"Spire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out over the low sill and stood on the leads. The night was soft and cool. The sky, full of the light of a rising moon, shewed beautifully, against its luminous violet, the outlines of dome and minaret and spire, and far out beyond the crowded city's confines, the two incomparable mountains, Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, the huge volcanoes, shrouded in eternal snow, rising a sheer ten thousand feet from the level plain, standing like ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... in alcohol. The outer shell, when it is spiral, should be broken at the upper part, and at several points of the spire, to let the liquor run in, so that the whole animal may be preserved; it is possible, following this indication, to have shell-fish in such order, that they may be dissected, even after being a very ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... Gothic times, be reflected in it. Alas! this evening my style flows not at all. Flow, then, into this smoke-colored goblet, thou blood of the Rhine! out of thy prison-house,—out of thy long-necked, tapering flask, in shape not unlike a church-spire among thy native hills; and, from the crystal belfry, loud ring the merry tinkling bells, while I drink a health to my hero, in whose heart is sadness, and in whose ears the bells of Andernach ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... which bids them farewell—I saw the sun shining on it in the fall of last year, and heard the sweet village choir raising anthems round about. What boots whether it be Westminster or a little country spire which covers your ashes, or if, a few days sooner or later, the world ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... top of the hill, beyond the cleft of the river Avon, he could see the smoke and the church towers of the town of Bristol, and beyond it, the slime of the water of the Bristol Channel; and nearer, on one side, the spire of Elmwood Church looked up, and, on the other, the woods round Elmwood House, and these ran out as it were, lengthening and narrowing into a wooded cleft or gulley, Hermit's Gulley, which broke the side of the hill just below where Steadfast stood, and had a little clear ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cattle. In the midst of this lawn was raised a terrace, a man's height, and covered with such beautiful cement, that the whole pavement seemed to be but one single stone, most highly polished. A temple was erected in the middle of this terrace, having a spire rising about fifty cubits high from the building, which might be seen for several leagues round. The temple was thirty cubits long, and twenty broad; built of red marble, highly polished. The inside of the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... sun shone through it with red rayless countenance. But before we reached the church, which was some three miles from home, the fog was gone, and the frost had taken shelter with the shadows; the sun was dazzling without being clear, and the golden cock on the spire was glittering keen in the ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... Round the old grey spire in the evening calm, No more they circle in sportive glee, Hearing the hum of the vesper psalm, And the swell of the organ so far below; But far, far away, over land and sea, In the still ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... a scene!—Can this be Venice? No. And yet methinks it is—because I see Amid the lumps of yellow, red, and blue Something which looks like a Venetian spire. ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... of man, or of his works, was there. The setting sun that cast such a gorgeous flood of light upon this exquisite panorama, bringing out some of these lofty islands in strong relief, and casting others into intense shade, shed no cheery beam upon church spire or cottage pane. We beheld the landscape, savage and grand in its ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... she will, Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan, after Miss Cornelia had gone. "She would stick at nothing, not even at shingling the church spire if she took it into her head. But I cannot understand how even Cornelia Bryant can talk to a minister as she does. You would think he ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... platform above the dining place, looking down upon the great chestnut tree, and indeed upon all our possessions. Thus endeavouring to realize the scenes so often seen in England, where the pretty simple church, with its graceful spire, is seen on an elevated place, while the humble cottages, and rose-covered houses clustered round ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... Negro seek For gems hid in some forlorn creek, We all Pearls scorn, Save what the dewy morne Congeals upon each little spire of grasse, Which careless Shepherds beat down as they passe, And Gold ne're here appears Save what the ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... lay across the velvet sward of the Rectory lawn. The heat of the early June day had given place to the cool air of the evening. The exquisitely delicate colouring from the setting sun flooded the sky overhead and deepened into blues and purples behind the elms and the church spire. A deep peace had fallen upon the world except that from the topmost bough of the tallest elm tree a robin sang, pouring his very heart out in a song of ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... of this English Boston, and quite as sour as those who peopled the daughter-city in New England. Our parlor had the one recommendation of looking into the market-place, and affording a sidelong glimpse of the tail spire and noble old church. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... and creaking noise on board, re-echoed from a hundred quarters. The water and all upon it was in active motion, dancing and buoyant and bubbling up; while the old grey Tower and piles of building on the shore, with many a church-spire shooting up between, looked coldly on, and seemed to disdain their ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... brow of which was a breast of pines. In front of the principal facade was a garden with a proclivity toward the lake, which was surrounded and sheltered by a belt of trees. In the distance the peasants' houses were seen, the tall clock spire of Aland, and far in the distance the chimneys of the furnace belonging to M. de Vermondans. At this moment, the plain, the snow-covered woods, the frozen lake presented one uniform color. Any one, however, might see they would present beautiful ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... towers above us, and gleams like the shining cross on the top of some lofty cathedral spire, does not flash up there inaccessible, nor lie before us like some pathless precipice, up which nothing that has not wings can ever hope to rise, but the height of the love of Christ is an hospitable height, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... knew we ought to feel its grandeur, but somehow we did not. Then we sat down by the Holy of Holies, and there we were startled into a better judgment by the astounding fact that the Cathedral of St. Paul—the largest edifice in Great Britain—could stand upright, spire, dome, body, and all, inside of St. Peter's! that the letters of the inscription which run around the base of the dome, though apparently but an inch, are in reality six feet high! Then, for the first time, the scales fell from ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... army, were at least in some way in touch with what was happening elsewhere. Even in that first month of the war it seemed callous to be breathing the sweet, clear air of Braemar, or to let one's eyes linger on the matchless beauty of mountain and glen. The grey spire of my church rising gracefully among the silver birches and the dark firs, bosomed deep in purple hills, pointed to some harder way than that. Stevenson, who wrote part of Treasure Island here, called it 'the wale (pick) of Scotland,' but just because it was so we saw more ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... Warwickshire, and no tourist would know that it was not indigenous there. They call their local stream the Avon, and boating there some idle summer days, I easily dreamed myself at home again, and within bow-shot of the skyward-pointing spire which covers the bones of Shakespeare. It is, I believe, a fact that the stream is christened after another river than that which owes its glamour to the poet's name, but in a case of this kind mere fact matters little, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... till it reached the bright blue dancing ocean, over which several white sails were skimming rapidly. Inland there was a beautifully diversified country. There were several rich woods surrounding gentlemen's seats, and here and there a hamlet and a church spire rising up among the trees, and some extensive homesteads, the gems of an English rural landscape; and there were wide pasture lands, and ploughed fields already getting a green tinge from the rising corn, and ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... fall; a tree 30-70 feet high, reduced at great elevations to a height of 1-2 feet, or to a shrub; trunk 1-3 feet in diameter, straight, slender; branches very irregular or in indistinct whorls, for the most part nearly horizontal; often ending in long spire-like shoots; branchlets numerous, head conical, symmetrical while the tree is young, especially when growing in open swamps; when old extremely variable, occasionally with contorted or drooping limbs; foliage pale green, turning to a dull ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... very refreshing; and it is Sunday, and we have got away from the wicked for an hour or two; but in England there would be a little white church out yonder, and a spire like an angel's forefinger pointing from the grass to heaven, and the lads in their clean smock-frocks like snow, and the wenches in their white stockings and new shawls, and the old women in their scarlet cloaks and black bonnets, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... golden plains. A mountain chipmunk stared at him, flicked its tail, and dived under a flat ledge; a bird whose real home was a thousand miles off in the north faced the upland breeze and sang in its unknown tongue. Jim drew still nearer the rocky spire, rounded a ledge, and faced an unexpected sight. In a little open lodge of willows, bent and roofed with a canvas cover, sat an Indian youth, alone, motionless, beside him was a pot of water, and between him ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... I was gray and old; Unwedded, alone in the world, Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation, And children in the church. I know they laughed and thought me queer. I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight, Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church, Disdaining me, not seeing me. But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me. It was the vision, vision, vision of the ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... wits. This inactivity was death. The escaping air hissed in my ears. Our precious air, escaping away into the vacant desolation of the Lunar emptiness. Through one of the twisted, slanting dome windows a rocky spire was visible. The Planetara lay bow down, wedged in a jagged cradle of Lunar rock. A miracle that the hull and dome ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... one must understand that St. Michael's is to Charleston, socially, what St. George's, Hanover Square, is to London. A beautiful old building, surrounded by a historic burial ground and surmounted by a delicate white spire containing fine chimes, it strongly suggests the architectural touch of Sir Christopher Wren; but it is not by Wren, for he died a number of years before 1752, when the cornerstone of St. Michael's was laid. When ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... hasten his beast, who was picking his way delicately through the filth and tumbled stones that lay everywhere, for the melodious roar seemed to be bidding him haste and be welcome. Mr. Morris was close beside him, and remarked on this and that as they went, the spire of St. Ann's away to the right, with St. Pancras's Bridge, a swinging sign over an inn with Queen Katharine's face erased, but plainly visible under Ann Boleyn's, the tall mound beyond the Priory crowned by a Calvary, and the roof ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... easily discerned, of a reversal in the fates of two nations. The steeples and turrets of Montreal, the old windmill, the belfry and high-pitched roof of Notre Dame de Bonsecours, the massed buildings of the Seminary and the Hotel Dieu, the spire of the Jesuits, rose against the green shaggy slopes of the mountain, and over the mountain the sky paled tranquilly toward evening. Sky, mountain, forests, mirrored belfry and broad rolling river—a permanent peace seemed to rest ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cloudless blue sky rose the pinnacles of Santa Croce, the domes of San Spirito, of the Baptistery, of the Cathedral; sharply defined in the clear atmosphere were the airy, light Campanile of Giotto, the more slender brown tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, the spire of Santa Maria Novella. Northward beyond the city rose the heights of Fiesole, and to the east the green hills dotted all over with white houses, swept away ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... have witnessed a part. He was stationed on horseback, upon one of the mountains of Salces, north of the city; from this point he could see the plain of Roussillon before him, sloping to the Mediterranean. Perpignan, with its ramparts of brick, its bastions, its citadel, and its spire, formed upon this plain an oval and sombre mass on its broad and verdant meadows; the vast mountains surrounded it, and the valley, like an enormous bow curved from north to south, while, stretching its white line in the east, the sea looked like its silver cord. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... admiration of the traveller! The castle was, to my eye, of all castles which I had seen, the most elevated in its situation, and the most difficult of access. The clouds of heaven seemed to be resting upon its battlements. But what do I see yonder? "Is it the top of the spire of Strasbourg Cathedral?" "It is, Sir," replied the postilion. I pulled off my travelling cap, by way of doing homage; and as I looked at my watch, to know the precise time, found it was just ten o'clock. It was worth making a minute of. Yet, owing to the hills ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... since Mr. Wharton and his brother-in-law built their cabins in the wilderness. Those cabins were now sheds and kitchens appended to larger and more commodious dwellings. A village had grown up around them. On the spire of a new meeting-house a gilded fish sailed round from north to south, to the great admiration of children in the opposite schoolhouse. The wild-flowers of the prairie were supplanted by luxuriant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... the promontory. Don't you remember the spire rising among the trees, as we see it from ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... there be the least spark of the former it will turn all the rest into its own bright substance. Here is the stifling smoke, coming up from some newly-lighted fire of green wood, black and choking, and solid in its coils; but as the fire burns up, all the smoke-wreaths will be turned into one flaming spire, full of light and warmth. Do you turn your smoke into fire, your fear into faith. Do not be down-hearted if it takes a while to convert the whole of the lower and baser into the nobler and higher. Faith and fear do blend, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Ambulant, undulant drapery, Vaguery and strangely provocative, Fluttersd and beckons. O, yonder - Is it?—the gleam of a stocking! Sudden, a spire Wedged in the mist! O, the houses, The long lines of lofty, grey houses, Cross-hatched with shadow and light! These are the streets . . . Each is an ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... John and Jane, to Fred and Frank, To Theodore and Mary, To Willie and to Reginald, To Louis, Sue and Gary; To sturdy boys and merry girls, And all the dear young people Who live in towns, or live on farms, Or dwell near spire or steeple; To boys who work, and boys who play, Eager, alert and ready, To girls who meet each happy day With faces sweet and steady; To dearest comrades, one and all, To Harry, Florrie, Kate, To children small, and children ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... had issued, to kneel once more, and then ascended to Heaven; before playhouses, parks, and palaces, wondrous resorts of wit, pleasure and splendour; before Shakespeare's resting-place under the tall spire which rises by Avon, amidst the sweet Warwickshire pastures; before Derby, and Falkirk, and Culloden, where the cause of honour and loyalty had fallen, it might be to rise no more: before all these points in their pilgrimage there was one which ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... child." "Who's Mike?" my brother growled A little roughly. Quoth the fisherman— "Mike, Sir? he's just a fisher lad, no more; But he can sing, when he takes on to sing, So loud there's not a sparrow in the spire But needs must hear. Sir, if I might make bold, I'd ask what song that was you sung. My mate, As we were shoving off the mackerel boats, Said he, 'I'll wager that's the sort o' song They kept their hearts up ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... desecrated that the traveller might pass it by without notice, but withal retaining the massive piers and arches of the first half of the eleventh century. There is Evreux, with its Norman naves, its tall slender Gothic choir, its strange Italian western tower, and almost more fantastic central spire. All these are noble churches, sharing with those of our own land a certain sobriety and architectural good sense which is often wanting in the churches of France proper. In Normandy as in England, ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... was a Gothic building, which would have been sufficiently handsome if built in stone, but with barbarous taste had been executed in wood. At the end of the garden some more steps led to a broad, four-cornered courtyard, on the right of which the iron spire of the National Memorial was dimly visible, while to the left was a large building of red and yellow brick with a four-square tower at either end, a pavilion projecting from the center, and a number of large windows. Over the entrance in the center of the building was the inscription in gold ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... lay the grey city wrapped in its veil of smoke, the tall spire of the old church rising in picturesque isolation above the line of the surrounding buildings. It seemed at that moment to stand as a symbol of the life of the Mother Country, a life fenced in by convention, by forms and ceremonies sanctified to every Englishman by centuries of association; ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... afraid!" cried the Goblin, "she's only rolling a little;" and, as he said this, the clock steadied itself and sailed serenely away past the spire of the village church ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... Many of them had lawns and gardens as at Albany, and the best were planted with rows of trees which would afford a fine shade in warm weather. Above the mercantile houses and dwellings rose the lofty spire of St. George's Chapel in Nassau Street, which had been completed less than three years before, and which secured Robert's admiration ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 'There's Hollingford church-spire,' said she presently, as they drew near the town, and caught a glimpse of the church through the trees. 'I think I never wish to go out ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... fire; how it fractures the rock, softens obdurate metals, envelopes the prairies in flame, and how it seized upon the seats, ceiling and roof in his darling house of worship, thence fiercely ascending the spire to strive to rise still higher, and invade the clouds. From this he turned to the doctrine of submission, in a manner so earnest and pathetic that a perceptible agitation pervaded the audience, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... attended high mass in the great Cathedral of Strasbourg, and was surprised and pleased at the sight of 10,000 soldiers, in review order, drawn up within its walls. It was tiresome enough work mounting to the top of the spire, (which I ascertained, by the steps I took, to be exactly 490 feet high, Strasbourg measure; and this is exactly eight feet higher than St. Peter's at Rome), but I made it out, notwithstanding the sulky looks of the jackanapes who lives at the top. Nothing can surpass the beauty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... descends by gentle steps to the plain, and forms natural terraces, clothed with walnut and chestnut trees, entwined with clusters of the creeping vine. In the midst of this wild, luxuriant vegetation, one sees here and there some country-house shining through the trees, the tall spire of a humble village, or the old dark towers and battlements of some castle of a bygone age. The plain was once a vast lake, and has preserved the hollowed form, the indented shores, and advanced promontories of its former aspect; but in lieu of the ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... countless millions in the body of a living fly; and then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California, towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast circumference. Or, turning to the other half of the world of life, picture to yourselves ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Church spire had suddenly fallen to the ground, it could scarcely have surprised and startled him more than his own ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... 27th of July this year, London was visited by the most violent thunderstorm which had been experienced for many summers. It lasted for several hours. The fine spire of the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields was struck by ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... discovered around me,—it was near the end of June,—on the ends of the topmost branches only, a few minute and delicate red cone-like blossoms, the fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward. I carried straightway to the village the topmost spire, and showed it to stranger jurymen who walked the streets,—for it was court-week,—and to farmers and lumber-dealers and wood-choppers and hunters, and not one had ever seen the like before, but they wondered as at a star dropped down. Tell of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... found in the sacred architecture of the time. The style of architecture first employed was the Romanesque, characterized by the rounded arch and the dome; but towards the close of the twelfth century this was superseded by the Gothic, distinguished by the pointed arch, the tower or the slender spire, and rich ornamentation. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... It was laid out in the old French style, with straight walks, pyramids of box, and white painted stone figures: satyrs and goddesses peeped through the green foliage. You now caught sight of a high tower with a spire; and soon the whole of the old mansion presented itself to view. The water was conveyed away from the broad moats, where the weeping willows with bowed heads and uncovered roots stood in the warm sunshine. ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... sale in the bazaar;— Where the Great Wall round China goes, And on one side the desert blows, And with bell and voice and drum, Cities on the other hum;— Where are forests, hot as fire, Wide as England, tall as a spire, Full of apes and cocoa-nuts And the negro hunters' huts;— Where the knotty crocodile Lies and blinks in the Nile, And the red flamingo flies Hunting fish before his eyes;— Where in jungles, near and far, Man-devouring tigers are, Lying close and giving ear Lest the hunt be drawing near, Or a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we never see save in our rare and half-deserted cathedral country towns. It was the Abbey of Osney. It would have been his landmark, as Hereford is the landmark for a man to-day rowing up to Wye, or the new spire of Chichester for a man that makes harbour out of the channel past Bisham upon a rising tide. And as he passed beneath it (for, of the many branches here, the main stream took him that way) he would have seen a great and ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... incident was an unfavorable omen, and would discourage his men. He cast about in his mind for a means of retaliation. Far over the roofs of the city rose a tapering spire, that of the cathedral in the Upper Town. On this spire, the devout Catholics of the French city had hung a picture of the Holy Family as an invocation of Divine aid. Through his spy-glass, Phipps could see that some strange object hung ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... a trace of vegetation exists along the sea-board from Persian to Indian frontier. Occasionally, at long intervals, a mud hut is seen, just showing that the country is inhabited, and that is all. The steep, rocky cliffs, with their sharp, spire-like summits rising almost perpendicularly out of the blue sea, are typical of the desert ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... cities the presence of this significant landmark is almost invariable. There is ever the lone and lorn tower, belfry, or spire painted in dark sad colours, seen from afar off, rising from the decayed little town below; often of some antique, original shape that pleases, and yet with a gloomy misanthropical air, as of total abandonment. They are rusted and abrased. ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... difficult to avoid the view of this solitary and egotistic peak, the highest in Styria. He was assigned a comfortable chamber, but the night was too fine for bed. He did not feel sleepy, and he went along the road he had come by; the church was an opaque mass, the spire alone showing in the violet twilight, like some supernatural spar on a ship far out at sea. He attempted to conjure to his tired brain the features, the expression, of the girl. They would not reappear; ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... flat; the walls, almost destitute of windows, are rough with unhewn stones; and many of the houses lie half buried under the rocky mountain side. These are without numbers as the streets are without names. Here, moreover, rises no village spire to point the thoughts of men heavenward; no church bell rings out its merry festal peals, or tolls the march to the grave; no sundial marks the succession of the hours which pass by unheeded all, save those of morning, noon, and evening; and in no public school-house ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... the cause of so much sorrow could never be found, and the Indians believe that it was taken away by the spirits of Kos-su'-kah and Tee-hee'-nay. In memory of them, and of this tragedy, the slender spire of rock [sometimes called "The Devil's Thumb"] that rises heavenward near the top of the cliff at this point is known among the Indians as ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... to have puzzled last century writers greatly, for they wrote it "Jermyn," "Germain," "Germaine," and even "Germin." St. James's Church, Wren's handiwork, is all that remains from the age of Anne, with "the steeple," says Strype, fondly, "lately finished with a fine spire, which adds much splendor to this end of the town, and also serves as a landmark." Perhaps it sometimes served as a landmark to Richard Steele, reeling happily to the home in "Berry" Street, where his beloved Prue awaited him. St. James's Square has gone through many metamorphoses ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... scene of my youth! [2] Seat of Friendship and Truth, Where Love chas'd each fast-fleeting year; Loth to leave thee, I mourn'd, For a last look I turn'd, But thy spire was ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... stinted himself the pleasure of seeing her; and he would often walk half-way over to the parsonage, and then back again, as if to whet his appetite. Indeed there was one corner of the road, whence he could see the church-spire wedged into a crevice of the valley between sloping firwoods, with a triangular snatch of plain by way of background, which he greatly affected as a place to sit and moralise in before returning homewards; and the peasants got so much into ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cruel and cold, as the shelterless know; Huddled in nooks on the mud or the flags, Wrapp'd in a few scanty, fluttering rags. Gently it rests on the roof and the spire, And filling the streets with its slush and the mire, Freezing the life out of poor, starving souls, Wild whirling and drifting as Boreas howls. Hard is their lot who have no where to go, To shelter from storm and the ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... ye out a walie hammer; About the knottit buttress clam'er; Alang the steep roof stoyt an' stammer, A gate mis-chancy; On the aul' spire, the bells' hie cha'mer, ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of this low, and more or less level wood, rose three separate stems that shot up and soared into the sky like a lighthouse out of the waves or a church spire out of the village roofs. They formed a clump of three columns close together, which might well be the mere bifurcation, or rather trifurcation, of one tree, the lower part being lost or sunken in the thick wood ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... worldliness, that interlace and constitute the successive cantos of "Don Juan," the passages just quoted and similar ones (they are not many) rise, as above the desires and the discontents, the plots and contentions, the shrewd self-seekings of a heated, noisy city rises a Gothic spire, aspiring, beautiful, drawing most of its beauty from its aspiration, on whose pinnacle, calmly glistening in the upper air, plays the coming and the parting day, while shadows fill the streets below, and whose beauty throws over the town a ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... of countless bells and of innumerable streams, and see the silver lines of the snow new fallen on the mountains against the deep rose of the dawn, and the shadows of the night steal away softly from off the city, releasing, one by one, dome and spire, and cupola and roof, till all the wide white wonder of the place discloses itself under the broad brightness of full day; to go down into the dark cool streets, with the pigeons fluttering in the fountains, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... St. Stiff the Martyr is calling to service, as it is wont to do at all times and hours—for mysterious purposes but little known:—it seems as if the bell disliked its little wooden cottage, on the unfinished spire; or was inspired, or in a towering passion to live in a tower, or saw no fun in waiting for funds; and so, continually pealed an appeal to the public:—however, it was a puny, little, curious bell, with a tongue of its own, now clacking for a charity sermon; and, curiously, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... them, the undulating slope and shimmering loch, the wide moors and softly rounded hills, the dark green masses of ragged firs, and the great white Bens in the far distance, and below them, in the midst the human touch, in a nestling village with its Heaven-pointing spire. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... nothing. I may be lightning, to be sure; or the Protestants may have had it down for Popery; but methinks they would have too much Christian regard for poor mariners than to knock down the only landmark on this coast till you come to Nissard spire.' Then he hailed the man at the mast-head, demanding if he saw the steeple of La Sablerie. 'No, no, sir.' But as other portions of the land became clearer, there was no doubt that the THROSTLE was ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and glittering shaft Shot 'thwart the earth! In crown of living fire Up comes the day! As if they, conscious, quaff'd The sunny flood, hill, forest, city, spire, Laugh in the wakening light. Go, vain Desire! The dusky lights have gone; go thou thy way! And pining Discontent, like them expire! Be called my chamber Peace, when ends the day, And let me, with the dawn, like Pilgrim, sing and pray. Great ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... evening. I left the cars with my head full of the cathedral. The first thing I saw, on lifting my eyes, was a brown spire. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... synagogue; and just beyond it St. Sophia, the ugly Greek cathedral, yellow, squat, and ponderous; and midway between these two—a thing of beauty—St. Matthew's Church, grey and Gothic, with its slender soaring spire. In Pembridge Square she paused to ask herself if it was not time to turn back. No, not yet, a few steps more would bring her to the old turning—that broad familiar way only as long as the width of two houses with their gardens, from which she might look for a few ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... still older church, with its reverend screen of trees, and slowly ascending a hill side, from whence he obtained enchanting peeps of the spire and college of Harrow, he reached the cluster of well-built houses which constitute the village of Neasdon. From this spot a road, more resembling the drive through a park than a public thoroughfare, led him gradually to the brow of Dollis Hill. It was a serene and charming evening, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was that the place was tenantless, till I caught sight of a thin spire of smoke struggling against the downpour. I hoped to come on some gardener or groom from whom I could seek direction, so I skirted the pleasance to find the kitchen door. A glow of fire in one of the rooms cried welcome to my shivering ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... rough, scraggy yellow birch, on a bank of club-moss, so richly inlaid with partridge-berry and curious shining leaves,—with here and there in the bordering a spire of the false wintergreen (Pyrola rotundifolia) strung with faint pink flowers and exhaling the breath of a May orchard,—that it looks too costly a couch for such an idler, I recline to note what transpires. The sun is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... have been a beautiful landscape. There was a sloping lawn, a fine stream winding at the foot of it, and a tract of park beyond, with noble clumps of trees, and herds of deer. At a distance was a neat hamlet, with the smoke from the cottage chimneys hanging over it; and a church with its dark spire in strong relief against the clear cold sky. The house was surrounded with evergreens, according to the English custom, which would have given almost an appearance of summer; but the morning was extremely frosty; the light vapour of the preceding evening had been precipitated by the cold, ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... beach, perhaps a hundred yards or more from the cliffs, a number of huge rocks stood alone. I suppose at some time they must have slipped from the mainland, but that was undoubtedly in the far-back past. One of them, I remember, was shaped like a spire, and seemed to look with derision on the foaming waters that sometimes nearly covered it, and at others left it standing ill all its majesty on ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... together picture, the critics said, and a new scene which in these days is much to be desired. The manner in which Lacroix had arranged to show both the exterior and interior of the church was a clever hit, every one agreed. Outside, with the clear blue sky for background, the spire of the church was clearly defined, and on a niche just above the main doorway stood an exquisitely carved statue of the patron St. Anne, holding by the hand her little daughter, the Blessed Virgin. And beyond the church and the ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... mental and bodily vigor. As yet their children all remain at home, as the boys find ample employment upon the farm, and at the mill; while Jennette assists her mother in the labours of the household. For many years the setting sun has rested upon the gleaming spire of the neat and substantial church erected by the settlers; and now upon the Sabbath day, instead of listening to a sermon read by a neighbour, they listen to the regular preaching of the gospel, and each one according to his means contributes to the support of their ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... arch, which they still show with admiration. The front proper has a big door, barred strongly, as if the church might have been in piratical times a place of refuge for the population up in the hills. To the right of the entrance is the tower, which is buttressed, and its spire is made of blue and colored tiles, which have thoroughly kept their colors. A bell in this tower may have rung the inhabitants to church when Columbus announced that he meant to impress the Palos people to assist him in his voyage. I entered the church, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... severe judgment to possess some of the defects of the late Flemish style, it is rivaled for beauty of outline only by the flamboyant steeples of Chartres and Vienna. As might be expected from its late age—it was not finished until 1530—this northwestern spire of Notre Dame at Antwerp exhibits some extravagances in design and detail, but the mode in which the octagonal lantern of openwork bisects the faces of the solid square portion with its alternate angles, thus breaking the outline without any harsh or disagreeable ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... plants whose leaves do not spread and grow large, but rather spire upward and grow tall; these plants they do not tend, not being worth their labor."—Mr. Clayton's Letter to the Royal Society, 1688. Miscellanea Curiosa, vol. iii., ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... A young moon was rising over the city, throwing out in dark relief against the sky a hundred steeples and domes. The long, thin spire of the Fortress Church—the tomb of the Romanoffs—shot up into the heavens like a dagger. Near at hand, a thousand electric lights and colored lanterns, cunningly swung on the branches of the pines, made a veritable fairyland. The ceaseless song of the skates, on ice as hard as iron, mingled ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... atoning for its spring thinness and scantiness by a vivid energy of colour; while straight across the court, beyond the rich patchwork of the roofs and the picturesque outlines of the chimneys, a delicate piece of white stone-work rose into air—the spire of one of Wren's churches, as dainty, as perfect, and as fastidiously balanced as the hand ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... another environment, how different might it not appear,—as for instance placed beside Amiens, where in one particular alone, the mere height of nave and choir, it immediately dwindles into insignificance. Under such conditions its graceful spire becomes dwarfed and attenuated. Need more be said?—The writer thinks not, since the present work does not deal with the comparative merits of any two cathedrals or of national types; but the suggestion should serve to ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... Stirling, in his Annals of Spanish Artists, says, that of no prince are recorded more sayings which show a refined taste and a quick eye. He told the Burghers of Antwerp that, "the light and soaring spire of their cathedral deserved to be put under a glass case." He called Florence "the Queen of the Arno, decked for a perpetual holiday." He regretted that he had given his consent for the conversion of the famous mosque of Abderahman at Cordova into a cathedral, when he saw ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... flame shot up in the east above the forest, but unlike the others did not go out again; it hung there a red spire, blood-red against the sky, and grew taller ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... story that transformed the world. I awoke shortly after midnight, after seeing the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau, with these words floating backward and forward in my head like a peal of bells from some distant spire. Backward and forward they went and came, and ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... so clearly expresses its purpose that a definition of style promptly suggests the title of Horticultural Architecture. Its decorative spire-like finials resemble the cypress and poplar. The clusters of floral ornaments and festoons reflect one of the fundamental purposes of decorative glory to which all plant life has been decreed. The bulblike glass dome is ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... grinning, from his box; and in the lighted doorway, she saw the figure of her maid, in trim cap and apron, waiting to welcome her. Not a petal had fallen from the bed of crimson dahlias beside the steps; not a leaf had changed on the young maple tree, which rose in a spire of flame toward the stars. Inside, she knew, there would be the bright fire, the cheerful supper table, the soft bed ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... commenced to appear at more frequent intervals now, and took on a character a little different from the old weather-grayed dwellings of the open country. There showed a white, slim church spire above the trees. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... walk on the other side of the wood, that overlooked the pleasant slope of the meadows beyond; the walk had probably been made to command this sunny, peaceful landscape, with trees, and a church spire, two or three red-tiled roofs of old cottages, and a purple bit of rising ground in the distance; and at some previous date, when there might have been a large family of Hamleys residing at the hall, ladies in hoops, and gentlemen in bag- wigs with swords ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... roof by Abbot Islip, who witnessed the erection of Henry VII.'s Chapel. Two hundred and thirty years afterwards Sir Christopher Wren restored Islip's work, and designed the upper portions. The edifice is not yet complete, as the square central tower requires a lofty spire to complete it. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... just coming into sight must be Old Sarum. The little ancient city that faded away when Salisbury lifted its spire into the world. We will stop ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... little while the river curved again, sweeping back to its original course. Suddenly, in the distance, the bright spire of the Settlement church came into view, and then the familiar cottages. Mandy Ann's laughing face grew grave, as she saw how very, very far away they looked. They took on, also, from the distance, a certain strangeness which smote her heart. This wonderful adventure ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... failings, and a laudable desire that others, at least, should profit by the teachings we neglect. Perhaps," he continued, closing his eyes dreamily, "there is not a man here who does not recall the happy days of his boyhood, the rustic village spire, the lessons shared with some artless village maiden, with whom he later sauntered, hand in hand, through the woods, as the simple ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... the new church was built; and some twenty years later, when Dr. Corrie, Archdeacon of Calcutta, was consecrated first Bishop of Madras, the church became 'the Cathedral Church of St. George.' St. George's Cathedral is a stately building, with a spire 139 feet high, and it stands in spacious grounds. The total cost was more than two lakhs of rupees; but nobody had to be asked to subscribe, for the money was available from a peculiar source. It was ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... the dark shaft of the tower whence the bell had rung its warning, at the dusky mass of the Capitol, at the spire of St. Paul's, and then down at a flickering figure passing rapidly on the other side of the street. Robert's eyes were keen, and a soldier's life had accustomed him to their use in the darkness. He caught only ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Corydalis claviculata, if you look to one leaf, may be called a tendril-bearer; if you look to another leaf it may be called a leaf-climber. Now I am sure I remember some cases with plants in which important parts such as the position of the ovule differ: differences in the spire of leaves on lateral and terminal ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... there is no sign of anything but peace and pleasant life in the surroundings. But these black-clad women do know—know that the cool green clump of trees over on the hill-side hides a roofless ruin with fire-blackened walls; that the church spire that for all their lives they had seen out there over the sky-line is no longer visible because it lies shell-smitten to a tumbled heap of brick and stone and mortar; that the glint of white wood and spot of ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... when he left the park, and crossed the Hampstead Road into a dreary region of dwellings crowded and commonplace as the thoughts of a worshipper of Mammon, houses upon houses, here and there shepherded by a tall spire, it was hard to believe that the spring was indeed coming ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... highway descends slowly to the village of Ecclefechan, the site of which is marked to the eye, a mile or more away, by the spire of the church rising up against a background of Scotch firs, which clothe a hill beyond. I soon enter the main street of the village, which in Carlyle's youth had an open burn or creek flowing through the center of it. This has been covered ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... build an imposing house. He had the stones gathered from the lands and used in building houses for his people. The seigneur's mill was one of the best. A fine church raised its cross-crowned spire near by. A brewery, built of stone, was in full operation. The land was fertile and produced abundant harvests. When Catalogne visited Longueuil in 1712 he noted that the habitants were living in comfortable circumstances, by reason of the large expenditures which the seigneur had made to improve ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... gorgeous sycamore! Oft hath the holy wine and bread Been blest beneath thy murmuring tent, Where many a bright and hoary head Bowed at that awful sacrament. Now all beneath the turf are laid On which they sat, and sang, and prayed. Above that consecrated tree Ascends the tapering spire, that seems To lift the soul up silently To heaven with all its dreams, While in the belfry, deep and low, From his heaved bosom's purple gleams The dove's continuous murmurs flow, A dirge-like song, half bliss, half woe, The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... perfectly silent again. The evening now seemed so cool and fresh that the boys forgot their fatigue, and kept on chatting and planning for future excursions till they reached the gates of the Grange, just as the sun ceased to gild the weathercock at the top of the church spire. ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... exulting nation's shout Swelled on the breeze of victory through our streets, But yesterday—our banners flaunted out Like flowers the south wind woos from their retreats; Flowers of the nation, blue, and white, and red, Waving from balcony, and spire, and mast; Which told us that war's wintry storm had fled, And spring was more than ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... spiral, and deeply hollowed out on one side; but examples of this group are both of older and of more modern date. Another very extensive genus, especially in America, is Platyceras (fig. 72, a and f), with its thin fragile shell—often hardly coiled up at all—its minute spire, and its widely-expanded, often sinuated mouth. The British Acroculioe should probably be placed here, and the group has with reason been regarded as allied to the Violet-snails (Ianthina) of the open Atlantic. The species of Platyostoma (fig. 72, h) also belong ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... two pine cones, a trident, a thyrsus tied around with two ribbons with the ends pendant, a thumb and two fingers. The caduceus again the conspicuous part of the sacred Triad Ashur is symbolized by a single stone placed upright,—the stump of a tree, a block, a tower, a spire, minaret, pole, pine, poplar or ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... alternating with Peggy in riding Star the rest of the journey was passed. They came into Lancaster the next day, the tall spire of the court-house with the two faces of its clock being the first thing to be spied. The town swarmed with soldiers. It seemed to Peggy that there was one on every corner. In truth Lancaster was in fair way toward being a military camp. The Americans found much difficulty in disposing ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... Magnolia, [6] spread High as a cloud, high over head! The Cypress and her spire, Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam [7] Cover a hundred leagues and seem To set the ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... under the shadow of the spire of St. Giles's, in the pavement between that old cathedral church and the County Hall, the passer-by will mark the figure of a heart let into the causeway, and know that he is standing on the "Heart of Midlothian," [Footnote: The title of one of Sir Walter Scott's romances.] the site of the old ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... day in April when he and Gascoyne rode clattering out through Temple Bar, leaving behind them quaint old London town, its blank stone wall, its crooked, dirty streets, its high-gabled wooden houses, over which rose the sharp spire of St. Paul's, towering high into the golden air. Before them stretched the straight, broad highway of the Strand, on one side the great houses and palaces of princely priests and powerful nobles; on the other the Covent Garden, ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... sober classical style. The Church consists of a Greek square, continued at the east end into a semicircular tribune, surmounted by a central cupola, and flanked by a detached bell-tower, ending in a pyramidal spire. The whole is built of solid yellow travertine, a material which, by its warmth of colour, is pleasing to the eye, and mitigates the mathematical severity of the design. Upon entering, we feel at once what Alberti called the music of this style; its large and simple ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... village marked with little spire, Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame, There dwells, in lowly shed and mean attire, A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name, Who boasts unruly brats ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... houses, with gaping caves of storage under the roofs, the red church spire, the clinking of hammers in the forges, the slow stamping of oxen-all spoke of sleepy toil, without ideas or ambition. Harz knew it all too well; like the earth's odour, it belonged to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... France, and the proposed experiment was actually performed in the presence of the king. Before the report, however, of the successful experiment reached Franklin he had himself verified his theory, using a kite to attain an altitude, as there was no spire or high building in Philadelphia. Taking his son with him, he went to an old cow house in the country, before a storm, and there, to catch the electric fluid, sent up his kite made of an old silk handkerchief. A wire extended from the upright stick of the kite, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... mind was for some time; but it's many years ago, when I was first made boatswain of a corvette (during this conversation he was looking through the telescope); yes, there it is," said he; "I have it in the field. Look, Mr Simple, do you see a small church, with a spire of glazed tiles, shining ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... sinking from the world, the thought came upon him that she was his sun, and the glory that she shed over his life might soon pass away into the bosom of the "ever-during Dark." But against the clouds rose one of the many spires that characterize the town of Bruges; and on that spire, tapering into heaven, rested the eyes of Gertrude Vane. The different objects that caught the gaze of each was emblematic both of the different channel of their thoughts and the different elements of their nature: he thought of the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... You see the approaching stranger, and the mysterious conversation grows more and more interesting. Emmaus rises in the distance, in the likeness of a New England village, with a white meeting house and spire. You follow the travellers; you enter the house with them; nor do you wake from your trance until, with streaming eyes, the preacher tells you that "they saw it was the Lord Jesus—and what a pity it was they could not have ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Georgian princess, of Metivier's disappearance from Moscow, and of how some German fellow had been brought to Rostopchin and accused of being a French "spyer" (so Count Rostopchin had told the story), and how Rostopchin let him go and assured the people that he was "not a spire at all, but only ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... and flying buttresses and all the rest of it so as to keep them from falling. Look at those," he added, pointing at the skyscrapers before him, "they're not afraid to stand by themselves; they mean something, they have a use, while a spire just sticks straight up, pointing at nothing and being of no service unless it is to hang bells in a belfry. I don't care what people say about those crazy old tumble-down buildings of the Middle Ages, they may be beautiful and all that, but ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and man. It cannot be secured in a moment. As the edifice is erected by diligently laying one stone upon another, until it finally becomes a splendid temple, piercing the heavens with its glittering spire, so a good name must be built up by good deeds, faithfully and constantly performed, as day after day carries us along amid the ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... to our great St. Paul's, so buried in the heart of the city, amid the roar and din of commerce. And how different the smoky atmosphere in which the great Dome is enshrouded, to the clear, bright air of Milan, where every delicate spire, every graceful projection with its play of light and shadow, is seen to perfection, and the pure whiteness of the marble is unsullied by the soot and dirt which form, alas! a complete veil to our own Cathedral! What aspect, I thought, would the fairy-like Dome of Milan present after a winter ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... quivering ripple behind it. Farther down, springing from between two clumps of trees, might be seen the span of a light and elegant arch, from under which the river gently wound away to the right; and beyond this, on the left, about a hundred yards from the bank, rose up the slender spire of the parish church, out of the bosom of the old beeches that overshadowed it, and threw a solemn gloom upon the peaceful graveyard at its side. About two hundred yards again to the right, in a little green shelving dell beneath the ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... spot, where Science holds her reign, How joyous once I join'd thy youthful train! Bright in idea gleams thy lofty spire, Again I mingle with thy playful quire. * * * * * * * My wonted haunts, my scenes of joy and woe, Each early boyish friend, or youthful foe; Our feuds dissolved, but not my friendship past, I bless the former, and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... of th'age of —- yeares, was last incumbent there, but not resident, since anno reg. xxvij who sold his interest to Mr Copley for viijli xi s. ij d. {26} At the west end of the building is a large massy tower, lately put into thorough repair, this is surmounted by an octagonal spire, 230 feet in height, and formed of wooden shingles carefully fitted together. The great bell of this church is the largest in the county, and weighs nearly a ton and a half: the whole peal, consisting of ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... broken, and in some places decayed entirely away. We considered it, however, a good road, and cantered over it, our sure-footed horses never once stumbling. Glad indeed, were we, to see the white spire of the Hilo church, and more glad to reach Mr. Coan's hospitable house, where hot baths and a good dinner in some degree enlivened us. Grandma was tired, but a night and day's rest made her quite herself again. We felt amply repaid for any amount of fatigue or discomfort, by ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... Persian embroidery, and Teuila took a green silk one, in which to appear before royalty. Long before we got to the village we could see the middle part of an immense native house rising up like a church spire. Mataafa's own house was the largest and finest I had ever seen, and there were others as large. Louis tried in vain to get an interpreter, but was fain to put up with Talolo, who nearly expired with fright and misery, for he could not speak the high chief ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... a church in This attractive little shire, He beheld a smallish urchin Shooting arrows at the spire; In a spirit of derision, "Look alive!" the eagle said; And, with infinite precision, Dropped a ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... empire, save the three countries which it had been beforehand agreed to accept. Louis kept all the provinces of Germany of which he was already in possession, and received besides, on the left bank of the Rhine, the towns of Mayence, Worms, and Spire, with the territory appertaining to them. Lothair, for his part, had the eastern belt of Gaul, bounded on one side by the Rhine and the Alps, on the other by the courses of the Meuse, the Saone, and the Rhone, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... been erected by them on the banks of the Bay of Quinte, in the township of Tyendinaga, or the Indian woods. It is of stone, with a handsome tin-covered spire, and replaces the original wooden edifice they had erected on their first landing, the first altar of their pilgrimage, which ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... monuments, and Arthur's Seat rising grandly beyond. Two or three bridges afford a level communication between the old town and the new, and Prince's street, the thoroughfare of the latter, forms a fine terrace along the northern edge of the ravine, passing midway the Scott monument, a superb spire of Gothic. This latter is perhaps the only commendable feature per se in the city—for the details of Edinburgh are notably poor, its pictorial effect arising solely from the very happy manner in which they are grouped, amphitheatre-like, around ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... I dare say, but it changed his mind, for I got rather excited, and told the story in my topsy-turvy way, and his wife heard, and said so kindly, 'Take it, Thomas, and oblige the young lady. I'd do as much for our Jimmy any day if I had a spire ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... in the fourteenth the Rhine witnessed the invention of artillery; and on its bank, at Strassburg, a printing-office was first established. In 1400 the famous cannon, fourteen feet in length, was cast at Cologne; and in 1472 Vindelin de Spire printed his Bible. A new world was making its appearance; and, strange to say, it was upon the banks of the Rhine that those two mysterious tools with which God unceasingly works out the civilization of man—the catapult and the book—war and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... day of the nuptials was fixed; a joyous company assembled at Burley on the Hill, the mansion of the bride's father, which, from one of the noblest terraces in the island, looks down on magnificent woods of beech and oak, on the rich valley of Catmos, and on the spire of Oakham. The father of the bridegroom was detained to London by indisposition, which was not supposed to be dangerous. On a sudden his malady took an alarming form. He was told that he had but a few hours to live. He received the intimation with tranquil ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... surname of Smith. He preceded his assistant, who, it was decided, should join him only on the last afternoon of his stay at Hammerpond. Now the village of Hammerpond is perhaps one of the prettiest little corners in Sussex; many thatched houses still survive, the flint-built church, with its tall spire nestling under the down, is one of the finest and least restored in the county, and the beech-woods and bracken jungles through which the road runs to the great house are singularly rich in what the vulgar artist and photographer call ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... Walton, Norfolk; Ledbury, Herefordshire; and a very curious one entirely of timber, with the frame for the bells springing from the ground, at Pembridge, Herefordshire. At Salisbury a fine early English detached campanile, 200 feet in height, surmounted by a timber turret and spire, stood near the north-west corner of the cathedral, but was destroyed ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... around. Swift on the sedgy reeds the ruin preys; Along the margin winds the running blaze: The trees in flaming rows to ashes turn, The flowering lotos and the tamarisk burn, Broad elm, and cypress rising in a spire; The watery willows hiss before the fire. Now glow the waves, the fishes pant for breath, The eels lie twisting in the pangs of death: Now flounce aloft, now dive the scaly fry, Or, gasping, turn their bellies to the sky. At ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... purple on the hill, The village spire, the ivy'd tow'r, The sparkling wheel of yonder mill, The grove, green field, and op'ning flow'r, Are ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... spire and barn, looked westerly The patient weathercocks; But even the birches on the hill 15 Stood motionless as rocks. No sound was in the woodlands Save the squirrel's dropping shell, And the yellow leaves among the boughs, Low rustling ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... The immense plantations of dark pines give it this sombre hue, but in reality the waters are clear as crystal. Beyond these groves, still looking south, you discover the woods about Wardour Castle, and amongst them the silvery gleam of another sheet of water. To the south-west is the giant spire of Salisbury, which since the fall of Fonthill Tower now reigns in solitary stateliness over these vast regions of down and desert. Stourton Tower presents itself to the north, whilst to the west, in the extreme distance, several high ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... the wind, to the parsonage of a little church near by and inquired for the minister, but was told by his wife that he had been gone for several weeks to a watering place in the mountains. The old woman ran on further, till she came to a great church whose majestic spire seemed to touch the clouds. A stately rectory was near. Soft music, mingled with merry voices, came out to her through the open doors. Awkwardly and tremblingly she went up the polished marble steps and rang. A servant ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... husband came back she told him what had happened. So he at once put on blue clothes, mounted a blue horse, and rode into the forest. He met the horse, dismounted, and began digging. At last he discovered a temple to Parwati, all of gold, with diamond pillars and a spire made of rubies. Inside was a statue of the goddess, and to it he prayed, saying, "I have houses and cottages, cattle and horses, money and goods of all kinds, but I am very sad because I have no son." The goddess pitied ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... bluefly shot past with its quivering, long-drawn hum, like an insect tuning-fork. As the friends topped each rise which leads up to the Crystal Palace, they could see the dun clouds of London stretching along the northern skyline, with spire or dome breaking through the low-lying haze. The Admiral was in high spirits, for the morning post had brought good news ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... detail; and then, at the turn, slackening earth's power asserting itself with the road's windings. Curiosity keenly on edge, or memory awakened; and the past also casting its spells, with the isolated farms or the paved French villages by the river-bank, or the church spire, the towers, in the distance.... A wrong turn is no hardship; it merely gives additional knowledge of the country, a further detail of the characteristic lie of the land, a different view of some hill or some group of buildings. ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... the rear platform of the limited, across the widening distance, at a town passed a moment ago. A flourishing city, according to the prospectus; a commonplace aggregation of architecture, you say; respectable middle-class homes; time-serving cottages built on the same plan; a heaven-seeking spire; perhaps a work of art in library or townhall. You are rather glad that you have left it behind; rather certain that soon you will have rolled through ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... abroad, find themselves within the confines of the parish of St. Bride's, with its church built by Wren shortly after the great fire, and its queer pointed steeple, like a series of superimposed tabourets overtopped with a needle-like spire? ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... Valley we come to the beautiful Tenaya Lake, and here the canyon terminates. A mile or two above the lake stands the grand Sierra Cathedral, a building of one stone, sewn from the living rock, with sides, roof, gable, spire and ornamental pinnacles, fashioned and finished symmetrically like a work of art, and set on a well-graded plateau about 9000 feet high, as if Nature in making so fine a building had also been careful that it should be finely seen. From every direction its peculiar form ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... spires and domes for all the world like some vast cathedral which taunts the soul with its aloofness. If, on some sunshiny afternoon you look up from the camp and see a ghost-moon hanging, no more than a foot above the highest spire, you must surely be "citified" if you do not pause to drink in its weird sublimity and ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... of these monuments is that which tradition allots to Absalom, close to this other which we have just described. It consists of a solid square erection, bearing what, for want of a better name, I must call a spire, with curved sides, the sides curving inwards as they fall from the apex to the base. This spiral roof, too low and dumpy to be properly called a spire, is very strong, built with stones laid in circles flat on each other, the circles becoming smaller as they rise towards the top. Why Absalom ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... comprehensive view of it, because the woods approached so closely that the traveller came upon it almost unawares. From every other side the outlines of the Abbey were singularly beautiful. Here a small spire sharply cut the sky, or a graceful point of roof told of a chapel or high-pitched hall; there, half frowning, half friendly, a mass of creeper-clad, grey wall looked capable of withstanding a siege. In some places solid pieces of ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... Through what a thicket of currant-bushes, and rose-bushes, and lilacs, and snow-balls, the path winds from the porch to the little gate—is it not a most charming spot? Now look over the brow of the hill—there, you can see the spire of the village church; and if you will walk a few paces further to yonder green knoll, you will see a cluster of pretty dwellings, and comfortable farm-houses, scattered ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... some gap in the hedge, when I discovered one of the inhabitants in the next field, advancing toward the stile, of the same size with him whom I saw in the sea pursuing our boat. He appeared as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and took about ten yards at every stride, as near as I could guess. I was struck with the utmost fear and astonishment, and ran to hide myself in the corn, whence I saw him at the top of the stile looking back into the next field, ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten |
