"Spire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mass in the great Cathedral of Strasbourg, and was surprised and pleased at the sight of 10,000 soldiers, in review order, drawn up within its walls. It was tiresome enough work mounting to the top of the spire, (which I ascertained, by the steps I took, to be exactly 490 feet high, Strasbourg measure; and this is exactly eight feet higher than St. Peter's at Rome), but I made it out, notwithstanding the sulky looks of the jackanapes who lives at the top. Nothing can surpass the beauty of the view from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... they lay in the Compass of about half a League every way, and 5 Leagues from the Main, between which and them lay other Islands. The most of them are barren rocks, and of these there is a very great Variety, some of them are of as small a Compass as the Monument in London, and Spire up to a much greater height; they lay in the Latitude of 36 degrees 57 minutes, and some of them are inhabited. At Noon they bore South 60 degrees East, distant 3 or 4 Leagues, and a Rock like a Castle lying not far from the Main, bore North 40 degrees ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... for a moment on the outside. The spire points upward and teaches its lesson of aspiration. "Lift up your hearts," it seems to say, and holds up the Cross as that by which alone we are to be "exalted unto everlasting life." Whenever we {19} lift up our eyes to it, it ought to repeat ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... to flee for their lives. A hunt is set up for them. Luckily a missionary ship comes in a few days later, and manages to restore peace. Our heroes return to the village. A mission is set up, and a small church, complete with a spire, is built. Another vessel calls for water, and would have opened fire, just for spite, but they see the spire and restrain themselves. Our heroes persuade the captain to take them on board. Will has fallen in love with the missionary's daughter, but nevertheless joins the party leaving ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... concave"—a view to which Mr. Darwin objects, but not so strongly as he might. The tendril of this sort, on striking some fitting object, quickly curls round and firmly grasps it; then, after some hours, one side shortening or remaining short in proportion to the other, it coils into a spire, dragging the stem up to its support, and enabling the next tendril above to secure a ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... a little hill, and saw the spire of a steeple, and the skirts of a country town, which a passenger told us was about three ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... Church spire then I saw, An' I wor rare an' fain, Fer near it stood t'owd parsonage— I ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... such a foot, and each toe left its print distinct and even in the dust. With his eye for queer details, he remembered that print and associated with it the yellow-rutted road, the rusty alders in the meadow beyond, and the pale spire of the church thrust into a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... fastened by the leg to a chain, to which was attached a piece of iron of about six pounds weight. He had a large court to range in, and he dragged the piece of iron about after him all day. When he was a year and a half old he flew away, with the chain and iron attached to his leg, and perched on the spire of the church of Santo Tomas, whence he was scared away by the carrion hawks. On alighting in the street, a Negro attempted to catch him for the purpose of bringing him home; upon which he seized the poor creature by the ear, and tore it completely off. ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... sloping lawn, a fine stream winding at the foot of it, and a tract of park beyond, with noble clumps of trees, and herds of deer. At a distance was a neat hamlet, with the smoke from the cottage chimneys hanging over it; and a church with its dark spire in strong relief against the clear cold sky. The house was surrounded with evergreens, according to the English custom, which would have given almost an appearance of summer; but the morning was extremely frosty; the light vapour of ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... trip against Real Pirates in the China Seas! And certainly there was the "romance" of the sea in the change from the gale and black night outside the bar, to the quiet morning on the wide river with the cathedral spire, violet against the sunrise, dropping its silvery music "from heaven like dew;" "Madame Angot," was the tune I think, with a note ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... at the smouldering fire, a slender spire of flame shot up from the log that had blazed so cheerily, and shone upon her as she went. A good omen, gratefully accepted then, and remembered often in the years ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... turned; the mountain ridge which had closed it in up to this point was now left behind to one side and the top of a spire appeared above the young growth. It was the top of St. George's steeple. The young wanderer paused. Natural as it was that the highest building of the town should become visible to him before the others, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... see that it was an avoided house—a house that was shunned by the village, to which my eye was guided by a church spire some half a mile off—a house that nobody would take. And the natural inference was, that it had the reputation of being ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... By day or night Lives in that stream Of lovely light. Here is the earth, And there is the spire; This is my hearth, And that is my fire. From the sun's dome I am shouted proof That this is my home, And that is my roof. Here is my food, And here is my drink, And I am wooed From the moon's brink. And the days go over, And ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... distracted her, and she wished rather to adopt that of Mara, importing bitterness, her impatience must not be interpreted in the worst sense. After long absence, it is natural to anticipate a return home, and a rush of joy pervades even unfeeling minds, when the spire of their native village, the smoke of their native hamlet, especially the roof of their native cottage, first strikes upon the sight. Friends, family, neighbours, early scenes and pleasures, recur with a force which gives the air of enchantment to the long-lost scene. But every ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... July 5th, 1830, the two fishermen engaged a caleche, and a boy named Louis Panet drove them up the Murray River. The present village church was already standing, "a respectable church," says Dr. Henry, "with its long roof and glittering spire and a tall elm or two"; the elms, alas, have disappeared and now there are only willows. A wooden bridge crossed the Murray and its large abutments loaded with great boulders told of formidable spring floods sweeping down the valley. A recent "eboulement" ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... but an hour after dawn when his father aroused him. The boat lay moored by a little quay, beyond which his eye travelled to clusters of red roofs glowing in the easterly sunshine, and a dominant spire, the weathercock of which dazzled the eye with its brightness. The town was just waking up, as could be perceived from the blue wreaths of smoke that poured out of ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... front of the principal facade was a garden with a proclivity toward the lake, which was surrounded and sheltered by a belt of trees. In the distance the peasants' houses were seen, the tall clock spire of Aland, and far in the distance the chimneys of the furnace belonging to M. de Vermondans. At this moment, the plain, the snow-covered woods, the frozen lake presented one uniform color. Any one, however, might see they would ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... passing up, or men coming down carrying a stretcher, where lay a long white figure whose face was shrouded, and whose fight was done. Sometimes I stopped to watch the passers in the street, the moonlight shining on the spire opposite, or the gleam of some vessel floating, like a white-winged sea-gull, down the broad Potomac, whose fullest flow can never wash away the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a church spire, A slender, pointed spire, And I saw Ranged in solemn row before me, A paste-pot and an ink-pot. I held in my either hand A pen and a brush. Ay, a pen and a brush. Now this is the strange part; I stood upon a church spire, A slender, pointed spire, Glad, exultant, Because The choice was ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... friend's shoulder and saw the jagged outline of the street and a spire beautiful in the sunset. She was annoyed that she had not first discovered the picturesqueness of the perspective, and, when Elsie sketched the street on the marble table, she felt that she would never be ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... proceeded up the Valley there were pointed out to us the Three Brothers, a triple group of rocks, three thousand eight hundred feet high. Cathedral Spire, Sentinel Rock, Yosemite and Lost Arrow Falls, and all the other points of interest that can be seen ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... countless bells and of innumerable streams, and see the silver lines of the snow new fallen on the mountains against the deep rose of the dawn, and the shadows of the night steal away softly from off the city, releasing, one by one, dome and spire, and cupola and roof, till all the wide white wonder of the place discloses itself under the broad brightness of full day; to go down into the dark cool streets, with the pigeons fluttering in the fountains, and the sounds of the morning chants coming from many a church door and convent ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... speak again, for the jagged ice-peaks were coming rather near. I held my breath as the little plane veered around a slender black spire and dropped toward a tiny scrap of smooth snow among the ice-hummocks. I might have spared my anxiety. Under Ray's consumately skilful piloting, the skids struck the snow with hardly a shock. We glided swiftly over the ice and came to rest just ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... have seen them. But, above all, I discovered around me,—it was near the end of June,—on the ends of the topmost branches only, a few minute and delicate red cone-like blossoms, the fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward. I carried straightway to the village the topmost spire, and showed it to stranger jurymen who walked the streets,—for it was court-week,—and to farmers and lumber-dealers and wood-choppers and hunters, and not one had ever seen the like before, but wondered as at a star dropped down. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... and this obscure spot soon underwent a strange transformation. A drowsy placid little village—with a modest parish spire peeping above a clump of poplars, and with half a dozen cottages, with storks nests on their roofs, sprinkled here and there among pastures and orchards—suddenly saw itself changed as it were into a thriving bustling ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... architecture unknown to him, yet strangely beautiful. While the buildings were packed closely together there seemed to be no two alike and their fronts were of all shapes and heights and of many hues. The skyline was broken by spire and dome and minaret and tall, slender towers, while the walls supported many a balcony and in the soft light of Cluros, the farther moon, now low in the west, he saw, to his surprise and consternation, ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a sky in which the last faint glow of evening still contended with the stars, the spire and pointed arches of the church of St. Germain rose darkly graceful. It was something after nine: the heat of the August day brooded over the crowded city, and dulled the faint distant ring of arms and armour ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... St. Olaf himself. The church was to be so big that seven priests could say mass at seven altars in it without hearing each other; and it was all to be built of flint stone and to be richly carved. When the time was nearly up the church was finished, all but the top of the spire; and St. Olaf was in sad trouble about his promise. So he walked out into a wood to think, and there he heard the Troll's wife hushing her child inside a hill, and saying to it, "To-morrow, Wind and Weather, your father, will come home in the morning, and bring with him the sun and ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... the familiar fields before me which we had yet to cross, with the Dieben winding through them under his low, red-brick bridges, and beyond the little clustered village with its grey church spire standing shoulder ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... the steep and rocky and lofty clifts of the river and that so closely had they kept themselves and horses within this little spot that there was not a track to be seen of them within a quarter of a mile of that place. every spire of grass was eaten up by their horses near their camp which had the appearance of their having remained here some time. his horse being much fatiegued with the ride he had given him and finding that the indians had ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... the hill, The village spire, the ivy'd tow'r, The sparkling wheel of yonder mill, The grove, green field, and op'ning flow'r, Are ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... with stone, but the exterior being decayed by time, in the year 1690 the body of the church, and also the tower, were cased with bricks of an admirable quality, and mortar suitable to them, for at this time there is scarcely any symptoms of decay. The elegant spire has been several times injured by lightning, and during its repairs the workmen have contracted the length of it considerably. It was at one time (whatever it is now) the loftiest spire in the kingdom, measuring from its base to the weathercock. The person who repaired it in 1777 made the ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... trees, Where first our marriage-vows were given, With merry peals shall swell the breeze And point with taper spire to Heaven. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... who cared for flowers; and by the time Bessie had put on her lilac-spotted sun-bonnet—a shapeless article it must be confessed, with a huge curtain serving for a tippet, very comfortable, and no trouble at all—he had scrambled into the fork, and brought down a beautiful spire of blossoms, with all the grand leaves hanging round in ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stolid prowess of a Quixote tilting against, yea, stouter foes than wind-mills, were I to have commenced with an attack upon external church architecture: this topic let us leave to the fraternity of builders; only asking by what rule of taste an obelisk-like spire, is so often stuck upon the roof of a Grecian temple, and by what rule of convenience gigantic columns so commonly and resolutely sentinel the narrowest of exits and entrances. Let us be more commonly contented, as well we may, with our grand, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... an hour before she went to her room adjoining to put on her hat for church. It was her pleasure during that hour to do nothing but sit at the window, open if the weather permitted, and look over the home paddock and the squat spire of the village church rising among a group of elms. It is not known what she thought about at those times, unless of the countless Sunday mornings she had sat there with her hands in her lap waiting to be roused at 10.45 by the Squire's entrance and his "Now, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... at my wandering wits. This inactivity was death. The escaping air hissed in my ears. Our precious air, escaping away into the vacant desolation of the Lunar emptiness. Through one of the twisted, slanting dome windows a rocky spire was visible. The Planetara lay bow down, wedged in a jagged cradle of Lunar rock. A miracle that the hull and ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... by driving south a few miles and tramping in to the foot of the stillwater on our river—a trail long familiar to me. The dog left us soon after we took it and began to range over thick wooded hills. We sat down among small, spire-like spruces at the river's edge with a long stretch of water in sight while the music of the hound's voice came faintly to our ears ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... lifted by the sun, and the land become warm and fruitful. The view to the westward is bounded and almost filled by the glorious Fairweather Mountains, the highest among them springing aloft in sublime beauty to a height of nearly sixteen thousand feet, while from base to summit every peak and spire and dividing ridge of all the mighty host was spotless white, as if painted. It would seem that snow could never be made to lie on the steepest slopes and precipices unless plastered on when wet, and then frozen. But this snow could not have been wet. It must have been fixed by being driven and ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... lovely shell, Small and pure as a pearl, Lying close to my foot, Frail, but a work divine, Made so fairily well With delicate spire and whorl, How exquisitely minute, A ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... Dean and Chapter may, perhaps, unjustifiably charge me twopence for seeing a cathedral; but your free mob pulls spire and all down about my ears, and I can see it no more forever. And even if I cannot get up to the granite junctions in the glen, the stream comes down from them pure to the Garry; but in Beddington ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... scenery continued at intervals until the evening of the second day after their unsuccessful attempt to draw out Curtis Darwood. They were now passing through Frederick Sound, bordered by spire-shaped glaciers that towered in the sky, pale and chaste, more than two thousand feet above the sound. Darkness fell, the sky being overcast, and the air chill, giving the passengers the shivers and sending them to their cabins below. Tad Butler ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... trees, not far away, is observed the weathercock of a chapel-spire, plainly indicating the location of the European quarter. Taking a branch road leading in that direction, I discover a party of English and native gentlemen playing a game of lawn-tennis. Arriving on the scene ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... with a fine spire, and might invite a traveller to survey it; but I, perhaps, wanted vigour, and ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... locked arms with it, the two gossiping together under their breath as they floated on through the tall grasses fringing the banks, or circled about the lily-pads growing in the eddies. In the middle of the meadow, just where two white ribbons of roads crossed, was a clump of trees pierced by a church-spire. Outside of this bower of green—a darker green than the velvet meadow- grass about it—glistened the roofs and windows of the ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... into his Morris chair with every bone in his body aching like a magnetized wire-skeleton charged with pain, Stanton collapsed again into his pillows and sat staring—staring into the dying fire. Nine o'clock rang out dully from the nearest church spire; ten o'clock, eleven o'clock followed in turn with monotonous, chiming insistency. Gradually the relaxing steam-radiators began to grunt and grumble into a chill quietude. Gradually along the bare, bleak stretches of unrugged floor little cold draughts of air came creeping exploringly ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... low sill and stood on the leads. The night was soft and cool. The sky, full of the light of a rising moon, shewed beautifully, against its luminous violet, the outlines of dome and minaret and spire, and far out beyond the crowded city's confines, the two incomparable mountains, Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, the huge volcanoes, shrouded in eternal snow, rising a sheer ten thousand feet from the level plain, standing ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... carpet in patterns composed of pretty wild flowers. Upon it stand hundreds of cottage-built tenements, covered with the creeping vine. In the centre, the presidio, or government-house; on one side the graceful spire of a church, on the other the massive walls of a convent. Above all, is a sky of the deepest cobalt blue, richly contrasting with the dark green of the tall pines, and the uncertain and indescribable tints on the horizon of these ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... the hacks for hire, of which latter there are nine hundred licensed. The canal is filled with country boats of excellent model, and the warehouses are crammed with goods. Money seems to be abundant and things dear. They are just finishing a tasteful Gothic church, with a tall spire, which is a notable landmark as you approach; they are also completing officers' quarters on a hill which commands the town. Barracks for three or four regiments lie unoccupied a couple of miles outside the city, and ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... cultivated field, in redeeming which from the wilderness, their vigor has not been displayed? Where, amid unsubdued nature, by the side of the first log-hut of the settler, does the school-house stand, and the church-spire rise, unless the sons of New England are there? Where does improvement advance, under the active energy of willing hearts and ready hands, prostrating the moss-covered monarch of the wood, and from their ashes, amid their charred roots, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... carrying ice or lumber to Rouen; fishing-boats with red or umber sails. He was blind to the villages, clambering over cliffs to a casino, a plage, and a Hotel des Bains, or nestling on the uplands round a spire. He was blind to the picturesque wooded gorges, through which little tributaries of the great river had once run violently down from the table-land of the Pays de Caux. He was blind to the charms of Harfleur, famous and somnolent, on the banks of a still more ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... comprehensive view of it, because the woods approached so closely that the traveller came upon it almost unawares. From every other side the outlines of the Abbey were singularly beautiful. Here a small spire sharply cut the sky, or a graceful point of roof told of a chapel or high-pitched hall; there, half frowning, half friendly, a mass of creeper-clad, grey wall looked capable of withstanding a siege. In some places solid pieces of masonry spoke of comparatively recent improvement, ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... varied from her dull, passive demeanour. And they were blessed tears of relief that she shed when Miss Monro, herself weeping bitterly, told her to put her head out of the post-chaise window, for at the next turning of the road they would catch the last glimpse of Hamley church spire. ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the waste of green water and the low coasts of Beveland, all unexpectedly to me we rounded a point, and there was a half-hidden town, one graceful spire seeming to beckon where ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... around with two ribbons with the ends pendant, a thumb and two fingers. The caduceus again the conspicuous part of the sacred Triad Ashur is symbolized by a single stone placed upright,—the stump of a tree, a block, a tower, a spire, minaret, pole, pine, poplar or ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... than to slip out of a night, and to go to that there beastly churchyard, saving your presence, for 'company,' as she calls it—nice sort of company, indeed. And it is just the same way with storms. You remember that dreadful gale a month ago, the one that took down the North Grove and blew the spire off Rewtham Church. Well, just when it was at its worst, and I was a-sitting and praying that the roof might keep over our heads, I look round for Angela, and can't see her. 'Some of your tricks again,' thinks I to myself; and just then up comes ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... the open window, and seemed intently gazing on the scene below. Mrs. Leslie reached her side unperceived. The moonlight was exceedingly bright; and just beyond the garden, from which it was separated but by a slight fence, lay the solitary churchyard of the hamlet, with the slender spire of the holy edifice rising high and tapering into the shining air. It was a calm and tranquillizing scene; and so intent was Lady Vargrave's abstracted gaze, that Mrs. Leslie was unwilling to disturb ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to think of the church as I propose it shall be when finished according to the plans I have made," he said hoarsely. "I am going to think of it with a belfry spire roofed with red tiles and a clock in the tower, and I am going to think of the clock as pointing to the exact hour of noon. Do you all understand? It is impossible that this man should know of how I mean to build that spire and about the clock, because until this moment no one knew except myself. ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... there. There was nothing peculiarly touching about the flat, long road, with the rink beneath it and the mountains above. The houses and shops, German pensions and crowded balconies had no particular charm. Even the tall, thin spire of the church lacked distinction; and yet it seemed to Winn that it would be difficult to forget. He stopped at the rink as he returned to pick up his skates. He told himself that he was fortunate when he discovered Claire, with Lionel on one side of her ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... not Thou forget me." A peculiar old prayer, but I kept on repeating it to myself with great comfort that evening. My men were rather quiet. Perhaps the general calmness was affecting them with kindred thoughts, though an Englishman never shows them. On the left stood the stumpy spire of Bayencourt Church just left by us. On the right lay Sailly-au-Bois in its girdle of trees. Along the side of the valley which ran out from behind Sailly-au-Bois, arose numerous lazy pillars of smoke from the wood fires and kitchens of an artillery encampment. An English aeroplane, ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... confusion, the drunken, panic-stricken masquers rushed to the street. The flames burst through the roof, sending high up into the air columns of fire, which threw into bright reflection every tower and spire within the circuit of the metropolis, brilliantly illuminating the whole fabric of St. Paul's, and throwing a flood of light across Waterloo Bridge, which set out in bold relief the dark outline of the Surrey hills." That "flood of light" was beheld by me, held up in my nurse's arms ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... straight and glittering shaft Shot 'thwart the earth! In crown of living fire Up comes the day! As if they, conscious, quaff'd The sunny flood, hill, forest, city, spire, Laugh in the wakening light. Go, vain Desire! The dusky lights have gone; go thou thy way! And pining Discontent, like them expire! Be called my chamber Peace, when ends the day, And let me, with the dawn, like Pilgrim, sing and pray. Great is the Lord our God, And let His praise be great: He ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... view the ancient writings. The single copy is kept in a great vault, built of indestructible metals, and protectively sheathed to last for all Time. The spot above its burial place is marked by a tall spire of ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... lovely or beautiful scene. Not a vestige of man, or of his works, was there. The setting sun that cast such a gorgeous flood of light upon this exquisite panorama, bringing out some of these lofty islands in strong relief, and casting others into intense shade, shed no cheery beam upon church spire or cottage pane. We beheld the landscape, savage and ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... core— A shadow that lifts clear and floats— The cabin'd village round the shore, The landing and the fringe of boats; Faint films of smoke that curl and wreathe, And upward with the like desire The vast gray church that seems to breathe In heaven with its dreaming spire. ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... There were also the wood-pigeons of the elms in the Bishop's garden, who held themselves up proudly on the borders of the terraces, going slowly, as if walking merely to show themselves off. Sometimes, half lost in the blue sky, looking scarcely larger than a fly, a crow alighted on the point of a spire to smooth its wings. The old stones themselves were animated by the quiet working of the roots of a whole flora of plants, the lichens and the grasses, which pushed themselves through the openings in the ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... Below, these distant tree-masses made sharp capes and promontories on the white grass; above, their rounded tops rose dark against a blue, light-breathing sky. At one point the river pierced the blackness of the wood, and in the space thus made the spire of a noble church shot heavenward. Swans floated dimly along the stream and under the bridge. The air was fresh, but the rawness of spring was gone. It was the last week of May; the "high midsummer pomps" were near—a heavenly prophecy ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in its version of the flora and fauna of that country. He might imagine that lions and leopards were commoner than they are in our hedgerows and country lanes, or that the head and neck of a giraffe was as native to our landscapes as a village spire. And that is why I apologise in anticipation for a probable lack of proportion in this work. Like the elephant, I may have seen too much of a special enclosure where a special sort of lions are gathered together. I may exaggerate the territorial, as distinct from the vertical space occupied ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... a girl, he tells her to build only a spire, for "modesty beseemeth a woman." Well for Sir Asker that he did not live in our day of clamoring suffragists. He would have "views" without doubt. But no such things troubled him while he battled in foreign lands all summer. It was autumn when he returned and saw from afar the ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... this village is oblong, but at the two ends of the roof, spire-like tops are affixed, similar to those on the rest of the huts in the village. They are not ornamental nor useful, but interesting as marking a native characteristic on a house copied from those ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... minute, dear," she pleaded. "You haven't seen this gorgeous view to the southwest, with Mount Pisgah looming in the center like some vast cathedral spire—look, isn't ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... not be confounded with a spire-steeple. The expression was used to denote a tower, long ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... snow,-the pitiless snow! Cruel and cold, as the shelterless know; Huddled in nooks on the mud or the flags, Wrapp'd in a few scanty, fluttering rags. Gently it rests on the roof and the spire, And filling the streets with its slush and the mire, Freezing the life out of poor, starving souls, Wild whirling and drifting as Boreas howls. Hard is their lot who have no where to go, To shelter from storm and the ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... consummately know no others. Nor is it without the strange significance which you will find in what at first seems chance, in all noble histories, as soon as you can read them rightly,—that the statue of Athena Polias was of olive-wood, and that the Greek temple and Gothic spire are both merely the permanent representations of useful wooden structures. On these two first arts follow building in stone,—sculpture,—metal work,—and painting; every art being properly called "fine" which demands the exercise of the full faculties of heart and intellect. For though ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... three or four smaller and narrower streets connected by courts and alleys diverged at right angles. In the middle of the town was the church, an immense building, big enough to hold half Eastthorpe, and celebrated for its beautiful spire and its peal of eight bells. Round the church lay the churchyard, fringed with huge elms, and in the Abbey Close, as it was called, which was the outer girdle of the churchyard on three sides, the fourth side of the square being the High Street, there lived in 1840 the principal doctor, ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... memorable battlefield of nations, the richest and most highly cultivated garden of civilised industry. Nearly all the Lombard cities may be seen, some of them faint like bluish films of vapour, some clear with dome and spire. There is Modena and her Ghirlandina. Carpi, Parma, Mirandola, Verona, Mantua, lie well defined and russet on the flat green map; and there flashes a bend of lordly Po; and there the Euganeans rise like islands, telling us where Padua and Ferrara nestle in the amethystine haze ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... was an unfavorable omen, and would discourage his men. He cast about in his mind for a means of retaliation. Far over the roofs of the city rose a tapering spire, that of the cathedral in the Upper Town. On this spire, the devout Catholics of the French city had hung a picture of the Holy Family as an invocation of Divine aid. Through his spy-glass, Phipps could see that some strange object hung from the steeple, and, suspecting its character, commanded ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... from the soaring lyric of the spire, Like the composite voice of all the town, The bells burst swiftly into singing fire That wrapped the building, and which showered down Bright cadences to flash along the ways Loud with the splendid gladness of ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... which thus towers above us, and gleams like the shining cross on the top of some lofty cathedral spire, does not flash up there inaccessible, nor lie before us like some pathless precipice, up which nothing that has not wings can ever hope to rise, but the height of the love of Christ is an hospitable height, which can be scaled by us. Nay, rather, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... he had been oppressed by one of the most melancholy moods that had ever afflicted him. Now, as he stood still for a moment, looking through the open window at the stars as they began to shine out above the cathedral spire across the river, he felt as though ten years had passed since he had driven down through the forest. Only the image of Hilda remained, and seemed to drown in light the gloomy forebodings that had so much distressed him. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... with a crown of thorns. The different sides of the Chapelle are in the same style—with buttresses between the windows, gables surmounting these, and a fine open parapet crowning all. The roof is sloping, and the height is over a hundred feet. The spire measures, from the vaulting, seventy feet. We entered by a stair-case the upper chapel, and an exquisite view presented itself. A single apartment, a half-circular chair, with fine, large windows, detached columns with bases and capitals, and fine groining—these all strike the eye of ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... the most prominent is the Roman Catholic Church, a white frame building with two great towers; Mr. Coan's native church with a spire comes next; and then the neat little foreign church, also with a spire. The Romish Church is a rather noisy neighbour, for its bells ring at unnatural hours, and doleful strains of a band which cannot play either in time or tune proceed from ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... rises to the height of two hundred feet in square massiveness, and from this point springs a slender and graceful spire to another hundred feet, so that next to Salisbury, the great archetype of this special class of ecclesiastical architecture, it is the tallest spire in England. Two square towers, richly ornamented, embellish the western front, and beneath the great window ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... be refused. Ascend to the top of this spire by this outer stair, and throw yourself down from it without hesitation. When you are at the earth, though you were in a thousand pieces, with one word I will set you upon your feet, straighter and with a better carriage than you ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... the Ramparts and Judith caught her breath in amazement at the wonderful scene. Away below them flowed the majestic St. Lawrence, its snow-clad banks pierced here and there by tiny villages each with its heavenward-pointing spire; to the north were the Laurentian Hills, now glistening in a dazzling white mantle; at their feet was the town, quaint and picturesque, its spires and monuments reminders of its ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... said altar there are very large gratings of iron, with rich ornaments in marble and mosaic, that look down therein. This building is flanked on one of the sides by two sacristies, and by a very high campanile, namely, five times as high as it is broad. It had on top a very high octagonal spire, but this was removed because it threatened to fall. This whole work was brought to a finish in the space of four years, and no more, by the genius of Maestro Jacopo Tedesco and by the solicitude of Frate Elia, after whose death, to the end ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... and to keep out the glare of the sun-beams from its chambers. Through what a thicket of currant-bushes, and rose-bushes, and lilacs, and snow-balls, the path winds from the porch to the little gate—is it not a most charming spot? Now look over the brow of the hill—there, you can see the spire of the village church; and if you will walk a few paces further to yonder green knoll, you will see a cluster of pretty dwellings, and comfortable farm-houses, scattered through ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... curving miles Of unimagined architecture! Tombs, Temples, and colonnades are neighboured there By fortresses that Titans might defend, And amphitheatres where Gods might strive. Cathedrals, buttressed with unnumbered tiers Of ruddy rock, lift to the sapphire sky A single spire of marble pure as snow; And huge aerial palaces arise Like mountains built of unconsuming flame. Along the weathered walls, or standing deep In riven valleys where no foot may tread, Are lonely pillars, and tall monuments ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... those tobacco plants whose leaves do not spread and grow large, but rather spire upward and grow tall; these plants they do not tend, not being worth their labor."—Mr. Clayton's Letter to the Royal Society, 1688. Miscellanea ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... patch in the road showed where tile or chimney-pot had been swept off and dashed to pieces. The sign at the village inn had been torn from its hinges, and farther on Tom came upon the Vicar examining the great gilt weather-cock on the little spire at the top of the big ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... presence of death with her out of that still chamber. Every sound was hushed into silence, every object appeared as unsubstantial as a shadow. Beyond the lawn, over the jewelled meadows, she could see the white spire of Old Church rising above the coloured foliage in the churchyard, and beyond it, the flat ashen turnpike, which had led hundreds of adventurous feet toward the great world they were seeking. She remembered that the sight of the turnpike had once ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... when fair and soft, The roof began to move aloft; Aloft rose every beam and rafter; The heavy wall climb'd slowly after. The chimney widen'd, and grew higher, Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist; With upside down, doom'd there to dwell, 'Tis now no kettle, but a bell. A wooden jack, which had almost Lost, by disuse, the art to roast, A sudden alteration feels, Increas'd by new intestine wheels; And strait against the steeple rear'd, Became a clock, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... and as lean and clean. How short and fat and dark and debauched he makes one feel! By nothing he says or means, of course, but merely by his old unconscious purity and simplicity—that slender straightness which makes him remind you of the spire of an English abbey. He greeted me with smiles, and stares, and alarming blushes. He assures me that he never would have known me, and that five years have altered me—sehr! I asked him if it were for the better? He looked at me hard for a moment, with his eyes of blue, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... house may be seen the Block-house, which formerly stood at the corner of King and Wentworth streets. Still further to the right is the old wind-mill tower, where the Dufferin Hotel now stands, and to the right of this is old Trinity Church before its first spire was destroyed by fire.] ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... It was a tremendous mountain, a terrible-looking, ugly mountain, perhaps three miles away. Aldous had never seen another like it. Its two huge shoulders were of almost ebon blackness, and glistened in the sunlight as if smeared with oil. Between those two shoulders rose a cathedral-like spire of rock and snow that seemed to tip the white ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... Robertson had been the pilot of Fairport, and was as well known to the frequenters of that harbor as was the tall spire which was the pride of the town. The sound of war had, however, roused within him the spirit of his father of Revolutionary memory. He declared he would not have it said that Joe Robertson was content to play ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... of trees and houses from the slope of our garden, W. V. saw the roof and spire of the church of the Oak-men showing well above the green ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... that adorned it. The sweet perfume of the flowers had already spread into the surrounding air, which, being free from every taint, conducted to her lips a full measure of the fragrance received from the spire of blossom in its midst. At the top of the pole were crossed hoops decked with small flowers; beneath these came a milk-white zone of Maybloom; then a zone of bluebells, then of cowslips, then of lilacs, then of ragged-robins, daffodils, and so ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... by Antonio di San Gallo in 1518, and is one of the most perfect specimens existing of the sober classical style. The Church consists of a Greek square, continued at the east end into a semicircular tribune, surmounted by a central cupola, and flanked by a detached bell-tower, ending in a pyramidal spire. The whole is built of solid yellow travertine, a material which, by its warmth of colour, is pleasing to the eye, and mitigates the mathematical severity of the design. Upon entering, we feel at once what Alberti called the music of this style; its large and ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... in his shady groves Full many a convent rears its glittering spire, Mid scenes where Heavenly Contemplation loves To kindle in her soul her hallowed fire, Where air and sea with rocks and woods conspire To breathe a sweet religious calm around, Weaning the thoughts from every low desire, And the wild waves that ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... little way, and enjoyed the tranquil beauty of the evening. The sky was pale and clear, somewhat greenish overhead and deepening along the line of the horizon into amber and rose. Behind us lay the town with every brown spire articulated against the sky and every vane glittering in the last glow that streamed up from the west. To our left rose a line of steep chalk cliffs, and before us lay the river, winding away through meadow lands fringed with willows and poplars, and interspersed ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... bricks showed like blotches of paint under a thick coating of powder. Over the wide door two little oblong windows, holding four damaged panes, blinked rakishly from a mat of ivy, which spread from the rotting eaves to the shingled roof, where the slim wooden spire bent under the weight of creeper and innumerable nesting sparrows in spring. After pointing heavenward for half a century, the steeple appeared to have swerved suddenly from its purpose, and to invite now the attention of the wayfarer to the bar beneath. This cheerful room ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... go! Stopping for a few minutes at Willesden Junction, our Irish horse pulls harder, and bolts with us for Rugby and some intermediate stations. It is just half-past seven a.m., a beautiful day. There is Harrow on the left, we can see the well-known spire, and we recall the days when we came up for the cricket-match against Eton, and how we all went back in ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... we attended service in the cathedral, a large modern structure, with two towers, each of which required a spire forty feet high to complete the original design. Massive columns of Aberdeen granite had been erected in the interior to support the roof of polished oak, adorned with carved devices, some of which had not yet been completed. The Communion-table, or altar, made in Italy ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... they had tumbled down haphazard from the top of the hill at the back. The flatness of the Kentish shore ends there. A fleet of steam-tugs lies at anchor in front of the various piers. A conspicuous church spire, the first seen distinctly coming from the sea, has a thoughtful grace, the serenity of a fine form above the chaotic disorder of men's houses. But on the other side, on the flat Essex side, a shapeless and desolate red edifice, a vast pile of bricks with many windows and a slate roof more ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... civilians used its investments as the best means of remitting their savings home. When the missionaries landed there was nothing but a Portuguese Catholic church in the settlement, and the Governor was raising subscriptions for that pretty building in which Carey preached till he died, and the spire of which the Governor-General is said to have erected to improve the view of the town from the windows of his summer ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... canons of the Church of the Three Kings were required for saltpetre to make gunpowder for the armies of the Republic. Over the door is a mask carved in the stone and a little window; above the monolithic church, standing on the platform of rock, is the exquisite flamboyant spire, not communicating with the church beneath, also ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Well may the hearers' ears go aching; for thy cry, man, proceedeth from thy aching belly. But now I will set the song again, and tell thee of a lady girdled with fine gold. Beneath the girdle beats a red heart; but her spirit is like a spire of blue smoke, that comes from a fire, indeed, but strains up to heaven. Warmed by that fire, like that smoke I fly up; and so I lie ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... They must be Roman Catholics and exceed the age of sixty years before they are received. On the north side of the quadrangle is the Roman Catholic parish church, a fine building in the Gothic style, with a high spire and moulded ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton |
