"Northern lights" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meteor, falling star, shooting star; blazing star, dog star, Sirius; canicula, Aldebaran^; constellation, galaxy; zodiacal light; anthelion^; day star, morning star; Lucifer; mock sun, parhelion; phosphor, phosphorus; sun dog^; Venus. aurora, polar lights; northern lights, aurora borealis; southern lights, aurora australis. lightning; chain lightning, fork lightning, sheet lightning, summer lightning; ball lightning, kugelblitz [G.]; [chemical substances giving off light without burning] phosphorus, yellow phosphorus; scintillator, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... bitter cold night, while threshing our hands about to keep our thumbs from freezing, we have looked up and seen the northern lights blazing along the sky, the windows of heaven illumined at the news of some great victory, so from beyond this bitter night of abomination a brightness strikes ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... Then for wine cooled in a brooklet losing itself in silver sands! Then for — but O these bilboes on our ankles, how mercilessly they grip! The vertical sun blisters the bare back: faint echoes of Olympian laughter seem to flicker like Northern Lights across the stark and pitiless sky. One earnest effort would do it, my brothers! A little modesty, a short sinking of private differences; and then we should all be free and equal gentlemen of fortune, and I would ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... to render the Forth more accessible by removing the danger of the Bell Rock, it was resolved by the Commissioners of Northern Lights to build a lighthouse upon it. This resolve was a much bolder one than most people suppose, for the rock on which the lighthouse was to be erected was a sunken reef, visible only at low tide during two or three hours, and quite inaccessible in bad weather. ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... moved out of his turn; for the tapering lash would shoot out like thonged lightning, and flick away an inch or so of hair and hide. Each beast growled, snapped, choked once over his portion, and hurried back to the protection of the passage, while the boy stood upon the snow under the blazing Northern Lights and dealt out justice. The last to be served was the big black leader of the team, who kept order when the dogs were harnessed; and to him Kotuko gave a double allowance of meat as well as an extra crack ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... navy-yard at Helvoetsluys, "about twenty of Bonaparte's English flotilla lying in a state of decay, the object of curiosity to Englishmen." By 1834 he seems to have been acquainted with the coast of France from Dieppe to Bordeaux; and a main part of his duty as Engineer to the Board of Northern Lights was one round of dangerous ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from the dawn of spring, vocal with the peeping of frogs, to the revery of winter, the silence of snow, and a hopeful glow in the west. Just here, by the barberry bush at the corner, he had stood still under the spell of Northern Lights. That was the night when his wife lay first in Tiverton churchyard; and he remembered, as a part of the strangeness and wonder of the time, how the north had streamed, and the neighboring houses had been rosy red. But at this ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... the fog that dims the Ice-sea, Darkness of the months of winter Lays its weight on sea and mountain. Like our lands are too our peoples. Their beginnings prehistoric Stretch afar in fog and darkness. But as through the fog a lighthouse, Or as Northern Lights o'er darkness, Gleamed his thought with light and guidance. When with filial fond remembrance Tenderly he sought and questioned, Searching for his people's pathways— Names and graves and rusty weapons, Stones and tools their answer gave him. Through primeval Asian ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... darting up and dancing, always in a state of preternatural activity,—soon sinking down, as if exhausted by so rapid and feverish a tide of life,—and succeeded by other shapes of a similar wild energy. It was like nothing so much as the phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. In the mere exercise of the fancy, however, and the sportiveness of a growing mind, there might be little more than was observable in other children of bright faculties; except as Pearl, in the dearth of human playmates, was thrown more upon the visionary throng which she created. The ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by-and-by, as if unwillingly drawn by a loadstone, and found the heavens wrapped in a rosy flame of Northern Lights. He looked as though he belonged to them, so pale and elf-like was his face then, like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... the aurora borealis—Northern Lights—plays in the sky the Indians always say that the 'marionettes are dancing.' About four weeks ago we had some electrical disturbances up here and a kind of an earthquake. It scared these Indians silly. There ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... unused to marsh and mere? Each time when we thought that we must be right, now at last, by track or passage, and approaching the conflict, with the sounds of it waxing nearer, suddenly a break of water would be laid before us, with the moon looking mildly over it, and the northern lights behind us, dancing down the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... These are Faraday's sparks, exalted by suitable machinery to sunlight splendor. At the present moment (1868), the Board of Trade and the Brethren of the Trinity House, as well as the Commissioners of Northern Lights, are contemplating the introduction of the magneto-electric light at numerous points upon our coast; and future generations will be able to point to those guiding stars in answer to the question, what has been the practical use of the labors ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... it," he whispered, nestling down on the window-seat and drawing her head close to his shoulder; for after the pause that destroyed hope she had broken down, her body shaking with muffled sobs, woeful to feel and to hear. Outside, the Northern Lights—the 'merry-dancers'—yet flickered over the snowy roof-ridges and the ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... my old northern lights,' said the reindeer; 'see how they flash!' and on it rushed faster than ever, day and night. The loaves were eaten, and the ham too, and then they ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... about 5.30 A. M. About 3 A. M. faint lights appeared in the sky and all rejoiced to see what was supposed to be the coming dawn, but after watching for half an hour and seeing no change in the intensity of the light, the disappointed sufferers realized it was the Northern Lights. Presently low down on the horizon they saw a light which slowly resolved itself into a double light, and they watched eagerly to see if the two lights would separate and so prove to be only two of the boats, or whether these lights would remain together, ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... lay in deep layers, blue by day and night, lilac in the brief intervals of sunrise and sunset. The pale, powerless sun seemed far away and strange during the three short hours that it showed over the horizon. The rest of the time it was night. The northern lights flashed like quivering arrows across the sky, in their sublime and awful majesty. The frost lay like a veil over the earth, enveloping all in a dazzling whiteness in which was imprisoned every shade of colour under ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... the results of the observations of Lottin, Bravais, and Siljerstrom, who spent a winter at Bosekop, on the coast of Lapland (70 degrees N. lat.), and in 210 nights saw the northern lights 160 times, see the 'Comptes Rendus de l'Acad. des Sciences', t. x., p. 289, and Martins's 'Meteorologie', 1843, p. 453. See also, Argelander in the 'Vortragen geh. in der Konigsberg Gessellschaft', ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... them that Satan, angered by the setting up of the kingdom of the saints in America, had "come down in great wrath," and was present among them, sometimes even in visible shape, to terrify and tempt. Special providences and unusual phenomena, like earthquakes, mirages, and the northern lights, are gravely recorded by Winthrop and Mather and others as portents of supernatural persecutions. Thus Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, the celebrated leader of the Familists, having, according to rumor, been delivered of a monstrous birth, the Rev. John Cotton, in open assembly, at Boston, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... stand in the hall below, and look up—and up—and up —and see all the colors of the rainbow, and see what kinder curious and strange pictures there wuz way up there in the sky above me (as it were). Why, it seemed curiouser than any Northern lights I ever see in my life, and they ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... in a panic. If a flock panic on you, you might as well quit, for every bird in the canyon will follow. You see this is the game: snowbirds live on little bugs that are found in great numbers around the great Northern Lights. When they see those candles flickering there in the great white quiet, the snow reflecting the long rays out between the dark tree trunks, they think it's the northern lights, and fly straight toward the candle. All the trapper has to do, then, is to take them in his hand and bag them. ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... talked, Ingolf looked up at the sky. The northern lights were quivering there. They were like great flames of yellow and ...
— Viking Tales • Jennie Hall
... frightful, superstition, as usual, added bugbears of her own. Indian bows were seen in the sky, and scalps in the moon. The northern lights became an object of terror. Phantom horsemen careered among the clouds or were heard to gallop invisible through the air. The howling of wolves was turned into a terrible omen. The war was regarded as a special judgment in punishment of prevailing sins. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... in knightly casque are rested: O'er which bend four milky plumes Like the gentle lilly's blooms Springing from a costly vase. See with what a stately pace Comes thine alabaster steed; Servant of heroic deed! O'er his loins, his trappings glow Like the northern lights on snow. Mount his back! thy sword unsheath! Sign of the enchanter's death; Bane of every wicked spell; Silencer of dragon's yell. Alas! thou this wilt never do: Thou art an enchantress too, And wilt surely never spill Blood of those whose eyes ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... fearless bear, the nimble lynx, the shy wolf, those eagles and swans, and seabirds, those many tones and notes of Nature's voice making distant music through the twilight summer night, those brilliant, flashing, northern lights when days grow short, those dazzling, blinding storms of autumn snow, that cheerful winter frost and cold, that joy of sledging over the smooth ice, when the sharp-shod horse careers at full speed with the light sledge, or rushes down the steep pitches over the crackling snow through the green spruce ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... gray, He's nigh lost his wits. With a bridge of white mist Columbkill he crosses, On his stately journeys From Slieveleague to Rosses; Or going up with music On cold starry nights, To sup with the Queen Of the gay Northern Lights. ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... of an iceberg piercing a polar winter sky: a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close serried, along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, rose, in the foreground, a head,—a colossal head, inclined towards the iceberg, and resting against it. Two thin hands, joined under the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... The northern lights were that evening very brilliant. When I put out my light at bed-time it was as if a bright moon was shining. I looked out, and above were three broad circles of light with long- pointed fingers raying up to the centre directly over my tent as I watched. It seemed like a benediction ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... warriors polish their good blades by the bright beams of the morning; and gird them on to their brave sirloins; and watch for rust spots as for foes; and by many stout thrusts and stoccadoes keep their metal lustrous and keen, as the spears of the Northern Lights charging ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... brooded over the late hilarious crew, who lay down like bundles of hair in their festal garments, and the northern lights threw a flickering radiance over a scene of profound quietude ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... the concrete—of the pure intellect into the human nature of the author. But nowhere could illustrations be found more interesting—shy, delicate, evanescent—shy as lightning, delicate and evanescent as the colored pencilings on a frosty night from the Northern Lights, than in the better parts ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... spirit. Whatever had an idea had a soul. Therefore the Wabanaki mythology is strangely like that of the Rosicrucians. But it created spirits for the terrible Arctic winters of the north, for the icebergs and frozen wastes, for the Northern Lights and polar bears. It made, in short, a mythology such as would be perfectly congenial to any one who has read and understood the Edda, Beowulf, and the Kalevala, with the wildest and oldest Norse sagas. But it is, as regards spirit and meaning, utterly and entirely unlike anything ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the curtains of a deep window. She was talking with Count de Chaumont and an officer in uniform. Her face pulsed a rosiness like that quiver in winter skies which we call northern lights. The clothes she wore, being always subdued by her head and shoulders, were not noticeable like other women's clothes. But I knew as soon as her eyes rested on me ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... eagerly, he merely came to inform her there were the most beautiful northern lights to be seen that could possibly be imagined, and begged her to come to the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... or reflecting system was first adopted under the direction of Borda, at the Corduan Lighthouse, probably about the year 1780. The system was soon introduced into England; and one of the first acts of the Northern Lights' Board, so early as 1786, was to substitute reflectors in place of coast-lights, which till then had been the only beacons on the ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... represents atmosphere. The sun current carries it far from the earth's surface. At the north, when the sun's reflection strikes the earth's crust in such a manner, its reflection will be seen in the atmosphere at a great height, called Northern Lights. This is mostly seen ...
— ABC's of Science • Charles Oliver
... regions the nights are often made quite gorgeous by the Northern Lights or Aurora borealis, and the corresponding appearance in the Southern hemisphere. The Aurora borealis generally begins towards evening, and first appears as a faint glimmer in the north, like the approach of dawn. Gradually a curve of light spreads like an immense arch of yellowish-white ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... the last of the great quintet, appeared in December 1814. Scott had obtained part of the scenery for it in an earlier visit to the Hebrides, and the rest in his yachting voyage (see below) with the Commissioners of Northern Lights, which also gave the decor for The Pirate. The poem was not more popular than Rokeby in England, and it was even less so in Scotland, chiefly for the reason, only to be mentioned with all but silent amazement, that it was 'not bitter enough against England.' ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... lovely creature, whose name was Gerda, and who is considered as a personification of the flashing Northern lights, vanished within her father's house, and Frey pensively wended his way back to Alfheim, his heart oppressed with longing to make this fair maiden his wife. Being deeply in love, he was melancholy and absent-minded in the extreme, and began to behave so strangely that his father, Nioerd, became greatly ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Glorious the northern lights a-stream; Glorious the song, when God's the theme; Glorious the thunder's roar; Glorious, Hosannah from the den; Glorious the catholic amen; Glorious the ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... there is sufficient light, if the sky be clear, to see to read for an hour before and an hour after midday. Then there is the light given by the moon and stars, and lastly the cheering glow of the aurora borealis,or northern lights. It is not, therefore, always dark, though when snow falls or the clouds block out the sky the darkness becomes intense. At such times the picture ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... revealing a face not actually looking old, but strongly suggesting age. His eyes were of a pale blue, with a hazy, mixed, uncertain gleam in them, reminding one of the shifty shudder and shake and start of the northern lights at some heavenly version of the game of Puss in the Corner. His features were more than good; they would have been grand had they been large, but they were peculiarly small. His head itself was very small in proportion to his height, his forehead, again, large in proportion ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... enough to understand that they were real—just as real as any of the other mysterious things, like microbes, and polonium, and chemical affinities, and the northern lights, by which we are surrounded. Sometimes it seemed as if the sprites were the children of the flowers that die in blooming; and sometimes as if they came in a flock with the birds from the south; and sometimes as if they rose one by one from the roots of the trees ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... inscriptions, rose on all sides. It was before one of these that the lady stopped; the iron figure of a bishop rested on it; the eyes were closed, the hands folded. She touched the figure; it instantly rose, and the eyes sparkled, as you may have seen the northern lights sparkle through the keen air of a winter night. He went to the altar, and standing before the bridal pair, said, in a deep ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... temporary residence in the country; and a friend of mine who knew that, and who had happened to drive past the house, had written to me to suggest it as a likely place. I had got into the train at midnight, and had fallen asleep, and had woke up and had sat looking out of window at the brilliant Northern Lights in the sky, and had fallen asleep again, and had woke up again to find the night gone, with the usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn't been to sleep at all;—upon which question, in the first imbecility of that condition, ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... th' northern lights," remarked Bob, when they had watched them for some time, "that they's flashes o' light from heaven. I'm thinkin' th' Lard sends un t' give us promise o' th' glories ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... with—yes, there were—millions of stars overhead. Away in the north, the streamers were shooting hither and thither, with marvellous evanescence and re-generation. No dance of goblins could be more lawless in its grotesqueness than this dance of the northern lights in their ethereal beauty, shining, with a wild ghostly changefulness and feebleness, all colours at once; now here, now there, like a row of slender organ-pipes, rolling out and in and along the sky. Or they might have been the chords of some ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the young King upon his white war-horse, clad for the battle as for a feast. The sun at noonday is not more fiercely bright than was his face. His long locks flowed behind him on the wind like tongues of yellow flame; and like northern lights in a blue northern sky, the leader's fire flashed in his eyes. So Balder the Beautiful might have come among the Jotuns. So the brawny sweating hard-breathing giants might have jostled and crowded toward ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... was a French astronomer, Bailly, who said that the lost people mentioned by Plato, the Atlantides, lived here. Finally, it has been asserted in our own time that there was an immense opening at the poles, from which came the Northern Lights, and through which one could reach the inside of the earth; since in the hollow sphere two planets, Pluto and Proserpine, were said to move, and the air was luminous in consequence of the strong ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... color of the Tuscan atmosphere, the hills and vineyards of the Apennines seemed bursting with mid-summer blood. The sick-room itself glowed with the Italian joy of life; friends filled it; no harsh northern lights pierced the soft shadows; even the dying women shared the sense of the Italian summer, the soft, velvet air, the humor, the courage, the sensual fulness of Nature and man. She faced death, as women mostly do, bravely and even gaily, racked ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... him. To this day they run through the mountains on cold, clear nights, in a multitude, while the light of the moon flickers from their white sides, flashing up into the sky in weird, fantastic figures. Some people call it Northern Lights, but old Isaac assured me earnestly, toothlessly, and with the light of ancient truth, as I lay snow-blind in his lodge, that it is nothing more remarkable than the spirit of Itika and the great ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... streams and lakes, telling of a cold rather than a warm climate, always seem to me as if undergoing some strange and unnatural visitation, when one of your heavy summer thunder-storms bursts over them. Snow and frost, hail and, above all, wind, trailing rain clouds and brilliant northern lights, are your appropriate sky phenomena; here, thunder and lightning seem as if they might have been invented. Even in winter (remember, we are now in February) they appear neither astonishing nor unseasonable, and I should think in summer (but ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... the song of the parson's son, as he squats in his shack alone, On the wild, weird nights when the Northern Lights shoot up from the frozen zone, And it's sixty below, and couched in the snow the hungry ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... days the land was illuminated for a while every night by the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights. Sometimes the aurora seemed to imitate the waves of the sea and moved like big heavy swells, changing colors, bluish, white, violet, green, orange. These colors seemed to blend together. Then the heaving ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... disturbed the family catawollapus—nee Irish—with, "Are you asleep, Maggie?" "Yis, sor." "Too bad, Maggie; the northern lights are out, and you ought to see them." "I'm sorry, sor, but I'm sure I filled them all this morning." What I intended to say was that I have taken the liberty of christening a perfectly good he-pointer pup Jet Wimp. Hope it ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... perpetual sunshine and the weird radiance of the Northern Lights; but prosody is not taught in your "Normal" school. The thing is a vain, artificial attempt to impose a whole body of ideas, notions, standards of comparison, metaphors, similes, and sentiments upon a race to which, in great measure, they must ever be foreign and ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... coldness of the sub-Arctic, the river a white band through heavy woods, nights that were crisp and still as death, the sky a vast dome sprinkled with flickering stars, brilliant at times with the Northern Lights, that strange glow that flashes and shimmers above the Pole, now a banner of flame, again only a misty sheen. Sometimes it seemed an unreality, that silence, that immensity of hushed forest, those vast areas in which life was not a factor. When a blizzard whooped out of the northern ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... no tapers to be seen, but northern lights shot up into the dark blue sky, and just over the fir-tree ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... The northern lights flashed and swept in fantastic shapes across the sky, illuminating the fir tops in the valley and making the white lichens gleam on the barren hill above us. We thought of the lake ahead with its old wigwams, and the promise it held out of an easy trail ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... spirit of the hour. On thy pleasant valleys rest, like sweet dews of morning, the gentle recollections of our early life; around thy hills and mountains cling, like gathering mists, the mighty memories of the Revolution; and, far away in the horizon of thy past, gleam, like thy own bright northern lights, the awful ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... tails, were long regarded, and still are by many, as harbingers of divine vengeance, presaging famines and inundations, or the downfall of princes and the destruction of empires. The northern lights have been frequently gazed at with similar apprehensions, whole provinces having been thrown into consternation by the fantastic coruscations of these lambent meteors. Some pretend to see in these harmless ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... Like Northern Lights on autumn evenings, the maiden's eyes pierced Narcissus through and through with many-coloured spears. There was thunder, too; the earth shook—just a little: but soon Narcissus saw the white dove of peace flying to him through the glancing showers. ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... Northern Lights, a luminous appearance in the northern parts of the heavens, seen mostly during winter, or in frosty weather, and clear evenings; it assumes a variety of forms and hues, especially in the polar regions, ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... and rescued the maiden. Viking gave the sword to his son Thorsten, and Thorsten gave it to Frithiof. The hilt was of hammered gold, covered with mystic red letters. Whenever he drew the sword light filled the hall, as when the northern lights gleam or the bright ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... was too beautiful for my depression of mind to last. The stars blazed brilliantly overhead; upon our left the faint outlines of the Laurentians rose, in front of us the lights of Levis twinkled above the frozen gulf. There was a flicker of Northern Lights in the sky. ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... moods through all the days and seasons, which we ascribe to the operations of law, were to them the visible tokens of the wrath or favor of the Almighty. On December 11th, 1719, for the first time in the history of the Colony, the northern lights were seen here. They shone with the greatest brilliancy. The consternation they caused was fearful. The people had never heard of such a phenomenon. They considered it the opening scene of the day of judgment. All amusements ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... numbers, and they were always rendered by what seemed to be some mighty veteran, the patriarch of the pack, for his effort was so thrilling and awe-inspiring that it always sent the gooseflesh rushing up and down my back. Many a time, night after night, beneath the Northern Lights, I have gone out to the edge of a lake to ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... capricious sea to give them food, and who spent most of their lives working for the comfort of the dead—the Restless Ones—who sweep the winter skies when the day is done, beckoning, whispering. The Northern Lights the white man calls them, as they leap and play above the frozen peaks, but the Thlinget knows them to be the spirits of the dead, homeless in space but hovering confidently overhead until their relatives on earth can give a Potlatch ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... point which we will dwell on for a moment as bearing on the question of Dante's orthodoxy. His nature was one in which, as in Swedenborg's, a clear practical understanding was continually streamed over by the northern lights of mysticism, through which the familiar stars shine with a softened and more spiritual lustre. Nothing is more interesting than the way in which the two qualities of his mind alternate, and indeed play into each other, tingeing his matter-of-fact sometimes with unexpected glows of fancy, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... We live far away in the cheerless north, in bark lodges. We are often cold and hungry. Father, what we ask is to you as nothing, while to us it is comfort and happiness. Give it to us, and when you stand upon your grand portico some bright winter night, and see the northern lights dancing in the heavens, it will be the thanks of your red children ascending to the Great Spirit ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... electric fuses now so universally used in blasting, firing cannon, and other similar purposes. It was Bose also who, observing some of the peculiar manifestations in electrified tubes, and noticing their resemblance to "northern lights," was one of the first, if not the first, to suggest that the aurora borealis ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... such things as this that make the life of the astronomer one of constant and discouraging toil. I have long contemplated, as I say, the advisability of retiring from this field of science and allowing others to light the northern lights, skim the milky way and do other celestial chores. I would do it myself cheerfully if my health would permit, but for years I have realized, and so has my wife, that my duties as an astronomer kept me up too much at night, and my wife is certainly right about it when she ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... half a dozen times had he seen the phenomenon in all his years on the tundras, where thunder-storm and the putting out of the summer sun until twilight thickens into the gloom of near-night is an occurrence so rare that it is more awesome than the weirdest play of the northern lights. It seemed to him now that what was happening was a miracle, the play of a mighty hand opening their way to salvation. An inky wall was shutting out the world where the glow of the midnight sun should have been. It was spreading quickly; shadows became part of the gloom, and this ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... had fair weather, and a clear serene sky; and, between midnight and three o'clock in the morning, lights were seen in the heavens, similar to those in the northern hemisphere, known by the name of Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights; but I never heard of the Aurora Australia been seen before. The officer of the watch observed that it sometimes broke out in spiral rays, and in a circular form; then its light was very strong, and its appearance beautiful. He could not perceive it had ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... the "aurora," or "northern lights," and know that electricity causes it, but the twins' mother couldn't know that. She told them just what had been told her when she was a ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... moon was cut here and there by dark purple shadows of the night. Not a breath stirred. He walked slowly up the hill, watching the golden streamers of the northern lights streaking across the sky. It was a perfect night. And yet, it was to ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... grass, every flower is rejoicing now, while we try to get away and are as frightened as if it were a disaster! The storm kill us indeed! It's not a storm to be dreaded, it's a blessing! Yes, a blessing! Everything's dreadful to you. If the Northern Lights shine in the heavens—you ought to admire and marvel at "the dawn breaking in the land of midnight!" But you are in terror, and imagine it means war or flood. If a comet comes—I can't take my eyes from it! a thing so beautiful! the stars we have looked upon to our hearts' content, they are ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky
... bewildering rapidity of movement, in grandeur so celestial, in its very existence so unaccountable, is calculated to lift man up and away from things earthly, into the very realm and presence of the spiritual, as does a first-class display of the northern lights, as seen in the far north-land. While they are generally more frequent in the winter months than at other times of the year, yet they are very uncertain in their comings, and sometimes burst upon the world and illuminate ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... had been allowed to play on the ice had all returned except the two polar bears, who begged Capt. Noah to let them stay out all night, as they wished to see the Northern Lights from the top of ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... dogs. A sense of insecurity that I would not for worlds have resigned, now tingled, now chilled my blood. At last, climbing a stony hill, the skies lay beneath me reddening with the flame of camps and flaring and falling alternately, like the beautiful Northern lights. I heard the ring of hoofs as I looked entranced, and in a twinkling, a body of horsemen dashed past me and disappeared. A little beyond, the road grew so thick that I could see nothing of my way; but trusting doubtfully to my horse, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... at night in the cities so that they will be clean. Ships will cross the polar seas, thawed beneath the Aurora Borealis. For everything is produced by the conjunction of two fluids, male and female, gushing out from the poles, and the northern lights are a symptom of the blending of ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... of the vessel. The helmsman was nodding silently upon his tiller; two seamen sat motionless upon the bow, and the lookout party in the crow's-nest talked mutteringly of our ill-luck as they scanned the horizon. The Northern Lights were pulsing like some great radiating heart, and the sea was alternately flame and shadow. The headlands of Labrador lay to the south—bare, boundless, precipitous; and to the east a glittering iceberg floated slowly towards us, like ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... easily maintained first rank among the Elmbrook sentinels, and might have done so to the end of her life had not one family taken an unfair advantage by calling in the aid of machinery. Silas Long, the postmaster, was a great student of astronomy, and could talk like a book on comets and northern lights, and all other incomprehensible things that sailed the heavens. So no one objected when he bought a telescope—in fact, the minister had advised it; but before long every one knew that while Si studied ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... a wild scene, encamped there as they were on that dreary expanse of snow, with the mysterious Northern Lights flashing overhead, giving a weird illumination, the snarling wolves fairly surrounding the tent, and the frightened ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... dark the size of the conflagration was apparent. Night withdrew to the eastern edges of the heavens; the sky to the zenith was a glistening orange, blurred with shadowy up-rollings of smoke, along the city's crest the torn flame ribbons playing like northern lights. Figures that faced it were glazed by its glare as if a red-dipped paint brush had been slapped across them; those seen against it were black silhouettes moving on fiery distances and gleaming walls. The smell of it was strong, and the showers of cinders so thick Lorry ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... enter into a competition, still less should it be provoked with the profound labours of the editor of the Analectic Magazine and his host of 'the most eminent literary men' who promised to eclipse the dissertations of the famous Northern lights" (p. 3). ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... moved. Its site was a knoll to the east of our house, which Veronica had chosen. Her rooms were toward the orchard, and Ben's commanded a view of the sea. He had not ventured to intrude, he told her, upon the Northern Lights, and she must not bother him about his boat-house or his pier. They were both delighted with the change, and kept house like children. Temperance indulged their whims to the utmost, though she thought Ben's new-fangled notions were ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... the big cave was used for religious services by her people, who worshiped the northern lights, or magnetic fire that never burned, and she told how they sacrificed to it ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... walk home was as silent as that going to Moss Brow had been. The only change seemed to be that now they faced the brilliant northern lights flashing up the sky, and that either this appearance or some of the whaling narrations of Kinraid had stirred up Daniel Robson's recollections of a sea ditty, which he kept singing to himself in a low, unmusical voice, the burden of which was, 'for I loves the tossin' say!' Bell met ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... his northern voyages, asserts the opinion that the northern lights kindle and disperse the vapors requisite to the formation of lightning. Hence there is no thunder in high northern latitudes. We admit the fact, but doubt the reasoning. Vapor is but water in a gaseous state. It is a fine medium for the exhibition of electricity, and we cannot ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... twilight, and admired the outlines of the surrounding hills, and fancied resemblances to various objects in the shapes of the crags against the evening sky. The sun had not set till nearly, if not quite, eight o'clock; and before the daylight had quite gone, the northern lights streamed out, and I do not think that there was much darkness over the glen of Arroquhar that night. At all events, before the darkness came, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Mr. Chalk, gazing at the erection with interest— "I suppose there's a good view from up there? It's like having a ship in the garden, and it seems to remind you of the North Pole, and whales, and Northern Lights." ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... about late that night, drinking in the mystic beauty of the scene. Northern lights, pale and dim, stretched their arc across beneath the Dipper. The air, soft as the dead leaves of spring, fanned his cheek. By and by the moon, like a red fire at sea, lifted itself from the waves. Thorpe made his way to the stern, beyond the square deck ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... sponge, making currents, the direction of which are indicated by these magnetic poles. The same silent fluid which makes this needle point down to the deck makes the telegraphic instrument click, makes the northern lights, and makes ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... in special providences; and I am now confirmed in my belief. This morning has brought with it a note from our good friend and neighbor at Belhelvie. Sir James is one of the commissioners for the Northern Lights. He is going in a Government vessel to inspect the lighthouses on the North of Scotland, and on the Orkney and Shetland Islands—and, having noticed how worn and ill my poor boy looks, he most kindly invites George to be his guest on the voyage. ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... Hereford.—On June 21st I went with my wife and two eldest sons to Edinburgh and other places in Scotland, but residing principally at Oban, where I hired a house. Amongst other expeditions, I and my son Wilfrid went with the 'Pharos' (Northern Lights Steamer) to the Skerry Vohr Lighthouse, &c. I also visited Newcastle, &c., and returned to Greenwich on Aug. 2nd.—From Oct. 12th to 17th I was at Cambridge.—On Dec. 24th I ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... with Olaf? The clouds drive fast before the wind—clouds rest on the edge of the dark Fjord—sails red as blood flash against the sky—who comes with Olaf? Fair hair ripples against his breast like streaming sunbeams; eyes blue as the glitter of the northern lights, are looking upon him—lips crimson and heavy with kisses for Olaf—ah!" She broke off with a cry, and beat the air with her hands as though to keep some threatening thing away from her. "Back, back! Dead bride of Olaf, torment me no more—back, I say! See,"—and she pointed ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... where the Ayrshire sloops danced like bobbins on the water; past the isles, where overhead drove the wedges of the wild swans, trumpeting as on a battle-field; past the Hebrides, where strange arctic birds whined like hurt dogs; northward still to where the northern lights sprang like dancers in the black winter nights; eastward and southward to where the swell of the Dogger Bank rose, where the fish grazed like kine. Over the great sea he would go as though nothing had happened, not even the snapping of a stay—down to the sea, where the crisp ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... not returning to one who was peerless? That hope speedily eclipsed all interests. That was purpose enough for my life. Forthwith, I began comparing lustrous gray eyes to the stars, and tracing a woman's figure in the diaphanous northern lights. One face ever gleamed through the dusk at my horse's head and beckoned northward. I do not think her presence left me for an instant on that homeward journey. But, indeed, I should not set down these extravagances, which each may recall ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... was born at Edinburgh in the year 1818, the grandson of Thomas Smith, first engineer to the Board of Northern Lights, son of Robert Stevenson, brother of Alan and David; so that his nephew, David Alan Stevenson, joined with him at the time of his death in the engineership, is the sixth of the family who has held, successively or conjointly, that office. The Bell Rock, his father's ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... northern lights,[162] appear with great brilliancy in the clear Canadian sky, especially during the winter nights. Starting from behind the distant horizon, they race up through the vault of heaven, spreading over all space one moment, shrinking to a quivering streak the next, shooting out again where least ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Beyond the Northern Lights, in regions haunted Of twilight, where the world is glacier planted, And pale as Loki in his cavern when The serpent's slaver burns him to the bones, I saw the phantasms of gigantic men, The prototypes of vastness, quarrying stones; Great ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... ship's chronometers and several pocket-chronometers. For magnetic observations, for taking the declination, inclination, and intensity (both horizontal and total intensity) we had a complete set of instruments. Among others may be mentioned a spectroscope especially adapted for the northern lights, an electroscope for determining the amount of electricity in the air, photographic apparatuses, of which we had seven, large and small, and a photographometer for making charts. I considered a pendulum apparatus with its adjuncts to be of special importance ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... of mystery, did the tremor of my heartstrings vibrate to thine own, and call thee from thy home among the dancers of the northern lights, and shadows flung from departed sunshine, and giant spectres that appear on clouds at daybreak and affright the climber of the Alps? In truth it startled me, as I threw a wary glance eastward across the chamber, ...
— Monsieur du Miroir (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... windows playing over their dark serried ranks. A cool, clear moon shone down upon us from amidst fleecy clouds, which drifted ever and anon across her face. Away in the north tremulous rays of light flickered up into the heavens, coming and going like long, quivering fingers. They were the northern lights, a sight rarely seen in the southland counties. It is little wonder that, coming at such a time, the fanatics should have pointed to them as signals from another world, and should have compared them to that pillar of fire which guided ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one place it seems uniformly luminous, shining feebly with a pale and sickly light; in another it exhibits bright flashes; again, it appears composed of brilliants of different sizes and shades, and sometimes, like a grand exhibition of the "northern lights," all these appearances are combined. The most phosphorescent sea seldom exhibits peculiarities by daylight. Nevertheless, sometimes, though rarely, luminous patches and even large tracts of water are seen in the daytime, and at a great distance from ordinary soundings, with the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... with northern lights, and then they came to Finland and knocked at the Finland woman's chimney, for door she ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... and the mists surge round, but he shakes his lance and pipes his call, and at last he comes to the Milky Way, where the sky-sylphs lead him to their queen, who lies couched in a palace ceiled with stars, its dome held up by northern lights and the curtains made of the morning's flush. Her mantle is twilight purple, tied with threads of gold from the eastern dawn, and her face is as fair ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... should go a step further," said Bearwarden, "and say our earth has the peculiarity, since it does not possess the influence necessary to generate naturally a great or even considerable development of apergy. The electricity of thunderstorms, northern lights, and other forces seems to be produced freely, but as regards apergy our planet's natural productiveness appears to be small." The omnipresent luminosity continued, but the glow was scarcely bright enough to be perceived from the earth. ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... light, almost, as day with the northern lights flaming up from behind Frenchman's Butte all over the whole sky, and all colors and shapes. On these nights the horses (they had been wild ponies once) would stamp about in the barn, and Kaiser would growl in his sleep. When I rubbed the cat's back it would crack and sparkle. The wolves seemed ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... tormenting man and horse; nor sunshine that blisters the face, nor natural strawberry-grounds as wide as Yorkshire, nor a sky clearer, purer, and more intensely blue than any that spans Italian plains. No; Canada means winter, snow, quivering northern lights, log-fires, and sledge-bells! ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Borealis I ever saw, the Northern or rather Northeast Sky appeared suffused by a dark blood-red colored vapour, without any variety of different colored rays. I have never since seen the like. This was about the year 1734. Northern lights were then a novelty, and excited great wonder and terror among ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... himself, tossed his jet-black hair from his wrinkled face, and after a moment, went on: "There never was such a winter as that. The air was so still by times that you can hear the rustle of the stars and the shifting of the northern lights; but the cold at night caught you by the heart and clamp it—Mon Dieu, how it clamp! We crawl under the snow and lay in our bags of fur and wool, and the dogs hug close to us. We were sorry for the dogs; and one died, and then another, and there ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... he had impiously removed the warning beacon. No evidence of the existence of the bell is found in the records of the Abbey; and on the subject of its wanton removal, the sagacious engineer of the Northern Lights say, "It in no measure accords with the respect and veneration entertained by seamen of all classes for landmarks; more especially as there seems to be no difficulty in accounting for the disappearance of such an ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... also had been busy seeing sights— The Parliament and all the other houses; Had sat beneath the gallery at nights, To hear debates whose thunder roused (not rouses) The world to gaze upon those northern lights Which flash'd as far as where the musk-bull browses; He had also stood at times behind the throne— But Grey was not arrived, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron |
