Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Beacon   /bˈikən/   Listen
Beacon

verb
(past & past part. beaconed; pres. part. beaconing)
1.
Shine like a beacon.
2.
Guide with a beacon.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Beacon" Quotes from Famous Books



... away, like a rose-leaf on the wind. Before her she saw a flame in the air, a flashing light high up on a tower. The beacon light shone from the goal of her longing, shone from the red lighthouse tower of the Fata Morgana of the Champ de Mars. Thither she was carried by the wind. She circled round the tower; the workmen thought it was a butterfly that had come too early, and that ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... of the party was broken up, the fire which had burned hitherto in but a single beacon was scattered upon a thousand hills. Nevertheless, the first breaking up of the party was eminently disheartening to its living members. But it was not by external violence that it was broken, but by the development within itself of a distinctive Romeward bias. Dr. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... were but a handful, yet so fecund was their marvelous zeal that they became the spiritual leaven of their whole community. They are less known than Plymouth and Salem, because men of action, rather than men of letters, have sprung from the loins of the South; but there they stand, a beautiful beacon, shining upon the coasts of our early history. Into their church, then, into the shrine where their small lamp still burns, their devout descendant, Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael led our party, because in her eyes Kings Port could show nothing more precious and significant. There ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... the annals of no country, catholic or pagan, may ever be stained with such a repetition of human sacrifices to papal power, and that the detestation in which the character of Mary is holden, may be a beacon to succeeding monarchs to avoid the rocks ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... fair criterion for judging of the morality of a country; for that she who sins and flies is less hardened in guilt than she who remains and deceives: and the example is also less pernicious, as the one who has forfeited her place in society serves as a beacon to warn others; while she whose errors are known, yet still retains hers, is a dangerous instance of the indulgence afforded to hardened duplicity. It is not the horror of guilt, but the dread of its exposure, that operates on the generality ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... which before (cold, and setled) left the Liuer white, and pale; which is the Badge of Pusillanimitie, and Cowardize: but the Sherris warmes it, and makes it course from the inwards, to the parts extremes: it illuminateth the Face, which (as a Beacon) giues warning to all the rest of this little Kingdome (Man) to Arme: and then the Vitall Commoners, and in-land pettie Spirits, muster me all to their Captaine, the Heart; who great, and pufft vp with his Retinue, doth any Deed of Courage: and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... stuck to him for about eight miles. He ran that distance to have a nearer look at a small island which lay due north of Telegraph Point. He satisfied himself it was little more than a very long, large reef, the neighborhood of which ought to be avoided by ships of burden, and, resolving to set some beacon or other on it ere long, he christened it White Water Island, on account of the surf. He came about and ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... the great days of Rome. The glory of Pisa is the end of the Middle Age and the early dawn of the Renaissance. There, amid all the hurly-burly and terror of invasion and civil wars, she shines like a beacon beside the sea, proud, brave, and full of hope, almost the only city not altogether enslaved in a country in the grip of the barbarian, almost overwhelmed by the Lombards. And indeed, she was one of the first cities of Italy to fling off the Lombard yoke. Favoured by her ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... on the eve of Christmas day and the street was deserted save for the solitary figure hastening towards that beacon light of home. Darkness and silence reigned in most of the houses she passed, and she sighed as ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams

... of Christ, Mother of Christ, I toss on a stormy sea, O lift thy child as beacon high To the port where I fain would be, Then, Mother of Christ, Mother of Christ, This do I ask of thee, When the voyage is o'er, O stand on the shore And show Him at last ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various

... was not far away. He could catch the dancing blue of it from time to time in ragged vista, and for this beacon he steered directly. His coat was heavy on his arm, his thin patent-leather ties pinched and burned and demanded detours around swampy ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... of the Kymore, like that of Rotas, here projects to the bed of the river, and was blazing at night with the beacon-like fires of the natives, lighted to scare the tigers and bears from the spots where they cut wood and bamboo; they afforded a splendid spectacle, the flames in some places leaping zig-zag from hill to hill in front ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... have had a nerve of steel, with all his softness of heart and benevolence. At all events, he did live to complete his gruesome feat; and he has given us, in a vivid pictorial way, such a picture of scoundreldom as should serve as a beacon to all men. It may seem like a paradox; but I am inclined to think that our non-success in putting down actual crime and wickedness which do not come within range of the law arises from the fact that our jurists ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... ceremony, she seemed to him peerlessly radiant; but it was the beauty and the dignity of one still girlish. What he now beheld was the exquisite fulfilment of that bright promise. He had not erred in worship; she who had ever been to him the light of life, the beacon of his passionate soul, shone before him supreme among women. What head so noble in its unconscious royalty! What form so faultless in its mould and bearing! He heard her speak—the graceful nothings ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... let them know that I have a lady to dinner with me. Let cook do something extra, and tell Beacon to have the landau and pair at half-past ten to drive her back to Town ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... permeated with a refinement of spontaneous humor and brilliant with touches of shrewd and searching satire."—BOSTON BEACON. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... excitement, I felt unbearably sore on Ieronim's account. Why did they not send someone to relieve him? Why could not someone of less feeling and less susceptibility go on the ferry? 'Lift up thine eyes, O Sion, and look around,' they sang in the choir, 'for thy children have come to thee as to a beacon of divine light from north and south, and from east and from ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... away from the long promontories, and was succeeded by a sombre gray; the glory in the west sank down; a wan twilight came over the sea and the sky; and a small golden star, like the point of a needle, told where the Dubh-Artach men had lit their beacon for the coming night. The Umpire lay and idly rolled in this dead calm; Macleod paced up and down the deck in the solemn stillness. Hamish threw a tarpaulin over the skylight of the saloon, to cover the bewildering light from below; and then, as the time went slowly ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... The beacon had been lighted on the mountain top, and had gleamed by her river sides! The sturdy hunter from the West, and the dashing horseman from the East; the merchant at his till, and the farmer, with hard hand on the plough-handle—all heard ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... a country town, containing a choice knot of the old, respectable, true-blue, Boston-aristocracy families. Two or three of them had winter houses in Beacon Street, and went there, after Christmas, to enjoy the lectures, concerts, and select gayeties of the modern Athens; others, like the Fergusons and Seymours, were in intimate relationship ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... in due time with a crash This particular castle however, not only attained to a great elevation in the visionary builder's eyes, but it covered so vast an area of land, that the story of its rise and fall deserves to be placed on record, as a warning to aerial architects and also as a beacon-light to young colonists. ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... doorway; and, blessed as a soul escaped from purgatory, I bounded, leaped, and flew down the steep road; then, quitting its windings, shot direct across the moor, rolling over banks, and wading through marshes: precipitating myself, in fact, towards the beacon-light of the Grange. And far rather would I be condemned to a perpetual dwelling in the infernal regions than, even for one night, abide beneath the roof of Wuthering ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... of his mind was excessive, but concentrated. He shed neither those lights nor those flames which kindle enthusiasm—that explosion of ideas. It was the lamp of the Gironde party; it was neither its beacon nor its torch. ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... frequently affords. At times, on a dark night, the summits of the hills suddenly shone with a weak faint light, which increased by degrees; then the bright moon gradually appeared, and illuminated the tops of the mountains, as large beacon-fires would have done; then again, calm, peaceful, and serene, she reflected her soft poetic light over the bosom of the lake, as tranquil and unruffled as herself. It was indeed an imposing sight. Towards evening, Nature at times showed herself in ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... This home of the Randolphs was so elaborately splendid, that a man served out the whole term of his apprenticeship to the trade of carpenter in one of its rooms. The lofty dome was for many years a beacon to the navigator. Such success had this Randolph in raising tobacco during the fifty-one years of his residence upon Turkey Island, that to each of his six sons he gave or left a large estate, besides portioning liberally his two daughters. Five of these sons reared ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... E. Ryan, business manager of the Woman's Journal, reported the many changes made in the paper during the year since it became the official organ of the association and the removal of its offices from Beacon Street to 585 Bolyston Street in the building with the Massachusetts and Boston woman suffrage associations and the New England Woman's Club. The advertising had increased from $256 a year to $852 and the circulation from 4,000 to nearly 15,000. The methods by ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... this, my friends! is't thus your new-fledged zeal, And plumed valour moulds in roosted sloth? Why dimly glimmers that heroic flame, Whose reddening blaze, by patriot spirit fed, Should be the beacon of a kindling realm? Can the quick current of a patriot heart Thus stagnate in a cold and weedy converse, Or freeze in tideless inactivity? No! rather let the fountain of your valour Spring through ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan

... not the only son of the Minamoto chief whom the tyrant let live. There was another, a mere babe at the time, who became a hero of chivalry, and whose life has ever since been the beacon of honor and knightly virtue ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... delight of gratified vengeance contended in her eyes with the fire of insanity. Before long the towering flames had surmounted every obstruction, and rose to the evening skies one huge and burning beacon, seen far and wide through the adjacent country; tower after tower crashed down, with blazing roof and rafter. The vanquished, of whom very few remained, scattered and escaped into the neighbouring wood. The maniac ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... thought that they fancied new, came to Emerson, as the finder of a glittering gem hastens to a lapidary to ascertain its quality and value. Uncertain, troubled, earnest wanderers through the midnight of a moral world beheld its intellectual fire as a beacon burning on a hill-top, and climbing the difficult ascent, looked forth into the surrounding obscurity more hopefully than hitherto. The light revealed objects unseen before—mountains, gleaming lakes, glimpses ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... was the beacon ray that lured him on. It lit his path on plain and mountain height, In wooded glade and on the flow'ry lawn— Where'er he strayed, it ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... energies. Now, completely prostrated with all I had gone through, as soon as I had crawled up far enough to be out of reach of the tide, I laid down under the trunks of the two trees that had been my beacon guides to safety, and which grew close together out of a clump of sand on the shore, falling asleep at once. I was so utterly worn out that I was not only powerless to proceed any further, but I had no dread of the savage country ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson

... dismissed my caution with a laugh and an elated gesture. Pooh! Nothing, nothing could happen to the brig, he cried, as if the flame of his heart could light up the dark nights of uncharted seas, and the image of Freya serve for an unerring beacon amongst hidden shoals; as if the winds had to wait on his future, the stars fight for it in their courses; as if the magic of his passion had the power to float a ship on a drop of dew or sail her through the eye of a needle—simply because it was her ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... answered Policeman Rat-it-all with painful lucidity, "where they shut people up. Sometimes there's an execution. But not often; not very often; once in a while, as you might say. There's a monument, too,—upon a hill they call the Beacon. I'm very fond of Bodmin. It's the County Town, you know; and with these little things going on, in one way and another, ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... journey along, with a laugh and a song, We see, on youth's flower-decked slope, Like a beacon of light, shining fair on the sight, The beautiful Station ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... say again, when you find out a professor that is not horribly tainted with some of these things, I exclude not the ministers nor their families, let him be as a beacon upon a hill, or as an ensign in our land. But says one, Would you have us singular? and says another, Would you have us make ourselves ridiculous? and says a third, Such and such, more godly-wise than we, do so. But I answer, if God has made you singular, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... were lying in wait; robbers of hearts were creeping stealthily; slayers of purity were watching; killers of innocence were lurking. To the woman at the window, that night, the twinkling lights of the city were as beacon fires on ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright

... 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, upon which taste was exhausted, and which cost a fortune to realize. The villa of Blennerhasset was really a beacon-light in the wilderness, that seemed created to invite the approach of the stranger to enjoy that repose which the sluggish and comfortless mode of travelling of that day, rendered so gratifying. The only sounds now heard, are the sighing of the wind through the lofty cotton wood, or the puffing ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas

... sailed by night and day continually, and now on the tenth day my native land came in sight, and already we were so near that we beheld the folk tending the beacon fires. Then over me there came sweet slumber in my weariness, for all the time I was holding the sheet, nor gave it to any of my company, that so we might come quicker to our own country. Meanwhile my company ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... to which our people appeal as a final justification for embarking on the war now so close at hand.... May the hope which glowed in our hearts during 1880, and which buoyed us up during that struggle, burn on steadily! May it prove a beacon of light in our path, invincibly moving onwards through blood and through tears, until it leads us to a real union of South Africa.... Whether the result be victory or death, Liberty will assuredly rise on South Africa ... just as freedom dawned over the United ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... Mill! There's nothing gaudy and spectacular about that, boys, eh? No, sir! it's a square, honest beacon that a man can steer by. We'll be there in twenty minutes." He was pointing into the darkness below the already descending trail. Only a pioneer's eye could have detected the few pin-pricks of light in the impenetrable distance, and it was a signal proof of his leadership that ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte

... of the South Sea bubble should always stand as a beacon to warn us that reckless speculation is the bane of commerce, and that the only sure method of gaining a fortune, and certainly of enjoying it, is to diligently prosecute some legitimate calling, which, like the quality ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... any creature, even in a low, bibulous, old Hottentot, may feel proud indeed. At least I am proud and as the years go by the pride increases, as the hope grows that somewhere in the quiet of that great plain which he saw in his dream, I may find the light of Hans's love burning like a beacon in the darkness, as he promised I should do, and that it may guide and warm my shivering, new-born soul before I dare the adventure of ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... For though it is a very proper thing to point out to an Emperor the virtues he ought to display, it involves a heavy responsibility to do so and it has rather a presumptuous look, whereas to eulogise an excellent ruler and so hold up a beacon to his successors by which they may steer their path, is not only an act of public service but ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... our heroes, their faces turned southward, and their eyes carried high up to the Pic du Midi d'Ossau—the mountain of the bears—an appropriate name for that beacon which was ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... the imagination of such tales, became a tower of wizards. High above all, a golden sphere reflected the sun's rays far out across the distant sea by day, and at night a huge lamp took its place as a beacon for the sailors of the Mediterranean, even to Spain and Africa. In the tower, too, was preserved the mystic mirror of the world, which instantly reflected all that passed in the empire, even to its furthest ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... night this lover would swim across the water to see Hero, guided by the light which she was wont to set in her tower. Even such loyalty could not conquer fate. There came a great storm, one night, that put out the beacon, and washed Leander's body up with the waves to Hero, and she sprang into the water to ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... Of which the inflation, strange to say, was the greater because Dr. Knox was of opinion that they would yield to treatment and tonics; though the old lady herself was opposed to both, and said elder-flower-water. She was a pleasant old personage, Mrs. Gattrell, who always shone out as a beacon of robust health above a fever-stricken, paralysed, plague-spotted, debilitated, and disintegrating crowd of blood-relations and connexions by marriage. But not one of all these had ever left the soil they were born on, none of Mrs. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... though stripped of power, A watchman on the lonely tower, Thy thrilling trump had roused the land, When fraud or danger were at hand; By thee, as by the beacon-light, Our pilots had kept course aright; As some proud column, though alone, Thy strength had propped the tottering throne: Now is the stately column broke, The beacon-light is quenched in smoke, The trumpet's silver sound is still, The warder ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... knife and the trusty gun, And a land in which to roam; The stars at night for my beacon light, Wildwood for my home; What care I for the gay cavalier, His plumes and his flashing steel? He rides not here in the grassy mere. In grateful shade of the forest glade We ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... kind Along these narrow ways of troubled stone, And floods the wide savannas of the mind With tides that cool the fever of the day: One with the dark, companioned by the stars, We'll seek St. Philip's, nebulous and gray, Holding its throbbing beacon to the bars, A prisoned spirit vibrant in the stone That knew its empire of forgotten things. Then will the city know you for her own, And feel you meet to share her sufferings; While down a swirl of poignant memories, Herself shall find you ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... breakers roar,—how bears the shore? —The traitorous wreckers' hands Have quenched the blaze that poured its rays Along the Hatteras sands. —Ha! say not so! I see its glow! Again the shoals display The beacon light that shines by night, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... and it would have given him a sickening pang on his death-bed to think that his frailties were to be perpetuated by his descendants; that he was to be pointed out as a shining star to guide, instead of a beacon-fire to warn. "No," he would have said, if he could have anticipated this most ill-chosen, however well-intentioned, tribute, "spare me this terrible irony. Do not provoke the inevitable retort. Say of me, if you must say anything, that I was not a bad man, though an erring ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... years since the decision of the Council of 543 A.D.[1] condemned to oblivion sublime teachings which ought to have been carefully preserved and handed down to future generations as a beacon amid social reefs; teachings that would have uprooted that frightful egoism which threatens to annihilate the world, and instilled patience into the hearts of such as were being crushed beneath the wheel of the cosmic ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... to cross the breaks where the sea hurled in over the rock. And after him followed the other natives, each with a lighted torch in hand—the torch they hunkered down to plant firmly in some crevice of the rock before taking a stand beside that beacon. ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... The cargo of a captured or detained vessel is not allowed to be taken on bail before adjudication without mutual consent. It was also a northern term for a beacon ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... after the man on the bowsprit once more called out, that notwithstanding the thick fog he saw a light distinctly; Stewart looked in the direction the sailor pointed out, and plainly saw the glimmer of the friendly beacon, and knew it at once as the signal placed to warn ships from approaching too near the cliffs which lined the shore. Notwithstanding his first repulse, he approached the pilot a second time; but he met with a second repulse;—he ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... and that of other clever men, among whom we may cite Rogers and Campbell. Moore especially, introduced under circumstances that brought out strongly the most amiable and estimable qualities of heart and mind, was to Lord Byron as a beacon-light amid the clouds external and internal harassing him then; and their sympathy was mutual and instantaneous. Lord ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... leagues from Glueckstadt; and four leagues from thence he passed by a village on the other side of the Elbe, which they told him was called Oldenburg, and belonged to the Duke of Saxony. Two leagues below that, he came to anchor over against a village called Rose Beacon, a fair beacon standing by the water-side. It belongs to Hamburg; and by a late accident of a soldier's discharging his musket, it set a house on fire, and burnt half the town. Some of Whitelocke's people ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... the light wind borne. His head sank down, and a ripple of scorn, At the irons that fettered his brown limbs' strength. Waved on his lip the dark hair's length. But sudden he lifted his head to the north— Like a mountain-beacon his eye blazed forth: 'Twas a cloud in the distance that caught his eye, Whence a faint clang shot on the light breeze by; A noise and a smoke on the plain afar— 'Tis the cloud and the clang of the Moslem war. And the light that flashed from his black eyes, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... beauteous sheaf whose opening ears bend low under their weight. Happiness beyond any dream came dancing to her ... No, it was stronger and keener yet, this joy of hers. It had been a great light shining in the twilight of a lonely land, a beacon toward which one journeys, forgetful of the tears that were about to flow, saying with glad defiance: "I knew it well—knew that somewhere on the earth was such a thing as this ..." It was over. Yes, the gleam ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon

... to be, when suddenly the 'Demon Lighthouse' directs his glare full on me, describes a sweep, is gone, and all is dark again. It suggests the policeman going his rounds. How the exile forced to sojourn here must detest this obtrusive beacon of the first class! It must become maddening in time for the eyes. Even in bed it has the effect of mild sheet-lightning. Municipality of Calais! move it away at once to a rational spot—to the end of the pier, where a ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald

... a day beacon near the middle of the west coast that was partially destroyed during World War II, but has since been rebuilt; named in memory of famed ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... and impressive than the opening of the "Agamemnon," with the solitary watchman on the tower, who, for ten long years, has watched nightly for the beacon-fires that are to announce the fall of Ilion, and who now beholds them blaze at last. The description which Clytemnestra gives of the progress of these beacon-fires from Troy to Argos is, for its picturesque animation, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the prospect of a dwelling in this "house of the Lord for ever," reconcile thee to any of the roughnesses or difficulties in thy present path—to thy pilgrim provision and pilgrim fare. Let the distant beacon-light, that so cheeringly speaks of a Home brighter and better far than the happiest of earthly ones, lead thee to forget the intervening billows, or to think of them only as wafting thee nearer and nearer to thy desired haven! "Would," says a saint, who has ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... patches, thickly covered with alders and ash trees. And then as he swung around the final, rocky point he saw his own claim in the distance. It was nothing but a hole in the side of the rocky hillside, a slide of gray waste down the slope; but to him it was a beacon to light his home-coming, a proof that some dreams do come true. He galloped down the trail where Drusilla and he had loitered and ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... a cold, foggy morning, nearly two months later, that they landed at Plymouth. The English coast had been a vague blank all night, only pierced, long hours apart, by dim star-points or weird yellow beacon flashes against the horizon. And this vagueness and unreality increased on landing, until it seemed to Randolph that they had slipped into a land of dreams. The illusion was kept up as they walked ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... very moment Miss Electa Pratt was seated in the awe-inspiring reception-room of Mrs. J. Mortimer Van Deuser's residence in Beacon Street. The two ladies were engaged in ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley

... remained gazing toward that great light—into the stillness of it—the loneliness—the eternal peace. On his rugged face an answering light was kindled, the glory of a spiritual passion, the flame of immortal things alive in his soul. More akin to him seemed that beacon fire of the sky—more nearly his real pathway home appeared that distant road and gateway to the Infinite—than the flickering, near house-taper in the valley below. Once before, on the most memorable day of his life, David ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... was placed at the summit ready for firing, and an arrangement made with the tenants, on whose land it stood, that a man should be on watch night and day. His duty would be to keep a vigilant eye on the river, and to light the beacon if any suspicions vessels were seen coming up. The smoke by day or the fire at night could be seen at both castles, and by a pre-arranged system signals could then be exchanged between Edgar and Albert by means of the ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... to the edge of the nearest canal, and gathered a bushel or so of dried Martian moss. He returned and began polishing the shiny exterior of the wrecked space ship. It had to really glitter if it was to be an effective beacon in guiding the ...
— Say "Hello" for Me • Frank W. Coggins

... sumptuous couches woo to rest? Ah me, my brother over bold, Thine is the fate my heart foretold: But love and pride forbade to hear The friend who blamed thy wild career. Fallen is the sun who gave us light, Our lordly moon is veiled in night. Our beacon fire is dead and cold A hundred waves have o'er it rolled. What could his light and fire avail Against Lord Rama's arrowy hail? Woe for the giants' royal tree, Whose stately height was fair to see. His buds were deeds of kingly grace, His bloom the sons who decked his race. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... do not know," he proceeded, his eyes sparkling with that light which is so often the beacon of death—"you do not know the fatal fascination by which a mind, set to the sorrows of a melancholy temperament, is charmed out of its strength. But no matter how dark may be my dreams—there is one light for ever upon them—one image ever, ever before ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... that in one window on the third floor in the house opposite the light of a lamp appeared like a glimmer of hope. Jack Kennard was there, on the watch. He had the window open and sat beside it until a very late hour; and after that he kept the light in, as a beacon, to bid her be ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... difficult to believe that Lord Robert had as ardently desired her to wife five years ago as he now desired to be rid of her. Then he obeyed the insistent spur of passion; now he obeyed the remorseless spur of ambition. In reality, then as now, his beacon-light ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... merely floundered in the deep mass of soft whiteness. His share of the luggage was heavy packs, nothing of which he could make a flag of distress or even build a fire. He felt for his matches, and lighting a cigarette, waved it aloft, almost smiling at his tiny beacon. ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... independence which he lacked. That Coleridge so often only shows the way, and so seldom guides our steps along it to the end, is no just ground of complaint. It would be as unreasonable to complain of a beacon-light that it is not a steam-tug, and forget in the incompleteness of its separate services the glory of their number. It is a more reasonable objection that the light itself is too often liable to obscuration,—that it stands erected upon a rock too often enshrouded by the mists of its encircling ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... conviction came the sound of a bell ringing somewhere in the depths of the building, and the shuffling of feet on the outer steps. The light of his fire had evidently been seen, and like a beacon had attracted some wandering and possibly intoxicated mariner with American papers. The consul walked into the hall with a sudden righteous frigidity of manner. It was one thing to be lounging in one's own office on the Sabbath day, and quite another to be deliberately ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... missionary schooner Messenger of Light that saw our beacon upon the island on the fourth day after we had reached the spot where we had landed from The Waif. The beautiful white vessel hove to outside the entrance to the little bay, a boat came ashore, and twenty minutes after they had first sighted our signal ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer

... is past. Remember it But as thou would'st the action of another, By thy enlighten'd judgment much condemn'd; And serving as a beacon in the storms Thy passions yet may raise. Remorse is vice: Guard thee against its influence debasing. Say to thyself, "I am not what I was; I am not now the instrument of vice; I'm changed; I am a man; Virtue's ...
— Andre • William Dunlap

... is thinking of dangers to shun,— Of breakers that whiten and roar; How little he cares, if in shadow or sun They see him that gaze from the shore! He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef, To the rock that is under his lee, As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf, O'er the gulfs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... Convent and his Rule Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer; The pen became a clarion, and his school Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... beyond, was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea. . . . On the edge of the river . . . only two black things in all the prospect seemed to be standing upright . . . one, the beacon by which the sailors steered, like an unhooped cask upon a pole, an ugly thing when you were near it; the other, a gibbet with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate." Here Magwitch, an escaped convict from Chatham, terrifies ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... National Biography, 63 vols. (Macmillan). English Men of Letters, a volume to each author (Macmillan); briefer series of the same kind are Great Writers (Scribner), Beacon Biographies (Houghton), Westminster Biographies (Small). Allibone, Dictionary of Authors, 5 vols. (Lippincott). Hinchman and Gummere, Lives of Great English Writers (Houghton), offers thirty-eight biographies in ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... glanced back for a last look at that lonely snow-covered hut, for it was our last link with civilisation, indeed with humanity. This is, however, not strictly correct, for later in the day we passed the wooden beacon erected by the Russian explorer Lieutenant Laptief in the year 1739. The tower, which stands on a prominent cliff, is still in a remarkable state of preservation and is visible for a great distance around. And talking of Laptief reminds me of other travellers who have explored these frozen wastes. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... the voices of the sea contending with the rocks. Above the village, in the space where the outline of two hills met and crossed, rose the pinnacled tower of the village church, the unusual height of which was explained by the old custom of lighting a beacon-fire on its summit, to serve as a guide to the boats at sea. Still higher, apparently on the very brow of the beetling crag that frowned above, stood the old Gothic hall, crumbling and lofty, a fit eyrie for the eagles of Morville. The ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... out as a beacon light in an ocean of literature worthy of the Stone Age, was a small pamphlet issued by the Michigan Agricultural College on luncheons in rural schools. Sound doctrine was preached on the need of the children for substantial and warm noon meals, and the comparative ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch

... the State of Maine; no more can it in the State of Missouri. Any statute which proposes to do this is a mere nullity; it takes away no right, it confers none. If it remains on the statute book unrepealed, it remains there only as a monument of error and a beacon of warning to the legislator and the statesman. To repeal it will be only to remove imperfection from the statutes, without affecting, either in the sense of permission, or of prohibition, the action of the States or of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Still in the land of the living? Ye gods, what a fiendish night! Many thanks for the beacon! It's kept me straight for more than half ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... starts at daybreak. Expects reach you by nine P. M. Asks you to show large beacon ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... of Lodgings there; Farm Houses swept away; Everton under Different Aspects; the Beacon; Fine View from it; View described; Description of the Beacon; Beacons in Olden Time; Occupants of the Beacon; Thurot's Expedition; Humphrey Brook and the Spanish Armada; Telegraph at Everton; St. Domingo; The Mere Stones; ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... with his wood. Darkness was settling and he piled the wood upon the fire until its flames leaped up into a great blaze as a beacon, to guide the boat to a safe landing ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... beacon, stoutly; "you pore over them day in and day out; they keep you in this room here, when you should be out among the people. Not making pastoral visits, I don't mean that, but going around among them, chatting ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... the teachers. In the most prominent chair, with its plush seat and its old-fashioned peaked back, sat the evangelist-manufacturer, Rask,—the shine of hungry fanaticism in his face like a beacon, his legs crossed, a dazzling shine on his shoes, his hands clutching a hymn ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... had, with wonderful self-control, put aside his indignation at the Orangemen, all the MacDonalds had not done so. Weaver Jimmie had gone up over the hills of the Oa like a bearer of the fiery cross, and wherever he appeared the beacon-fire of anger had blazed forth. The Orangemen celebrating! The MacDonalds arose as one man, and in all the inherited fury of generations, combined with as much more produced for the occasion, banded together and swore that before the soil ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... rose and copper as it stretched out into the sunset. Before them the water shimmered, satin smooth and silver gray, and beyond, clean shaven William's Island loomed out of the mist, guarding the town like a sturdy bulldog. Its lighthouse beacon flared through the mist like a baleful star, and was answered by another in ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... integrity to the whole. One of the most novel features of the dome will be the arrangement of the tower, crowning its apex, into a light-house, which, from its extreme power and height, it is supposed, will furnish guidance to vessels as far out at sea as that afforded by any beacon on the neighboring coast. This is the suggestion of the architect, Mr. Kellum, but, whether or not it will be carried out in the execution of the design, Mr. Tucker, the superintendent of the work, is unable to say. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... staff, landlord," the new-comer ordered sharply. "They will be here shortly, and will want supper and lodgings." He turned in the doorway and called: "Get firewood from where you can, Colonel Hand, and kindle beacon fires at both ends of the bridge, to light the waggons and the rest of the forces; throw out patrols on the river road both to north and south, and quarter your regiment in the village barns." Then he added in a lower voice to a soldier who stood holding ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... even know of its existence. A great many little things, which Felicia had long been meaning to buy, now seemed to find a legitimate hour for their purchase. So she and Kirk went the round of the Asquam Utility Emporium, B. B. Jones Co., and the Beacon Light Store, from each of which places of business they emerged ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price

... Hudson City, N. J., over forty years ago, when there were not as many houses in that town as there are now. I was born in old Dutch Row, now called Beacon Avenue, in a two-story frame house. In those days there was an Irish Row and a Dutch Row. The Irish lived by themselves, ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney

... Law was opened, in 1872, under the supervision of the Boston University, of which it is a department. The first instruction was given at No. 18 Beacon street, where the school remained for two years. The school opened with sixty-five students. The late Hon. George S. Hillard was the Dean. The lecturers comprised such well-known names as Edmund H. Bennett, Henry W. Paine, Judge Benjamin F. Thomas, Dr. Francis Wharton, Judge Dwight Foster, ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... might escape from it. But he let a gentle west wind blow, that it might carry me and my comrades to our home. For nine days it blew, and now we were near to Ithaca, our country, so that we saw the men that tended the beacon-lights, for it was now near to the dawn ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church

... Munich was in 1866; after having been the Rome of the Yugoslav movement, the seat of its philosophy and the centre of its politics, the Croat capital has now an atmosphere of sad futility, for Belgrade is the beacon of the Yugoslav world. While comparing Zagreb with Rome one must add that she had also the misfortune to resemble Rome of the decadence—a good deal of outer polish was imparted by the Austrians, at the expense of their victims' backbone. The five centuries of Turkish ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... attempt to proceed in the midst of worldly avocations. Science admits no participation in the cares of life. Remember the feats of Xanthippe. Take counsel from the example of Socrates, who has been set up as a beacon for all coming time to warn philosophers from the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... dissonant voices it is still a book of the utmost import, and has so been received. Compact of the experiences, the dreams, the hopes, the fears, the disillusionments, the ruptures, and the philosophising of a strangely starved soul, it is a beacon light by which the wanderer may be guided. Nothing is left out; the author writes as though it were a labour of love. It bears the imprint of an eager, almost consuming desire to say truly what ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... with names. Your Roman task-mistresses; your drivers of lodging-house slaveys; your ladies who whipped their pages to death in the Middle Ages; your modern dames of fashion, decked with the plumage of the tortured grove. There have been other women also—noble women, their names like beacon-lights studding the dark waste of history. So there have been noble men—saints, martyrs, heroes. The sex-line divides us physically, not morally. Woman has been man's accomplice in too many crimes to claim to be his judge. 'Male and female created He ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... best of all, that wonderful ascension, by two of us, of Pico itself, seven thousand feet from the level of the sea, where we began to climb. We camped half-way up, and watched the sunset over the lower peaks of Fayal; we kindled fires of faya-bushes on the lonely mountain-sides, a beacon for the world; we slept in the loft of a little cattle-shed, with the calves below us, "the cows' sons," as our Portuguese attendant courteously called them; we waked next morning above the clouds, with one vast floor of white level vapor beneath ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... Dorothy returned to the old ruse. She set a lamp in her chamber window, the effect of the beacon being that Bess came across from her house, as the clock scored eight and one-half, and joined the Harley party. It was nothing out of common for Bess to do this; she and Dorothy had been bosom friends since days when the two wore their hair ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... cannot help referring to the beautiful character of Phyllis Wheatley, whose life was absolutely pure, and who was so remarkably inspired by the poetic muse that, even in the darkest days of Negro bondage, she forced the recognition of mankind. Her genius flashed forth as a beacon light to her benighted brethren as a token of assurance to them of the fulfillment of the promise, "Ethiopia shall again stretch forth her hand unto God." Benjamin Banneker, the great mathematician and astronomer, was another instance, in ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... is the highest of the eastern downs, Firle Beacon. It is smoking like a volcano with the embers of the bale fire, which men lit last night, to warn the natives that the king was coming. There is yet another volcano farther on. It is Ditchling Beacon; and, yes, another still ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... decided that she needed a change. Letters were written to the Nantucket grandfather, and plans made for Becky's departure. She was to spend a month on the island, come back to Boston to the Admiral's big old house on the water-side of Beacon Street, and return ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey

... interesting. We found ourselves under perpendicular cliffs of Beacon sandstone, weathering rapidly and carrying veritable coal seams. From the last Wilson, with his sharp eyes, has picked several plant impressions, the last a piece of coal with beautifully traced leaves in layers, also some ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... Don Alonso de Aguilar now appeared conspicuous amongst his companions, directing every movement with cool intrepidity, and animating his followers with the example of valorous achievement; his ponderous sword, reeking with blood, gleamed on high, a beacon of victory; and death marked his progress as he waded through the field of strife. The numbers and better discipline of the Spaniards, at length began to prevail: the rebels wavered, and terror soon spread through their ranks. In vain did El Feri exert his utmost powers ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... "North American Review" what it was during the period of Emerson's youth and early manhood. These, and men like them, gave Boston its intellectual character. We may count as symbols the three hills of "this darling town of ours," as Emerson called it, and say that each had its beacon. Civil liberty lighted the torch on one summit, religious freedom caught the flame and shone from the second, and the lamp of the scholar has burned steadily on the third from the days when John Cotton preached his first sermon to those in which we ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... like lightening by the inspiration of the spirit and illuminating the darkened soul, to these mysteries no man perhaps was ever a more sudden or a more combustible kind of convert than myself. I beamed with gospel light; it shone through me. I was the beacon of this latter age: a comet, sent to warn the wicked. I mean, I was all this in my own imagination, which swelled and mounted to the very acme ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft



Words linked to "Beacon" :   tower, pharos, direct, visual signal, shine, lead, signal light, signal fire, Tower of Pharos, guide, beacon fire, beam, radio station, take, conduct



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com