"Translucent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mountain of moderate elevation, stands on a tongue of land that projects from the coast between the south of Palestine and Egypt. It is washed on the north by the sea which, on this day, is not gleaming, as is its wont, in translucent ultramarine; its more distant depths slowly surge in blue-black waves, while those nearer to shore are of quite a different hue, and meet their sisters that lie nearer to the horizon in a dull greenish-grey, as dusty plains join darker lava beds. The northeasterly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... strong, but more graceful outlines as we approached the pine-clad, sandy plains of the seaboard, upon which Richmond is built. We were skirting along the eastern base of the great Blue Ridge, about whose distant and lofty summits hung a perpetual veil of deep, dark, but translucent blue, which refracted the slanting rays of the morning and evening sun into masses of color more gorgeous than a dreamer's vision of an enchanted land. At Lynchburg we saw the famed Peaks of Otter—twenty miles away—lifting their proud heads ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... belief that it is only found in their island; but in this I apprehend they are misinformed, as specimens of equal merit have been brought from Quilon and Cochin on the southern coast of Hindostan. The cat's-eye is a greenish translucent quartz, and when cut en cabochon it presents a moving internal reflection which is ascribed to the presence of filaments of asbestos. Its perfection is estimated by the natives in proportion to the narrowness and sharpness of the ray and the pure ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... must regain the lost state. But it is to the giant and spiritual childhood of the young immortals we must return, when into their dear and translucent souls first fell the rays of the father-beings. The men of old were intimates of wind and wave and playmates of many a brightness long since forgotten. The rapture of the fire was their rest; their out-going was still consciously through universal being. By darkened images we may figure something ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... much to say of Richardson, but it is not too much to say of George Eliot. She has sounded depths and explored sinuosities of the human heart which were utterly unknown to the author of "Clarissa Harlowe." It is like looking into the translucent brook—you see the wriggling tad, the darting minnow, the leisurely trout, the motionless pike, while in the bays and inlets you see the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... I never for one moment thought of phantasms; I fell asleep. I awoke; the hot floodgates of the cloudless heaven were still open, the air translucent over and around me, when straight in front of me, on a gloriously gilded patch of grass, there fell a shadow—a shadow from no apparent substance, for both air and ground were void of obstacles, and, apart from myself, there was no living object in the near landscape. Yet ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... Llanganati, Cotocachi, Chiles, and Imbabura, imitate Cotopaxi; Pichincha, Atacatzo, and Guamani are irregular. The Ecuadorian volcanoes have rarely ejected liquid lava, but chiefly water, mud, ashes, and fragments of trachyte and porphyry. Cotopaxi alone produces pure, foam-like pumice, and glossy, translucent obsidian.[62] The paucity of quartz, and the absence of basalt, are remarkable. Some of the porphyroids are conglomerate, but the majority are true porphyries, having a homogeneous base. Dr. T. Sterry Hunt calls them porphyroid trachytes. They have a black, rarely reddish, vitreous, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... where the wild wood ceaseless breathes The sweetly-murmuring strain, from falling rills Or soft autumnal gales; O! seek thou there Some fountain gurgling from the rifted rock, Of pure translucent wave, whose margent green Is loved by gentlest nymphs, and all the train Of that chaste goddess of the silver bow; For silent, shady groves, by purling springs, Delight the train, and through the gliding hours ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Night! when our first parent knew Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue? Yet 'neath the curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of heaven came, And lo! creation widened in man's view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find, Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed, That to such countless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... formless, unstable, impalpable, a fog of uncondensed experiences hovers over our consciousness like an atmosphere of uncombined gases. One spark of genius shoots through it, and its elements rush together and glitter before us in a single translucent drop. It would hardly be extravagant to call Science the art ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... has a fat that is solid and pure white; if yellow and soft it should be rejected; the lean is pink and the skin like white translucent parchment. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... gave place to faintest violet, then flushed to rose color. The details of the coping above them became sharply distinct. Below them the canyon was full of blue shadow, but already the depths were becoming translucent. He looked at his strange companion. Should he wake her, he wondered. Softly he tried the door. It was locked from within. If he allowed her to slumber in peace, she might, on awakening, be terrified at the visible depths below. Now, all was vague ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... was confused into glancing at Jack Dalhousie's friend, who stood silent upon the sidewalk, two yards away. Thus she surprised his translucent eyes fixed upon her with a look which she had seen there on two other remembered occasions. The eager confidence had, indeed, faded from his face, but not as she had designed that it should fade. The man had ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... life and our Christian work can penetrate. As the diver in his bell sits dry at the bottom of the sea, and draws a pure air from the free heavens far above him, and is parted from that murderous waste of green death that clings so closely round the translucent crystal walls which keep him safe; so we, enclosed in God, shall repel from ourselves all that would overflow to destroy us and our work, and may by His grace lay deeper than the waters some courses in the great building that shall one day rise, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... as thick as ever on his crown; but the lower part of his face showed changes, born of the years. Still lined, still looking just a little worn, it had gained something in decision, gained infinitely more in sensitive refinement. In Scott, the native clay was being replaced by translucent marble. In Catia, it was hardening to ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... of beauty—the trees and grass lightly rimed, the air sparkling and translucent. Nature was held in the rest of winter; but beneath the outward stillness, one caught as it were the strong heart-beat of the mighty mother. Diana climbed the steep down without a pause, save when she turned round from time to time to help her companion. Her slight firm frame, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was reducing the gloom of the sylvan tunnel to a translucent twilight, we floated down the swift current toward ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... thro' crystal gulfs were gleaming Ocean depths, with wonders teeming; Shapes of terror, huge, unsightly, Loom'd thro' vaulted roof translucent." J.C. JONES, Valhalla. ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... Sweeping round a wide bay, the land drawls nearer again, the far-away blue darkening to purple, and then to green and brown. The sky is cut by the outlines of the Leitrim and Sligo hills, a row of rounded peaks against the blue, growing paler and more translucent in ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... simple, unaffected, true, transparent. In a season of many mistakes he was never known to be wrong.... By a happy tact, not often so felicitously blended with pure evidence of soul, Abraham Lincoln knew when to speak, and never spoke too early or too late.... The memory of his statesmanship, translucent in the highest degree, and above the average, and openly faithful, more than almost any of this age has witnessed, to fact and right, will live in the hearts and minds of the whole Anglo-Saxon race, as one of the noblest examples ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... offered extensively for sale. It is calculated to supersede all other kinds in use by its beauty, freedom from guttering, hardness, and capacity of giving light, in all which respects it is superior to every other species of candle. This candle is nearly translucent, and can be made to exhibit the wick, when the candle is held up between the eye and the light, while the surface is as glossy as polished wax or varnish. The principal ingredient is lard; and the value of this manufacture can be hardly exaggerated. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... an opal sea I looked on of mist, shot along its upper surface with the rosy gold and pinks of dawn. Then, as that soft, translucent lake ebbed, jutting hills came through it, black and crimson, and as they seemed to mount into the air other lower hills showed through the veil with rounded forest knobs till at last the brightening day dispelled ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... vestments of the neighboring monks of the convent della Trinita! The delicious groves and gardens of the Villa de Medici then covered more than two English miles, and amidst cypress shades and shrubberies, watered by clear springs, and reflected in translucent fountains, stood exposed to public gaze all that now form the most precious treasures of the Florentine Gallery—the Niobe, the Wrestlers, the Apollo, the Vase, and above all, the Venus of Venuses, which has derived ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... he minded him of a new book he had in his bag, for literature, he judged, might be her hobby, and had engaged her in conversation, of which his share was meant to impress the tiny, translucent ear that nestled in the dark-brown coils and waves of the pretty head ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... looked at the stuffs and gems shown her by nude maidens, who scattered around the wealth contained in the coffers. Tahoser had just emerged from the bath, and the aromatic oils with which she had been rubbed, still further softened her delicate, satin-like skin; her flesh was almost translucent. She was of superhuman beauty, and when she gazed upon the burnished metal mirror, with her eyes brightened with antimony, she could not help smiling upon her reflection. A full gauze robe enveloped her fair form without veiling it. For sole ornament she wore a necklace ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... then the noble morning star disclosed herself, swinging in the sky like a blazing jewel in a translucent sea. ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... Shark's Bay. A compound of rather fine-grained translucent quartzose sand, cemented by carbonate of lime, of various shades of reddish and yellowish grey. This stone has in some places the structure of a breccia; the angles of the imbedded fragments, which are from half an inch to two inches in diameter, being very distinct—but in other parts, the fracture ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... glory of colour painted with perfect beauty by the last smile of the sun. Earth and air and sea showed every variety of the chromatic scale, especially of rose-tints, from the tenderest morning blush of virgin snow to the vinous evening flush upon the lowlands washed by the purple wave. The pure translucent vault never ceased to shift its chameleon-like hues, that ranged between the diaphanous azure of the zenith and the faintest rainbow green, a border-land where blue and yellow met and parted. The air felt soft and balmy; a holy calm was on the face of creation; all looked delicious after the ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... jackass. After incredible scramblings the two succeeded in surmounting the ranges and in dropping sheer to the mile-wide round valley through which flowed the river—the broad, swift mountain river, with the snow-white rapids and the swirling translucent green of very thick grass. They were very glad to reach the grass at the bottom, but a little doubtful on how to get out. The big mountains took root at the very edge of the tiny round valley; the river flowed out of a gorge at one end and into a gorge ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... winter day, when a big side-wheel steamer bound for way ports down the Sound lay at the wharf at Vancouver waiting for the mail. Towering white in the sunshine high above the translucent brine, she looked with her huge wheel-casings, lines of winking windows, and triple tier of decks more like a hotel set afloat than a steamer, and the resemblance was completed by the long tables set out for breakfast in the white and gold saloon. ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... June. The colors of sky, mountain and lake are particularly lovely at this time of the day. Miss Cassandra and Lydia have taken out their water colors, and are trying to put upon paper the exquisite translucent shades of the mountains that surround the lake. Lydia says that the wash of water colors reproduces these atmospheric effects much more faithfully than the solid oils, and she and our Quaker lady ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... in the lighting, such as it was, there was no flame, no "living" light. Whatever light there was came muffled, as though through some green translucent stone. The whole effect was terribly weird ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... a tiny spurt of dust twirled up into the air and came spinning towards them like a huge, translucent top. Gaining momentum as it spun along and picking up more dust as it advanced, it came whirling onward, rising high and higher until it swept down on them, a huge, khaki-colored, balloon-like mass. It caught them in its whirl, ground its stinging, sifting particles into their clothing, their ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... in his head by repeating "the North Sea or German Ocean." Mixing up delirious dream with fact, he clearly remembered the green waves rearing themselves up first, an immeasurable wall, then spreading a translucent canopy beneath the firmament and then descending in awful deluge. He had a confused memory of morning sunshine, of a cottage, of a hard-featured woman, of sitting before a fire with a blanket round his ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... as light is sometimes seen through a translucent substance, but he saw it so plainly that there could be no error. When he looked aloft at the impenetrable gloom, he was sensible of the same dim light upon the water. He tested his accuracy ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... series of terraces, falling off like steps to the river on our left. They had been burned over, and the young grass was sprouting up, under the freshening influence of the early rain, in a carpet of translucent green. At a distance of four leagues from San Juan, after descending from terrace to terrace, we again reached the river, now flowing through a valley three hundred yards broad, and about fifty feet below the general level of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... night that followed, that the recurrence of the tennis-garden in Fenwick's mind might grow and grow, and be a nucleus round which the whole memory of his life might re-form? Even so she had seen, at a chemical lecture, a supersaturated solution, translucent and spotless, suddenly fill with innumerable ramifications from one tiny crystal dropped into it. Might not this shred of memory chance to be a crystal of the right salt in the solvent of his mind, and set ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... they had dressed, Russell and he began to amuse themselves on the sea-shore. The little translucent pools left on the sands by the ebbing tide always swarm with life, and the two boys found great fun in hunting audacious little crabs, or catching the shrimps that shuffled about in the shallow water. At last Eric picked up a piece of wood which he found lying on the beach, and said, "What do you ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... head, without the least disorder, but with a wilfulness of elegant play most harmonious with all the rest of her appearance. To characterise the two in a word, Christina was a beautiful pearl, and Dolly was a translucent opal. ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... over the city—so clear and cloudless that if any Zeppelin came before the night, it would have been seen a mile high, as a silver ship, translucent from stem to stern, sailing in an azure sea. One would not be scared by one of these death-ships on such a day as this, nor believe, until the crash came, that it would drop down destruction upon this dream city, all ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... instead of being digested a long time in dilute acid, is dipped into a solution of sulfuric acid (50 to 80 per cent.) and then washed and dried it acquires a hard, tough and translucent coating that makes it water-proof and grease-proof. This is the "parchment paper" that has largely replaced sheepskin. Strong alkali has a similar effect to strong acid. In 1844 John Mercer, a Lancashire calico printer, discovered that ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... in body. A rush of power that I have no way of describing to you filled me. I seemed to be a tremendous dynamo in the air several inches above the ground and still ascending. When I noticed everything around me becoming prismatic and more or less translucent, I could have walked on water without sinking, and I had distinct understanding that matters seemed to be disintegrating and dissolving around me. I was frightened but self-conscious and quiet. I remained in this state for about ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... to hear it," said Rupert, buttering his toast with an energy that was somewhat exultant. "I thought you'd come round to my view, but I own I was startled at your not seeing it from the beginning. The man is a translucent liar and knave." ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... SABRINA fair Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of Lillies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair, Listen for dear honour's sake, Goddess of the silver lake, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... head through the string of beads and letting the translucent white disc fall into ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... remained as mysterious as before. Of course they did not touch it with bare hands—all wore insulated mittens—but the dazzling stuff was certainly as hard as steel and as highly polished. It was neither transparent nor opaque, but translucent, "like pink ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... typewriter, a copy-press, sundry chairs and spittoons, a small gas-heater, and many tottering columns of dusty letter-files. The window-panes, encrusted with perennial deposits of Atmosphere, were less transparent than translucent, and so little the latter that electric bulbs burned all day long whenever the skies were overcast. Also, the windows were fixed and set against the outer air—impregnable to any form of assault less impulsive than a stone cast by an irresponsible hand. A door, set craftily in the most ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... moments into the interior of the room. Dan was about to turn back into the house, when again Monsieur de Boisdhyver came to the window. He did not raise the shade, but inserted between the windowpane and the candle a strip of dark green paper. It was translucent and had the effect of sending a beam of green light southward, across the meadows and the dunes, to meet—Tom suddenly realized—the rays of the green light from ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... those so far mentioned, which is sometimes called the "lesser house fly."[7] This insect is distinguished from the ordinary house fly by its paler and more pointed body. The male, which is commoner than the female, has large pale patches at the base of the abdomen, which are translucent when the fly is seen on the window pane. These little flies are not the young of the larger flies. Flies do not grow after the wings ...
— The House Fly and How to Suppress It - U. S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 1408 • L. O. Howard and F. C. Bishopp
... beautiful transformation of all, and one which I think is peculiar to the Nile Valley, for a second glow, more beautiful and more ethereal than the first, overspreads the hills, which shine like things translucent against the purple earth-shadow which slowly mounts in the eastern sky. The sails of the boats on the river meanwhile have taken on a tint like old ivory, while perhaps a full moon appears above the hill-tops, and in twisting bars of silver ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... forgotten youth trickle into his veins. In front of him the stream dodged round great boulders and vanished into the woods, flecked with foam from the falls whose wash came tremulously through the wilderness. The sky overhead was translucent with the half light of sunset and he felt a delicious languor stealing over him. For three hours Stoughton, Riggs and he had fished to their hearts' content, while Birch climbed a ridge and speculated what such a forbidding country might reasonably be ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... to the Red in the growth and character of the bush. The clusters, however, are a little shorter, and the fruit a little larger and sweeter, and is of a fine yellowish-white color, with a veined, translucent skin. ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... her ripened beauty, bare-necked, bare-armed, full dressed by nature in that splendid animal equipment which in its day had captivated the eyes of all the lusty lovers of complete muliebrity. The other,—how delicate, how translucent, how aerial she seemed! yet real and true to the lineaments of her whom the young girl looked upon as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... glass and held it before his eyes, staring at the man opposite him through its translucent depths. Hawkes appeared oddly distorted ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... two or three hundred negroes, a regard for their bodily, moral, and spiritual welfare, inevitably led the master into the impersonal attitude of statecraft. It was a training, sir, in leadership, in social thinking, in, if you please, altruism." The old gentleman thumped the arm of his chair with a translucent palm. "Yes, sir, negro slavery was God's great lesson to the South in altruism and loving-kindness, sir! My boy, I do believe with all my heart that the institution of slavery was placed here in God's country to rear up giants of ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... itself enclosed in the pouch formed of the secondary larva's skin. Of these two bags without outlet, one of which is enclosed within the other, the outer is transparent, flexible, colourless and extremely delicate; the second is brittle, almost as delicate as the first, but much less translucent because of its yellow colouring, which makes it resemble a thin flake of amber. On this second sac are found the stigmatic warts, the thoracic studs and so forth, which we noted on the pseudochrysalis. Lastly, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... time Davidson began to mend. His account of the change, like his account of the vision, was oddly convincing. Over patches of his field of vision, the phantom world grew fainter, grew transparent, as it were, and through these translucent gaps he began to see dimly the real world about him. The patches grew in size and number, ran together and spread until only here and there were blind spots left upon his eyes. He was able to get up and steer himself about, feed himself once more, ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the golden glory of the sun, sinking over a promontory of gleaming yellow sumach that jutted out into the noble river, was shorn of its intense radiance; at times in the thickest woods he seemed surrounded by a yellow nimbus; at times so luminous was the glow of these translucent leaves that the position of the sun itself seemed changed, or the shadows cast in defiance of its glory. As he walked on, long reaches of the lordly placid stream at his side were visible, as far as ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... health had left her cheek. Its complexion was akin to that of translucent alabaster. The features wore a more fixed and regular aspect, and their play was less buoyant and ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... once again. We must regain the lost state. But it is to the giant and spiritual childhood of the young immortals we must return, when into their clear and translucent souls first fell the rays of the father-beings. The men of old were intimates of wind and wave and playmates of many a brightness long since forgotten. The rapture of the fire was their rest; their outgoing was still consciously through universal being. By darkened images ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... like your stuff. I think it's great. It's a seller, with the right man to push it. I'd like to handle it. And I'll guarantee I could double the returns from your Middle-Western territory." T. A. Junior had strangely translucent eyes. Their luminous quality had an odd effect upon any one on whom he happened to turn them. He had been scrawling meaningless curlycues on a piece of paper as Ed Meyers talked. Now he put down the pencil, turned, and looked Ed Meyers fairly ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... able to catch numbers of the chickens and turkeys and other birds who incessantly alighted on the head of the Rhinoceros for the purpose of gathering the seeds of the rhododendron-plants which grew there; and these creatures they cooked in the most translucent and satisfactory manner by means of a fire lighted on the end of the Rhinoceros's back. A crowd of Kangaroos and gigantic Cranes accompanied them, from feelings of curiosity and complacency; so that they were never at a loss for company, and went onward, as it were, in ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... faces. But of the lights themselves, of the great latticed columns, of the enormous sponge-like blossoms of the upper surface of the jungle sea, nothing could be seen. They were deep in a tangled maze of translucent flora that was like nothing so much as a forest of giant seaweed transplanted from its natural element. The moss-like carpet beneath their feet was slushy wet and condensed moisture rained steadily from the matted fronds and tendrils above. The air ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... are rare enough, save the faint hues of the flowerets,—almost as indistinguishable in the general effect as their fairy fragrance on the air. Aloft, the sky is all one blaze of sunshine, that seems to bleach it into palest, most translucent blue. Far to the west some fleecy clouds are rolling up from the horizon, wafted from the peaks of the hidden Rockies. Down in the "swale," the wooden barracks, stables, quarters, and storehouses ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... this sequestered spot." As the evening advanced, the blue-eyed maid of heaven spread forth her silvery light across the glassy surface of the deep, yielding a magic power to the soul-inspiring scene, and, by reflection, doubling the objects on the sea, whose translucent bosom scarcely heaved a sigh, or murmured forth a ripple on the ear; and now, amid the stillness of the night, we were suddenly amused with the deep-sounding notes of the key-bugle reverberating over the blue waters with most harmonious effect. "We are indebted to that ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... even as I did upon earth. Let my soul be called [into the presence], and let it be found by the side of the lords of right and truth. I have come into the City of God, the region which existed in primeval time, with [my] soul, and with [my] double, and with [my] translucent form, to dwell in this land. The God thereof is the lord of right and truth, he is the lord of the tchefau food of the gods, and he is most holy. His land draweth unto itself every land; the South cometh sailing down the river thereto, and the North, steered thither ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... trees, the surrounding hills lost their forms, in the east the distance merged into the oncoming night, but the west was still translucent, green. There was a faint movement in the leaves by the roadside, and a grey fox crossed, flattened on the ground, and disappeared. Howat Penny could see the liquid gleam of its eyes as it watched him. From the ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... know the Adriatic? It pleases me to begin a love story over its translucent sapphire and under its heavenly skies. I shall rejoice again in its splendours as I hover in fancy over these two impressionable young hearts, to whom a new ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... European eye, the bones of whales, or sometimes a whole whale's carcase, white with carrion-gulls and poisoning the wind, lie scattered here and there along the sands. The waves come in slowly, vast and green, curve their translucent necks, and burst with a surprising uproar, that runs, waxing and waning, up and down the long key-board of the beach. The foam of these great ruins mounts in an instant to the ridge of the sand glacis, swiftly fleets back again, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... men lifted the amber egg up to the top of a workbench. Powell took a small hammer to test the hardness of the strange translucent substance. ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... and the wild spirits of the storm had drawn a translucent drapery of vapour from the dark thundercloud hovering overhead to where the fringe of the forest broke the blood-stained bar upon the horizon's verge, and this luminous orange-coloured curtain was crossed ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... contours throughout this volume. And it is in all respects a fortunate work; as remarkable a one almost for him to write as a volume of his essays for any one else. Comparatively to his other books, it is as flesh and blood to spirit; Emersonian flesh and blood, it is true, and semi-translucent; but still it completes the man for us: he would have remained too problematical without it. Those who have never personally known him may finish and solidify their impressions of him here. He likes England and the English, too; and that sympathy ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... carenage, right in front of one of Da Costa's big warehouses, whose green jalousies relieved the effect of the staring white building under the hot West Indian sun; the glare of which, cast back by the rippling translucent water that laved the stone jetty, through which one could see the little fishes gliding about as clearly as in the Brighton Aquarium, almost blinded us with ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... edge of dull red. But beautiful and impressive as was this painting on the sky, the most novel and exciting effect was in the body of the atmosphere itself, which, laden with moisture, became one mass of color—a fine translucent purple haze in which the islands with softened outlines seemed to float, while a dense red ring lay around the base of each of them as a fitting border. The peaks, too, in the distance, and the snow-fields and glaciers and fleecy rolls of mist that lay in the hollows, were ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... face was dark, too, dark and lined with colored ceremonial pigment, green and orange stripes across her cheeks. Earrings were strung through her ears. On her feet were tiny slippers of perruh hide, laced around her ankles, and she wore long translucent Martian trousers with a bright sash tied around her waist. Between her small breasts a chain of stone beads rested, good-luck ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick
... to pause at the top of Greenwich Hill, and look around on the richness and beauty of the prospect. Flowing to the right, the broad and glorious Thames turned its liquid mirror to the skies, and reflected every passing cloud upon its translucent bosom. But our noble river had more than clouds to shadow it;—the treasures of the universe floated for us upon its wave—the spoils of conquered and humbled nations left their track along its shores; Spain, France, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... steps that led into a dimly-lit room on the ground floor. Suspended from the point of the canopy was a lamp of a dull red color, which with rain spatterings and droppings, and a long-standing accumulation of cobwebs and dust had grown barely translucent, and must have emitted but a sickly light at night-fall. A worn and ragged rope-mat lay on the second step, and across the upper half of the dilapidated door (which was of glass) a faded screen ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... liver-coloured bars hung like a pall. To the north a line of clear light was still visible, but over the foot-hills towards east and south there lay almost invisible a shimmering haze, soft and translucent, and above the haze a heavy curtain, while over the immediate landscape there shone a strange weird light, through which there floated down to earth large white snowflakes. Not a breath of air moved across the face of the hills, but still as the dead they lay in solemn oppressive ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... colour. It is painted on wood and the dragon is extremely dead. Here too is Piero della Francesca, that rare spirit, but his picture, No. 47, has almost perished. The mild Basaiti and milder Catena are here; a pretty little Caravaggio; two good Cimas, No. 611, sweet and translucent, and No. 592, a Tobias; and excellent examples of both Alvise and Bartolommeo Vivarini, those pioneer brothers, a blue and green dress of the Virgin in No. 615 by Bartolommeo being exquisite. Here too is a Cosimo Tura, No. 628, poor in colour but fine in the drawing ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... were closed, he could see that the strange light burnt upon them. In a way it rendered his eyelids translucent—he was conscious of a dull pulsing redness through which shot a network of lines of fire. He opened his eyes slowly, cautiously, and looked upward. From some point above him, in what he judged must be the ceiling ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... caused by retention of the secretions from the mucous glands, sometimes develop in the mouth, nose, pharynx, and vulva of cattle. They are called "mucous cysts." These are of sizes varying from peas to pigeon eggs, are roundish and translucent, and surrounded by a delicate, vascular membrane. They contain a siruplike substance more or less thick and transparent ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... and serve raw. Frizzling is possible but a waste of God's good mercies. Properly cured meat is salt but not too salt, of a deep blackish-red, and when sliced thin, partly translucent, also of an indescribable savoriness. Cut as nearly as possible, across the grain. Do not undertake to make beef hams save in the late fall, so there may be cold weather for the curing. The meat must be chilled ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... girls of more vigorous organization, who were disposed to laughing and play, and required a strong hand to manage them;—then young growing misses of every shade of Saxon complexion, and here and there one of more Southern hue: blondes, some of them so translucent-looking, that it seemed as if you could see the souls in their bodies, like bubbles in glass, if souls were objects of sight; brunettes, some with rose-red colors, and some with that swarthy hue which often carries with it a heavily-shaded ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... with the painted papier-mache of Cashmere. The shoulder-pads were of yellow silk. The panels of the litter itself were ablaze with the loves of all the gods and goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon—lacquer on cedar. The cedar sliding doors were fitted with hasps of translucent Jaipur enamel and ran in grooves shod with silver. The cushions were of brocaded Delhi silk, and the curtains which once hid any glimpse of the beauty of the king's palace were stiff with gold. Closer investigation showed that the entire fabric was everywhere ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... step, for fear of crushing something beautiful. We look down upon a bank of green moss, and find snowy, shell-like fungi, so delicate that we hold our breath lest they should float away. Farther on are orange-colored ones, and some shaped like callas, translucent, and in color a pale pink carnelian. Wandering on, we enter a grove of pine-trees, in the midst of which a spring is bubbling up, and the ground is covered with a carpet of ferns, mosses, and wild flowers. By the time we are ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... been like the storm wind of the mountains hurling off the dead leaves of thought. Wayland paused in his pacing. The opal peak emerged from pearl gray cloud wrack; a silver cross, translucent, unreal, luminous, a thing of dreams winged with silver light beneath a solitary star, eternal as God. And the night wind through the pines, that had sounded so doleful but a moment before, became the jubilant clicking of countless castanets, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... seemed to set him apart from the genus of humankind in an aura of alien and daunting honesty. Banneker recalled hearing of outrageous franknesses from his lips, directed upon small and great, and, most amazingly, accepted without offense, because of the translucent purity of the medium through which, as it were, the inner prophet had spoken. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... learnt - you know you did - in the same visit, how the beautiful sculptures in the delicate new material called Parian, are all constructed in moulds; how, into that material, animal bones are ground up, because the phosphate of lime contained in bones makes it translucent; how everything is moulded, before going into the fire, one-fourth larger than it is intended to come out of the fire, because it shrinks in that proportion in the intense heat; how, when a figure shrinks unequally, it is spoiled - emerging from the furnace a misshapen birth; a big head and a little ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... making glass. Its early origin. The crystal of the ancients. What it is made of. The blowing process. An acid and an alkali. Sand as an acid. Lime, soda, and potash as alkalis. The result when united. Transparent and translucent. Opaqueness. Making sheet glass. Why the eye cannot see through rough glass. How sheets are ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... God, ought we not to recognize the fact that by reason of their general diversity intelligences could be classed in spheres? From the sphere where the least degree of intelligence gleamed, to the most translucent souls who could see the road by which to ascend to God, was there not an ascending scale of spiritual gift? And did not spirits of the same sphere understand each other like brothers in soul, in flesh, ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... pleasant spring return once more? Does earth her happy youth regain? Sweet suns green hills are shining o'er; Soft brooklets burst their icy chain: Upon the blue translucent river Laughs down an all-unclouded day, The winged west winds gently quiver, The buds are bursting from the spray; While birds are blithe on every tree; The Oread from the mountain-shore Sighs, "Lo! thy flowers come back to thee— Thy child, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... is but a great ceremony or sacrament, which teaches under visible forms a hidden and transcendent doctrine. It was thus that he found in the ritual of the church a perfect image of the world; an image purged, exalted, and illuminate, a holy house built up of shining and translucent stones, in which the burning torches were more significant than the wheeling stars, and the fuming incense was a more certain token than the rising of the mist. His soul went forth with the albed procession in its white ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... more than ever his existence to be an undemanded one, he lay down upon his back on a heap of litter near the pig-sty. The fog had by this time become more translucent, and the position of the sun could be seen through it. He pulled his straw hat over his face, and peered through the interstices of the plaiting at the white brightness, vaguely reflecting. Growing up brought responsibilities, he found. Events did not rhyme quite as he had ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... as cleavable or columnar, and compact masses; it is translucent and has a vitreous lustre, and the colour varies from white to pale shades of violet, grey, green or yellow. There are good cleavages in two directions. The hardness is 6 and the specific gravity 3.0. The mineral is thus not unlike felspar in general appearance, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... themselves through the current of his blood into life's carnation; whilst he dreamed upon her lips, his breath was caught, as though of a sudden she had smiled for him, and for him alone. Near to her was a maiden of Hellas, resting upon a marble seat, her eyes bent towards some AEgean isle; the translucent robe clung about her perfect body; her breast was warm against the white stone; the mazes of her woven hair shone with unguent. The gazer lost himself in memories of epic and idyll, warming through worship to desire. Then his look strayed to the next engraving; a peasant girl, consummate ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... all other rivers there is a surface, and an underneath, and a vaguely displeasing idea of the bottom. But the Rhone flows like one lambent jewel; its surface is nowhere, its ethereal self is everywhere, the iridescent rush and translucent strength of it blue to the shore, and radiant to ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... appropriateness and benefit the corsage shown in No. 64. This has much in its favor for a slender body. The upper part of the waist may be made of chiffon or crepe, which is beautifully—one might say benignly—translucent. It has an insinuating transparency that neither reveals nor conceals too much. The neck-band of velvet or satin, full and soft, apparently enlarges the throat. The sleeves may be in whatever style ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... moss as well as gelatine. All three kinds are collected, but those of the first kind are much more valuable than the others. The nest, which is shaped like that of our swallow, consists wholly of a tough, gelatinous, translucent substance, which exudes from the bill of the bird as it builds. We do not understand the physiology of this process. The people generally believe that the substance of the nest is dried seafoam which the birds bring from the sea on returning ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... on his right, whom he had brought in, was a leading actress of the town—indeed, of the United Kingdom and America, for that matter—a creature in airy clothing, translucent, like a balsam or sea-anemone, without shadows, and in movement as responsive as some highly lubricated, many-wired machine, which, if one presses a particular spring, flies open and reveals its works. The spring in the present case was the artistic commendation she ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... is the human face—it takes an artist to describe the various faces with their beauty of modelling, their infinite variety of type, their subtlety of expression. You can almost see the flushing of the capillaries under the translucent skin, so fine are the mediums of silk and wool under the magic handling of the talented weavers in brilliant epochs. Not a detail in one of these older canvases of the highest Gothic ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... double hook, was clearly distinguished under the microscope. I suspect that it was a remnant of one of the Thysanoura. The quadrifids in contact with this decayed remnant contained either small masses of translucent, yellowish matter, generally more [page 436] or less globular, or fine granules. In distant parts of the same bladder, the processes were transparent and quite empty, with the exception of their solid nuclei. My ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... 1867 onward stood out in the fullest prominence; a multitude of official reports and investigations and court records contribute a translucent record. He became invested with a sinister distinction as the most cold-blooded corruptionist, spoliator, and financial pirate of his time; and so thoroughly did he earn this reputation that to the end of his days it confronted him at every step, and survived ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... playing-field—bright and vivacious as it all was, seems now like a boisterous prelude of blaring brass and tingling string, which lapses into some delicate economy of sweet melody and gliding chord. It has its shadows, I do not doubt, this Silent Isle; but to-day at least it is all still and translucent as its clear-moving quiet waters, free as its vaulted sky, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... (house-boys) mop the floor with kerosene, skating around the room on rags tied to their feet, or pushing a piece of burlap on all fours across the floor. The walls are frescoed pink and blue; the ceiling is often of painted canvas. The windows, fitted with translucent shell in tiny squares, slide back and forth, so that the balcony can be thrown open to the light. Double walls, making an alcove on one side, keep out the heat of the ascending or descending sun. The balcony at evening is a favorite ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... dominating colour effect of Mexican onyx, which it resembled in many ways, excepting that the natural pattern of its convolutions was less marked. Here and there were patches almost transparent—certainly translucent. The whole chest, cover and all, was wrought with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of minute hieroglyphics, seemingly in an endless series. Back, front, sides, edges, bottom, all had their quota of the dainty pictures, the deep blue of their ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... beaming Change and intertwine! Glories over glories streaming All translucent shine! Blessings, praises, adorations Greet Thee from the trembling nations Majesty ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various
... the sea, Translucent air, Where every leaf alive with glee Glows in the sun without shadow of grief— You speak of spring, When earth takes wing And sunlight, sunlight is everywhere! Radiant life, Face so fair— Crowned with the gracious glory of wife— Your glance lights all this happy day, Your tender glow And ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... west round rock, behold a man had arranged himself, his back against the cedars, without attracting notice. While the gray weather lightened and wine-red streaks on the lake began to alternate with translucent greens, and I was watching mauve plumes spring from a distant steamer before her whistles could be heard, this nimble stranger must have found his own amusement in the blindness of ...
— The Blue Man - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... young brother. Men call the shadow, thrown upon the universe where their own dusky souls come between it and the eternal sun, life, and then mourn that it should be less bright than the hopes of their childhood. Keep thou thy soul translucent, that thou mayest never see its shadow; at least never abuse thyself with the philosophy which calls that shadow life. Or, rather would I say, become thou pure in heart, and thou shalt see God, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... such masterly delicacy alluding, that was thus reflecting its sinister disorder upon the things without. It is a pity that some human beings are not more transparent. If Mr. Polly, for example, had been transparent or even passably translucent, then perhaps he might have realised from the Laocoon struggle he would have glimpsed, that indeed he was not so much a human ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... silken garment of turquoise, shot with blue purple and shimmering glaucous green—a garment in colour such as that with which the waves of Adriatic might have clothed the rosy limbs of new-born Aphrodite, as she rose from the cool, translucent sea-deeps—knelt upon the tiger-skin before the dancing fire. Her hands grasped the two arms of Richard's chair. She leaned down right across it, the lines and curves of her beautiful body discernible under her delicate draperies. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... honey-bee venturing abroad in the middle of the day, the clear piping of the little frogs in the marshes at sundown, the camp-fire in the sugar-bush, the smoke seen afar rising over the trees, the tinge of green that comes so suddenly on the sunny knolls and slopes, the full translucent streams, the waxing and warming sun,—how these things and others like them are noted by the eager eye and ear! April is my natal month, and I am born again into new delight and new surprises at each return of it. Its name has an indescribable charm ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... hammered on top until the ramrod almost bounded from the gun; then the bullet which the youthful hunter had molded himself, was shoved gently but firmly downward, backed by another bit of muslin. The ramrod was pushed into its place, and the hammer, clasping the yellow, translucent flint, was drawn far back, like the jaw of a wild cat, and the black grains sprinkled into the pan. The jaw was slowly let back so as to hold the priming fast, and the old fashioned rifle, such as our grandfathers were accustomed to use, was ready ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... grows in woods on wood and is quite common in our woods—both the rose-colored and the translucent-brown. Captain McIlvaine calls Merulius tremellosus and M. rubellus emergency species. He says they are rather tasteless, tough, slightly woody in flavor. They are ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... are scudding over the sky in great masses of copper color and gold, parting every here and there, and showing glimpses of clear translucent blue beyond. ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... of modern churches. Several specimens have been found in situ, in the cemeteries of Saturninus, Alexander, Agnes, and Callixtus. They are of the same make, cut in marble so delicately as to be translucent, flat-bottomed, and very low. For what were they used? We cannot think of "holy water" in the modern sense, because in those days the faithful were wont to purify their hands, not in receptacles of stagnant water, but in springs or living ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... with his slim, delicate hand, the cup of translucent china, and drained off the fragrant Souchong, sweetened, and tempered with Jersey cream to perfection. Something in the sight went like a pang to his wife's heart. "Ah!" she said, "it is easy enough for us to condemn. We ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... the bright moon shine in its translucent splendor, and never again will you know the happiness and the peace of this beautiful evening, as you waited on that bridge for her who nevermore would come ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... powerful searchlights within the dome are played upon the translucent glass, the effect is magical, the reflections weirdly changing in color and shape. The rich details of the decorations are softened in the night light. The slender shafts of the obelisks accentuate the vast ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... characteristic structure with the dye inside the fibre, colouring it a beautiful bluish-grey tint, the inner cellular markings being black. A proofed fur fibre, on the other hand, when examined under the microscope, is seen to be covered with a kind of translucent glaze, which completely envelops it, and prevents the beautiful markings showing the scaly structure of the fibre from being seen. Finally, if we examine microscopically a proofed fibre which has been dyed, or which we have attempted to dye, with logwood ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... Why? Because, my dear Sir Patrick, though the germ is there, it's invisible. Nature has given it no danger signal for us. These germs—these bacilli—are translucent bodies, like glass, like water. To make them visible you must stain them. Well, my dear Paddy, do what you will, some of them wont stain. They wont take cochineal: they wont take methylene blue; they wont ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... colonists were yet able to follow its descent through the waves. The powerful light it gave forth lighted up the translucent water, while the cavern became gradually obscure. At length this vast effusion of electric light faded away, and soon after the Nautilus, now the tomb of Captain Nemo, reposed in ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... herdsman's oaten quill, Wafted from the plain below; Or the heifer's frequent low; Or the milkmaid in the grove, Singing of one that died for love. Or when the noontide heats oppress, We will seek the dark recess, Where, in the embower'd translucent stream, The cattle shun the sultry beam, And o'er us on the marge reclined, The drowsy fly her horn shall wind, While echo, from her ancient oak, Shall answer to the woodman's stroke; Or the little peasant's song, Wandering lone the glens among, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... the yellow lights of the town were fewer than they had been. The quay was quiet and deserted, and the Ile Nou was a black shape in the translucent glitter of the water. On the Bella Cuba all was very still, and each whisper of the little waves that lapped against the side of the yacht came distinctly to ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... poetry can dwell in and glorify alike a word and an Iliad. Nothing in language is too small, as nothing is too great, for it to fill with its presence. Everywhere it can find, or, not finding, can make, a shrine for itself, which afterwards it can render translucent and transparent with its own indwelling glory. On every side we are beset with poetry. Popular language is full of it, of words used in an imaginative sense, of things called—and not merely in transient moments of high passion, and in the transfer ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... on her lips, and a faint shadow of thought on the clear fine brows, the face of Lettice was noticeable for its tranquillity. No storm of passion had ever troubled those translucent eyes: patience sat there, patience and reflection; emotion waited its turn. One could not doubt her capabilities of feeling; but, in spite of her four-and-twenty years, the depths of her heart had ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... whatsoever is held precious by men; she was a midway saint, a light between day and darkness, in whom the spirit in the flesh shone like the growing star amid thin sanguine colour, the sweeter, the brighter, the more translucent the longer known. And if the image will allow it, the nearer down to him the holier ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... as in other regions where hot springs are found, travertine is not uncommon. It is found notably in the volcanic district of Mono County, and elsewhere, sometimes in the form of Mexican onyx, which is only a translucent variety of the same marble. In its reproduction here the marble has been imitated even to the natural imperfections which roughened the Italian stone. In the concave surfaces of the ornamentation the color has been deepened, so that it appears sometimes as a rich reddish brown. All this enhances ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... is thick upon the velvet grass— The porch-rails hold it in translucent drops, And as the cattle from th' enclosure pass, Each one, alternate, slowly halts and crops The tall, green spears, with all their dewy load, Which ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... Through dense shrubberies, over drenched lawns her way was; it led her to the lily-pond, which lay hidden within rhododendron walls, with a narrow cincture of grass path all about it. Dark-brown, still and translucent like an onyx it lay before her. It was her haunt of election when she was troubled, as now she was, when she gave herself time ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... and dancing sparkles of silver upon the ocean. The Evening Star declines slowly in its turn toward the western horizon. Our gaze is held by a shining world that dominates the whole of the occidental heavens. This is the "Shepherd's Star," Venus of rays translucent. ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... The Tempest music, and turn to the song "Arise, ye subterranean winds." See how the accompaniment surges up in imperious, impetuous strength. Turn to "See, the heavens smile": note how the resonant swinging chords and that lovely figure playing on the top give one an instant vision of vast, translucent sea-depths and the ripples lapping above. Look at "Come unto these yellow sands" and "Full fathom five": he almost gives us the colour of the sea and the shore. These things did not come by accident, nor do they ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... glorious a prospect as could greet the eye. A magnificent sheet of water lay before us in one unbroken expanse, resembling a smooth translucent lake. Its gentle repose harmonized exquisitely with the slender motionless boughs of the drooping gums, palms, and acacias, that clustered on the banks, and dipped their feathery foliage in the limpid ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... be found to vary in two directions. In the anthracitic, or stone-coals, which burn like coke, the yellow matter diminishes, and the ground substance becomes more predominant, blacker, and more opaque, until it becomes impossible to grind a section thin enough to be translucent; while, on the other hand, in such as the "Better-Bed" coal of the neighbourhood of Bradford, which burns with much flame, the coal is of a far lighter, colour and transparent sections are very easily obtained. In the browner parts of this coal, sharp eyes will readily detect multitudes of ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... bar before we knew it. There were a few minutes when, on either hand of the Mona, but not near enough to be more than an arresting spectacle, ponderous glassy billows ceaselessly arose, projected wonderful curves of translucent parapets which threw shadows ahead of their deliberate advance, lost their delicate poise, and became plunging fields of blinding and hissing snow. We sped past them and were at sea. Yeo's knowledge of his work gives him more than the dexterity which overcomes difficulties ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... was a bright opalescent mist. Green, pink, and other pale colors gleamed as behind a thin layer of crystal. Where the sun shone through a low white cloud upon a distant slope there might have been a great globe of iridescent glass illuminated within. The water was a light, soft, filmy yet translucent blue. Concha gazed ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... 56. To show the action of saliva on starch. Saliva for experiment may be obtained by chewing a piece of India rubber and collecting the saliva in a test tube. Observe that it is colorless and either transparent or translucent, and when poured from one vessel to another is glairy and more or less adhesive. Its reaction is ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... and street and square Lay mine, as much at my beck and call, Through the live translucent bath of air, As the sights in a magic crystal-ball. And of all I saw and of all I praised, The most to praise and the best to see Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised: But why did it more ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair, Listen for dear honour's sake, Goddess of the silver lake, Listen ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Whensoever thou shalt anoint thine eyes with the ointment in this jar, for the space of three hours afterwards thou shalt see through all solid substances that lie fifty feet in front of thee as though, instead of being opaque and dense as stone or brick, they were clear and translucent as a diamond of the first water. But of this power tell no man anything, lest thou ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... five to ten lots of 500 lbs. each are mixed in a blending machine, in order to obtain greater uniformity. The colour of the W.A. powder is very light grey, the grains are very uniform in size, dry and hard. The powder for larger guns is of a yellowish colour, almost translucent, and almost as hard as vulcanite. The powder is said to be unaffected by atmospheric or climatic conditions, to be stable, and to have given excellent ballistic results; it is not sensitive to the impact of bullets, and when ignited burns ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... in the mossy ruin of immemorial summers. Overhead, the larch-boughs dangled green tresses, or a grove of beech shook sunlight through branches decked with translucent gold. Now and then they came out into open spaces, where trees rent from the soil, dead amid spring's leafage, told of a great winter storm; new grass grew thickly about the shattered trunks, and in the hollows whence the roots had been torn. One moment ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... wish thy home had rose On the parch'd surface of unwater'd plains, For that, when long the heavy rain descends, Bursts over guardian banks their whelming tide!— Seldom the wild and wasteful Flood extends, But, spreading plenty, verdure, beauty wide, The cool translucent Stream perpetual bends, And laughs the Vale as the bright ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... everything scrupulously clean. Strange cooking utensils of copper and stone caught their eye, while the translucent window-panes puzzled them. But all this was forgotten when they sat down to a polished table of white wood, and attacked a towering stack of cakes which vied with cups of coffee in sending a column of ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... snakes, the jewel work being very cunningly interlaced and perfectly finished. Their eyes were set with rubies, and between their open mouths they carried an opal, shaped like a heart. The stone was translucent and faintly luminous like a moonstone, but held in its heart one fleck of ruby red, in appearance like a drop of blood. By some curious trick of light, in whatever position the ring was held, this drop ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... infested the building. The Germans may make first-rate spies—assuredly their system of espionage was well organized before the war broke out—but I do not think they are conspicuous successes as detectives: their methods are so delightfully translucent. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... somehow, seemed banal and excessive as I marshalled them to my lips. A quaint, almost hypnotic quiet rose like the tide around us: all seemed said and agreed to. A tiny fire flickered on the Franklin hearth; the iridescent fan-tailed fish bent and flattened and glided in the translucent globe; an old clock ticked restfully somewhere. The two elderly friends there—for they were friends; one felt it. And why not? They were from the same class, undoubtedly, the hardware king and the housekeeper, the solid bourgeoisie that is essentially ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... strained forward to the very thinnest edge of the curtainings. For between the Disk and Cross began to form fine black mist. It was transparent. It seemed spun of minute translucent ebon corpuscles. It hung like a black shroud suspended by unseen hands. It shook and wavered now toward the Disk, now ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... Paul; and then, continuing to speak with enthusiasm, "the indication of minerals is undoubted. See you that serpentine deposit mingled with a variety of other rocks, varying in colour from darkest green to yellow, and from the translucent to the almost transparent? Wherever that is seen, there we have good reason to believe that copper ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... ethical, psychological, and biological studies. The great point about the position in which Eliza and Lucy had placed themselves was simply this. They stood full against the light, so that we could see right through their translucent bodies, which were almost liquid to look upon, and beautifully dappled with dark spots on a grey ground in a very pretty and effective pattern. So favourable was the opportunity for observation, indeed, that we could clearly make out with the naked eye even the joints of their legs, the hairs ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... as he surveyed its costly contents. There were Indian diamonds of unusual size and brilliancy; Turkish rubies of fiery crimson; magnificent sapphires; turquoises of purest tint; large specimens of lapis-lazuli, all veined with gold; and translucent chrysoprase of bright ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... And because this fragment of the past since they had met was incontestably theirs, and because the future hung trembling before them in a mist of doubt, they turned happy, hopeful eyes to that future, clinging to each other's hands. The little chamber of translucent white, where one looked down to a mirrored dome and up to a kind of sky, became to them a place bounded by the touch and the look and the voice of each other, as every place in the world is bounded for ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... unusual should appear. A few days after that, if it succeeds regularly, the skin will become red, then a pimple will form, and on the pimple a little vesicle or blister which may be plainly seen on the fifth or sixth day. On the eighth day the blister (vesicle) is, or should be, plump, round, translucent, pearly white, with a clearly marked edge and a depression in the center; the skin around it for about half an inch is red and swollen. This vesicle and the red, inflamed circle about it (called the areola) are the two points which prove the vaccination to be successful. A rash, and even a vesicular ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... different feeling that I looked at Mr. Lewis, whose ugly, positively ugly face was being perpetually transfigured with emotion and variety. Without grace of feature or figure, he impressed one as a living soul; and this inward light gave a translucent beauty to the frail, chance-shapen vase, which all Mr. Remington's personal advantages of form and color failed to impress us with. Only dark eyes of un-sounded depth, and a voice whose rich cadences had an answering rhythm in the inward man, showed what his attractions might be, or were, to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sense transparent, nor even translucent, it was evident that the apparition before them was not composed of flesh and blood. He looked at each of the four Earth-beings intensely for a moment, then pointed toward the table upon which stood the mechanical educator, and Seaton placed it in front of the peculiar ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... Then there were the tiny irises, only one finger tall, growing in dry places, frail as crocuses, and much tinier, and blue, blue as the eye of the morning heaven, which was a morning earlier, more pristine than ours. The lovely translucent pale irises, tiny and morning-blue, they lasted only a few hours. But nothing could be more exquisite, like gods on earth. It was the flowers that brought back to Alvina the passionate nostalgia for the place. The human influence ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... and twice a day, under the influence of the seemingly-mysterious systole and diastole of the tides, spread out into a wide-glittering lake and anon crept back again into its sinuous bed. This water was as fickle and wanton and many-mooded as a coquettish girl. Now its translucent glassy surface is unruffled by a single wrinkle, and in its brilliant depths every minutest feature of yonder drifting hay-barge is weirdly mirrored. I look out again, and the face of the water is working with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... reader to consider well what this condition really is. For the definition of it appears to us to be, that condition of surface which allows the inner structure of the material to manifest itself. Polish is, as it were, a translucent skin, in which the life of the inorganic comes to the surface, as in the animal skin the animal life. Once clothed in this, the inner glories of the marble rock, of the jasper, of the porphyry, leave the darkness behind, and glow into the day. From the heart of the agate the mossy ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... the pebble. In this way, without any scraping, which would be wearisome work for the operator and dangerous to the inhabitants of the dome, we have all the cells before our eyes, together with their contents, consisting of a silky, amber-yellow cocoon, as delicate and translucent as an onion peeling. Let us split the dainty wrapper with the scissors, chamber by chamber, nest by nest. If fortune be at all propitious, as it always is to the persevering, we shall end by finding that the cocoons harbor ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... approach Port Said is just at the fall of dusk. Then the sea lies in opalescent patches, and the low shores fade away into the gathering night. The slanting masts and yards of the dhows silhouette against a sky of the deepest translucent green; and the heroic statue of De Lesseps, standing for ever at the Gateway he opened, points always to the ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... also becomes spiritual, and the temporal becomes eternal. They are therefore in heaven after death and in palaces there, the useful designs of which are resplendent with gold and precious stones. They look on these things, however, as the shining and translucent external of inward things, namely, of uses, in which they take a pleasure and enjoyment which are the happiness and joy of heaven. The opposite is the lot of those who have looked on riches and wealth just for the sake of riches and wealth and for their own sake, thus on the externalities ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... passengers from rain and hot sun by awnings, or such arcades as distinguish Turin, or Sir F. Bramwell's upper footpaths on the model of the Chester rows. Moreover, there is no reason but the existing filth why the roadways should not have translucent velaria to pull over in bright sunshine and wet weather. It would probably need less labour to manipulate such contrivances than is required at present for the constant conflict with slush and dust. ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells |
