"Burnish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them of life and a liegeman's joys. None have I left to lift the sword, or to cleanse the carven cup of price, beaker bright. My brave are gone. And the helmet hard, all haughty with gold, shall part from its plating. Polishers sleep who could brighten and burnish the battle-mask; and those weeds of war that were wont to brave over bicker of shields the bite of steel rust with their bearer. The ringed mail fares not far with famous chieftain, at side of hero! No harp's delight, no glee-wood's gladness! No good hawk now flies through the hall! ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... was not made of glass, (for glass mirrors cannot be shown to have existed before the thirteenth century,) but of polished metals; and amongst these, silver was in the greatest esteem, as being capable of a higher burnish than other metals, and less liable to tarnish. Metallic mirrors are alluded to by Job, xxxvii. 18. But it appears from the Second Book of Moses, xxxviii. 8, that in that age, copper must have been the metal employed throughout the harems of Palestine. For a general ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... your mark is at the fairest. Forswear her love, and seal it with a kiss Upon the burnish'd splendour of this blade, Or it shall rip the entrails ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... warrior's play. Though the dove of peace is dancing to the sounding truce harp's lay. Arbitrate if you have to; smooth it o'er if you must, But, be prepared for battle, to parry the war king's thrust. Don't foster the chip on the shoulder; don't hasten the slap in the face. But, burnish your sword, ere you're older,—the blade of the ancient race. Hark to the deeds of your fathers; cherish the stories I've told, Then—go and do like, if you have to—and die—like a Hero ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... beeswax; polish, shoe polish. [art of cutting and polishing gemstones] lapidary. [person who polishes gemstones] lapidary, lapidarian. V. smooth, smoothen[obs3]; plane; file; mow, shave; level, roll; macadamize; polish, burnish, calender[obs3], glaze; iron, hot-press, mangle; lubricate &c. (oil) 332. Adj. smooth; polished &c. v.; leiodermatous[obs3], slick, velutinous[obs3]; even; level &c. 213; plane &c. (flat) 251; sleek, glossy; silken, silky; lanate[obs3], downy, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... some other light ships, was between the blockading fleet and the blockaded, where perpetual vigilance was needed. This sharp service was the very thing required to improve his character, to stamp it with decision and self-reliance, and to burnish his quiet, contemplative vein with the very frequent friction of the tricks of mankind. These he now was strictly bound not to study, but anticipate, taking it as first postulate that every one would cheat him, if permitted. To a scrimpy and screwy man, of the type ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... free, and light-attracting. The ancients believed that some pearls were constituted by flashes of lightning playing on bubbles within the oyster. A relative of the family here seemed to be wooing the tropic sun of its beams, if not to vitalise, at least to burnish its treasure. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... to veer to a hundred fathoms, and there lie like a duck in fifty or sixty feet of water. I remember on one occasion, however, that when we next weighed the anchor, it came up with parts polished bright, as in my childhood we used sometimes to burnish a copper cent. This seemed to show that it had been scoured hard along a sandy bottom. We had had no suspicion of the ship's dragging during the gale, and I have since supposed that it may have started ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... Knowing well that I have never had one hour of inspiration since it was begun, and have only beaten out my metal by brute force and patient repetition, I hoped some day to get a "spate of style" and burnish it—fine mixed metaphor. I am now so sick that I intend, when the Letters are done and some more written that will be wanted, simply to make a book of it by the pruning-knife. I cannot fight longer; I am sensible of having done worse than I hoped, worse than I feared; all I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... side the Persians form'd;— First a light cloud of horse, Tartars they seem'd. The Ilyats of Khorassan deg.; and behind, deg.138 The royal troops of Persia, horse and foot, Marshall'd battalions bright in burnish'd steel. 140 But Peran-Wisa with his herald came, Threading the Tartar squadrons to the front, And with his staff kept back the foremost ranks. And when Ferood, who led the Persians, saw That Peran-Wisa kept the Tartars back, 145 He took his ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... acres of the seeded grasses The changing burnish heaves; Or marshalled under moons of harvest Stand still all night the sheaves; Or beeches strip in storms for winter And stain ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... notice that the first tells us how to burnish a photograph; the second, how to ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... the midst, a double throne. Like burnish'd cloud of evening shone; While, group'd the base around, Four Damsels stood of Faery race; Who, turning each with heavenly grace Upon me her immortal face, Transfix'd ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... argument that colours suffer in grey weather, and that strong sunlight is necessary to all the hues of heaven and earth. Here again there are two words to be said; and it is essential to distinguish. It is true that sun is needed to burnish and bring into bloom the tertiary and dubious colours; the colour of peat, pea-soup, Impressionist sketches, brown velvet coats, olives, grey and blue slates, the complexions of vegetarians, the tints of volcanic rock, chocolate, cocoa, ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... seeking his new-found acquaintance within, He pok'd in the boot his inquisitive snout, Head and shoulders so far, that he could not get out; And thus he seem'd cas'd—from his head to his tail, In suit of high-burnish'd impregnable mail! ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... went to the same school with Donald. She was a shy little thing with big brown eyes, which looked at you wistfully, and a mass of yellow hair, which the sun in the summer mornings loved to burnish. Minnie at the age of ten felt drawn to Donald, as timid women generally feel drawn toward masterful men, ignoring the steadier love of gentler natures. Donald had from the start constituted himself her protector in a lordly way. He had once resented a belittling remark which a schoolmate ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... incisively; the reporter took off his spectacles, and began to burnish them, for his face was ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... Sometimes called in the romances Frusberta (query, from fourbir, to burnish; or, froisser, to crush?). The meaning does not seem to be known. I ought to have observed, in the notes to Pulci, that the name of Orlando's sword, Durlindana (called also Durindana, Durandal, &c.), is understood ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... tapers throw A holy lustre o'er his brow, And burnish with their rays of light The mass of curls that gather bright Above the haughty brow and eye Of a young ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... critics may give of Poe and his writings, they must all agree that he is original. He is a clever writer in a limited field. His writings have a glow and burnish that have their origin in his fondness for sensations, color, and vividness of details. He loves mystery and terror,—not the fancies and fears of a child, but overwrought nerves. His material is unreal, and remote from ordinary life. His characters are abnormal, and ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... command to restore order in the city at any cost, cared not a straw what the world without might say of him. The rifle, the bayonet, the revolver, the whip—here were fine tools and proved. Let but a breath of suspicion frost the burnish of a reputation and he would have that man or woman at the bar, though arrest might cost a hundred lives. Thus it came about that those within the gates were a heterogeneous multitude to which all classes had contributed. The milliner's assistant ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... I seem to see One spot of burning brightness, beaming clear Through all the floating glory, like a sphere Quenching light with its own intensity. Yes! yes! it is the Holy City I behold, With God's sun, from its towers of burnish'd gold, Reflected broadly ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... "With burnish'd brand and musketoon So gallantly you come, I read you for a bold Dragoon, That lists the tuck of drum." "I list no more the tuck of drum, No more the trumpet hear; But when the beetle sounds his hum My comrades take the spear. And O! ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... each about a foot in length. One piece should be too soft, another too hard, and the third piece of the right quality. Fix them in a vice, about an inch apart and in a vertical position, and with the light from a window shining upon them. Burnish them if necessary, and you will see a band of light ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... obscure townsfolk who stood in with them. Knapp had been discouraged. Now he took a handful and spread it on his palm, golden eagles, heavy, shining, solid. Swaying his wrist, he let the sun play on them, strike glints from their edges, burnish their surface. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... he reported his misgivings to God, and God upbraided the Prophets for their sloth. "Is there no one who can do this for me?" He cried. "Are all the cunning men in Hell? Shall I make all Heaven drink the dregs of my fury? Burnish your rusted armor. Depart into Hell and cry out: 'Is there one here who knows the Welsh Nonconformists?' Choose the most crafty and release him ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... thorn, maple-leaved or Virginia thorn (suitable for hedging), hawthorn, wild May cherry, or service berry, water beech, fringe tree, red bud, black alder, common alder, sumach, elder, laurel, witch-hazel, hazel-nut, papaw, chinkapin, burnish bush, nine bark, button-bush, honeysuckle, several varieties of the whortleberry or huckleberry, ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... of a pivot are that it shall be round and well polished. Avoid the burnish file at all hazards; it will not leave the pivot round, for the pressure is unequal at various points in the revolution. A pivot that was not perfectly round might act fairly well in a jewel hole that was round, but unfortunately ...
— A Treatise on Staff Making and Pivoting • Eugene E. Hall
... deposited from a hot cyanide solution is spongy in the extreme, and if the maximum wear-resisting effect is to be obtained, it is advisable to burnish the gold rather than to rely upon ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... infected the Doctor; everything was in its place; everything capable of polish shone gloriously; and dust was a thing banished from her empire. Aline, their single servant, had no other business in the world but to scour and burnish. So Doctor Desprez lived in his house like a fatted calf, warmed and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her round slim arms showed to the elbow; her hat she had taken off, and the sun danced in the gold lustres of her hair. She was all aglow; she belonged out in the fresh air and the sunlight like this; she could stand it; that dusky-gold radiance played from her like a burnish. Steering sat down on the log bench and watched her, hypnotised by her into haunting fancies of something, somebody, somewhere. She was one of those beings whose rich magnetism of face and personality brings them close to you, not only for the present, but also for the past, one of those ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... . . . . . HOPE holds to Christ the mind's own mirror out To take His lovely likeness more and more. It will not well, so she would bring about An ever brighter burnish than before And turns to wash it from her welling eyes And breathes the blots off all with sighs on sighs. Her glass is blest but she as good as blind Holds till hand aches and wonders what is there; Her glass ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... sair distrest, Down drops her ance weel burnish'd crest, Nae joy her bonnie buskit nest Can yield ava; Her darling bird that she ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... a sad farewell! To you my grateful heart still fondly clings, Tho' fluttering round on Fancy's burnish'd wings Her tales of future Joy Hope loves to tell. Adieu, adieu! ye much-lov'd cloisters pale! 5 Ah! would those happy days return again, When 'neath your arches, free from every stain, I heard of guilt and wonder'd at the tale! Dear haunts! where oft my simple lays I sang, Listening ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
