatters his windows, Hiding the sun, and strewing the ground with thatch from the house-roofs, Bellowing fly the herds, and seek to break ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Owing to the position of the Earth's axis with regard to her orbit, the Sun appears to travel 23-1/2 deg. north and 23-1/2 deg. south of the equator. When, on June 21, the orb attains his highest northern altitude, we have the summer solstice and the longest days; when, by retracing his steps, he declines 23-1/2 deg. below the equator, at which point he arrives on December 21, we have the winter solstice and the shortest days. Intermediate between those two seasons ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... to be fulfilled; leaves bud, and ever Something is wanting, something falls behind; The flowered Solstice comes indeed, but never That light and lovely ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... replied, after a brief calculation. "You have just six months in all to live from that date. They will offer you up by Tu-Kila-Kila's hut the day the sun reaches the summer solstice." ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... depends on the occurrence of need and of danger. As soon as agriculture was engaged in, however, attention must have been fixed on the recurrence of the seasons, and the measures of time afforded by the moon must, at least, have been observed. The summer and the winter solstice, the equinoxes, the new moons, these were to the early cultivator epochs to be observed; and certain annual feasts are found to have come into use in very early times, epochs of man's simplest and earliest calendar, and occasions for tribal gatherings and for such fixed religious ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... Foerstemann the tortoise is the symbol of the summer solstice, as the snail, which occurs only as a head ornament in the manuscripts and not independently, is the symbol of the winter solstice; both, as the animals of slowest motion, represent the apparent standstill of ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... of peace and tranquillity. The expression takes its rise from a sea-fowl, called among naturalists halcyon, or alcyon, which is said to build its nest about the winter solstice, when the weather is usually observed to be still and calm. Aristotle and Pliny tell us that this bird is most common in the seas of Sicily, that it sat only a few days, and those in the depth of winter, and during that period the mariner might sail in full security; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... and harvesting, for determining the new year, and for fixing the dates of certain other ceremonial observances. By the aid of such devices as the native priests have at their command they are enabled to fix the date of the winter solstice with a fair degree of accuracy. Such rude determination of time was probably an aboriginal invention, and may have furnished the motive in other cases for placing stone pillars in such unusual positions. The explanation of the governor of Zui for a sun symbol seen on an upright ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... should fertilize, amend, As vernal storms the fields athwart. Youth freshens beneath Passion's showers, Develops and matures its powers, And thus in season the rich field Gay flowers and luscious fruit doth yield. But at a later, sterile age, The solstice of our earthly years, Mournful Love's deadly trace appears As storms which in chill autumn rage And leave a marsh the fertile ground And ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... And quickens in his arms.—All, all, but thou! For thou art single as the northern pole; As cold, as distant, and unreachable To what hath passion's warmth; and, though Thy life be at its summer solstice—bright With day—thy heart still turns to barren ice, More bleak than ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... strong likelihood that the Taronhiawagon, he who comes from the Sky, of the Onondagas, who was their supreme God, who spoke to them in dreams, and in whose honor the chief festival of their calendar was celebrated about the winter solstice, was, in fact, Ioskeha under another name.[172-1] As to the legend of the Good and Bad Minds given by Cusic, to which I have referred in a previous chapter, and the later and wholly spurious myth of Hiawatha, first made public by Mr. Clark in his History ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... wife, whilst desiring "to acknowledge an influence which has lent half the charm to my labor," he adds: "If I were in a court of justice, or injustice, under oath, I should not like to say that, either in the wooing days of spring, or under the suns of the summer solstice, you had been, either with hoe, rake, or miniature spade, of the least use in the garden." Perhaps our fair cousins on the other side of the Atlantic do not grub so energetically as we do. Certainly, with us it is very common for the ladies of the family to be the practical ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... 27) identifies the turtle with the summer solstice and the snail as the animal associated with the winter solstice. There does not seem to be any one animal used in connection with any one of the cardinal points. In Tro-Cortesianus 88c the dog seems to be associated with the north as shown ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... Points, or Solstices, are points of the Ecliptic at a distance of 90 deg. from the Equinoxes, at which the sun attains its highest declination in each hemisphere. They are called the Summer and Winter Solstice according to the season in which the sun appears to pass these points ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... the emperor, greatly distressed, began in haste to gather an army and ships, and sent orders to the troops of Valerian and Martinus[121] to proceed with all speed. For they had been sent, as it happened, with another army at about the winter solstice, with instructions to sail to Italy. But they had sailed as far as Greece, and since they were unable to force their way any farther, they were passing the winter in the land of Aetolia and Acarnania. And the Emperor Justinian ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... ardent; I had a powerful animal sensibility; and I knew the one great secret for maintaining its equipoise, viz. by powerful daily exercise; and thus I lived in the light and presence, or (if I should not be suspected of seeking rhetorical expressions, I would say)—in one eternal solstice, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... in each year, here at Thebes, a light as of a conflagration used to penetrate from one end to the other of the sanctuaries of Amen; for the middle artery is open towards the north-west, and is aligned in such a fashion that, once a year, one solitary time, on the evening of the summer solstice, the sun as it sets is able to plunge its reddened rays straight into the sanctuaries. At the moment when it enlarges its blood-coloured disc before descending behind the desolation of the Libyan mountains, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... folklorists of the Tataukyamu, a priesthood which, controls the New-fire ceremonies at Walpi, and is prominent in the Soyaluna, or the rites of the winter solstice, that the Piba or Tobacco phratry brought the fetishes of that society to Walpi, and there are many obscurely known resemblances between the Mamzrauti and the Wuewuetcimti celebrations in Walpi which appear to support that claim. The Piba phratry is likewise said to have come to Walpi comparatively ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... tell of the other places where he pitched his camp, or of the days which he tarried in this or that. Let it suffice to say that in a month's time he traversed so much space only as an army well equipped might pass over in a single day's march; and that about twenty-one days after the winter solstice the army of the Christians came to a certain place which is named the Casal of Beitenoble, and which in ancient times was, if I err not, a city of the priests. There it tarried some twelve days, being much troubled by storms ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... seemest not as thyself alone, But as the meaning of all things that are; A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar Some heavenly solstice, hushed and halcyon, Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone; Whose eyes the sungates of the soul unbar, Being of its furthest fires oracular, The evident heart of ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... Ashtoreth. One day, as he chased the wild boar in Lebanon, near the sources of the river of Byblus, the animal which he was hunting turned upon him, and so gored his thigh that he died of the wound. Henceforth he was mourned annually. At the turn of the summer solstice, the anniversary of his death, all the women of Byblus went in a wild procession to Aphaca, in the Lebanon, where his temple stood, and wept and wailed on account of his death. The river, which his blood had once actually ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Babylonians, a motive for the study of the stars and planets was the priestly one of accurately fixing the religious festivals. The tropical year being thus ascertained, their tables showed the exact time of the equinox or sun's transit across the equatorial, and of the solstice. From a very early period they had practised agriculture, growing Indian corn and "Mexican aloe." Having no animals of draft, such as the horse, or ox, their farming was naturally of ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... spring for aught but praise to be bestowed on his mellow notes, which, though full and soft, are powerful, and may on a calm morning, before the everyday hum of human toil begins, be heard a mile away, over wood, field, and lake. Toward the summer solstice his notes are on the wane, and when he gives them forth we often hear him utter them as if laboring under great difficulty, ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... continuous day and continuous night vary in accordance with the distance from the pole. At the north point of Nova Zembla, 75 degrees north latitude, there is uninterrupted light from May 1st to August 12th, and uninterrupted darkness from November 8th to February 9th. At the arctic circle at the summer solstice the day is twenty-four hours long. At the antarctic circle at the same time the ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... of editions, and never detected by Tickell or by Hurd.] he embarked at Marseilles. As he glided along the Ligurian coast, he was delighted by the sight of myrtles and olive trees, which retained their verdure under the winter solstice. Soon, however, he encountered one of the black storms of the Mediterranean. The captain of the ship gave up all for lost, and confessed himself to a capuchin who happened to be on board. The English heretic, in the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in the day, without establishing the time from the centre of the earth, the equator, where, at the beginning of the sacred year, the sun rises and sets at 6 o'clock. At this time, while the sun is at the summer solstice, the inhabitants of the north pole have no night, while at this same time at the south it is about all night, therefore the inhabitants of the earth have no other right time to commence their twenty-four hour day, than beginning at 6 o'clock in the evening. God said to Moses 'from even, unto ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign, from the Beginning to the Entering into the Gates of the Holy City, According to the Commandment • Joseph Bates
... was a crime nearer home, committed in the river flowing past his own door, and especially at Sagar Island, where the Ganges loses itself in the ocean. At that tiger-haunted spot, shivering in the cold of the winter solstice, every year multitudes of Hindoos, chiefly wives with children and widows with heavy hearts, assembled to wash away their sins—to sacrifice the fruit of their body for the sin of their soul. Since 1794, when Thomas ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... sun not to exceed 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 37 seconds, according to Cassini, but according to Keil 57 seconds, or almost 49 minutes. This error, becoming daily more sensible, would have occasioned the autumnal equinox to have at length fallen on the day reckoned the solstice, and in process of time, on that held for the vernal equinox. The Golden number, or Grecian cycle of the lunar years, was likewise defective. The remedy both which, pope Gregory XIII., in 1585, established the new style. Scaliger, Tachet, and Cassini have ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... her the symbol of God's pain. The cool breezes of the morning lift the gilt threads from her brow. On that little hill by the city of Florence, where the lovers of Giorgione are lying, it is always the solstice of noon, of noon made so languorous by summer suns that hardly can the slim naked girl dip into the marble tank the round bubble of clear glass, and the long fingers of the lute-player rest idly upon the chords. It is twilight always for the dancing nymphs whom Corot set ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... strangely, as if trying to tell secrets we could never understand. I love the legend of the Friar's Heel, but, after all, it's only a mediaeval legend, and it's more interesting to think that, from the middle of the sacrificial altar, the priest could see the sun rise (at the summer solstice) just above that stupendous stone. I stood there, imagining a white-robed Druid looking up, his knife suspended over a fair girl victim, waiting to strike until his eye should meet the red eye of the sun. Oh, I shall have bad dreams about Stonehenge, I know! But I shan't mind, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... passage [from it] into Britain is of equal distance with that from Gaul. In the middle of this voyage is an island which is called Mona;[39] many smaller islands besides are supposed to lie [there], of which islands some have written that at the time of the winter solstice it is night there for thirty consecutive days. We, in our inquiries about that matter, ascertained nothing, except that, by accurate measurements with water, we perceived the nights to be shorter there than on the continent. The ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... sublime precision that leads the earth over a circuit of 500,000,000 miles back to the solstice at the appointed moment without the loss of one second—no, not the millionth part of a second—for ages and ages of which it traveled ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... when the sun arrives at his greatest distance from the equator, or about the twenty-first of June, called, also the summer solstice, (from the Latin sol, the sun and sto, to stop or stand still,) because when the sun reaches this point he seems to stand still for some time, and then appears to retrace his steps. The days are then longer than at any ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... hour of the Roman day, corresponding nearly to eight o'clock before noon—as the winter solstice was now passed—when Arvina reached the magnificent dwelling of the Consul in the Carinae at the angle of the Caerolian place, hard by the foot of the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... strange echoes, while the splashing rain-drops and lowering clouds did not serve to raise the spirits. It was an inauspicious beginning of active service, and typical of the many long and weary weeks of wet discomfort that the Sixth of Michigan was destined to experience before the summer solstice had fairly passed. The points of interest,—the public buildings, the white house, the massive Greek architecture of the Treasury building, the monument, all these as they glided like phantoms, through the mist, attracted scarcely a casual glance. Indeed, it is probable that few ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... place, she becomes the vehicle for the expression of the highest religious and ethical thought attained by the Babylonians. On the other hand, in the great Babylonian epic,[69] dealing with the adventures of a famous hero, Gilgamesh, Ishtar, who makes her appearance at the summer solstice, is a raging goddess who smites those who disobey her commands with wasting disease. Starting with this phase of the goddess' character, one can at least understand the process of her further development into a fierce deity ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... XII. Should SOLSTICE, stalking through the sickening bowers, 550 Suck the warm dew-drops, lap the falling showers; Kneel with parch'd lip, and bending from it's brink From dripping palm the scanty river drink; NYMPHS! o'er the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... more, too. Out of its mysterious darkness will slip easily into his mind the old-time loved and half-forgotten legends that grew out of the winter night in the twilight of the early days of the Aryan race. At the time of the winter solstice it was the custom of the gods to leave their dwellings in heaven and come down to earth. In the shout of the wind in the pines he may well hear Wotan riding overhead in his gray cloak and broad-brimmed hat ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... divided into eight parts, the first of forty-five days from the date of the rising of the west wind (February 7) to the date of the vernal equinox (March 24), the second of the ensuing forty-four days to the rising of the Pleiades (May 7), the third of forty-eight days to the summer solstice (June 24), the fourth of twenty-seven days to the rising of the Dog Star (July 21), the fifth of sixty-seven days to the Autumn equinox (September 26), the sixth of thirty-two days to the setting ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... Christmas observances began in ancient Rome. The primitive Italians were wont to celebrate the winter solstice and call it the feast of Saturn. Thus Saturnalia came to mean almost any kind of celebration which came in the wake of conquest, and these ceremonies being engrafted upon Anglo-Saxon customs assumed a ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... a fine Geneva[261] watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac[262] he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice[263] he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the winter solstice, our supply of water from the Cape Sheridan River having failed, Eskimos were sent out to reconnoiter the ponds of the neighborhood. The English expedition on the Alert had melted ice during their entire ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... before his time, perhaps, not yet come to the solstice of his age, yet was he not mortal? Hear that divine [3919]Epictetus, "If thou covet thy wife, friends, children should live always, thou art a fool." He was a fine child indeed, dignus Apollineis lachrymis, a sweet, a loving, a fair, a witty child, of great hope, another Eteoneus, whom Pindarus ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... plain prose, we gravely talk of courting the Muse in shady bowers; waiting the call and inspiration of Genius ... of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the vernal equinox ... when we talk such language or entertain such sentiments as these, we generally rest contented with mere words, or at best entertain notions not only groundless but pernicious.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... At the summer solstice, the season when the wild boar had ripped open the divine hunter, and the summer had already done damage to the spring, the priests were accustomed to prepare a painted wooden image of a corpse made ready for burial, which they hid in what were called the gardens of Adonis—terra-cotta ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the signification of the ayash tyucotz when performed about the time of the summer solstice. However clumsy and meaningless it may seem, it is still a solemn performance. It gives public expression, under very strange forms, to the idea that has found its most perfect utterance in the German philosopher's[8] definition ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... argument grew busy. To the amazement of the passengers this richly dressed female brandished lusty epithets. "You Irish mick!" she said. (One would not have believed it possible if he had not heard it.) "That's what I am, and proud of it," said he. The shopping solstice is not all fur coats and pink cheeks. If you watch the conductors in the blizzard season, and see the slings and arrows they have to bear, you will coin a new maxim. The conductor ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... Solstice Festival was celebrated at the end of December in the Serampore hermitage. As always, Sri Yukteswar's disciples gathered from far and near. Devotional SANKIRTANS, solos in the nectar-sweet voice of Kristo-da, a feast served by young disciples, Master's profoundly moving discourse ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... when the sun, retiring to the summer solstice, is most distant, land winds and sea breezes are strong and regular, and the people suffer severely from cold. In the Gaboon heavy showers sometimes fall, July being the least subject to them, and the fiery sun, when it can disperse the clouds, turns the soil to dust. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... several species sing last year after Midsummer; enough to prove that the summer solstice is not the period that puts a stop to the music of the woods. The yellowhammer no doubt persists with more steadiness than any other; but the woodlark, the wren, the red-breast, the swallow, the white-throat, the goldfinch, the common linnet, are all undoubted ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... was so outrageous that they were forced to take down their sails and let fall their anchors. Here they found the difference between Sweden and this country: there, at midnight, one might plainly read without a candle; here, though nearer the summer solstice and the days at longest, they found at least four hours of dark night, as seeming near ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... Great Britain, Ireland, and parts of France were known as Celts, and that their religion was directed by strange priests called Druids. Three times in the year, on the first of May, for the sowing; at the solstice, June 21st, for the ripening and turn of the year; and on the eve of November 1st, for the harvesting, those mysterious priests of the Celts, the Druids, built fires on the hill-tops in France, Britain, and Ireland, in honor of the sun. At this last festival the Druids of all the region gathered ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... they proceeded to matters of general information, broaching one or two subjects which I knew pretty well, and on which I had often reflected. M. Emanuel, who had hitherto stood looking on, dark as the winter-solstice, brightened up somewhat; he thought I should now show myself at ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... or ill so will the harvest of the coming year be good or bad; and also that there may be on the table when the Great Supper is served on Christmas Eve—that is to say, on the feast of the Winter Solstice—green growing grain in symbol or in earnest of the harvest of the new year ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... that moribund period of the social solstice when the fag end of the season had fizzled out like a wet firecracker in the April rains; and Geraldine and Kathleen were tired, mentally and bodily. And Scott was buying polo ponies from a British friend and shotguns from a ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the fourth sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters about the 21st of June, and commences the summer solstice. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... will grow the rice. For the ceremony is described as a harvest festival, and swinging is practised by the Letts of Russia with the avowed intention of influencing the growth of the crops. In the spring and early summer, between Easter and St. John's Day (the summer solstice), every Lettish peasant is said to devote his leisure hours to swinging diligently; for the higher he rises in the air the higher will his flax grow ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Hemorrhoidal Scolia, rivalling in size the Garden Scolia and like her, no doubt, requiring a copious diet, will be entered in the insects' "Who's Who" as the destroyer of the Pine-chafer, that magnificent Beetle, flecked with white upon a black or brown ground, who of an evening, during the summer solstice, browses on the foliage of the fir-trees. Though unable to speak with certainty or precision, I am inclined to look upon these devourers of Scarabaeus-grubs as ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... of the Araucanians is solar, and begins on the 22d of December, or immediately after the southern solstice, which they call Thaumathipantu, or the head and tail of the year, and are able to ascertain this period with tolerable precision by means of watching the shadows. The 22d of June is called Udanthipantu, the divider of the year, as dividing ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... light To guide the wanderer's steps aright, Yet not enough from far to show His figure to the watchful foe. With cautious step, and ear awake, 720 He climbs the crag and threads the brake; And not the summer solstice, there, Tempered the midnight mountain air, But every breeze, that swept the wold, Benumbed his drenched limbs with cold. 725 In dread, in danger, and alone, Famished and chilled, through ways unknown, Tangled and steep, he journeyed on; Till, as a rock's huge point he turned, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... first place, we must call to mind the fact that, at two particular points of his course, the sun is found in the zodiacal signs of Cancer and Capricorn. These points are astronomically distinguished as the summer and winter solstice. When the sun is in these points, he has reached his greatest northern and southern declination, and produces the most evident effects on the temperature of the seasons, and on the length of the days and nights. These points, if we suppose ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... promise; Sir John Cheke 'freshman' for proselyte; 'mooned' for lunatic; 'foreshewer' for prophet; 'hundreder' for centurion; Jewel 'foretalk', where we now employ preface; Holland 'sunstead' where we use solstice; 'leechcraft' instead of medicine; and another, 'wordcraft' for logic; 'starconner' (Gascoigne) did service once, if not instead of astrologer, yet side by side with it; 'halfgod' (Golding) had the advantage over 'demigod', that it was ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... end of June, what far other Job's-post is this that reaches Berlin and Queen Sophie? That George I., her royal Father, has suddenly sunk dead! With the Solstice, or Summer pause of the Sun, 21st or 22d June, almost uncertain which, the Majesty of George I. did likewise pause,—in his carriage, on the road to Osnabruck,—never to move more. Whereupon, among ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... ancestor-worship the emperor worships only at the Altar of Heaven, leaving Buddhism, Taoism, and any other form of worship to his subjects. The emperor's sacrifices and prayers to heaven are conducted with great parade and ceremony. The chief of these state observances is the sacrifice at the winter solstice, which is performed before sunrise on the morning of the 21st of December at the Temple of Heaven. The form of the altar ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... the subject much attention, making it the central theme of his work on The Dawn of Astronomy.(1) Lockyer's researches make it clear that in the main the temples of Egypt were oriented with reference to the point at which the sun rises on the day of the summer solstice. The time of the solstice had peculiar interest for the Egyptians, because it corresponded rather closely with the time of the rising of the Nile. The floods of that river appear with very great regularity; the on-rushing ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... calendars. Primitive astronomy knew hardly anything of solstices and equinoxes, and where these are noted in the more advanced rituals, they appear to be attachments to observances founded on other considerations—so the Roman Saturnalia, celebrated near the winter solstice, and apparently the plebeian festival of the summer solstice attached to the worship of Fortuna; and the same thing is probably true of the Semitic and Greek festivals that occurred near the equinoxes ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... Orion, to consider woman? I have not consulted the astronomers. The stars of the heavens are in their places. Male and female, the groups come to us in winter and retire in summer: their faint splendors fall down upon our harvest nights, and then give way to the more august retinue of the wintry solstice. The boreal pivot, whose journal is the awful, compact blue, may, for aught I know, be hobnobbing at this moment with the most masculine of starry masculinities. But if it be, it is in little sympathy with the magnetic pole of human thought, whose fine point turns unwaveringly in these days ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the Virgin Mary was placed on the 25th of March, or about the time of the vernal equinox; the Feast of St. Michael on the 29th of September, or near the autumnal equinox; and the Birth of Christ at the time of the winter solstice. Christmas was thus fixed at the time of the year when the most celebrated festivals of the ancients were held in honour of the return of the sun which at the winter solstice begins gradually to regain power ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... week (Wednesday) bear the name of Beddou, and this accounts for his being placed in the rank of mythological beings, and discovers the illusion of his pretended existence as a man; since it is evident that Mercury was not a human being, but the Genius or Decan, who, placed at the summer solstice, opened the Egyptian year; hence his attributes taken from the constellation Syrius, and his name of Anubis, as well as that of Esculapius, having the figure of a man and the head of a dog: hence his serpent, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... this bourne only on the solstice, the tenth day before the Kalends of July, and trudged comfortably to Sarsina, where we put up at the inn, frequented by foot-farers like us. So also at Caesena and Faventia. There we agreed that we had had enough of the highway, as we might encounter ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... to spend the Summer?" is usually discussed by paterfamilias, anxious mammas and uneasy children long before the summer solstice drives them from the pent-up confines of the busy metropolis to the pure air and quite recreation of country life. Many will visit the seaside, some will climb the mountains or explore the forests. Fashion, in most instances, determines the place of resort, ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... confirming our knowledge of its continuous diminution during historical times. He measured an arc of meridian, from Alexandria to Syene (Assuan), and found the difference of latitude by the length of a shadow at noon, summer solstice. He deduced the diameter of the earth, 250,000 stadia. Unfortunately, we do not know the length of the stadium ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... possessor refer to the seller or giver of the property within thirty days, if the latter reside in the city, or, if the goods have been received from a stranger, within five months, of which the middle month shall include the summer solstice. All purchases and exchanges are to be made in the agora, and paid for on the spot; the law will not allow credit to be given. No law shall protect the money subscribed for clubs. He who sells anything of greater value than fifty drachmas shall abide in ...
— Laws • Plato
... Thales, the founder of the Ionic school of philosophers, born 639 B.C. He is reported to have predicted an eclipse of the sun, to have made a visit to Egypt, to have fixed the year at three hundred and sixty-five days, and to have determined the course of the sun from solstice to solstice. He attributed an eclipse of the moon to the interposition of the earth between the sun and moon; and an eclipse of the sun to the interposition of the moon between the sun and earth. [Footnote: Sir G. G. Lewis, Hist. of Astron., ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... associated with astronomy in Greece was Thales, the founder of the Ionic school of philosophers. He is reported to have made a visit to Egypt, to have fixed the year at three hundred and sixty-five days, to have determined the course of the sun from solstice to solstice, and to have calculated eclipses. He attributed an eclipse of the moon to the interposition of the earth between the sun and moon, and an eclipse of the sun to the interposition of the moon between the sun and earth,—and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... statute, stadium, stability, instable, static, statistics, ecstasy, stamen, stamina, standard, stanza, stanchion, capstan, extant, constabulary, apostate, transubstantiation, status quo, armistice, solstice, interstice, institute, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the world of spirits, and intimidate them so that they fear to do harm to men. Again, if God in His goodness had not given protection to the weak, the tame animals would have been extirpated long ago by the wild animals. In Tammuz, at the time of the summer solstice, when the strength of behemot is at its height, he roars so loud that all the animals hear it, and for a whole year they are affrighted and timid, and their acts become less ferocious than their nature is. Again, in Tishri, at the time of the autumnal equinox, the great bird ziz[7] flaps ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg |
