"Topmost" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from the fervid rays of the Chaco sun. It is a costume imposing and picturesque; while the caparison of his horse is in keeping with it. The saddle, called recado, is furnished with several coverings, one upon another, the topmost, coronilla, being of bright-coloured cloth elaborately quilted; while the bridle of plaited horse-hair is studded with silver joints, from which depend rings and tassels, the same ornamenting the breast-piece and neck straps attaching the ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... the fields again, past the barb-wire boundary line, across the river, and up among the foot-hills, leading to the mountain close at hand. When the topmost crest was reached I stopped for a last look at the Yegnare Valley, at San Francisco lying below, at San Morano farther in the distance, at the mountain looming up in the background, beyond which lies Tegacigalpa, ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... marched towards the Pyrenees, and, as evening fell, found themselves among the mountains, where Roland planted his banner on the topmost summit, clear against the sky, and the army encamped for the night; but the whole Saracen host had also marched and encamped in a wood not far from the Franks. Meanwhile, as Charlemagne slept he ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... having taken the lady in, from her topmost purple feathers to her pin-like heels, decided that, in all probability, she had not got a League mind. And she and the Anglo-Indian colonel (who probably had not got this type of mind either, for Anglo-Indian colonels so exceedingly often have another) were going to start ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... Legba consisted of propitiating his or her characteristics by unctions of palm oil, and near every native door stood a clay Legba-pot of cooked maize and palm oil, which got eaten by the turkey-buzzard or vulture. This loathsome fowl, perched upon the topmost stick of a blasted calabash tree, struck Burton as the most appropriate emblem of rotten ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... they were within a mile of him; then he wheeled the mare and took her back along her tracks, urging her to her topmost speed. Swiftly she fled and swiftly pursued Sooltan, the man not once ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... ridge into a valley and then up to higher altitude, where the character of the forest changed. The trees were no longer pines, but firs and spruce, growing thin and exceedingly tall, with few branches below the topmost foliage. So dense was this forest that ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... perhaps, forgotten that one moment before catching sight of the nocturnal band of vagabonds, Quasimodo, as he inspected Paris from the heights of his bell tower, perceived only one light burning, which gleamed like a star from a window on the topmost story of a lofty edifice beside the Porte Saint-Antoine. This edifice was the Bastille. That star was the candle of Louis XI. King Louis XI. had, in fact, been two days in Paris. He was to take his departure ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... concert was in every respect as complete a triumph as the first. The audience numbered upward of SEVEN THOUSAND, filling the vast amphitheatre to the topmost circles of the gallery. The sight of that dense sea of heads, from either extremity of the balcony, reminded us of one of Martin's grand, gloomy pictures, and the resemblance was further increased by ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... interest that all of the large trees from which the lower limbs were sawed and the stubs grafted, the topmost limbs having been left, designated as U.W.T., did badly. While in the case of the five Hales, three had 100% and two had 66.6% catches. These two also had 100% catches but bugs ate the tender shoots and killed three of them. These trees had the tops cut off last fall ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... times and nations and general humanity, to deduce the grand results of life, and pronounce the lessons of wisdom. But all this it does with the full power of fancy—with a bold lyrical freedom which ascends, as with godlike step, to the topmost height of worldly things; and it effects it in conjunction with the whole sensible influence of melody and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... in all her husband's accomplishments, from the greatest to the least, admired very much his skill in ornamental chirography. She drew her chair closer to the table, and took up the topmost card, and began to decipher, rather than to read, the name in the beautiful old English characters, so tangled in a thicket of rose-buds and forget-me-nots as to be scarcely legible. She looked closely and more closely at the ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... sanctuaries. I watched the people moving in a long row, like a trail of ants, towards the western gate between the pylons of the Ptolemies, and the last of them had disappeared before the rosy light died away on the topmost points of ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... applied ornament judiciously distributed; a moulding in the arches; a florid canopy and statue amid the buttresses; a few grinning monsters leaning out of unexpected nooks; a leafy budding of the topmost pinnacles; a piercing here and there of some little gallery, parapet, or turret into lacework against the sky — and the building became a poem, an inexhaustible emotion. Add some passing cloud casting its moving shadow over the pile, add the ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... garden. Once there he would face the next difficulty. One was enough at a time. And then, when he had made the rope fast to one of the marble pillars and slid down it, it proved too short. He swung with his feet just touching the topmost branch of a blossoming peach tree. There was nothing for it but to let go, snatch at the branches as he fell and trust to chance for safety. He found it; and dropped to the ground amid a perfect shower of shed ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... looked inexpressibly shocked, and hastened into the stair, which was very dirty, and odorous of many evil smells. The steps seemed endless, but she was glad as she mounted to find the light growing broader, until at last she reached the topmost landing, where the big skylight revealed a long row of doors, each giving entrance to a separate dwelling. The girl looked confusedly at them for a moment, and then, recalling sundry directions Walter had given, proceeded ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... other. The finest and fastest boats were side-wheelers, but a large wheel at the stern, or two stern wheels, side by side, capable of independent action, were common modes of propulsion. The escape-pipes of the engine were carried high aloft, above the topmost of the tiers of decks, and from each one alternately, when the boat was under way, would burst a gush of steam, with a sound like a dull puff, followed by a prolonged sigh, which could be heard far away beyond the dense forests that bordered the river. A row of posts, always in appearance, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... bulk of the cathedral; and upon the top of the cathedral was a random splash and great stain of snow, still clinging as to an Alpine peak. It had fallen accidentally, but just so fallen as to half drape the dome from its very topmost point, and to pick out in perfect silver the great orb and the cross. When Syme saw it he suddenly straightened himself, and made with his sword-stick ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... on the topmost stair now, and a key was thrust with a rasping sound into the lock. But before it could be turned—it fortunately fitted ill—we three had jumped on the bed and were crouching in a row at the head of it, where the curtains of the alcove concealed, and only just concealed ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... were laughing in great glee, when a mockingbird, perched on the topmost bough of a small tree opposite the nursery window, burst suddenly into song, with many a trill and quaver. Clara, with the child in her arms, sprang to the ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... is not wind enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor, By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore, A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb, The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea— For these alone the finials fret the skies, The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free, While from the triple portals, with grave eyes, Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity, The ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... very beautiful. She ruffled her hair a little on father's shoulder. She pinked her cheeks from the inside some way. She glanced up at the topmost branch of the Christmas tree. The gold ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... anxiety and pain to him; for it was difficult to satisfy men of all tempers, and some of these not of the most generous sort. On such occasions he might be seen with his right-hand thumb thrust through the topmost button-hole of his coat-breast, vehemently hitching his right shoulder, as was his habit when labouring under any considerable excitement. Occasionally he would take an early ride before breakfast, to inspect the progress of the Sankey viaduct. ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... embroideries, alternating with eatables, fruit, pipes, and the like, there being no attempt at classification. Woe be to the unwary who approach these bazars without the ability to "bargain"; for there is ever a scale of prices, and the topmost one is ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... practice, if it did no more, gave wings to our most sombre hours, and put a point on the imagination. As for the superstition of the tales of ceilidh and buaile-mhart I have little to say. Perhaps the dullest among us scarce credited the giant and dwarf; but the Little Folks are yet on our topmost hills. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... serious service, for this gush of sentimental feeling is a transient and fluctuating thing; it gives out just as soon as it meets with difficulty and occasion for self-sacrifice. And this attempt to live forever on the topmost wave of emotional excitement defeats itself by the satiety and ennui which it brings. Whether in courtship, or society, or business, it behooves us to be on our guard against this insidious sham which cloaks selfishness in protestations of affection; ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... the wise woman stooped, and lifting her in her arms, folded her cloak around her. Instantly she fell asleep, and slept as soft and as soundly as if she had been in her own bed. She slept till the moon went down; she slept till the sun rose up; she slept till he climbed the topmost sky; she slept till he went down again, and the poor old moon came peaking and peering out once more: and all that time the wise woman went walking on and on very fast. And now they had reached a spot where a few fir-trees came to meet ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... of the King's dominions stood the palace, perfect in beauty, from its dazzling foundations to its topmost flaming turret. Brightness unquenchable shone from its walls, warmth and the spirit of friendliness streamed from its windows and wide-flung golden doors. Beyond it, in the garden of the Princess, the exquisite flame-roses and stately fire-lilies unfolded to a richer, fuller beauty. ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... them! Theirs is the dizzy exaltation of him who mounts above the world. Alas, in me is no such unfathomable mystery. I but trick myself. Yet I have my moments. These stones that I carry on the mountain, what of them? On what windy ridge do I build my castle? It is shrill and bleak, they say, on the topmost peaks of the Delectable Mountains, so lower down I have reared its walls. There is no storm in these upland valleys and the sun sits pleasantly on their southern slopes. But even if there be unfolded no broad prospect from the devil ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... In the topmost chamber of the last of a row of somber gray stone houses in Adam Street a girl with a thin but beautiful face and large, expectant eyes sat close to the bare, uncurtained window, from which it was possible to command a view of the street below. A book which she had apparently ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... encountered in reaching it. From the interior and exterior galleries of this exquisite structure one can look down, on one side, upon the palms of the Equator and on the other upon the beech and the fir, which interlock their topmost sprays at his feet. Beyond and beneath the silvery beeches railway-trains whisk back and forth, like hares athwart the covert—the tireless locomotive another foil to the strangers from the land ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... asked the captain; and again they searched the cabin. The closet was peered into to its topmost shelf; a few boxes that had been left, emptied of their contents; even the bed on which Charlie lay was minutely examined, and the improbable supposition that the walls of the cellar might conceal him was ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... distant hamlets. The hamlets twinkled in the fresh daylight, and in the nearest one—a mile back on the road—a fine campanile stood up against the sun, which pierced through three windows in its topmost story. So flat was the plain that mere sky filled nine-tenths of the prospect; and all the wide dome of it tinkled with the singing ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... more unceasingly their far crags smoke With the thick darkness of swart cloud, because When first the mists do form, ere ever the eyes Can there behold them (tenuous as they be), The carrier-winds will drive them up and on Unto the topmost summits of the mountain; And then at last it happens, when they be In vaster throng upgathered, that they can By this very condensation lie revealed, And that at same time they are seen to surge From very vertex of the mountain up Into far ether. For very ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... the murmur of bees a-swing? What is the laugh of a child at play? What is the song that the angels sing? (Where were the tune could the sweet notes stay Longer than this, to kiss and betray?) Nay, on the blue sky's topmost towers, What is the song of the seraphim? Say— Carol of ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... his bunch of keys from his pocket, he detached his latch-key softly, and as softly inserted it in the lock. The door opened noiselessly, showing a light down the stairway from the hall above. He could now hear some one moving, probably on the topmost floor, with an opening and shutting of doors that might have been those of closets, followed by a swishing sound like that of the folding or packing of clothes. He entered and closed the door with a distinctly ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... the evening of the last day of June when we rounded Kvarven and stood in for Bergen in the gloom of the sullen night. Next morning when I came on deck Vagen lay clear and bright in the sun, all the ships being gayly decked out with bunting from topmost to deck. The sun was holding high festival in the sky—Ulriken, Floeiren, and Loevstakken sparkled and glittered, and greeted me as of old. It is a marvellous place, that ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... Little River drains a province larger than a European kingdom. Chungking is built at a great height above the present river, now sixty feet below its summer level. Its walls are unscalable. Good influences are directed over the city from a lofty pagoda on the topmost hill in the vicinity. Temples abound, and spacious yamens and rich buildings, the crowning edifice of all being the Temple to the God of Literature. Distances are prodigious in Chungking, and the streets so steep ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... smothered exclamation of hope, got upon her feet and ran forward to him. He hurried her to the window. She obeyed him in silence, for it was clear that terror had robbed her tongue of all articulate speech. He clambered out, turned on the topmost rung, and flinging an arm round her waist, was lifting her out, when the other figure stepped forward and set a hand on his shoulder. The look on this woman's face was now terrible. Something seemed working in her throat and the muscles of her face: it was her despair struggling with ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... puzzled to know what sort of angels he was entertaining unawares, obtained permission from the "women folks," sent a boy off with the jug of drink and showed his callers to the topmost floor ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... topmost height ye gain, And stand in Glory's ether clear, And grasp the prize of all your pain - So many ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... the lamp. Then there was a pause, and then a figure came across the porch, a short figure casting grotesque shadows, a bit stiff, a bit unsteady, like the rings of light that went out in circling waves behind it. It was Uncle Buzz. He came and stood on the topmost rotting step. He bowed. With one hand holding the wavering lamp, the other bravely cupped before his ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... busy time on a large plantation. All hands join in the work—men, women and children; for it must be rushed. Over-ripe berries shrink and dry up. The pickers, with baskets slung over their shoulders, walk between the rows, stripping the berries from the trees, using ladders to reach the topmost branches, and sometimes even taking immature fruit in their haste to expedite the work. About thirty pounds is considered a fair day's work under good conditions. As the baskets are filled, they are emptied at a "station" in that particular ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... looked about till she found a shed, built against the hut, where the goats were kept; she peeped in, and saw it was empty. She continued her search and presently came to the fir trees behind the hut. A strong breeze was blowing through them, and there was a rushing and roaring in their topmost branches, Heidi stood still and listened. The sound growing fainter, she went on again, to the farther corner of the hut, and so round to where her grandfather was sitting. Seeing that he was in exactly the same position as when she ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... a duty to one's family than oneself, for the all-important supper-time is not come yet), and then, if gifted by the Lord with wings—for what bird can stoop at such a moment to believe that his own grandfather made them?—up to the topmost spray that feathers in the breeze, and pour upon the grateful air the voice of free thanksgiving. But an if the blade behind the heart is still unplumed for flying, and only gentle flax or fur blows out on ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... return to a stuffy apartment—that the police would have been justified in thinking he had been shot from outside. It was an old-fashioned house in more ways than in the manner of its heating. Outside of one of his two unscreened windows there was an iron grating—the topmost landing of a fire escape. Dundee could imagine Captain Strawn's positiveness in placing the murderer there—crouching in ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... which she held open in her hands, and in so doing pressed against her arm, inhaling the perfume of her violets, and sending a wild thrill of ecstasy through her. The Adagio rose with so exultant a song, soared with so jubilant a strain to the topmost summits of rapture, and flowed wide into the Infinite, that it seemed like the voice of some celestial being pouring out the joy of a deathless victory. The spirits of the audience were borne along on that irresistible torrent ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... over the topmost letter and a moist silence prevailed till a sudden jerk fished up the bag, and before the dolls could recover their wits they were spread out on the floor of a mail car to dry, while several busy men sorted and saved such papers and letters ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... was the sea, in the depths of which were to be seen swimming the most fantastic fishes, and on the surface a superb three-decked vessel. On the two sides, trees full of birds put the heavens, which they touched with their topmost branches, in communication with the earth, which they grasped with their roots; and in the space left in the middle of all this, in the most perfectly horizontal line, and reproduced in six different writings, was the adverb "pitilessly." This time the artist was not deceived; the ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... flew fast and the motor drummed steadily in their ears. Lannes let the aeroplane sink a little lower, and John became conscious of a new sound, akin nevertheless to the throb of the motor. It was the concussion of the battle. The topmost and weakest waves of air hurled off in circles by countless cannon and rifles were reaching them. But they had been softened so much by distance that the sound was not unpleasant, and the Arrow rocked gently as if touched by ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... James was much annoyed with the women, especially Kitty Davie, always pushing in when there was tossing, and tearing the very ha'pence out of our hands: us not caring so much about the money, but humiliated to see women mixing up in politics. By the time the topmost barrel was on the bonfire there was a great smell of whiskey in the quarry, it being a confined place. My father had been against the bonfire being in the quarry, arguing that the wind on the hill would have ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... went up and up, till at last they reached the topmost gallery, where the wall was pierced with loopholes and overhanging platforms, whence stones and other missiles could be hurled upon an attacking force. Miriam looked out eagerly, walking round the ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... impossible to cite any instance of this being done. The effect on the great gas bag of the sudden release of a load so great would certainly cause a sudden upward flight which might be so quick and so powerful as to affect the very structure of the ship. So far as known 250 pounds was the topmost limit of Zeppelin bombs, while most of them were of much smaller dimensions. The airplane bombs were seldom more than sixty pounds in weight, although in the larger British machines a record of ninety-five pounds has been attained. The most common form of bomb used ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... pronouncing these words, there followed a tumult over head, as if heaven and earth were coming together. The trees in their topmost branches bended to their very roots. It seemed as if the whole forest were peopled with devils, making a crash like a thousand waggons, hurrying to the right and the left, before and behind, in every possible direction, with ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... green foliage to the topmost crags, wild pear-trees being no inconspicuous feature; charming little valleys wind about between the mountain-spurs, and last night's downpour has imparted a freshness to the whole scene that perhaps it would not be one's good fortune to see ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the point where the concealed foundations of Hawthorne's life terminate, and the final structure begins to appear above the surface, like the topmost portion of a coral island slowly rising from the depths ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... window. The night was very dark. He could see nothing, and yet he knew that some one was there—some one who would help him in his final hour of despair. Struggling weakly from the bed, he dragged himself to the bars. Beaching between them, his hand encountered the topmost rung of a ladder. Some one was ascending from below. He could feel the supports quiver, he could hear the ladder creak beneath the weight of a living, ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... which had clothed the land like a garment before the days of the sheep. For here, at least, there came no nibbling wethers, nor starving cattle; and the mountain sheep which had browsed there in the old days were now hiding on the topmost crags of the Superstitions to escape the rifles of the destroyers. All the world without was laid waste and trampled by hurrying feet, but the garden of Hidden Water was still kept inviolate, a secret shrine consecrated ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... and hollow, the brambles outstretching their arching wreaths, laden with heavy clusters of shining fruit, glossy black, scarlet, or green, sometimes with a lingering pearly flower. A step-ladder stile led down into it from the field, and on the topmost step, her back against the rail, sat Wilmet. On the lowest, turned at right angles to the first, was John Harewood, looking up to her; while scrambling on the bank, contending with the brambles, were the younger ones; Lance, unable ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bunting feels the musical tendency, and aspires to its expression, with the rest. Perched upon the topmost branch beside his mate or mates,—for he is quite a polygamist, and usually has two or three demure little ladies in faded black beside him,—generally in the early part of the day, he seems literally to vomit up his notes. Apparently with much labor and effort, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... airplane, are in the control of men; and there may be still a chance of bringing about a better state of affairs than now exists. While the war correspondents were actually in France, and while they were often forced to write at topmost speed, there was excuse for avion and camion, vrille and escadrille, and all the other French words which bespattered the columns of British and American, Canadian and Australian newspapers. I doubt if there was ever any necessity for hangar, the shed which sheltered the airplane ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... all use and purpose in life is quite valueless. The edifice of romance is constructed much on the same plan as a child's castle of cards, and deservedly shares the same fate. That is to say, the topmost card overbalances the whole structure. It is usually the hand of Reason that topples over Love's romantic tenement by crowning it with the card of Common Sense. When we find Love has become a practical reality, the discovery ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... of cross between a thieves' kitchen and a presbytery. He is the poet Verlaine. The singer of the sweetest verses in the French language—a sort of ambling song like a robin's. You have heard the robin singing on a coral hedge in autumn-tide; the robin confesses his little soul from the topmost twig; his song is but a tracery of his soul, and so is Verlaine's. His gift is a vision of his own soul, and he makes a tracery as you might of a drawing with a lead pencil, never troubling himself to inquire if what he traces is ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... to keep warm, Whopper mounted to the topmost branches of the silver maple. From this position he could overlook a wide expanse of country. He gazed first to, the northward and then over ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... she stepped over the topmost ledge of the granite stile, there was a fanlike flutter of black and white in her very face, and she stood a moment watching the ill-omened bird wheel and dip behind the thick blossom of ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... And if this wonderful thing were possible—if she could put her hand in his and trust to him for safety in all the coming years they might live together—what man of woman born would dare to interfere? There was a blue light coming in through the shutters. He went to the window: the topmost leaves of the trees were quivering in the cold air far up there in the clearing skies, where the stars were fading out one by one, and he could hear the sound of the sea on the distant beach, and he knew that across the gray plain of waters the dawn was breaking, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... their pensive lord attends: This only solace his hard fortune sends. Soon as he reach'd the shore and touch'd the waves, From his bor'd eye the gutt'ring blood he laves: He gnash'd his teeth, and groan'd; thro' seas he strides, And scarce the topmost billows ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... the topmost heights of Proudhon's political philosophy. It is from this that the fresh and vivifying stream of his Anarchist thought flows. Before we follow the somewhat tortuous course of this stream let us glance back at the way ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... strength. 'Why should I not leap out of the arena where these men place me to play a fool's part; and scrambling over the ranges of seats, plunge this dagger into his heart? Ye gods! were I once to begin to clamber up, no force could stop me from reaching him, were he at the very topmost range! And ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... baffled, and he determined to scrutinize every shelf, of this particular section in turn. With the aid of one of those step-ladders folding into a chair which you sometimes see in libraries, he examined the topmost shelves but without result. He took down in turn Macaulay's History of England, a handsome edition of the works of Swift, and a set of Moliere without getting any nearer the end ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... the close-shut hearse Envy the dead within,—or, worse, Turn away with a keener zest To grapple and revel and sin with the rest! While far apart in a bower of green, Unheeded, unseen, A warbling bird on the topmost bough Merrily pipes to the Poet below, Asking an answer as gay, I trow! But he hears the surging waves without,— The heartless jeer, and the wild, wild shout: The ceaseless clamor, the cruel strife Make the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... stands fast in this, To do thee to hang upon the bough On the topmost oak in the morning-tide While the ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... beat about in jagged circles. Alternately floating and fluttering, she caught on an air-current, hurled herself on it, floated; then, as though she were sliding through some gigantic pillar of quiet air, sank earthwards. She seized the topmost bough of one of the high trees, threw her arms across it and hung limp. She panted; it seemed as if her breasts must burst. Her eyes closed; but the tears streamed ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... same plan, but in both plays (as in Richard II. and Richard III.) it suffers from the intractable nature of the historical material, and is also influenced by other causes. In Coriolanus the hero reaches the topmost point of success when he is named consul (II. iii.), and the rest of the play shows his decline and fall; but in this decline he attains again for a time extraordinary power, and triumphs, in a sense, over his original adversary, though he succumbs ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... furze-bushes, and creeping from one to another as soon as disturbed, contribute to keep it much out of sight, unless one knows and can imitate its call-note, in which case the male bird will soon answer and flutter up to the topmost twig of the furze-bush in which it may have previously been concealed, fluttering its wings, and repeating the call until again disturbed. This is the only occurrence of which I am aware in any of the Islands, included in the limits I have prescribed ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... line by line, the gnarled writhing of its intricate branches, and the pointed fretwork of its light and narrow leaves, inlaid on the blue field of the sky, and the small rosy-white stars of its spring blossoming, and the beads of sable fruit scattered by autumn along its topmost boughs—the right, in Israel, of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow,—and, more than all, the softness of the mantle, silver grey, and tender like the down on a bird's breast, with which, far away, it veils the undulation of the mountains;—these ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... lie low a-deck"; and he went up the companion ladder when I got my flannels and rubber-shod shoes upon me. But at the topmost step he stood awhile, and then he fell flat on his hands, and backed again down the stairway, so that he came almost on top of me; but I saw what prompted his action, for, as he moved, there was a shadow thrown from the deck light down to where we lay; and then ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... d'un chene Then 'mid the flowers springing Que je m'suis repose; At the oak-tree's foot I lay; Sur la plus haute branche Sweet the nightingale was singing Le rossignol chantait. High on the topmost spray. ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... Even the topmost branches spread out and drooped in all directions, and many poles supported ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... to shin that tree," announced Sam, and went up, and so did all of the others, reaching the topmost branches only after a difficult climb lasting ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... worthships and noblenesses whatsoever. Such blessed Parliament and, were it once in perfection, blessed Aristocracy of the Wisest, god-honoured and man-honoured, he does look for, more and more perfected,—as the topmost blessed practical apex of a whole world reformed from sham-worship, informed anew with worship, with truth and blessedness! He thinks that Hero-worship, done differently in every different epoch of the world, is the soul of all social business among men; that the doing of it well, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... wall," he admits in the "Note-Books." Who would not enjoy seeing a monarch come to so humble a contact with the bulwarks of his tower? Especially if he were royal enough not to take offense at one's mirth, as this one never did. Reaching the topmost heights of the stone pile, shaggy with yellow moss, we eagerly pressed to the battlements and drank in the view, finding all Florence spread out before us, far down from the breeze and light and prospect of our perch,—understanding ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... that scarce the feathery weed Sown by some eagle on the topmost stone Swayed in the air:—so bright, that noon did breed 1245 No shadow in the sky beside mine own— Mine, and the shadow of my chain alone. Below, the smoke of roofs involved in flame Rested like night, all else was clearly shown In that broad glare; yet sound to me ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to cowardice, and, suddenly changing their part from attacked to attackers, they swooped like eagles upon the galleys, and after a brisk hand-to-hand combat, in which Portundo was slain, they carried seven of them by assault, and sent the other flying at topmost speed to Ivica. This bold stroke brought to Algiers, besides the Moriscos, who had watched the battle anxiously from the island, many valuable captives of rank, and released hundreds of Moslem galley-slaves from irons and the lash.[11] "Drub-Devil" had a splendid reception, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... time-worn features of the aged matron. He wept. A thousand recollections crowded upon his mind, as memory, retracing scenes long passed, carried him back to the maternal mansion and the days of juvenility, where he beheld that mother, whose care, education, and discipline caused him to reach the topmost height of laudable ambition. Yet, how were his glories forgotten while he gazed upon her whom, wasted by time and malady, he should part ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... tall pillar above us. See how the wild marjoram has thrust its roots between the joints and hangs like "the hyssop that springeth out of the wall." See how the weather has worn deep holes and crevices in the topmost drum, and how the sparrows have made their nests there. Lean your back against the pillar; feel it vibrate like "a reed shaken with the wind"; watch that huge capital of acanthus leaves swaying slowly to and fro and trembling upon its stalk "as a ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... the letters, and Valerie turned to the books. Idly she moved along the wall, reading the names upon the calf bindings and not knowing whether she read them or no. A sudden desire to look at the topmost shelves made her cross to the great step-ladder and climb to its balustered pulpit. Before she was half-way there the desire had faded, but she went listlessly on. Come to the top, she turned to let her eye wander over the nearest shelf. Old, little-read volumes only ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... high hopes are at length realized. Most fortunate man! He has "risen in his profession" to the topmost summit ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the rows of nests and the beautiful brown eggs in them. Jimmy Skunk couldn't climb, and so he could have gotten only the eggs in the lower nests. Now if he, Unc' Billy, had been there, he could have climbed to the very topmost nest and—but what was the use of thinking about it? He hadn't been there, and he couldn't go now, because ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... himself standing on the glass steps, and as his foot touched the topmost one the whole flight closed up like an umbrella, and in a moment Teddy was sliding down the smooth glass pane, faster and faster and faster until he could hardly catch ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... constellations outside, while masts and funnels ran up, faintly indicated, into the gloom above. She scarcely moved to the lift of the languid swell, but as the undulations passed there was a pale-green shimmer about her waterline that magnified the height to her topmost deck. She looked unsubstantial, rather like a floating fairy palace than a ship, and as the noisy launch drew nearer ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... brighter and clearer; a semi-circular moon shone golden through the black network of the weeping birch-tree. The other trees stood like grim giants, with thousands of chinks looking like eyes, or fell into compact masses of darkness. Not a leaf was stirring; the topmost branches of the lilacs and acacias seemed to stretch upwards into the warm air, as though listening for something. The house was a dark mass now; patches of red light showed where the long windows were lighted up. It was a soft and peaceful evening, but under this ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... believed in the well-known theory that a continent, now submerged, once existed between America, Europe and Africa—in other words, where the Atlantic Ocean is now. That theory has found many followers. In support of it one is told that such islands as Madeira, the Canaries, the Azores, are the topmost peaks of a now partly submerged range of mountains which once stood upon that vanished continent. It is also a common belief that Northern Africa underwent the contrary process, and was pushed up from under the sea. That is why—it is said—the Sahara Desert, which ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... amphibians, but it soared over the group of buildings some twenty or thirty feet above the top of the wireless mast and went on, rising steadily, to clear even the topmost trees on the farther side of the stream by a hundred ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... measure, dar'd on earth." I then: "If soul that to the verge of life delays Repentance, linger in that lower space, Nor hither mount, unless good prayers befriend, How chanc'd admittance was vouchsaf'd to him?" "When at his glory's topmost height," said he, "Respect of dignity all cast aside, Freely He fix'd him on Sienna's plain, A suitor to redeem his suff'ring friend, Who languish'd in the prison-house of Charles, Nor for his sake refus'd through every vein To tremble. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... all his nobles and chiefs that they should bring with them to Saragossa as many men as they could gather together. And when they were come to the city, it being the third day from the issuing of the King's command, they saluted the great image of Mahomet, the false prophet, that stood on the topmost tower. This done they went forth from the city gates. They made all haste, marching across the mountains and valleys of Spain till they came in sight of the standard of France, where Roland and Oliver and the Twelve Peers were ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... Waveland, the inhabitants, as every one knows, are very liable to go to extremes in almost everything they undertake. Thus, if a new comer excites their favorable notice, they have nothing to do but to ride at once, upon the very topmost ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... conference lasted not more than an hour, during which time Daylight lived at the topmost of the highest peak of life that he had ever scaled. These men were big players. They were powers. True, as he knew himself, they were not the real inner circle. They did not rank with the Morgans and Harrimans. And yet they were in touch with those giants and were themselves ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... of joy, for the dark cloud ahead of them was a high mountainous land, whose topmost points were beginning to blush with the first touches of the sun that was ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... lifted from his tent, And thus outspake the Moor:— "I saw, old Chief, the Tricolor On Algiers' topmost tower— Upon its battlements the silks Of Lyons flutter free. Each morning, in the market-place, The muster-drum is beat, And to the war-hymn of Marseilles The squadrons pace the street. The armament from Toulon sailed: The Franks have ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... heavenwards. Mysterious shadows begin to throng the hollows; new tints and half-tints flicker and shift everywhere; mists hang floating over ravines and precipices; the vegetation grows more various, here slenderer, there richer and more luxuriant; whilst high over all, bright on the topmost summits, is a new strange something—the white snows of purity, catching the morning streaks on them of a brighter day, that has never as yet risen upon ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... listened—and at last it became dreadful and I was frightened at it. I wouldn't go alone again, for I felt queer and wanted to follow the great flow of it. But at twelve o'clock, with the "sun upon the topmost height of the day's journey," most of Nature's sights appear to me to be at their plainest. In the evening, when the shadows grow long and all hard lines are blurred, how soft, how different, everything is! It was noontide, that garish cruel time of day, when I first came ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... journeyed on his way too; and if he was merry before, he was now ten times more so. He had not gone far before he met an old miser: close by them stood a tree, and on the topmost twig sat a thrush singing away most joyfully. 'Oh, what a pretty bird!' said the miser; 'I would give a great deal of money to have such a one.' 'If that's all,' said the countryman, 'I will soon bring it down.' ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... young Juicy cones of the pine, And the milky beech-nut Is his bread and his wine. In the joy of his nature He frisks with a bound To the topmost twigs, And then ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... of my mind I climbed the hill that overshadows the gold-born city. The Dome they call it, and the face of it is vastly scarred, blanched as by a cosmic blow. There on its topmost height by a cairn of stone I stood at ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... unapproached[obs3], unsurpassed; superlative, inimitable facile princeps[Lat], incomparable, sovereign, without parallel, nulli secundus[Lat], ne plus ultra[Lat]; beyond compare, beyond comparison; culminating &c. (topmost) 210; transcendent, transcendental;plus royaliste que le Roi[Fr], more catholic than the Pope increased &c. (added to) 35; enlarged &c. (expanded) 194. Adv. beyond, more, over; over the mark, above the mark; above par; upwards of, in advance of; over ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... was too remote for the postman, for I never got a letter—at least so it seemed; and no squirrel watching from the topmost bough of the tallest pine could be ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton |
