"Portal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... opening to the left, which Mabel and Vi, the little twin daughters of his former chief, used to occupy. He seemed to hear the laughter of the children echoing from some far-off paradise of the past, before the portal of which a stern-browed Fate stood to prevent his entering. The shutters of the dining-room window had been thrown open. A memory-ghost prompted him to unfold one of them. On its inner surface, painted over, he found ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... first a large outer court, and thence, through a huge gateway, passes into the inner. Beneath the gateway stand the statues of war-gods, each eighteen feet high, with faces terribly distorted, and in the most threatening attitudes; these are supposed to prevent the approach of evil genii. A second portal, similarly constructed, under which the "four heavenly kings" sit enthroned, leads to a third court, surrounding the principal sanctuary, which measures one hundred feet in length, and is of equal breadth. On rows ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... St. Lawrence during these six decades remained a land of mystery. The navigators of Europe still clung to the vision of a westward passage whose eastern portal must be hidden among the bays or estuaries of this silent land, but none was bold or persevering enough to seek it to the end. As for the great continent itself, Europe had not the slightest inkling of what it held in store for future ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... New Earth divine, Conceived of seed immortal: She sings, "Not mine the holier shrine, But mine the cloudy portal!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... sat out beneath the vine-covered portal—Malvey and Flores with a wicker-covered demijohn of wine between them—and Pete lounging on the doorstep, smoking and gazing across the canon at the faint stars of an early evening. With the wine, old Flores's manner changed from surly indifference to a superficial politeness which ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... end came to her peacefully, and the soul of "Granny" Quirk passed the narrow gate that leads from things seen to those that are apprehended by faith. With a smile on her face she passed the portal, confident in ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... said Murphy. "We're going through the gate." He punched the button on his camera and passed under the monstrous portal. ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... when so much had been forgotten,—when even the features and architectural characteristics of the mansion in which it was merely a piece of furniture had been forgotten. And, as he gazed at it, he half thought himself an actor in a fairy portal [tale?]; and would not have been surprised—at least, he would have taken it with the composure of a dream—if the mimic portal had unclosed, and a form of pigmy majesty had appeared within, beckoning ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... greatly delighted. The roof was of copper externally, and was painted black, while the walls, in common with those of the church, were staringly white. To this mausoleum there was no access from the church. It had a portal and steps of its own on ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... only that the Queen was so overcome with the repeated shouts and plaudits of her new subjects, that she was obliged to retire. The fine Gothic cathedral, in which the ceremony was performed, is indeed a church worthy of such a solemnity; the portal is the finest I ever beheld; the windows are painted in the very best manner; nor is there any thing within the church but what should be there. I need not tell you that this is the province which produces the most delicious wine in the world; but I will assure you, that I should have ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... little son runs breathless into the home portal after being chased from school by some "turrible" boys we can hear this same little mother as she storms about the place and tells what "papa must do" about the matter. According to her notion, if teachers could not control the "criminal element" among their pupils then it was ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... the salute. "It will be," he stated positively. "These merchants have learned by now that to insult Portal Menstal with poor offerings is unwise in the extreme. And, mark ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... Duchess. Alice may be considered the very John Cabot of the rabbit-hole. Before her time it was known only to rabbits, wood-chucks, and dogs on holidays, whose noses are muddy with poking. But since her time all this is changed. Now it is known as the portal of adventure. It is the escape from the plane of ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... under what he called his own fin, and led the old fellow, moaning piteously, across the street. He stopped when he came to the ancient gate, ornamented with the armorial bearings of the venerable Shepherd. "Here 'tis," said he, drawing up at the portal, and he made a successful pull at the gatebell, which presently brought out old Mr. Bolton, the porter, scowling fiercely, and grumbling as he was used to do every morning when it became his turn to let in that ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... heroic deeds of Herakles. The latter, holding aloft his club, drags two-headed Cerberus out of Hades by a chain drawn through the jaw of one of his heads. He is just about to pass Cerberus through a portal indicated by an Ionic pillar. To the right Persephone, stepping out of her palace, seems to forbid the rape. Herakles in his turn seems to threaten the goddess, while Hermes, to the left, holds a protecting or restraining arm over him. Athene, with averted face, ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... intensely dark outside when the members of the expedition first issued from the hospitable portal of the "Anchor;" but there was a moon, although she was completely hidden by the dense canopy of fast- flying clouds which overspread the heavens; and the faint light which struggled through this thick veil of vapour soon revealed a small fleet of fishing smacks at anchor in the middle ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... mansion. It stood some short distance below the road, on the side of a hill sweeping down to the Tweed; and was as yet but a snug gentleman's cottage, with something rural and picturesque in its appearance. The whole front was overrun with evergreens, and immediately above the portal was a great pair of elk horns, branching out from beneath the foliage, and giving the cottage the look of a hunting lodge. The huge baronial pile, to which this modest mansion in a manner gave birth was just emerging into existence; part of the ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... room, drew back the curtain over the portal and, taking out his keys, unlocked and pushed back the door, descending with the others into the vault-like chamber and examining the massive iron ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... distressful imaginings or hearkening to my companion's animadversions upon rogues, criminals, and crime in general until, as the afternoon waned, we descended the steep hill into Wrotham village and pulled up at the "Bull" Inn, into whose hospitable portal Mr. Shrig vanished, to pursue those enquiries he had repeated at ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... accuracy is not a capricious and intermittent impulse," writes Bishop Alexander. "It is a fixed habit of mind, the result of a particular discipline. Historians of the school of the author of the Acts of the Apostles are not men to build a flamboyant portal of romance over the entrance to the austere temple ...
— The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord - A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy - Trinity at Cambridge • B. W. Randolph
... the house,—is a little restive at first in the unwonted restraint of the harness, but soon gets broken in to steady work by the heavy roads. Somewhat over an hour's slow progress brings me to the rude portal which spans the entrance of the McTureous estate. The houses of all the plantations on the Sea Side road are to be found on the eastern, or left-hand as one rides towards Hilton Head. The character of the fields and quarters between the road ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... trailed their heads in the soil, and a small rivulet was running down the steps of the summer house. As the last two umbrellas, after a brief and exciting struggle for precedence, passed through the portal and the gate was shut with a slam, Lennie Chapman turned to her companions ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... conservatism revealed in this reply was blended with audacity—the inherited audacity of the pioneer. No line of Lowell's has been more often quoted in this hall than the line about the futility of attempting to open the "Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key." Those words were written in 1844. And here, in a sentence written forty-two years afterward, is a description of organized human society which voices the precise hope of forward-looking minds in Europe and America ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... when we come upon a great house with deep overhanging eaves, square-topped chimneys, and altogether with a Swiss air about it. There are idlers hanging about the door, for this is "Unkraut's," and the brisk air of musical instruments streams out of the open portal. Within all is motion and uproar. A large salle de danse occupies the greater part of the ground floor, the central portion of which is appropriated to the waltzers, while a broad slip on each side, beneath ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... wonderful picture stretched before me. The small stream and the surrounding country were walled in by dense green trees. To the west the cool, dark depths parted only wide enough for the creek to disappear through a narrow portal. Through small openings in the southern wall, I caught glimpses of the summer cottages on the sandy shore. To the north stretched the pasture-lands with shade-trees happy to hide their nakedness with thick foliage. Here, too, ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... and frowsy cells, Where infamy with sad repentance dwells; Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast, And deal from iron hands the spare repast; Where truant 'prentices, yet young in sin, Blush at the curious stranger peeping in; Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar, Resolve to drink, nay, half to whore, no more; Where ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... enumerating the four things that are never satisfied, lays special stress upon two which are, so to say, the beginning and end of all things, the alpha and omega of human philosophy—viz., the grave and the womb;[179] the latter the bait as well as the portal of life, the former the bugbear and the goal of all things living. The idea, no less than the form, is manifestly Indian. Birth and death constitute the axis of existence; the womb is the symbol of the allurement that tempts men to forget their sorrows, to keep the Juggernaut ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... of bed, finding that his ankle was much better and looked from the window. There was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen. He turned toward his door, just as a loud knock came on the portal. ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... words!—to make immortal How the heavens in starlight drown As she enters in the Portal, How the Heavenly City glows, How the bells cry, "We have found her!" As through tears and praise she goes With the children ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... northern lights are streaming In brightness like the morn, And pealing far amid the vastness I hear the gyallarhorn *** The heart of starry space is throbbing With songs of minstrels old; And now on high Walhalla's portal ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... wide that day, All through the unveiled heaven there seemed to play Out of the Holiest of Holy, light; And the elect beheld, crowd immortal, A young soul, led up by young angels bright, Stand in the starry portal. ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... surcharged? this capacity of the front teeth of all animals to cut and of the "grinders" to receive the food and reduce it to pulp? the position of the mouth again, close to the eyes and nostrils as a portal of ingress for all the creature's supplies? and lastly, seeing that matter passing out (7) of the body is unpleasant, this hindward direction of the passages, and their removal to a distance from the ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... successors. Little things, magnified by pusillanimous apprehension, stood in his way. In 1819 he expressed in a poem The Ruins of Campo Vaccino esthetic abhorrence of the cross most inappropriately placed over the portal of the Coliseum in Rome, and was thereafter never free of the suspicion of heresy. In 1825 membership in a social club raided by the police subjected him to the absurd suspicion of plotting treason. Only once do we find him, during the first half of the century, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... no right of coercion, no machinery of its own for acting upon the States. And, unhappily, the States, pressed by their individual wants, feeling keenly their individual sacrifices and dangers, failed to see that the nearest road to relief lay through the odious portal of taxation. Had the mysterious words that Dante read on the gates of Hell been written on it, they could not have shrunk from it with a more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... mossy and much gnawed by time; it has narrow loopholes up and down its front and sides, and an arched window over the low portal, set with small panes of glass, cracked, dim, and irregular, through which a bygone age is peeping out into the daylight. Some of those old, grotesque faces, called gargoyles, are seen on the projections of ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 128, and connected together by bolting through the flanges. The steel forms were erected by hand in advance of the derrick, 20 ft. of form on each side at a time. The concrete buckets were brought into the tunnel on cars hauled by electric motors from the mixing plant at the portal, and the buckets were lifted by the derricks and emptied into the forms. The side walls were concreted to the springing line and then the five-ring brick roof arches were constructed on traveling centers and in 20-ft. sections. The remainder ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... as we passed its portal grand, Our hearts were glad, our spirits light, And we rejoiced, and eager scanned The scenes that came before our sight. Near Alcatraz, an island bold, We paused to ...
— Within the Golden Gate - A Souvenir of San Fransisco Bay • Laura Young Pinney
... traces. The arm that had been tossing in the grief tempest, had fallen heavily, too weary to change itself into a more easy position. Those large eyes, now so closely veiled by their swollen lids, had evidently wept till the fountain of tears was dry. That lovely mouth was still the open portal of a sigh, which the mastery of sleep had ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... girls? If we ever live to speak or think like that, it will indeed be time to have done with the world. Even as I love you now, my heart's darling, I shall love you when years of intimacy are like some happy journey behind us, and on into the very portal of death. Regret! How paltry all will seem that was not of the essence of our love! And who knows how short our time may be? When the end comes, will it be easy to bear, the thought that we lost one day, one moment of union, out of respect ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... of the hammock sets in motion a cool breeze, and lying at full length, one is admitted at high noon to a new domain which has no other portal but this. At this hour, the jungle shows few evidences of life, not a chirp of bird or song of insect, and no rustling of leaves in the heat which has descended so surely and so inevitably. But from hidden places and cool shadows come broken sounds and whisperings, which cover the gamut from insects ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... it was Rose who drew the blank that made her "guardian of the portal" for the first twenty minutes. At the end of that time the girls would draw again and let another poor unfortunate take ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... pleasure in my eyes by my drooping lashes. Faithful, heart and soul, to one noble being, I refused to look into the admiring eyes of another. His insidious praises of my genius made no impression. The image of a man six feet two, with a sky-blue scarf across his princely bosom, stood at the portal of my heart, and the young gentleman with curled hair and that light-colored mustache ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. So shall the life, into which you have entered, be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss. And if to the dead it is permitted to care for the things of this world, every action of your life will ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... and curious wind, That in the arched doorway cries, And at the bolted portal tries, And harks ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... environed the ordinary Jewish idea of death. The sense of union with God by which a few Jews in some rare flashes of inspiration knew that they would live after death, is here triumphant. St. Paul regards death as a portal to that happy existence which can only be described as being "at home with the Lord" (2 Cor. v. 1-8; cf. Phil. i. 23). Union with Christ now absolutely guarantees union with Him hereafter. The resurrection-body ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... ready they started in a painted barge, accompanied by Sir Geoffrey Carleon, who wore his velvet robe of office, and grumbled at its weight and warmth. A row of some fifteen minutes along the great canal brought them to a splendid portal upon the mole, with marble steps. Hence they were conducted by guards across a courtyard, where stood many gaily dressed people who watched them curiously, especially Grey Dick, whose pale, sinister face caused them to make a certain sign with their fingers, ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... "Is there a porter?" "There is; and if thou holdest not thy peace, small will be thy welcome. I am Arthur's porter every first day of January." "Open the portal." "I will not open it." "Wherefore not?" "The knife is in the meat, and the drink is in the horn, and there is revelry in Arthur's hall; and none may enter therein but the son of a king of a privileged country, or a craftsman bringing his craft. But there will be refreshment for thy dogs and ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... disastrous results. He soon outgrew the ignominy of his first failure, however, and again and again sought to overcome its disgrace by a fresh appearance. To his appeals the irate manager lent a deaf ear. The sacred portal that leads to the enchanted ground of the stage was closed against young Forrest, the warden being instructed not to let the importunate boy pass the door. At last, in desperation, he resolved to storm the citadel, to beat down the faithful guard and to carry war into the enemy's camp. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... rockets, above their heads. Here, seated upon one of those carven tombs which now make benches for lovers in that enchanting spot, she told him old legends of St. Trophime, how he and his fellows sculptured about the portal of his abbey descend from their niches and keep here the eve of Toussaint. "You will see them," she said, "when you go to hang your shield in the cloister, where it must be displayed, if so be you fight ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... further, but wounding one with my dagger, felled the other to the ground; and darting past him, made my way through what passages I cannot tell, till I found myself in a street leading from behind the governor's house. I ran against some one as I rushed from the portal; it was my servant Neil. I hastily told him to draw his sword and follow me. We then hurried forward; he telling me he had stepped out to observe the night, while the rest of my men were awaiting me in the house, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Southampton on January 11, in the "Malta." On the 16th, he notes in his diary,] "I was up just in time see the great portal of the Mediterranean well. It was a lovely morning, and nothing could be grander than Ape Hill on one side and the Rock on the other, looking like great lions or sphinxes on each side ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... as now occupied the open square lying between the great Cathedral of Ste. Marie and the College of the Jesuits. The latter, a vast edifice, occupied one side of the square. Through its wide portal a glimpse was had of the gardens and broad avenues of ancient trees, sacred to the meditation and quiet exercises of the reverend fathers, who walked about in pairs, according to the rule of their order, which rarely permitted them ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... not through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet between two rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon the traveller's sight opened the long ranges of columned palaces,—each with its black boat moored at the portal,—each with its image cast down, beneath its feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... learned as Mezzofanti, As poetical as Dante, As wise as Magliabecchi, As profound as Mr. Lecky— Has absorbed more kinds of knowledge Than are found in any college; He may take his full degree Of Ph. or LL. D. And prepare to pass the portal That ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... horseman turned into the road some distance ahead of them and rode straight for the forest. Then, for the first time, Gwynne observed a second rider, motionless at the roadside, and in the shadow of the towering, leafless trees that marked the portal through which they must enter the forest. The flying horseman slowed down as he neared this solitary figure, coming to a standstill when he reached his side. A moment later, both riders were cantering toward the wood, apparently in excited, earnest conversation. A few ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... pathway and portal, To the life that shall die nevermore; And the cross leadeth up to the crown everlasting, The ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... a sculptured portal the figure of a young girl, arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much. She looked ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Arts Aeroplane View of the Exposition, Photo copyrighted by Gabriel Moulin Avenue of Palms The South Gardens The Palace of Horticulture Festival Hall—George H. Kahn Map of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition "Listening Woman" and "Young Girl," Festival Hall South Portal, Palace of Varied Industries—J. L. Padilla Palace of Liberal Arts Sixteenth-Century Spanish Portal, North Facade "The Pirate," North Portal "The Priest," Tower of Jewels The Tower of Jewels and ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... the carriage stopped suddenly before a wide, pillared portico I was wholly taken by surprise. Mills opened the carriage-door, and I got down with a blank, dreamy feeling, and followed him up the steps through the wide portal and along the hall. He ushered me into the library, and left me while he went ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... have excused myself, on the plea of having already made my breakfast. "Hout, man," cried he, "a ride in the morning in the keen air of the Scotch hills is warrant enough for a second breakfast." I was accordingly whirled to the portal of the cottage, and in a few moments found myself ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... his Excellency experienced a sudden and awful shudder. Lord Moustache, however, who was more used to mysteries, taking up a silver trumpet, which was fixed to the portal by a crimson cord, gave a loud blast. The gates flew open with the sound of a whirlwind, and Popanilla found himself in what at first appeared an illimitable hall. It was crowded, but perfect order was preserved. ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... happened to Queen, his Australian shepherd. Like the other vanishings, it was followed by a single stroke on that prodigious, invisible bell—what Harry calls "The Bell of the Blind Spot." And he has already mentioned my opinion, that this phenomenon signifies the closing of the portal of the unknown—the end of the special conditions which produce the bluish spot on the ceiling, the incandescent streak of light, and the vanishing of whoever falls into the affected region. The mere fact ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... shudder at thy sound; Like some poor mortal Who hears the Three that mark life's doomed bound Sit at his portal. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... known variety of food. Dishes that tickle the palate, satisfy the appetite, aid digestion, promote health and prolong life. The magic portal to a ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... sense of the permanence of man's unity with his Maker can illumine our present being with a continual presence and power of good, opening wide the portal from death into Life; and when this Life shall appear "we shall be like Him," and we shall go to the Father, not through death, but through Life; not through error, ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... apostles, that decorate the grand portal, and entered the cathedral. The interior is as fine as the exterior. The columns are massive, the ceiling groined; the style is the decorated or geometric architecture, that prevailed in Europe in the thirteenth ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... Swayamvara. And hearing of it, all the lords of earth smit with love speedily came thither, desirous of (possessing) Damayanti. And the monarchs entered the amphitheatre decorated with golden pillars and a lofty portal arch, like mighty lions entering the mountain wilds. And those lords of earth decked with fragrant garlands and polished ear-rings hung with jewels seated themselves on their several seats. And that sacred assembly of Kings, graced by those tigers ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... three to four hundred feet high, lightly wooded at their summits, and broken by wide openings, into which ran arms of the sea, forming gloomy channels of communication with the interior country; whilst on each side of their entrances the huge cliffs rose, like the pillars of some gigantic portal. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide—abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... drowsily. I sat quite still in the sun. And then presently, moved by some prompting instinct, I turned my head, and, far off, through the narrow portal of the temple, I saw the girl-child swathed in purple still lying, sinuously as a young snake, upon the palm-wood roof above the brown earth wall to watch me with her eyes ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... wine to interfere with business. Follow me, but cautiously, one after the other in single file, and look to your footing. 'Tis perilous steep between here and the gate;" and, indeed, so they found it, but all reached the level forecourt in safety, and so through the open portal. ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... that direction yields Unto the port-mouth of the Elysian fields: A place desired of all, but got by these Whom love admits to the Hesperides; Here's golden fruit, that doth exceed all price, Growing in this love-guarded paradise; Above the entrance there is written this: This is the portal to the bower of bliss, Through midst whereof a crystal stream there flows Passing the sweet sweet of a musky rose. With plump, soft flesh, of metal pure and fine, Resembling shields, both pure and ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... What love! What self-sacrifice! A Paradise opened before him. But at the portal of that Paradise stood an angel with a flaming sword, saying: "Back, your name ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... outward blessing-freighted broke Around him standing at the gate alone. All down the radiant slope of golden stairs, By which he climbed so late from earth to heaven, It rolled impalpable—a fragrant cloud; And still, turned from the Alleluias loud, Beyond the portal-guarding angels seven, He listened earthward, for a voice—a sound Out of the dark that ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... book—'twill summon back The spirits now immortal, Who bravely died for fatherland And passed the heavenly portal!" ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... look up and see a mere strip of blue sky, but trailing plants reaching far downward from window-sills, one above the other, light up the gloom with many a patch of vivid green. You venture down some dim passage and come suddenly upon a little court where an old Gothic portal with quaint sculptures, or a Renaissance doorway with armorial bearings carved over the lintel, bears testimony to the grandeur and wealth of those who once lived in the now grimy, dilapidated, poverty-stricken mansion. Pretentious dwellings of bygone days have long since been abandoned ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... say that were I a French bride I should bargain for a wedding of the first class at any sacrifice. To have the big doors of the front portal flung open at the thrice-repeated knock of the beadle's staff; to hear Mendelssohn's 'Wedding March' pealed from the great organ; to march in solemn procession up the aisle, preceded by that wonderful figure in cocked hat, red sash, pink silk stockings, ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... he was thus moving, he, too, caught a plain, unmistakable movement beyond, that told of the mill being occupied by others besides themselves. In this anxious, yet determined, frame of mind, then, Fred Fenton led his three chums past the portal of the door, ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... features, thou wilt not withhold thine aid from a bereaved and sorrowing daughter. Before to-morrow's sunset thou wilt be free, for Austria wars not with the Turk. Then straight repair to Venice, and there await the Battle of the Bridge. Take thy stand beneath the portal of St Barbara, and follow the man who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... morning brought the bailiff there'd be nothing to be seen Save a piece of bevelled cedar where the tenant's plate had been; There would be no sign of Peter — there would be no sign of Joe Till another portal ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... travelled; to whom the philosopher, the preacher, the poet appeal in vain,—nay, to whom the conceptions of the grandest master of instrumental music are incomprehensible; to whom Beethoven unlocks no portal in heaven; to whom Rossini has no mysteries on earth unsolved by the critics of the pit,—suddenly hears the human voice of the human singer, and at the sound of that voice the walls which enclosed him fall. The something far from and beyond the routine ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... readiness to be used by any of the family whom accident or occupation should detain beyond the usual hour of closing the gates; and both by the direction and nature of this interruption, it would seem that an applicant for admission stood at the portal. The effect on the auditors was general and instantaneous. Notwithstanding the recent dialogue, the young men involuntarily sought their arms, while the startled females huddled together like a flock of trembling and ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... dogs grew very strong now, and coming nearer, he discovered, to his astonishment that of the myriads of those who had arrived ahead of him thousands were still gathered on the outside of the portal. They sat in a wide circle spreading out on each side of the entrance, big, little, curly, handsome, mongrel, thoroughbred dogs of every age, complexion, and personality. All were apparently waiting for something, someone, and at ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... her unto the heights of the castle, and he stood with her before its gates. And Gustahem, when he saw them, opened the portal, and Gurdafrid stepped within the threshold, but when Sohrab would have followed after her she shut the door upon him. Then Sohrab saw that she had befooled him, and his fury knew no bounds. But ere he was recovered from his surprise she ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... city by the narrow gate known as the Town Gate, through which, as through that greater portal of Moscow, ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... portal, and, just as he reached it, a figure sprang out. So close was Tom that the unknown collided with him, and our hero went over on his back. The other person was tossed back by the force of the impact, but quickly recovered himself, and ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... especially when the wedding guests' motor-cars began to make their way, with sundry hoots and snorts, through the densely packed mob. Women screamed,—some fainted—but none thought of giving way to others, or retiring from the wild scene of contest. Gwent judged it wisest to remain within the church portal till the crowd should clear, and there, safely ensconced, he watched the maddened mass of foolish sight-seers, all of whom had plainly left their daily avocations merely to stare at a man and woman ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... the bank president, and followed awed within the portal that unlocked a palace more wonderful than Aladdin's to their ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... claret which stood at my elbow. A few hours before I had undoubtedly fallen in the estimation of the stolid constable when, instead of asking him questions regarding the tragedy, I had inquired the position of the wine cellar, and obtained possession of the key that opened its portal. The sight of bin after bin of dust-laden, cobwebbed bottles, did more than anything else to reconcile me to my lonely vigil. There were some notable vintages represented ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... of Masonry is the only way to investigate its philosophy. This is the portal of its temple, through which alone we can gain access to the sacellum where ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... Gorgona at the Portal knocks And charms the squamiest Serpent in her Locks - I wear tobacchanalian Wreaths of Smoke And there are more Perfectos ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... tell what cannot quite be seen. A rush of color toward that awful gap; it reaches the edge; it rises in the air and shoots out over that gulf that might indeed have been the portal of Tartarus. Fifty feet as flies the bird. It is in the air—it is half-way over—and yet the maniac has seen it not. But the maniac is turning with his victim in his arms. The streak of drab has passed forty feet—ten feet ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... man turned, in mind to flee, but every entrance to the hall was closed, and at each portal stood a grinning Saracen. He bowed his shaven head, and his ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... for an answer, and the maid bade him step inside while she ran up-stairs. Mrs. Sumter answered her knock at the door of Miss Kate's room, into which the damsels were now doubled. To the disappointment of that somewhat volatile domestic, Mrs. Sumter closed the portal before proceeding to open the missive, but her announcement, "From Mr. Lanier," caused Miriam Arnold to sit ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... Fort George, within two months—record time. Dobson accompanied his master. Brock was silent as to his impressions, but admitted he was convinced that the water route for a military expedition was the only practical one, and that Mackinaw, held by the United States, was the portal and key to the western frontier in case of invasion. He crossed overland through the "bad woods" and open plains to the Point of Pines, where batteaux and canoes awaited him. From thence he proceeded along the north shore of Lake Erie until abreast of the Miami, ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... and strange devices. The room had two doors. One was that by which the old man and the negro had entered. The other was behind the bed, and was clamped and fastened with so many bolts and bars, with locks similar to those on big safes, that it would seem a rare treasure was concealed behind the portal. ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... great violence without; and the dashing rain on the sides of the building awakened that silent sense of enjoyment, which is excited by such sounds in a room of quiet comfort and warmth, when a loud summons at the outer door again called the faithful black to the portal. In a minute the servant returned, and informed his master that another traveler, overtaken by the storm, desired to be admitted to the house for ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... a man arrayed in the cowl and frock of a hermit, and having his knotted cord twisted around his middle, stood before the portal of the castle of Front-de-Boeuf. The warder demanded of ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... shamelessly. He saw Big Jim Gallagher, red-faced, excited, apparently much flustered, reading a paper. He thought he heard Langdon's name and Heney's. There seemed to be dissension in the board. But before he learned anything definite a watchful attendant closed the portal with an angry slam. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... market: sometimes it may be that their natures have manifold openings, like the hundred-gated Thebes, where there may naturally be a greater and more miscellaneous inrush than through a narrow beadle-watched portal. No doubt there are abject specimens of the visionary, as there is a minim mammal which you might imprison in the finger of your glove. That small relative of the elephant has no harm in him; but what great mental ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... declared your intention to light a fire beneath and have the finest stew in all England? The castle is a stern place, perhaps; but how can I ever think it grim, with such a jolly old flatterer as you stationed at its portal? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... 181. Gimles port, the portal of Gimle, a hall lined with gold and fairer than the sun, in which the righteous dwell ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... upright there? Waitest thou escort to conduct thee hence? Or blame I only shine accustom'd ways?" Then he: "My brother, of what use to mount, When to my suffering would not let me pass The bird of God, who at the portal sits? Behooves so long that heav'n first bear me round Without its limits, as in life it bore, Because I to the end repentant Sighs Delay'd, if prayer do not aid me first, That riseth up from heart which lives in grace. What ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... the Present and a servant of knowledge he feared no future, believing it to be for him non-existent, and was careless as to when his strenuous hour of life should end; and I because I felt that yonder lay my true future; yes, and my true past, even though to discover them I must pass through that portal which ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... Gerda stepped through the great portal into the palace. The gate was formed of cutting winds; but Gerda repeated her evening prayer, and the winds were laid as though they slept; and the little maiden entered the vast, empty, cold halls. ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... outer court of the temple—the common area, within which it stands. 2. The miracles, with and through which the Religion was first revealed and attested, I regard as the steps, the vestibule, and the portal of the temple. 3. The sense, the inward feeling, in the soul of each believer of its exceeding desirableness—the experience, that he needs something, joined with the strong foretokening, that the redemption and the graces propounded to us in Christ are what he needs—this I hold to be the true ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... star-shaped ramparts, moat and stockade, had been constructed at the mouth of the river. Its citadel is a very solid structure, with walls eight feet thick, built of the bricks of the devastated town of Niagara. A narrow portal with a double iron door admits one to the vaulted interior of the citadel, and a stairway, constructed in the thickness of the wall, conducts to the second storey or platform, which is open to the sky. Here were formerly mounted several heavy ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... until the song was finished, and then, taking courage, he tapped again much louder than before, and was rewarded by hearing footsteps advance towards the threshold, and a moment later the crazy portal was standing open, and the unkempt head of ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... for sight-seeing, either, but he went through it all conscientiously. My mother, of course, enjoyed herself, but she met with an accident. While sketching some figures of saints and monsters that adorned the arch of the northern portal of the palace, she made an incautious movement and sprained her ankle. The pain was excessive for the moment, but it soon passed off, so as to enable her to limp back to our hotel. But the next day the pain was worse; my father had a headache, a rare affliction with him; I had caught a bad cold ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... for reflection, one glance will convince you that you are addressed by an old acquaintance, and, heretofore, constant attendant upon all the gay varieties of life; of this be assured, that, although retired from the fascinating scene, where gay Delight her portal open throws to Folly's throng, he is no surly misanthrope, or gloomy seceder, whose jaundiced mind, or clouded imagination, is a prey to disappointment, envy, or to care. In retracing the brighter moments of life, the festive scenes of past times, the never ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... without, Stayed in mid-roar the merry shout. A soldier to the portal went,— 'Here is old Bertram, sirs, of Ghent; And—beat for jubilee the drum!— A maid and minstrel with him come.' Bertram, a Fleming, gray and scarred, Was entering now the Court of Guard, A harper with him, and, in plaid All muffled close, a mountain maid, Who backward shrunk ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... heard without, Stayed in mid-roar the merry shout. A soldier to the portal went— 110 "Here is old Bertram, sirs, of Ghent; And—beat for jubilee the drum! A maid and minstrel with him come." Bertram, a Fleming, gray and scarred, Was entering now the Court of Guard, 115 A harper with him, and in plaid All muffled close, a mountain maid, Who backward ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... the door of a small tumble-down house in a filthy lane, the one window it presented in front being barred with iron. Some bolts were drawn inside, and though the man who opened the door was forbidding in his aspect, he did not refuse to let Tom in. The portal was hastily closed and bolted after they had entered. The smell of the house was ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... consecrated by philanthropy, cannot reconcile it with probability, that a proud mansion, a quarter of a century since, was here erected, dedicated to hospitality, where a priestess, in the person of an elegant and refined lady, shed an influence around that attracted to its portal the stranger from every country. In looking at a scene, now desolate and repulsive, he can scarcely credit the fact, that, within that period, the same place was embellished by gardens, groves, and arbors, ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... being done to the porch, and the jasmine had been cleared away altogether. Mr. Brumley could not quite understand what was in progress; Sir Isaac he learnt afterwards had found a wonderful bargain in a real genuine Georgian portal of great dignity and simplicity in Aleham, and he was going to improve Black Strand by transferring it thither—with the utmost precaution and every piece numbered—from its original situation. Mr. Brumley stood among the preparatory debris of this and rang a quietly resolute electric bell, which ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... she had played so often, and which was now singing for her the chant of happy love. She saw the sunshine streaming through the open doorway, and, dazzled by this light from without, her eyes fixed upon the luminous portal, she no longer perceived the dim ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... the portal a moment, drinking hungrily the fresh, free air of the morning that had come down from her hills. Then she fled away into ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... his body increasing, age pressing on, or rather the Lord calling him unto his crown, the blessed Patrick perceived he was hastening unto the tomb; and much he rejoiced to arrive at the port of death and the portal of life. Therefore, being so admonished by the angel, his guardian, he fortified himself with the divine mysteries from the hand of his disciple, the Bishop Saint Thasach, and lifting up his eyes he beheld the heavens opened, and Jesus standing in the multitude of angels. Then raising his hands, ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... and difficult, I saw at a little distance on our right a narrow opening between two high wooded precipices. All within seemed darkness and mystery. In the mood in which I found myself something strongly impelled me to enter. Passing over the intervening space I guided my horse through the rocky portal, and as I did so instinctively drew the covering from my rifle, half expecting that some unknown evil lay in ambush within those dreary recesses. The place was shut in among tall cliffs, and so deeply shadowed by a host of old pine trees that, though the sun ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... and mysterious, a mighty cavern, so black and high that it might well suggest a portal leading to the regions below, where Vulcan is supposed to stir those tremendous fires which have moulded much of the configuration of the world, and which are ever seething—an awful Inferno—under the thin crust of the ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... a large freshly-built erection in Tudor architecture, with a wide portal arch, and five separate gables starting from one central building, which bore a large clock-tower, and was decorated at every corner with the Talbots' stout and sturdy form. This was the great hall, built by the present Earl George, and containing five baths, intended ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... followed this application to the thumbscrew arrangement on the door, for the colonel had taken the bell away long ago. But there resulted a clucking, which brought the colonel to the portal frowning and alert, warming in the expectation of having somebody whom he might ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... eye in so far as the exquisite adaptation of the pupil is concerned presents us with an apt illustration of the principle of the telescope. To see an object, it is necessary that the light from it should enter the eye. The portal through which the light is admitted is the pupil. In daytime, when the light is brilliant, the iris decreases the size of the pupil, and thus prevents too much light from entering. At night, or whenever the light is scarce, the eye often requires to grasp all it can. The pupil then expands; ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... in a grove of cottonwoods opposite the mouth of Vermilion River, we could plainly see the great portal a mile or two away, the Gate of Lodore, where all this tranquillity would end, for the river cuts straight into the heart of the mountains forming one of the finest canyons of the series where the water comes down as Southey described it at Lodore, and the ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... were no more. At the portal of the lips, soul met soul. The shaded veranda, and even the house itself faded away. Only this new-born ecstasy lived, like a flaming star suddenly ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... runs as a poison in burning veins and aching brain—the dread West Coast fever. And may England never again dream of forfeiting, or playing with, the conquests won for her by those heroes of commerce, the West Coast traders; for of them, as well as of such men as Sir Gerald Portal, truly it may be said—of such ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... you, minister, as you are, to stand at the portal of eternity, or the portal of the tomb, and fill the future with horror and with fear? You have no right to do it. I don't believe it, and neither do you. You would not sleep one night. Any man who believes it, who has got a decent heart in his bosom, will go insane. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... great sledge-hammers rattled on the nailed and plated door: the sparks flew off in showers; men worked in gangs, and at short intervals relieved each other, that all their strength might be devoted to the work; but there stood the portal still, as grim and dark and strong as ever, and saving for the dints upon its battered ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Rue de Picpus. The place was once a convent of the order of St. Augustine, but is now occupied by the "Women of the Sacred Heart." Within the convent, which we entered, there is a pretty Doric chapel with an Ionic portal. There was an air of privacy about, the little chapel which pleased me, and a chasteness in its architecture which could not fail to please any one who loves simple beauty. Within the walls of the court, there is a very small private cemetery, ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... moved away from the dense crowd that covered the wharf. In the cloud of fluttering handkerchiefs, our friends' faces grew dim and slowly faded; the fair city at our Western portal looked like ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... and choir, the two transepts, one arch of the nave, and the chapter-house; Under the Edwards the nave unfolded itself farther west, and the Abbot's House and Jerusalem Chamber were built. Richard II. was very fond of the Abbey, and rebuilt, at great expense, the famous north portal, often spoken of as "The Beautiful Gate," or "Solomon's Porch." By Henry V. the nave was prolonged nearly to its present length. It was just completed in time for the grand procession to sweep along ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... great vestibule, or porch of the gate," which "is formed by an immense Arabian arch, of the horseshoe form, which springs to half the height of the tower. On the keystone of this arch, is engraven a gigantic hand. Within the vestibule, on the keystone of the portal, is sculptured, in like manner, a gigantic key," emblems, say the learned, of Moorish ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... I cannot see why we should fear so much to enter the other portal, since it is the destiny of all, and we believe in a better world. He was hopelessly ill when he wrote and was winding up some business matters. He is a brave man to meet death so composedly. The only pang is ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... south wall, in which are three small windows, has been unfortunately disfigured by a baroque seventeenth-century altar, whose projections hide a part of the frescoes. Opposite is the entrance, a magnificently-proportioned portal, with a rounded arch, most delicately decorated in colour. Every inch of the walls is covered, and for the most part by the work of Signorelli himself, the above-mentioned grotesques, the merely ornamental ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... came to pass that one winter's day in 1677, at St James's Palace, John Churchill led his bride to the altar, which proved the portal to one of the happiest wedded lives that have ever fallen to the lot of mortals. How little, at that crowning moment, Sarah Churchill could have foreseen those distant days of the future, when she was left to walk alone the last stage of life, in which she would read and re-read, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... and the sheriff disappear through the gate, and are about to ascend the large stone steps leading to the portal in which is situated the inner iron gate opening into the debtors' ward, the sheriff made a halt, and, placing his arm in a friendly manner through Marston's, enquires, "Anything I can do for you? ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams |
