"Battlement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... winged sphinxes, terminating in lions' paws, the two other legs are plain, being intended to stand against the wall. The bottom is formed with bronze bars, on which are laid bricks supporting pumice-stones for the reception of charcoal. There is a sort of false battlement worked on the rim, and in the middle a cow is to be seen in high relief. Three bronze benches also were found, alike in form and pattern. They are one foot four inches high, one foot in width, and about six feet long, supported by four legs, terminating in the cloven ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... the South methought I saw A wilderness of spires, and chrystal pile Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome, Illimitable range of battlement On battlement, and the Imperial height Of Canopy o'ercanopied. Behind, In diamond light, upsprung the dazzling Cones Of Pyramids, as far surpassing Earth's As Heaven than Earth is fairer. Each aloft Upon his renown'd Eminence bore globes Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances Of either, showering ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... or tempest bent, While yet may frown one battlement, Demands and daunts the stranger's eye, Each ivied arch and pillar lone Pleads haughtily for ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... city wall, a huge battlement, ancient and weathered, like an unscalable cliff, and going through its gate was entering the shadows of a cave. Out of the glare of the sun I went into the gloom of deep, narrow, and mysterious passages. The sun was only on the parapets and casements, which leaned towards each ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... the iron will That clutched and held the trembling hill! God lives and reigns! He built and lent The heights for freedom's battlement Where floats her flag in ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... there is no such brave show of battlement and rampart. In all our rambles we never came upon a castle or palace; in fact, so far as I remember, no one ever spoke of such structures. They seem to have no place there. Nor is it hard to understand this singular divergence from the ways of a world whose habits ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... north transept, the first impression is not that of a Norman building. The single broad light of the Norman clerestory, with its adjacent round-headed lancets in the wall, remains in each bay unaltered. Above these windows was once a battlement; but Miller records, in 1834, that it was "removed within the last sixty years." The aisle battlement remains. The walls of the triforium were raised, and the Norman windows, both of the aisle and triforium, altered, in the Perpendicular period, the alterations having been ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... it than the minister. For the spirit of God lies all about the spirit of man like a mighty sea, ready to rush in at the smallest chink in the walls that shut him out from his own—walls which even the tone of a violin afloat on the wind of that spirit is sometimes enough to rend from battlement to base, as the blast of the rams' horns rent the walls of Jericho. And now to the day of his death, the shoemaker had need of nothing. Food, wine, and delicacies were sent him by many who, while they considered him outside of the kingdom, would ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... footlight world is strong, but a woman's pride is stronger. Under temptation's test, her religion might was dim, but her refinement would rise as a battlement in defense. Her church and creed might waver and sink, but that undefinable innocence which we call womanhood, would lead her, a Dian, through the fires of hell. In society and the slums a large percentage of women are courtesans by choice. The one has a refinement that is but a veneer, and the ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a horse unbroken When first he feels the rein, The furious river struggled hard, And tossed his tawny mane, And burst the curb and bounded, Rejoicing to be free, And whirling down, in fierce career, Battlement, and plank, and pier, ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the whole surface of the window becomes divided into a series of panels, the heads of which being arched, are trefoiled or cinquefoiled. In the later windows the transoms at the top are often furnished with a small ornamental battlement, causing the mullions ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... city and fortress of the middle ages. Here has been none of the Vandalism of Vauban, Cohorn, and those mechanical-pated fellows, who, with their Dutch dyke-looking parapets, made such havoc of donjons and picturesque turrets in Europe. Here is every variety of mediaeval battlement; so perfect is the illusion, that one wonders the waiter's horn should be mute, and the walls devoid of bowman, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... afternoon at a picturesque little place called Prainha—prettier than any I had seen so far, because of its frontage battlement, with its numerous staircases to allow the people of the various houses to go down to the water. A tiny church stood ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... very cold. Gusts of wind from the snow-covered Schneeberg drove along the streets, making each corner a fortress defended by the elements, a battlement to be seized, lost, seized again. Peter Byrne battled valiantly but mechanically. And as he ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... specimen of Italian architecture of the seventeenth century, and containing some incomparable pictures by the Italian masters, and a chef-d'oeuvre of Rubens, had been set on fire by a bomb, and was now in a blaze from battlement to ground. The next intelligence was still more painful. The principal convent of the city, which was close in its rear, had taken fire, and the unfortunate nuns were seen at the windows in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... without, the people were rising in masses, and thousands from adjacent towns were gathering around the city walls, and all crying loudly for revenge; but none could enter. The Romans held the gates, and every tower and battlement along the great red-brick walls, hard as adamant, was crowded with glistening spears. Nothing could be done from without, and there was little chance of help to come from within. A scheme was proposed to burn the fleet, but this got noised abroad too early, and the ships were moved from ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... steeps of the mountain, which we have before alluded to, and which, from the opposite side of the Connecticut, and within a few furlongs from the spot where they now stood, rose, half concealed in its "misty shroud," like some huge battlement, to the heavens—"there! do you hear that dull roar, with occasionally a crashing sound, away up there among those clouds of fog near the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... was a strange dusky mingling of gold and gloom, when Moses stole softly in. The great cloud-castle that a little while since had glowed like living gold from turret and battlement, now dim, changed for the most part to a sombre gray, enlivened with a dull glow of crimson; but there was still a golden light where the sun had sunk into the sea. Moses saw the little thin hand ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... long imprisonment, have given you the necessary following. You, and you alone, must issue the final call, lead the last, supreme attack, and carry the old flag, the Crimson Banner of Brotherhood, to the topmost battlement of ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... reeling as if drunken against the western battlement. "My comfort," he said, hoarsely, while one hand tore at his jetting throat—"my comfort is that I could not perish slain by a braver enemy." He moaned and stumbled backward. Momentarily his knees gripped the low embrasure. Then his feet flipped upward, convulsively, so that John Bulmer ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... enchanted Castle, we saw a man on the top of the watch tower waving his arms and gesticulating with dramatic gestures into space. This was our Vahtimestari. From his exalted position, with one of the most beautiful panoramas eye could wish lying at his feet—resting on a famous battlement, that had withstood the ravages of love and war—he evolved his magic verse. Truly no scene could be more inspiring, no motive more sublime, for even we humble humdrum matter-of-fact Englishwomen felt almost inspired to tempt the poet's muse. But happily no—our friends ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... arms, the shriek of anguish, and the shout of victory. Muley Abul Hassan, at the head of a powerful force, had hurried from Granada, and passed unobserved through the mountains in the obscurity of the tempest. While the storm pelted the sentinel from his post and bowled round tower and battlement, the Moors had planted their scaling-ladders and mounted securely into both town and castle. The garrison was unsuspicious of danger until battle and massacre burst forth within its very walls. It seemed to the affrighted inhabitants ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... thickness of the walls, from tower to tower, and the dim corridors and dizzying bartizans are made safe to the most timid of Cockneys by stout wooden banisters, that enable you to stand as securely on a crumbling battlement as on the top of Salisbury plain. We saw the courts and quadrangles, admired the splendid windows, and only wondered at the lowness of the ceilings of some of the principal rooms, as from floor to floor could not have been more than seven feet and a half. There were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... show; like Flers, it has risen to some modern importance through manufactures. The chief church, St Martin, has already struck us on our approach by its stately tower of late Gothic such as in England we might have looked to see crowned with battlement and pinnacles, but which here is finished with a high roof bearing statues on its ridge. Beside the tower there is something, one hardly knows what, a very high roof and a kind of spire. When we come near, we find that the church, though very ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... case, which projects beyond it all round. On this the head stands, and at each corner a little round pillar, the height of the head, rears itself up. On the top of the head there is an ornamental battlement, composed of dog-tooth pieces of cork. As the clock has a head, it ought to have a face; indeed, the face is one of the chief parts of a clock. Take a piece of stiff white paper or thin cardboard, cut it square the exact size of the head, and on it mark, in your neatest ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... provinces; and many of the emperors of the queen city (among whom may be mentioned, especially, Verus and Valens) spent here the greater part of their time. But I perceive we have arrived at the city itself. Let us ascend this battlement, and throw our eyes upon ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... when she saw the isle so rugged and forbidding, but when the boat came aland in a stony bight, whence the ground went up somewhat steeply toward the heights, she went ashore straightway, and toiled up toward the white battlement. Presently she found herself in a strait and rugged path betwixt two walls of rock, so that she lost sight of the castle a while, till she came out on to a level place which looked down from aloft on to the blue water, but all over against her close at ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... this time crossed the narrow court, and passing beneath a second portcullised door defended on either side by high battlement walls, nearly double as thick as the steps themselves were wide. At the head was an arched door, heavily studded with nails, and opening into the Castle hall, a gloomy, vaulted room, its loop-hole windows, in their mighty depth of wall, affording little light. A large ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ladies, who wave their lily hands in return. I see fight and fray and tournament. I hear roaring heralds bawling the charms of delicate women, and shamelessly proclaiming their lovers. Stay. I see a Jewess about to leap from a battlement. I see knightly deeds, violence, rapine, and a good deal of blood. I've seen pretty ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... guns speak sudden on the height And build for miles their battlement of fire; Somewhere the men that shivered all the night Peer anxious forth and scramble through the wire, Swarm slowly out to where the Maxims bark, And green and red the panic rockets rise; And Hell is loosed, and shyly sings a lark, And the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... quantity of small stones and pieces of brick which now had to be removed. Further, if we cleared all the rubble from the middle of the wall between us and the outside, there would be no support for the slabs of the battlement above, and however firmly they were cemented, it was not improbable that they would sink ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... up under the porte-cocher of a mansion built of cobble-stones. It was as strong as a battlement, but its outlines curved in obedience to gracefulness and yielded to the demand of striking effect. Viewed from one point it might have been taken for a castle; from another, it suggested itself as a spireless church. Strangers halted to gaze at it; street laborers looked ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... neglected, I propose making a push, and begging them of the Duke of Bedford. They would be magnificent for Strawberry-castle. Did I tell you that I have found a text in Deuteronomy to authorize my future battlements? "When thou buildest a new house, then shalt thou make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thy house, if any ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... easy, and it was not long before the captain of the guard looked down upon the lights of the castle gleaming through the gathering gloom. But instead of being, as was its wont, lighted from highest battlement to flanking tower, only one or two lamps could be discerned shining out of that vast ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... earth to slay." "Angel of good!" Gonzalo cried, "A thousand joys are at thy side, Thou comest to light my dangerous way, With calm, and pure, and heavenly ray. I feel thou art a spirit sent, From heaven's snow-white battlement, To lead me through these stranger wilds, With voice and actions like a child's, So guiltless in thy love—so dear, I bless thy goodness with a tear. Oh! like thy climate's deathless spring, Succeeding ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... sylvan domain, herded with deer of various races, and terminating in pine forests; beyond them moors and mountains. The donjon keep, tall and grey, that had arrested the Douglas, still remained intact, and many an ancient battlement; but the long list of the Lords of Montfort had successively added to the great structure according to the genius of the times, so that still with the external appearance generally of a feudal castle, it combined in ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... ecclesiastical importance begins when John de Villula purchased it of the king, and transferred hither his episcopal stool from Wells (see further, p. 19). In mediaeval days Bath was a walled city, and fragments of its fortifications, crowned by a modern battlement, may still be seen in "Borough Walls"; and two round-headed arches of the old E. gate are visible in a passage behind the Empire Hotel, leading to the river. The battle of Lansdown gives Bath a place in the annals of the Great Rebellion. But the fame of Bath is social rather than ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... screen set up. The south-west part was, in the year 1695, new built with stone. In the year 1706 the church was wholly new whitewashed, gilt, and painted within, and the pillars of the round tower wainscoted with a new battlement and buttresses on the south side, and other parts of the outside were well repaired. Also the figures of the Knights Templars were cleaned and painted, and the iron-work enclosing them new painted and gilt with gold. The east end of the church was repaired and beautified in 1707." In ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Mead's own favorite "cutting-out" horse, and it answered with perfect will and knowledge the urging of Tuttle's spurs. With a soft "f-s-s-t" the rope wore over the top of the wall and Mead's tall form stood dimly outlined behind the battlement of cactus. He untied the rope from his waist, threw it to the ground, and with foot and fist thrust aside the bristling, sharp-spined masses, dropped over the outer edge, hung at full length by his hands for an instant, and landed in the ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... hill with its dark ascending firs, to its crown of silvery birches, above which, as often as the slowly circling road brought him to the other side, he saw rise like a helmet the gray mass of the fortress. Turret and tower, pinnacle and battlement, appeared and disappeared as he climbed. Not until at last he stood almost on the top, and from an open space beheld nearly the whole front, could he tell what it was like. It was a grand pile, but looked a gloomy ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... interval, As the adventurous spider, making light Of distance, shoots her threads from depth to height, From barbican to battlement; so flung Fantasies forth and in their centre swung Our architect,—the breezy morning fresh Above, and merry,—all his waving mesh Laughing with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... her. The moon has risen above the edge of the horizon, and she sees a noble old castle. Its summit of tower, watchtower and battlement, glimmers faintly in the moonlight. This is ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... silver paper laid over one another like the shingles on a roof,—the bishops in long gowns, with mitre on the head,—all in the two colors of their respective sides. The four castles were made of pieces of gray sandpaper, glued into cylinder shape, with battlement-shaped strips around the top; when glued on their standards, they looked like little ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... shines the morning sun On leaguer'd castle wall, When bastion, tower, and battlement, Seemed nodding ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... thunder-splintered pinnacle; Bound many an insulated mass, The native bulwarks of the pass, Huge as the tower which builders vain Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain. The rocky summits, split and rent, Formed turret, dome, or battlement. Or seemed fantastically set With cupola or minaret, Wild crests as pagod ever decked, Or mosque of eastern architect. Nor were these earth-born castles bare, Nor lacked they many a banner fair; For, from their shivered brows displayed, Far o'er the unfathomable glade, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... not trust the people, So he might not speak aloud. But he look'd up toward heaven, And it all was clear and blue, And in the liquid ether The eye of God shone through. Yet a black and murky battlement Lay resting on the hill, As though the thunder slept therein, All ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... short, the Hazzards and I returned to Schloss Rothhoefen in some haste, primarily for the purpose of inspecting it from dungeon to battlement. I forgot to mention that, being very tired after the climb up the steep, we got no further on our first visit than the great baronial hall, the dining-room and certain other impressive apartments customarily ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... constitutes a state? Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, Thick wall or moated gate; Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned; Not bays and broad-armed ports, Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; Not starred and spangled courts, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... on our return, the point where we had crossed the line of marked trees the day before, the question arose whether we should still trust ourselves to this line, or follow our own trail back to the spring and the battlement of rocks on the top of the mountain, and thence to the rock where the guide had left us. We decided in favor of the former course. After a march of three quarters of an hour the blazed trees ceased, and we concluded ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... shouted we, some of us discharging our pieces to add to the uproar, while one man exploded a swivel gun which stood on the seaward battlement. ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... As the adventurous spider, making light Of distance, shoots her threads from depth to height, From barbican to battlement: so flung Fantasies forth and in their centre swung Our architect,—the breezy morning fresh Above, and merry,—all his waving mesh Laughing with lucid ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... exposed to the sunlight, which yet seems sunlight in a prison, and silence over all—that is Mola. The ruins of the fortress are near the gate on the highest point of the crag. Within is a barren spot—a cistern, old foundations, and some broken walls. Look over the battlement westward, and you will see a precipice that one thinks only birds could assail; and, observing how isolated is the crag on all sides, you will understand what an inaccessible fastness this was, and cannot be surprised at ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... do ye know That Kaad, King Mark's old stable groom, beheld St. George leap from the battlement where wall And rock drop off an ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... disturbed even from this most serious occupation by the blast of a horn winded before the gate. It was repeated three times, with as much violence as if it had been blown before an enchanted castle by the destined knight, at whose summons halls and towers, barbican and battlement, were to roll off like a morning vapour. The Saxons started from the table, and hastened to the window. But their curiosity was disappointed; for these outlets only looked upon the court of the castle, and the sound came from beyond its precincts. ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... Sometimes in narrow circuit bending, Sometimes in platform broad extending, Its varying circle did combine Bulwark, and bartizan, and line, And bastion, tower, and vantage-coign. Above the booming ocean leant The far-projecting battlement; The billows burst, in ceaseless flow, Upon the ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... down the wilder, and seemed like to hold a day or more, as indeed it did. About mid-afternoon Turlough came and beckoned him silently out to the rear or seaward battlement ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... of the place, conspired with the occasion of his coming, and the dismal images of his fancy, to produce a real rapture of gloomy expectation, which the whole world would not have persuaded him to disappoint. The clock struck twelve, the owl screeched from the ruined battlement, the door was opened by the sexton, who, by the light of a glimmering taper, conducted the despairing lover to a dreary aisle, and stamped upon the ground with his foot, saying, "Here ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... the ancient dukes of Ferrara, which is to be found a little farther on, has a fine feudal aspect. It is a vast collection of towers joined together by high walls crowned with a battlement forming a cornice, and which emerge from a great moat full of water, over which one enters by a protected bridge. The castle, built wholly of brick or of stones reddened by the sun, has a vermilion tint which deprives it of its imposing effect. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... as I speak, and together we leave the turret chamber, and, passing through the great conservatory, we reach the promenade. We lean on the battlement, long since dismantled, and gaze beneath us. Close to the castle walls below is a well-kept lawn trending downwards with slight incline to meet the loch which laps over its borders. This loch, or lake, stretches for miles and miles on every side, bounded here and ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... and directly under its lower bastions, seems to have been intended originally for a gun-platform, but there is nothing there now to indicate that guns were ever mounted on it. It has no parapet, or battlement, and is merely a wide, empty shelf of rock, overhanging the narrow entrance to the harbor, and overhung, in turn, by the walls of the fortress. In the mountain-side back of it are four or five quadrangular ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... thirteenth century, and its last architectural revision was Tudor; within, it is for the most part dark and chilly, save for two or three favoured rooms and its tall-windowed, oak-galleried hall. Its terrace is its noblest feature; a very wide, broad lawn it is, bordered by a low stone battlement, and there is a great cedar in one corner under whose level branches one looks out across the blue distances of the Weald, blue distances that are made extraordinarily Italian in quality by virtue ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... trees appear. Here begin the ornaments. Marble, bronze, carved and painted brick—a filigree and a scrollwork—put forth claims. The lords of the city stand girthed in ornaments. Knight and satrap have changed somewhat. Moat and battlement grimace but faintly from behind their ornaments. The tick-tock sounds through the carouse. Sleek, suave men and languorous, desirable women sit amid elaborations, sleep and breed in ornamental beds. Power wears new masks. Leadership has improved its table ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... one-third part of the north-west tower had fallen from top to bottom; yet this illustration shows that same tower complete. This affords an opportunity of comparing portions of the two towers. The upper part of each is shown to finish on top with a battlement parapet. It is evidence in itself that during the fifteenth century certain alterations had been effected in them both at this part. But this print must have been made from an original which had been executed quite twenty years earlier—for King's drawing, issued ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... heavy-caved gabled houses, its monkish hospitium upon the left, where good ale may still be quaffed, and its great square-keeped castle upon the right, no gray and grim skeleton of ruin, but very quick and alert, with blazoned banner flying free, and steel caps twinkling from the battlement. A row of booths extended from the castle gate to the high street, and two doors from the Church of the Trinity was that of Thorold the goldsmith, a rich burgess and ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... almost gone before de Vasselot reached the base of the mound of half-shattered rock upon which the chateau had been built. The wall that had once been the outer battlement of the old stronghold was so fallen into disrepair that he anticipated no difficulty in finding a gap through which to pass within the enclosure where the house was hidden; but he walked right round and found no such breach. Where the wall of rock proved vulnerable, the masonry, ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... Antonio Santacroce had made me come down from the Angel, in order to fire on some houses in the neighbourhood, where certain of our besiegers had been seen to enter. While I was firing, a cannon shot reached me, which hit the angle of a battlement, and carried off enough of it to be the cause why I sustained no injury. The whole mass struck me in the chest and took my breath away. I lay stretched upon the ground like a dead man, and could hear what the bystanders were saying. Among ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... the most gloomy aspect. The walls were of great thickness, and the windows, or slits which served the purpose of windows, seemed rather calculated to afford the defenders the means of employing missile weapons, than for admitting air or light to the apartments within. A small battlement projected over the walls on every side, and afforded farther advantage of defence by its niched parapet, within which arose a steep roof, flagged with grey stones. A single turret at one angle, defended by a door studded with huge iron nails, rose ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... mingle with the waves, and take a last farewell of their agitated home, to seek a peaceful dwelling among the rolling floods; yet there is a voice rushing from her breast, that proclaims VICTORY along the whole line and battlement of her affections. That voice is the voice of patience and resignation; that voice is one that bears everything calmly and dispassionately, amid the most distressing scenes; when the fates are arrayed against her peace, and apparently plotting for her destruction, still ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to him for punishment, and, this being done before sunset this evening, he will yield to you free and uninjured the said M. de Tignonville, and will retire from the lands of Vrillac. But if you refuse"—the man passed his eye along the line of attentive faces which fringed the battlement—"he will at sunset hang the said Tignonville on the gallows raised for Tavannes, and will harry the demesne of Vrillac to ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... up into an high battlement, and led with her twelve gentlewomen; and when they were above, one of the gentlewomen cried, and said: Ah, Sir Bors, gentle knight have mercy on us all, and suffer my lady to have her will, and if ye do not we must suffer death with our lady, for ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... the Castle of Content, With flaming tower and tumbling battlement Where Time hath conquered, and the firelight streams Above sore-wounded Loves and dying Dreams,— Ei ho! the vanished ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... escapes through a door that ever providentially opens directly behind him. How tired one gets of that door! The "caitiff" in these chronicles of when knighthood was in flower is invariably hanged from "the highest battlement"—the second highest would not do at all; or else he is thrown into "the deepest dungeon of the castle"—the second deepest dungeon was never known to be used on these occasions. The hero habitually "cleaves" his foeman "to the midriff," the "midriff" being what the properly ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to see and hear Seem'd in her frame residing; Before the watch-dog prick'd his ear She heard her lover's riding; Ere scarce a distant form was kenn'd She knew and waved to greet him, And o'er the battlement did bend As on ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... by the battlement and the stories were told. They were stories of the small grains lying hid in the dark earth waiting for the golden heat of the sun to draw them forth into life until they covered the tilled fields with waving wheat to make bread for the world; they were stories of the seeds of fair ...
— The Land of the Blue Flower • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... drifting clouds in heaven cleared fully, showing many brilliant stars in the western horizon,—and a sentry passing, as noiselessly as his armour and accoutrements would permit, along the walled battlement which protected and overshadowed the windows of the Queen's apartments, paused in his walk to look with an approving eye at the clearing promise of the weather. As he did so, a tall figure, wrapped in a thick rain-cloak, suddenly made its unexpected appearance ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... close under the low, turf-constructed battlement, and, as we were in the act of scrambling over it, we received a straggling and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... that would turn up afterwards in many a nightmare—with the gutter in the middle and towerlets and stone posts all along the sides; and high fantastic walls (where it was defendre d'afficher), with bits of old battlement at the top, and overhanging boughs of sycamore and lime, and behind them gray old gardens that dated from the days of Louis le Hutin and beyond! And suggestive names printed in old rusty iron letters at the street corners—"Rue Videgousset," ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... porch, of suggested Burgundian style, forms the main entrance to the church, and is situated midway along the south side. Almost directly opposite, on the north, is the curiously contrasting feature of a crenelated battlement, a reminder of the time when the church was doubtless a temporal as well ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... years to rear, crumbles into dust, the mere plaything of the idle wind; it lays its hand upon the populous city with its teeming, restless multitude. And yesterday, where stood the glittering spire, the shining tower, the frowning battlement, today the cold gray ocean rolls in ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... at Ba'albak, the Governor and the chief people rode out to receive us. Our horses' hoofs soon rang under a ruined battlement, and we entered in state through the dark tunnels. Horses were neighing, sabres were clanking; it was a noisy, confusing, picturesque scene. We tented for the night in the midst of the grand court of the ruins. In the morning the ladies of the Governor's harim paid me a visit in my tent. With their ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... establishment. But, Sir, she has other securities; she has the security of her own doctrines; she has the security of the piety, the sanctity of her own professors; their learning is a bulwark to defend her; she has the security of the two universities, not shook in any single battlement, in ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... great things that a chorus of psalmists say that it will do for a man. Here is one of their triumphant utterances: 'Thou wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt Thou compass him as with a shield.' That crystal battlement, if I may so vary the figure, is round a man, keeping far away from him all manner of real evil, and filling his quiet heart as he stands erect behind the rampart, with the sense of absolute security. That is one of the blessings that God's favour or goodwill will ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and wondrous monument, And shadows forth its glory. There is given Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, A Spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power And magic in the ruined battlement, For which the Palace of the present hour Must yield its pomp, and wait till Ages are ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... the ardent blood of Wallace. But the intrepid earl, descrying his friend on the ladder which might soon carry him to the summit of the battlement, exclaimed, "Forward! Let not my span of life stand between my country and this glorious ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... all!" cried De Bracy to the soldiers around him; "do ye call yourselves cross-bowmen, and let these two dogs keep their station under the walls of the castle? Heave over the coping stones from the battlement, an better may not be. Get pickaxe and levers, and down with that huge pinnacle!" pointing to a heavy piece of stone carved-work that projected from ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... thousand years have manned the walls With all their heroes,—the last Cato[237] stands And tears his bowels, rather than survive The liberty of that I would enslave. 210 And the first Cassar with his triumphs flits From battlement to battlement. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Through the shocked town. The very houses seem To groan, and shrieks, and sobbing and the cries Of wailing women pierce the vaulted skies. 'Twas e'en as though all Carthage or old Tyre Were falling, stormed by ruthless enemies, While over roof and battlement and spire And temples of the Gods rolled on the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... represents the inner keep of Klingsor's castle, the magician himself being seated on the battlement. He is gazing intently into the magic mirror, wherein all the world may be seen, and comments with malicious glee upon Parsifal's ejection from the temple of the Holy Grail and his approach to his ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... broad green slope from the old Cathedral battlement down to the River Pol. Their long stretches of meadow are scattered with trees, some of the oldest oaks in Glebeshire, and they are finally bounded by the winding path of the Rope Walk that skirts the river bank. Along the Rope Walk in March and April the daffodils ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... the genius, and for every thing that belongs to the memory, of Dryden;" and thus magniloquently eulogizes his most splendid achievement:—"The fact is, Dryden's version of the 'Knight's Tale' would be most appropriately read by the towering shade of one of Virgil's heroes, walking up and down a battlement, and waving a long, gleaming spear, to the roll and sweep ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... stood upon the long, steep, narrow bridge, which crossed the river close to Carrigvarah, the family mansion of the O'Maras; he looked back in the direction in which he had left his companion, and leaning upon the battlement, he ruminated long and moodily. At length he raised ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... giving them a strange freckled appearance; while in many cases the dust and dew have produced a little soil, upon which a spontaneous growth of shrubbery has sprung up; the flat roofs have usually a collection of little urn-shaped turrets round the battlement, between which are stretched clothes-lines. Here the ebony daughters of Eve, with their bullet-heads and polished faces and necks, may be seen at all hours hanging up washed clothes, their capacious mouths ornamented with long cigars, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... horsemen at that moment dismounted, and, displaying a white cloth on a pike, moved forward towards the Tower, while the Major and Lord Evandale, descending from the battlement of the main fortress, advanced to meet him as far as the barricade, judging it unwise to admit him within the precincts which they designed to defend. At the same time that the ambassador set forth, the group of horsemen, as if they had anticipated the preparations ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Spirit Approached the overhanging battlement, 240 Below lay stretched the boundless universe! There, far as the remotest line That limits swift imagination's flight. Unending orbs mingled in mazy motion, Immutably fulfilling 245 Eternal Nature's law. Above, below, around, The circling systems formed A wilderness of harmony. ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Along a road broad enough for twelve chariots to have driven on it abreast, slowly they came to the great gate of the castle. And as they got nearer, they saw at every window heads leaning out; every battlement, every terrace, was crowded with figures. And when they were quite near, by throwing their heads very far back, so that their necks felt quite stiff for quite a long time afterwards, the children could see that all those ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... light returned, Pathfinder and Cap ascended again to the roof, with a view to reconnoitre the state of things once more on the island. This part of the blockhouse had a low battlement around it, which afforded a considerable protection to those who stood in its centre; the intention having been to enable marksmen to lie behind it and to fire over its top. By making proper use, therefore, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... their broadsides of yellow flame now. From battlement and casemate of forts rolled the thunder of their batteries, sending their heavy shots smashing into the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... 'no' before this. I'll not blame Maggie for not liking him; and I wad be as weel pleased for Maggie to bide single, till I hae my ain manse to marry her from. Now I willna hae my life and prospects wrecked for women's battlement and quarrels;" and then David very foolishly spoke of Dr. Balmuto's coldness to him; and on this subject David got warm and eloquent, and Aunt Janet perceived that the minister was disposed to ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... given Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, A spirit's feelings, and where he hath leant His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power And magic in the ruin'd battlement For which the palace of the present hour Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... coppers by well-dressed strangers, and is apt to conclude that sturdy beggars can bear stout denials. Now we come upon the ruins of a square stone tower, which anciently formed a portion of the public baths; and here an old Arabian gate, arch and battlement still standing. Near the Alameda another is seen, and gardens, once connected by a subterranean passage with the distant Alhambra, away on the hill. Here an arch and there a crumbling column, all souvenirs of ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... promising life. But, as I sit by my window on the Walk, while the tides of Thames and traffic flow swiftly by, and the blue evening mist comes down over the river, transforming dingy wharf and factory into fairy palace and phantom battlement, it seems to me that my friend died fitly and well, in the midst of Realities, recking little that the love he thought secure had passed irrevocably from him, but never swerving in fidelity to his mistress or devotion to ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... the string-course has been broken in the Decorated period by the insertion of three slender windows, each having two lights with a quatrefoil above. Above the windows comes the moulded string or cornice continued from the transept, and above this the pierced merlons of the Decorated battlement are again very broad in proportion to the embrasures. Instead of being built up, the exposed arches of the triforium have here been glazed. The clearstorey resembles that of the transept, but the corbel table is surmounted ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... Morgan's walls, Looms the black fleet. Hark, deck to rampart calls With the drums' beat! Buoy your chains overboard, While the steam hums; Men! to the battlement, ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... family established in one of those Dutch edifices, of which Albany was mainly composed, and which stood a little removed from the street—having a tiny yard in front, with the stoop in the gable, and that gable towards the yard. The battlement walls of this house diminished towards the high apex of a very steep roof by steps, as we are all so much accustomed to see, and the whole was surmounted by an iron weathercock, that was perched on a rod of some elevation. It was always a matter of importance with the Dutch ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... sound was heard within the walls of the fort, until the elephants advanced towards the gates. Then suddenly a stream of fire leaped out from loophole and battlement. So well directed and continuous was the fire, that the elephants, dismayed at the outburst of fire and noise, and smarting from innumerable wounds, turned and dashed away, trampling in their flight ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... is a precipice That seems a fragment of some mighty wall, Built by the hand that fashioned the old world, To separate its nations, and thrown down When the flood drowned them. To the north, a path Conducts you up the narrow battlement. Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint, And many a hanging crag. But, to the east, Sheer to the vale go down the bare old cliffs,— Huge pillars, that in middle heaven upbear Their weather-beaten ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... touch my lyre delighted, thus to bring To thee my heart's full homage while I sing! And thou, old Castle!—thy bold turrets high, Have shed their deep enchantment on mine eye, Though years have changed thee, I have gazed intent In silent joy, on tower and battlement, When all thy time-worn glories met my sight; Thou have I felt such rapture, such delight, That, had the splendour of thy days of yore Flashed on my view, I had not loved thee more! Scene of immortal deeds! thy walls have rung To pealing shouts from many a warrior's tongue; When ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... narrow path reached and crossed to the other side of the isthmus. We then found that the path led to the foot of the rock, formerly island, of the keep, and thence in a zigzag up the face of it to the top. We followed it, and after a great climb reached a door in a modern battlement. Entering, we found ourselves amidst grass, and ruins haggard with age. We turned and surveyed the path by which we had come. It was steep and somewhat difficult. But the outlook was glorious. It was ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... monument, And shadows forth its glory. There is given Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power And magic in the ruined battlement, For which the palace of the present hour Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... houses and withdrew to some retreat where they maintain their traditions, waiting for better times to return to their former homes. Many of the vaulted carriage-ways frame a glimpse of the rushing river which washes the massive foundations of the courtyards, the blue hills and lines of forked battlement. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... became indistinct; the stars seemed to lose their radiance, as covered by a light mist; a dark cloud appearing, in his half dormant fancy, to take the gigantic proportions of a man, hovered on the battlement. It became smaller and smaller, but still it seemed a cloud, through which the moonlight gleamed; but a thrill passed through him, as if telling of some impalpable and indefinable object of dread. With a sudden effort he shook off the lethargy of half sleep, and sprung to ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... store-buildings and cement walks along the main street of the town, and here and there a real lawn, cut by a lawn-mower; but as the machine buzzed on toward the river the familiar little old battlemented buildings came to view. The Palace Hotel, half log, half battlement, remained on its perilous site beside the river. The triangle where the trails met still held Halsey's Three Forks Saloon, and next to it stood Markheit's general store, from which the cowboys and citizens had armed themselves during the ten days' ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... No! There will be a shudder, as though a calamity had happened. Standing on heaven's battlement, a watchman will see something shoot past, with fiery downfall, and shriek: "Wandering star—for whom is reserved the blackness of ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... each battlement, vases, candlesticks, and pineapples alternately, and the effect will be striking. Vases have many votaries amongst those worthy members of society, the churchwardens. Candlesticks are of ancient origin, and represent, from the highest authority, the light of the churches: but as in most churches ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... central tower caught the last reflection of the declining orb. Leonard watched the rosy gleam till it disappeared, and then steadfastly regarded the reverend pile as its hue changed from grey to black, until at length each pinnacle and buttress, each battlement and tower, was lost in one vast indistinct mass. Night had fallen upon the city—a night destined to be more fatal than any that had preceded it; and yet it was so calm, so beautiful, so clear, that it was scarcely possible ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the menace of night; Then a long, lonely, leaden mere Backed by a desolate fell As by a spectral battlement; and then, Low-brooding, interpenetrating all, A vast, grey, listless, inexpressive sky, So beggared, so incredibly bereft Of starlight and the song of racing worlds It might have bellied down upon the Void Where as in terror Light was beginning ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... at the delicate moment of the operations that she spoke. Dick started: the remainder of the coil slipped from his grasp, and the end fell with a splash into the moat. Instantly, from the battlement above, the voice of a sentinel ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Thy camp of waters, on the pebbled shore, And measures their great footsteps to and fro, Hath lifted up into my brain the flow Of this mad tide of blood.—Ay! we are like In foam and frenzy; the same winds do strike, The same fierce sun-rays, from their battlement Of fire! so, when I perish impotent Before the night of death, they'll say of me, He died as mad ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... battlement and pinnet high, Blazed every rose-carved buttress fair— So still they blaze, when fate is nigh The lordly ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... and nearer, till the half-light ran with her half- thought, dropping, sinking, dying. "Guise," said the signpost, and a battlement stared down and threw its shadow across her face. "Is that where the dukes lived?" She was a speck in the landscape, moving on wheels that were none of her invention, covering distances of hundreds of miles without amazement, upon a magic mount unknown to her forefathers. Dark and light moved ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... battlement, and pillared remains of palace or hall were on every side, and as they gazed, it seemed to them that they could easily imagine the presence of the helmeted, armoured warriors who had ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... great deal of mortar in the interstices: the buttresses, or rather piers, are of small projection, but great width. The upper story, destroyed about forty years since, was of a different style of architecture. According to an old print, it terminated with a large battlement, and bartizan towers at the angles. This dungeon was formerly divided into several apartments; in one of the lower of which was found, about half a century ago, a very ancient tomb, of good workmanship, ornamented with ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... Faithful where women are required to pass before men; yet the best evidence of the Governor's thoughtfulness for his female guests met them at their approach to the Castle. There was not a man visible except a sentinel on the battlement above the gate, and he stood faced inwardly, making it impossible for him to see ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... owner of the one pair of red flannel leggins of which I have spoken. These were not long enough to cover the brown skin of his sturdy thighs. His ornaments were silver crescents, wristlets, a silver studded belt, and a peculiar battlement-like band of silver on the edge of his turban. Notice his uncropped head of luxuriant, curly hair, the only exception I observed to the singular cut of hair peculiar to the Seminole men. Me-le, however, is in many other more important respects an exceptional character. ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... stretch of coast appeared. On the summit of a mountain of red rocks, dotted here and there by dark masses of shrubbery, stood a broad yellow squat tower, with no opening on the side toward the sea except a window, a mere black hole of irregular contour. The outlines of a porthole in the battlement of the tower, that had formerly served for a small cannon, was outlined against the blue sky. On one side the promontory rose sheer above the sea, and on the other sloped landward, covered with green, with ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... what is called "the golden valley," this remarkable "Rock of Cashel" looms up three hundred feet above the surrounding plain, its top, even now, crowned with the ruins of what were in Brian's day palace and chapel, turret and battlement and ancient tower. Beneath the rough archway of the triple ramparts at the foot of the rock, and up the sharp ascent, there rode one day the herald of Ivar, the Danish King of Limerick. Through the gate-way of the palace he ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... battlement, and saw a little party issue from a small postern gate far below him, cross the broad fosse, and pause in an open space formed by an outlying work beyond. They bore ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... from La Rochelle, not far distant, and we gave not a thought to the automobile again that night, but strolled on the quay by the little river Sevre-Niortaise, and watched the moon rise over the old chateau donjon, and heard the rooks caw, and saw them circle and swing around its battlement in a final night-call before they went to rest. It was all very idyllic and peaceful, although Niort is, as may be inferred, an important centre for ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield |
