"Firmament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... paling in the firmament when I opened my window. Mists clothed the horizon. The rushing wind soon tore them aside, and drove them into the gorges, whence descend, in the shape of a fan, the unformed masses of the lower glacier, soiled with ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... literary labour. Dr. Nacquart warned him against the consequences of such brain debauch, as he termed it, prophesying that harm would ensue. And the doctor was right. Balzac was soon to pay for his excesses. Just now there was much in the political firmament that caused the novelist anxiously to wish that his own fortunes and those of Eve were indissolubly united. "Make haste!" was his constant ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... entertained, so well, that not he and his only, but the very barbarous nations of the Poictevins, Bretons, Manceaux, and those that dwell beyond the isles of the Canaries, and that of Isabella, have thought it as easy to pull down the firmament, and to set up the depths above the clouds, as to make a breach in your alliance; and have been so afraid of it in their enterprises that they have never dared to provoke, incense, or endamage the one for fear of the other. Nay, which is more, this sacred ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... favourable breeze which was now blowing, and the smooth water which would render our voyage easy. We lost sight of the Cowlitz just as the sun sunk in the western wave. We were now gliding calmly over the starlit sea—the beautiful firmament above us shining with a splendour peculiar to the torrid zone. The boats sailed well, and kept ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... guests—her hair hung about her shoulders in true Indian style; and altogether she was a genuine sample of backwoods' civilization. We were placed in a good bed—the state-bed of course—and as we lay, paid our devotions to Urania, and contemplated the beauties of the starry firmament, through an aperture in the roof which would ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... heard among her brother deities? But Jove, great Jove—old Jove, the King of Olympus, hero among gods and men, how does he carry himself in these councils summoned by his voice? Does he lie there at his ease, with his purple cloak cut from the firmament around his shoulders? Is his thunderbolt ever at his hand to reduce a recreant god to order? Can he proclaim silence in that immortal hall? Is it not there, as elsewhere, in all places, and among all nations, that a king of gods and a king of men is and will be king, rules and will ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... of the more remarkable constellations; and are not without some conception that the issues of human affairs are occasionally influenced, or at least indicated, by the movements of the stars. The Pleiades, for instance, they believe to be seven of their departed countrymen, fixed in the firmament; one eye of each of them appearing in the shape of a star, being the only part that is visible. But it is a common superstition among them, as we have already noticed, that the left eyes of their chiefs, after death, ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... last union were born, Ganesa, the elephant-headed god of wisdom, and Indra, the god of the firmament, both chiefs of inferior divinities, the number of which, if all the objects of adoration of the Hindus be included, ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... as now according, unto your request, I will give you here to understand. I being once laid in my bed, and I could not sleep for thinking on my calendar and practice, I marvelled with myself how it were possible that the firmament should be known, and so largely written of by men, or whether they write true or false, by their own opinions and suppositions, or by due observation and true course of the heavens; behold, I thought my house would have been blown down, so that all my doors and chests ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... their invectives; the ignorant and coarse amongst the priests spoiled everything. The Blessed Sacrament was exposed for a whole week in the churches, and it ended by an announcement to Israel, that their cry had reached the firmament, that David had grown cold to Bathsheba (they did not add, nevertheless, that David preferred another to Bathsheba with his whole heart). But the Duchesse de Fontanges gave offence neither to the Archbishop of Paris nor to ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... had she sat content, Her young unlessoned back to a morning gay, To a solemn noon, to a cloudy firmament, And looked upon ...
— A Father of Women - and other poems • Alice Meynell
... growing dark, and the natural obscurity of the hour was increased by the thickness of the lowering clouds, which overspread the whole firmament of heaven, and seemed to portend a tempest. But from the jaws of the semicircular arch of Roman brick, within which the group was collected, a broad and wavering sheet of light was projected far into the street, and over the fronts of ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... glittering, frosted—a symphony in metals—silver, aluminium, lead—rendered buoyant for the nonce, ethereal—as though the world were really gone Christmas mad, and, having a sudden attack of topsy-turvydom in its inside, had taken to showering its treasures about the firmament, instead of keeping them snugly put away in mines below ground. A sheet of snow, and bitter white rain driving still. A huge building looming black, its many eyes staring into the dark—lidless, bilious, vacant. This is ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... mankind any so effective and brilliant an awakening as the resuscitation of classical literature. It was not one solitary star arising after another at long intervals and far apart in space, but a sudden blazing forth of a whole firmament of light. But that is a phenomenon to all appearance not to be repeated, or, more correctly speaking, not to be completed, since it broke up unfinished, leaving the world in partial darkness. Literature has been ever since wailing the loss of the seventy per cent of Livy's History, of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... occasion has excited. These thousands of human faces, glowing with sympathy and joy, and from the impulses of a common gratitude turned reverently to heaven in this spacious temple of the firmament, proclaim that the day, the place, and the purpose of our assembling have made a deep impression on ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... endowed with energy eternal, with all the wisdom of the ages, and with a strength that can bend the mountains or turn the ocean from its bed, and we begin to be. Oh! how I sicken for that hour when first, like twin stars new to the firmament of heaven, we break in our immortal splendour upon the astonished sight of men. It will please me, I tell thee, Leo, it will please me, to see Powers, Principalities and Dominions, marshalled by their kings and governors, bow themselves before our thrones and humbly crave the liberty to do our ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... avis, our new star of the literary firmament, has come to a complete collapse. Something has snuffed her out; she has ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... clusters, others in a row, or rather alone, at certain distances from each other. A zone of luminous dust, extending from north to south, bifurcated above their heads. Amid these splendours there were vast empty spaces, and the firmament seemed a sea of azure with archipelagoes ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... and on the firmament, the orderly withdrawal of the stars, the calm promise of coming day, the rosy suffusion of the sky and waters, the ineffable splendour that then burst forth, attuned my mind afresh after the discords of the night. Methought that all I looked on said to me, and that all I heard ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... the sturdy north blows from his cheek A blast, that scours the sky, forthwith our air, Clear'd of the rack, that hung on it before, Glitters; and, With his beauties all unveil'd, The firmament looks forth serene, and smiles; Such was my cheer, when Beatrice drove With clear reply the shadows back, and truth Was manifested, as a star in heaven. And when the words were ended, not unlike To iron in the furnace, every cirque Ebullient ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... detonation. In the strange light of the setting moon, while everybody's attention was engrossed by the excitement, the swift oncoming of a thunder-cloud had not been observed by any but Andrew, and it had already climbed half-way to the zenith, blotting out a third of the firmament. This inverted thunder-bolt produced a startling effect upon the over-strained nerves of the crowd. Some cried out with terror, some sobbed with hysterical agony, some shouted in triumph, and it was generally believed that Virginia Waters, who died a maniac many years afterward, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... [i.e., Ra] himself, and therefore in his name which I bear, I can tread on all my enemies. O great Ra, who climbest the heavenly vaults and who sailest in thy boat across the firmament with undisputed authority, do thou save me from that austere god whose eyebrows are as menacing as the balance that weighs the deeds of men. Save me, I pray thee, from these guardians of the passages who will, if they-may, impede my progress. O Tmu, who livest in the august ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... sometimes described as human heads with appended entrails, which issue from the tomb to attack the living during the night watches. The so-called Spectre Huntsman of the Malay Peninsula is said to be a man who scours the firmament with his dogs, vainly seeking for what he could not find on earth—a buck mouse-deer pregnant with male offspring; but he seems to be a living man; there is no statement that he ever died, nor yet that he is a spirit. The incubus ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... into an ocean of blue, immeasurable. There was no end to this azure liquid. Gazing thus, his intelligence became aware of the fact that there are skies of different kinds. This one was not quite like his native firmament. Here was no suggestion of a level space overhead, remote, but still conceivable—a space whereon some god might have sat enthroned, note-book in hand, jotting down men's virtues, and vices, and what not. A sky of this kind was obviously not ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... reached the summit of his power; and the subversion of his throne, with the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in 1814 and 1815, is evidently here symbolized. Napoleon had become the idol of France, which worshipped at the shrine of his glory. With his fall, their sun was stricken from its firmament, and ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... System Address at Gettysburg Address on Mexican Affairs Understanding America Address before the Southern Commercial Congress The State of the Union Trusts and Monopolies Panama Canal Tolls The Tampico Incident In the Firmament of Memory Memorial Day Address at Arlington Closing a Chapter Annapolis Commencement Address The Meaning of Liberty American Neutrality Appeal for Additional Revenue The Opinion of the World The Power of Christian Young Men Annual Address to Congress A Message Address before the United States ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... as I lay in an agony of fear, my soul seemed to be whirled on the wind into the bosom of a thundercloud. I felt the weight of the rolling vapours. I saw a blaze. I was stunned by a roar that shook the firmament. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... There hang, royally suspended, the galleries of diamond and sapphire feebly imitated by human skill in the gardens of Babylon. There rise triumphal arches, fashioned of brightest stars. There are linked together porticoes of suns extended across the spaces of the firmament, like the columns of Palmyra over the sands of the desert. This architecture is alive. The City of God has a soul of its own. There is no mere matter in the abiding places of the Spirit; no death in the locality ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... to themselves to be alone, the only two beings in the universe. In his exaltation, Evariste raised his eyes to the firmament flashing with ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... dust and smoke of a furious bombardment. It seemed to me, too, that the guns on the other fronts had come nearer. Deve Boyun was hidden by a spur of hill, but up in the north, white clouds, like the streamers of evening, were hanging over the Euphrates glen. The whole firmament hummed and twanged like a taut string ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... was so quick that Alex had not time to save himself.-However, she took the incident not only without displeasure but with apparent satisfaction, saying she was very glad to renew her acquaintance with him. She had not seen him since the time of his spouting, "The spacious firmament on high"—"Ye shepherds so cheerful and gay," etc.,—all of which she remembers hearing. Ah—I have never recollected till this instant that I ought to have gone to her the next day !-how shocking!—and now that I have the consciousness, I can do nothing, for I am lame from a little ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... the ground is very firm beneath us, without either inspiration, teaching, or any aid whatever. Since, then, there must be a world Maker, let us judge of His nature by His work. We cannot observe the glories of the firmament, its infinite extent, its beauty, and the Divine skill wherewith every plant and animal hath its wants cared for, without seeing that He is full of wisdom, intelligence, and power. We are still, you will perceive, upon solid ground, without having to call to our aid ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... every side. The moon, in her last quarter, was barely visible—a mere shadow of silver in the sky; so indistinct was his vision, that it seemed to him as though he were looking at the image of the firmament reflected in water, rather than at the stars themselves. Yet, in the certain renewal of his sight, there came to him a gladness which he had not known for many ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... Lesbia, miss, you ask would be enough for me? I cannot sum the total number; nay, that were too tough for me. The sands that o'er Cyrene's shore lie sweetly odoriferous, The stars that sprent the firmament when overly stelliferous— Come, Lezzy, please add all of these, until the whole amount of 'em Will sorely vex the rubbernecks attempting to keep count ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... mists from earth are clouds in heaven: Clouds, slowly castellating in a calm Sublimer than a storm; while brighter breathes O'er the whole firmament the breadth of blue, Because of that excessive purity Of all those hanging snow-white palaces, A gentle contrast, but ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... a fixed star in the firmament of fictional characters as surely as David Harum or Col. Sellers. He is a source of infinite delight, while this story of Mr. Roster's is one of the finest examples of ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... Fletcher," says Lowell, in his lectures on 'Old English Dramatists,' "are as inseparably linked together as those of Castor and Pollux. They are the double star of our poetical firmament, and their beams are so indissolubly mingled that it is vain to attempt any division of them that shall assign to each his rightful share." Theirs was not that dramatic collaboration all too common among the lesser Elizabethan dramatists, at a time when managers, eager to satisfy a restless ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... suggested. In his lectures on science, he says: "When storms are breaking in the heavens, and sometimes long before their commencement, and when their approach has not yet been manifested by any appearances in the firmament, phenomena are observed, apparently sympathetic, proceeding from the deep recesses of the earth, and exhibited under very various forms at its surface." Dr. Lardner cites many instances of fountains which, when a storm is approaching, burst forth with a violent flow ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... in the country, my power, my popularity, my consequence, nay, my character, are all risked; but I have done right, and therefore in the end it must turn out to have been wise. If this fail me, the pillared firmament is rottenness, and earth's ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... contain'd Angels of higher and lower stations, of greater and of lesser degree, express'd in the Scripture by Thrones, Dominions, and Principalities: This, I think, we have as much reason to believe, as we have, that there are Stars in the Firmament (or starry Heavens) of ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... these truths seems inadequate; and the defence which the understanding sets up for the faith, always seems partial and cold. Who ever fully expressed his deepest convictions? The consciousness of the dignity of the moral law affected Kant like the view of the starry firmament, and generated a feeling of the sublime which words could not express; and the religious ecstasy of the saints cannot be confined within the channels of speech, but floods the soul with overmastering power, possessing all its faculties. ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... in a melting mood, I gazed listlessly upon the brazen firmament, with no fellow-feeling for those hot culinary bars. The broiling glow was not at all tempting: I think it would have staggered even the gay salamander that is said to accept so thoroughly the gospel of caloric. And what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... it was instructive as well as ornamental. Three of the bedrooms were on the ground floor and were small apartments. The upstair rooms were much larger, were situated in the roof, and were lit by skylight windows which commanded a limited view of the firmament above but none whatever of the green earth below. These upper rooms were reached by an almost perpendicular staircase surmounted by a trap door, a mode of access convenient enough for the young and active, but not ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... courbait, se tordait, et, sous les sombres voutes, On ne distinguait rien qu'une sombre rougeur Empourprant le profil du monstrueux forgeur. Et l'ouragan l'aidait, etant demon lui-meme. L'Etre, parlant du haut du firmament supreme, Dit:—Que veux-tu de plus?—Et le grand paria, Levant sa tete enorme et triste, lui cria: —Le poitrail du lion et les ailes de l'aigle. Et Dieu jeta, du fond des elements qu'il regle, A l'ouvrier d'orgueil et de rebellion L'aile de l'aigle avec le poitrail du lion. Et le demon reprit son ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... this our Poet was not Inferior to Carew, Lovelace, nor any of those who were accounted the brightest Stars in the Firmament of Poetry. ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... have brought me to the end of my first year at the Academy, and now we come to the events of the second. In June of 1871, the proverbial silver lining, which the darkest cloud is said to have, began to shine very faintly in the West Point firmament, and I thought that at last the darkness of my cadet life was to be dispelled by the appearance above the horizon of another colored cadet. And, indeed, I was not disappointed, for, one day, I was greeted by the familiar face and voice of Mr. H. A. Napier, a former fellow-student at Howard ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... which struck our hero as being most remarkable was the magnitude and dazzling brightness of the host of stars that covered the black firmament. It seemed as if they were magnified in glory, and twinkled so much that the sky seemed, as it were, to tremble with light. A feeling of deep solemnity filled Fred's heart as he gazed upwards; and as he thought upon ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... are favoured with a special season of their own; but the prevailing temperature can scarcely be defined by mounting mercury, neither can it be adequately described. It is during these blazing hot months that the ever-azure firmament seems to blink with blue: that the roads and pavement blister the soles of your feet; and that the gay-coloured house-fronts scorch your clothes of white drill and tan your Anglo-Saxon complexion. The Cubans have a mania for painting the fronts of their town residences ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... it cast shadows at night, as distinct as those made by the moon. No such cometary monster had ever before been seen. People shuddered when they looked at it. It moved with amazing speed, sweeping across the firmament like a besom of destruction. Calculation showed that it was not more than 3,000,000 miles from ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... question perpetually recurred to their minds, 'Where is he who abideth forever?' they lifted up their eyes, and saw, as they thought, beyond sun, and moon, and stars, and all which changes, and will change, the clear blue sky, the boundless firmament of heaven. That never changed, that was always the same. The clouds and storms rolled far below it, and all the bustle of this noisy world; but there the sky was still, as bright and calm as ever. The Almighty Father must be there, unchangeable in the unchangeable heaven; bright, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... there no more to do but to lose a hatchet to make us rich? Now for that; it is as easy as ——, and will cost us but little. Are then at this time of the year the revolutions of the heavens, the constellations of the firmament and aspects of the planets such that whosoever shall lose a hatchet, shall immediately grow rich? Ha, ha, ha! by Jove you shall even be lost and it please you, my dear hatchet! With this they all fairly lost their hatchets out of hand. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... without ceasing. Thus war became sweeter in their eyes even than returning home in their ships. As when some great forest fire is raging upon a mountain top and its light is seen afar, even so as they marched the gleam of their armour flashed up into the firmament of heaven. ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... which 'infinite' belongs—the class representing thoughts of thought—he who has a right to say he thinks at all, feels himself called upon, not to entertain a conception, but simply to direct his mental vision toward some given point, in the intellectual firmament, where lies a nebula never to be resolved. And yet to this very point, which the intellect cannot define, are our spirits forever tending. No artistic creation ever fully pleases unless there is given in it some ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... That which was to be, and to continue under God's dominion, rule and control, God named himself. He called the light, day; the darkness he called night; the dry land he called earth; and the gathering together of the waters, he called seas; and the firmament he called heaven, etc. And what was to be under Adam's dominion, rule and control, Adam named himself, but by God's direction and authority. But mark: Adam did not name himself—for no child ever names himself. But ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... spirits of evil on the mountains, and is therefore termed, "The Thunderer," like the Greek Zeus, and his abode is called, "The Thunder-Home." Ukko is often represented as sitting upon a cloud in the vault of the sky, and bearing on his shoulders the firmament, and therefore he is termed, "The Pivot of the Heavens." He is armed as an omnipotent warrior; his fiery arrows are forged from copper, the lightning is his sword, and the rainbow his bow, still called Ukkon Kaari. ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... gives that sweet and strange affinity which adds the glory of orderly arrangement to its elements, gifting them with the fair variety of change and assimilation that turns the dust into crystal, and separates the waters above the firmament from those below. It is the walking and clinging together that gives power to the winds, weight to the waves, heat to the sunbeams, and stability to the mountains. It is the 'clinging together' which throws our syllables into words, gives metre to poetry, and melody and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... zenith, emitting streams of light. I stood like a statue, and gazed with fear and awe up to the glittering sky. Millions of stars seemed to be dashing across the blue dome of heaven. In fact I thought the whole starry firmament was tumbling down to earth. The neighbours were terror struck: the more enlightened of them were awed at contemplating so vivid a picture of the Apocalyptic image—that of the stars of heaven falling to the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... Russian hearts, is the purpose of these lectures to show. For while the laws of the spirit are ever the same in essence, the character of their manifestation varies with time and place, just as in Nature the same force appears in the firmament as gravitation when it binds star unto star, as attraction when it binds in the molecule atom unto atom, and in man as love when it binds heart unto heart. The phenomena therefore, natural to all literature, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... positions which have already been asserted. Gregory, in writing to William the Conqueror, had used the figures of the sun and moon to illustrate the relations of Church and State. Innocent draws out the analogy in much detail: "As God, the builder of the universe, has set up two lights in the firmament of heaven, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, so for the firmament of the universal Church, which is called by the name of heaven, He has set up two great dignities, the greater to rule souls, as it were ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... heaven were falling upon the earth like the figs cast by the fig-tree which the wind has shaken. The sun, the great luminary of the universe, had become as sackcloth of hair. The moon was blood-red. The firmament was as a scroll rolled away. The archangel Michael, the prince of the heavenly host, appeared glorious and terrible against the sky. With one foot on the sea and one foot on the land he blew from the arch-angelical trumpet the brazen death of time. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... that the darkening firmament does but show the stars, and that when treason and murder surge round the fated chambers of royalty, their foulness and violence do but enhance the loyal self-sacrifice of such doorkeepers as Catherine Douglas, Madame Auguier, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to approach, he caused the boat to be softly and with silence rowed towards the pillar; but ere he came near it, the pillar and cross of light broke up, and cast itself abroad, as it were into a firmament of many stars, which also vanished soon after; and there was nothing left to be seen but a small ark, or chest of cedar, dry and not wet at all with water, though it swam; and in the fore-end of it, which was towards him, grew a small green branch of palm; and when the wise man ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... of our firmament, guide of our Nation, Pride of her children, and honored afar, Let the wide beams of thy full constellation Scatter each cloud that would darken a star! Up with our banner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... seared, as though the lightning's scathe had rent, In the swiftness of its wrath, through the midnight firmament, The darkly deepening clouds; and the shadows dim and murky Of destiny are on me, for ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... "The spacious firmament on high With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... night once more, and made all dim. And only the cold light of the firmament lit thoughts in me restless as the sea on which I tossed, whose moon was dark, yet walked in ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... what men can do who are eager in the pursuit of wealth. Under the influence of such an incentive, railroads, canals, and fortresses spring into being, and fleets bedeck the seas like the stars of the firmament. Money is not wanting when lucrative investment is the end in view. Even professed Christians can collect together heavy sums, when some great enterprise promises a profitable income. They profess, perhaps, to be accumulating money for Christ; but, alas, ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... individuality it has! No two clusters alike; all shades and sizes.... A solitary blue-purple one, fully expanded and rising over the brown leaves or the green moss, its cluster of minute anthers showing like a group of pale stars on its little firmament, is enough to arrest and hold the dullest eye. Then,...there are individual hepaticas, or individual families among them, that are sweet scented. The gift seems as capricious as the gift of genius in families. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... is a wonderful night, Farquhar," he said. "Truly the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... I built up a larger fire and spread my blanket beside it to sleep under the open sky instead of in the deserted house, for the night was soft, warm, and windless. Overhead was a firmament of cloudless blue, with here and there a shining star beginning to show; but away to the south-west a dark line of cloud was rising and spreading, and I felt cheered at the sight, for it was a sign of rain. ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... ridges we looked back upon a wondrous sight. Far away across the fertile plain appeared the town that we had left, and behind it the sun sank. It would seem as though some storm had broken there, although the firmament above us was clear and blue. At least in front of the town two huge pillars of cloud stretched from earth to heaven like the columns of some mighty gateway. One of these pillars was as though it were made of black marble, and the other like to molten gold. ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... moment the thing that had brought him there, and a look of awe and wonder came over his rugged features, as the shepherd, with his face turned upward and his deep voice full of emotion, repeated, "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... of a guilty woman in conformity with the law of the first Church, which has enriched heaven with as many saints and martyrs and confessing souls as there are stars in the firmament?" persisted Veronique, vehemently. "Who said: Confess yourselves to one another? Was it not the disciples, who lived with the Saviour? Let me confess my shame publicly on my knees. It will redeem ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... duties which it imposes. If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, heaven will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty, and human happiness. Auspicious omens cheer us: great examples are before us: our own firmament now shines brightly upon our path: WASHINGTON is in the clear upper sky. These other stars have now joined the American constellation; they circle around their centre, and the heavens beam with a new light. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... make war upon my senses, and treat them as my enemies. My eyes, which have drawn me into a thousand difficulties, see no longer either gold or precious stones, or ivory, or purple; they behold nothing save the water, the firmament and the rocks. The only female who comes within their sight is a swarthy old woman, dry and parched as the Lybian deserts. My ears are no longer courted by those harmonious instruments and voices which have so transported my soul; they hear nothing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... this softened mood, the gods pointed to the firmament where her father's eyes glowed like radiant stars in the northern hemisphere. They told her they had placed them there to show him all honour, and finally added that she might select as husband any of the gods present at ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... by his genius to a height, which lifts him above the reach of the critic. He shines in the firmament of letters like a sun before whose lustre all, Parsee-like, bow down in worship. Preceding generations have read him with reverence and admiration: as one of the greatest masters of history, he must continue to be so read. But though ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... from the southeast; as if from an entrenched camp, to encounter their assailants. There was a fierce action for a few moments, the shouts of the combatants, the heavy discharge of cannon, the rattle of musketry; the tramp of heavy-aimed foot soldiers, the rush of cavalry, being distinctly heard. The firmament trembled with the shock of the contending hosts, and was lurid with the rapid discharges of their artillery. After a short, fierce engagement, the north-western army was beaten back in disorder, but rallied ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... illegitimate, yet esteemed above and beyond all the royal progeny of the proudest intellect, enshrined in the sanctum sanctorum, the veritable holy-of-holies of the human heart. Hope is not a virtue; it is but a rainbow with which Fancy paints the black o'erhanging firmament, a golden shaft of sunlight with which she gilds Life's rugged mountain peaks,—a melody most divinely sweet with which she cheers the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... "firmament" means a solid dome or roof. This firmament, the sky, was supposed to be the floor of Heaven. The firmament had four corners and rested on the mountains, as the eye could plainly see. When God's car was rolled across the floor we heard thunder, and his movements ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... in a most romantic manner for the origin of thunder. A summer-storm was sweeping over the land, and I had sought a temporary shelter in the lodge of a Sioux Indian on the banks of the St. Peters. Vividly flashed the lightning, and an occasional peal of thunder echoed through the firmament. While the storm continued my host and his family paid but little attention to my comfort, for they were all evidently stricken with terror. I endeavored to quell their fears, and for that purpose asked them a variety of questions respecting their ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... fire far up the sooty night Mixt fuels — Labor's Right and Labor's Crime — Sent upward throb on throb of scarlet light Till huge hot blushes in the heavens blent With golden hues of Trade's high firmament. ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... the hills decay and that rivers as the dusty years proceed run feebly and lose themselves at last in desert sands; and in its aeons the very firmament grows old. But evil also is perishable and bad men meet their judge. ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... is too often obsessed with one idea. Across his mental firmament he sees only one blazing word: INJUSTICE. And, fine fellow though he often is, he is inclined to be impatient with any talk of art or beauty. "How can beauty grow in these vile cities?" he cries. "What is the use of ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... themselves to all those who seek them. Here, amongst the waters,—that is, in the mirror of similitude, in those works where shines the brightness of divine goodness and splendour, which works are symbolized by the waters superior and inferior, which are above and below the firmament, he sees the most beautiful bust and face—that is, external power and operation, which it is possible to see, by the habit and act of contemplation and the application of mortal or divine mind, of man ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... the people. The mighty in their pride walk alone to destruction. The humble walk hand in hand with Providence to immortality. Their works survive. When the people of the Colonies were defending their liberties against the might of kings, they chose their banner from the design set in the firmament through all eternity. The flags of the great empires of that day are gone, but the Stars and Stripes remain. It pictures the vision of a people whose eyes were turned to the rising dawn. It represents the hope of a father for his posterity. It was never ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... their votaries, who were numerous as the stars of heaven. I repaired, and built, and completed my work. Outside the temple I fashioned everything with the same care as inside. The mound of earth on which it was built I enlarged like the firmament of the rising stars (?), and I beautified the entire building. Its towers I raised up to heaven, and its roofs I built entirely of brick. An inviolable shrine(?) for their noble godships I laid down near at hand. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... have of the Creator when you behold His creation?" the priest went on in the rapid customary jargon. "Who has decked the heavenly firmament with its lights? Who has clothed the earth in its beauty? How explain it without the Creator?" he said, looking inquiringly ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... basis of life and intelligence; because they worked powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, to make reason and the will of God prevail. With Saint Augustine they said: "Let us not leave Thee alone to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as thou didst before the creation of the firmament, the division of light from darkness; let the children of thy spirit, placed in their firmament, make their light shine upon the earth, mark the division of night and day, and announce the revolution of the times; for the old order is passed, and the ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... a-hawking through the firmament, thou wouldst say? Why, when did I take spleen at a man for standing his ground against me? Roundhead as he is, man, I like him the better of that, not the worse. I hunger and thirst to have another turn with him. I have thought on his passado ever since, and I believe, were ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... your sulphur, and your mercury, Your oil of height, your tree of life, your blood, Your marchesite, your tutie, your magnesia, Your toad, your crow, your dragon, and your panther; Your sun, your moon, your firmament, your adrop, Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heautarit, And then your red man, and your white woman, With all your broths, your menstrues, and materials, Of piss and egg-shells, women's terms, ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... he sits up nights," Gow Johnson said. "The game is with Terry—at last." Then he called to the dispersing gossiping crowd: "Hold on—hold on, you people. I've got news for you. Folks, this is O'Ryan's night. It's his in the starry firmament. Look at him shine," he cried, stretching out his arm towards the heavens, where the glittering galaxy hung near the zenith. "Terry O'Ryan, our O'Ryan—he's struck oil—on his ranch it's been struck. Old Vigon found it. Terry's got his own at last. O'Ryan's in it—in it alone. Now, let's hear ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... only know the fullness of the firmament, the myriad of suns and planets, the brilliancy of the constellations, and the overpowering revelation of the infinite above. In less fervent latitudes one can never feel the bigness of the vault on high, nor sense the intimacy one had here ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the carriages bearing away Savinien, Herzog and his daughter, resounded in the calm starry night. In the villa everything was quiet. Pierre breathed with delight; he instinctively turned his eyes toward the brilliant sky, and in the far-off firmament, the star which he appropriated to himself long ago, and which he had so desperately looked for when he was unhappy, suddenly appeared bright and twinkling. He ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... they gambled. More than one member of both Chambers came there to buy what Paris pays for by its weight in gold,—namely, the amusement of intercourse with anomalous untrammelled women, those meteors of the Parisian firmament who are so difficult to class. There wit reigns; for all can be said, and all is said. Carabine, a rival of the no less celebrated Malaga, had finally inherited the salon of Florine, now Madame Raoul Nathan, and of Madame Schontz, now ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... that it must be seven or eight o'clock. Between the rifts of the lower hills the lake was flashing silver, while where Vermont had been nothing but a mass of shadow, blue-green mountains were emerging in a triple row, from which the last veils of vapor were being dragged up into the firmament On the left, the Adirondacks were receding into translucent dimness, in a lilac haze ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... task well appointed, Like a bevy of beautifal girls in the court of their monarch, Or a regiment of soldiers all bright in new rose-colored armour. Two altars arose between earth and the cloud-speckled firmament; Cain walked in a stern and defiant advance to his altar, A recklessness flashed from his eyes, and passions unconquered, As he scornfully looked on the kneeling, worshipping Abel, Ay scornfully thus he addressed his ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... let fly the white Gae Bulga from the fork of his irresistible right foot. [7]Ferdiad began to defend the ford against Cuchulain, so that the noble Cu arose with the swiftness of a swallow and the wail of the storm-play in the rafters of the firmament, so that he laid hold of the breadth of his two feet of the bed of the ford, in spite of the champion.[7] Ferdiad prepared for the feat according to the testimony thereof. He lowered his shield, so that the spear went over its edge into the watery, water-cold river. And he looked at Cuchulain, ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... flake, and pellicle, All day the hoary meteor fell; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below,— A universe of sky and snow! The old familiar sights of ours Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, Or garden wall, or belt of wood; A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, A fenceless drift what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... in the room. The old, old fashion. The fashion that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. The old, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens |
