"Spire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wondreth what it myhte be, And bad men to gon in and se. 1140 This ladi tho was crope aside, As sche that wolde hireselven hide, For sche ne wiste what thei were: Thei soghte aboute and founde hir there And broghten up hire child and hire; And therupon this lord to spire Began, fro whenne that sche cam, And what sche was. Quod sche, "I am A womman wofully bestad. I hadde a lord, and thus he bad, 1150 That I forth with my litel Sone Upon the wawes scholden wone, Bot why the cause was, I not: Bot he which alle thinges wot Yit hath, I thonke him, of his miht ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... equestrian statue of Peter the Great, with his arm stretched out in an attitude of command. Forming the different sides of this vast open space are some of the finest public buildings in the city: the Admiralty with its golden spire, the beautiful Isaac Church with its superb granite columns, the Winter Palace with its long rows of richly ornamented windows, the War Office, the Senate House, and many others. At one end, with a crescent of ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... the left there was a gleam of green, atoning for its spring thinness and scantiness by a vivid energy of colour; while straight across the court, beyond the rich patchwork of the roofs and the picturesque outlines of the chimneys, a delicate piece of white stone-work rose into air—the spire of one of Wren's churches, as dainty, as perfect, and as fastidiously balanced as the hand of man could ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shadow of the spire of St. Giles's, in the pavement between that old cathedral church and the County Hall, the passer-by will mark the figure of a heart let into the causeway, and know that he is standing on the "Heart of Midlothian," [Footnote: ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... of God's own hallow'd day Had painted yonder spire with gold, And calling sinful man to pray, Loud, long, and deep the bell ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... 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 ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... a time of darkness and stagnation merely? By no means. People were tremendously alive. Great states were being founded. Large centres of commerce were being developed. High above the turretted towers of the castle and the peaked roof of the town-hall, rose the slender spire of the newly built Gothic cathedral. Everywhere the world was in motion. The high and mighty gentlemen of the city-hall, who had just become conscious of their own strength (by way of their recently acquired riches) ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... passion of life, flaming records of the days when every instant held not an eternity of ennui, but of sensibility. "Red life boils in my veins.... Every woman is to me the gift of a world.... I hear a thousand nightingales.... I could eat all the elephants of Hindostan and pick my teeth with the spire of Strasburg Cathedral.... Life is the greatest of blessings, and death the worst of evils...." But the poet was still reading—she forced herself ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... going on around them?" he rattled on, tapping the wet slab of a tomb with the end of his umbrella. "And not only these sturdy patriots who lie here, but the queer old ghosts who live in the steeple?" he added, waving his hand upward to the slender spire, its cross lost in the fog. "Yes, ghosts and goblins, my boy. You don't believe it?—I do—or I persuade myself I do, which is better. Sometimes I can see them straddling the chimes when they ring out the hours, or ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... itself, which formed the boundary of one-half of the garden; a mass of sober magnificence, rising in calm repose against the sky, which, to my awe-struck gaze and childish imagination, seemed to rest upon its exquisitely formed spire. Seated on the grass, busying my fingers with the daisies that were permitted to spring around, I have been lost in such imaginings as I suppose not many little children indulge in, while permitting my eyes to rove over the seemingly interminable ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... else that I could ever see. And these Davosers took to them naturally when the time for Comus came. It was between four and five in the morning, and nearly all the houses in the place were dark. The tall church-tower and spire loomed up above us in grey twilight. The tireless wind still swept thin snow from fell and forest. But the frenzied bells had sunk into their twelvemonth's slumber, which shall be broken only by decorous tollings at less festive times. I wondered whether they were ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... in Mrs. Astrid's room stood open, and through them were seen charming prospects over the dale, with its azure stream, its green heights and slopes, and the peaceful spire of its church in the background. She herself stood, as in astonishment, at the beauty of the grove, and her ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... has already been said, they make a beautiful tree. And if you want an avenue of trees on a drive that don't spread too wide and run up like Lombardi poplar, they'll beat Lombardi poplar all to pieces. And if you crowd them a little, they will grow up like a spire and retain their branches, so you really have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... and listen, there is no sign of anything but peace and pleasant life in the surroundings. But these black-clad women do know—know that the cool green clump of trees over on the hill-side hides a roofless ruin with fire-blackened walls; that the church spire that for all their lives they had seen out there over the sky-line is no longer visible because it lies shell-smitten to a tumbled heap of brick and stone and mortar; that the glint of white wood and spot of scarlet yonder in the field is the rough wooden cross with a kepi on top marking ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... the harbor, the wharves crowded with shipping, and the neighboring shores of Long Island and New Jersey. Towards the north they looked down for many miles upon continuous lines of streets, and thousands of roofs, with here and there a church-spire rising above its neighbors. Dick had never before been up there, and he, as well as Frank, was interested in the grand view spread ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... night to and sometimes into the enemy lines and on their return report what they had heard. By day, aviators came back from flights over enemy positions and gave details of what they had seen. Every hill, tree-top, church spire, tall building and captive balloon watched every move of the enemy and reported it. These reports by the ears and eyes of the armies enabled American and allied commanders to plan their infantry and ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... dwarfing the petty, storied dwellings. This is but one great church. In brilliant contrast in another quarter, adjoining the city, is the great abbey church of St. Mary, crowned by a lofty and magnificent spire rising above the equally fine conventual buildings. All over the city are seen the churches and buildings of other monastic and religious houses. The background of dwellings and shops, built in a similar style, is cut by a few winding streets, and studded with the towers, spires, ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... chant our mournful songs." So the church arises,—in Germany, in France, in England,—solemn, mystical, massive, a type of sorrow, in the form of a cross, with "a sepulchral crypt like the man in the tomb, before the lofty spire pointed to the man who had risen to Heaven." The church is still struggling, and is not jubilant, except in Gregorian chants, and is not therefore lofty or ornamental. It is a vault. It is more like a catacomb than a basilica, for the world is buried deep in sorrows and fears. Look ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... and Christ Church spire. But I must rest. I'll enter yonder inn." She stepped forward toward a shabby looking tavern a few doors off, where a crowd of garrulous soldiers were grouped about the door. Too weary to observe any one, Leah staggered into the forlorn, miserably furnished reception-room of the Good Cheer House, ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... well known face, But the faces were new and strange; New figures sat in the oaken stalls, New voices chaunted in the choir, Yet the place was the same place, The same dusky walls Of cold, gray stone, The same cloisters and belfry and spire. ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... air before they go into the church. The poor little dears shouldn't have the wickedness and impurity of this world break on them too suddenly. If the stranger noticed any lack about our church, it would be that of a spire. There is a place for one; indeed, it was begun, and then the builders seem to have stopped, with the notion that it would grow itself from such a good root. It is a mistake however, to suppose that we do not ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... higher and higher, The branches blow and I see a spire, The gleam of a turret, the glint of a dome, All sparkling and ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... wonderful. But when he left the park, and crossed the Hampstead Road into a dreary region of dwellings crowded and commonplace as the thoughts of a worshipper of Mammon, houses upon houses, here and there shepherded by a tall spire, it was hard to believe that the spring was indeed coming slowly ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... edifice which graces this sightly spot, though sadly dealt with in its general symmetry, still lifts its lofty spire with undiminished beauty, and justifies the stirring ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... Those lightning-births my nature seemed to share, They told the secrets of its fiery frame, The sudden messengers of hate and love, The thunderbolts that arm the hand of Jove, And strike sometimes the sacred spire, and strike ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... weeping-elm, and the alder, glittered in the sunlight,—their finny inhabitants occasionally leaping in the air, in joyous sport. Fourteen buildings were scattered over the demesne,—one, by its spire, seeming to be devoted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... 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 ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... long been deemed sacrilege for mortal eyes to 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 stone. It is ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... Harrow-on-the-Hill, with its pointed spire, rises blue in the distance; and distant ridges, like receding waves, rise into blueness, one after the other, out of the low-lying mist; the last ridge bluely melting into space. In the midst of it all gleams the ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... 210; knob, loma[obs3], pena [obs3][U.S.], picacho[obs3], tump[obs3]; knoll, hummock, hillock, barrow, mound, mole; steeps, bluff, cliff, craig[obs3], tor[obs3], peak, pike, clough[obs3]; escarpment, edge, ledge, brae; dizzy height. tower, pillar, column, obelisk, monument, steeple, spire, minaret, campanile, turret, dome, cupola; skyscraper. pole, pikestaff, maypole, flagstaff; top mast, topgallant mast. ceiling &c. (covering) 223. high water; high tide, flood tide, spring tide. altimetry &c. (angel) 244[obs3]; batophobia[obs3]. satellite, spy-in-the-sky. V. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... that same season. It was early; so early that the cross of Grace Church had, when I looked up, just caught the morning sun, and for a moment flamed like a crusader's symbol. And then the grace and glory of that exquisite spire became slowly visible. Fret by fret the sunlight stole slowly down, quivering and dropping from each, until at last the whole church beamed in rosy radiance. Up and down the long avenue the street lay in shadow; by some strange trick of the atmosphere the sun seemed to have sought out only ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... the moonlight; then between hedges, over which they saw broad wan meadows shrouded in a low-lying mist. They scarcely heeded whither they rode at first, being only anxious to get away, turning once westward when the spire of Chichester cathedral rose suddenly near them out of the dewy night, pale and intricate and high. They rode, speaking little, just a rare word now and then, at a turning, at a footfall, at a roughness in ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... Nine in ten of us had never seen a mountain, nor a hill as high as a church spire, until we had crossed the Ohio River. In power upon the emotions nothing, I think, is comparable to a first sight of mountains. To a member of a plains-tribe, born and reared on the flats of Ohio or Indiana, a mountain region was a perpetual miracle. Space seemed to have taken ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... beneath the trees, Where first our marriage-vows were given, With merry peals shall swell the breeze, And point with taper spire to heaven. ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... lies near E. by N. and W. by S., and is ten leagues long in that direction, and no where above three or four leagues broad. The coast is rocky, much indented, and seemed to form several bays or inlets. It shews a surface of craggy hills which spire up to a vast height, especially near the west end. Except the craggy summits of the hills, the greatest part was covered with trees and shrubs, or some sort of herbage, and there was little or no snow on it. The currents between Cape Deseada and Cape Horn set from west to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... laid out, with every palm of tree of aggressively Indian appearance carefully excluded from its green expanse, so it wears a curiously home-like appearance. The Maidan is very reminiscent of Hyde Park, though almost double its size. There is one spot, where the Gothic spire of the cathedral emerges from a mass of greenery, with a large sheet of water in the foreground, which recalls exactly the view over Bayswater from the ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... church spire, Or in the fire; On the wavelet's tip, Or the mast of a ship; In the shining gem Over Bethlehem; In the little cradle, With the ox in the stable, A baby fair It was ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... immediate locality, but by no means as prominent or famous among his neighbors as he was in Europe. He was not so fertile in resources as to be in any sense inspired, and had privately waited for the finishing of a certain spire in the little town of Philadelphia so that he might use it to get nearer to the clouds to demonstrate his theory of lightning. It was in June, 1752, that this great exemplar of the genius of common-sense descended to the trial of the experiment that was the simplest and the ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... heard outside just then. On looking from the windows, a great cake of ice about five feet thick, with a point like a church spire, was seen attempting, as it were, to leap the lower end of the garden-fence. It failed; but on making a second attempt was more successful. The fence went slowly down, and the spire laid its head among the vegetables, or rather on the spot where ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... spire in the evening calm, No more they circle in sportive glee, Hearing the hum of the vesper psalm, And the swell of the organ so far below; But far, far away, over land and sea, In the still mid-air the swift ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... and the main land, and that it was a mile wide and tolerably clear and deep enough. After having passed Deadman's Head and this rock, we came to a small pretty sand-bay, but it lies open. From Deadman's Head you can see, on the point of Falmouth Bay, a church with a small spire, and near it a stone windmill, which forms a good land-mark, for along the whole coast there are few or no steeples. As you sail along this point the castle comes into view standing upon the west point of the harbor of Falmouth, where also ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... fifty new churches, being then in a state of decay. The present church, which is very solid, and has dignity of outline, was the work of Flitcroft, and was opened April 14, 1734. The steeple is 160 feet high, with a rustic pedestal, a Doric story, an octagonal tower, and spire. The basement is of rusticated Portland stone, of which the church is built, and quoins of the same material decorate the windows and angles within. It follows the lines of the period, with hardly ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... was now, even in the event of escaping, reduced to an ordinary vessel dependent on its sails. The shock seemed to have shaken the berg itself, for at that moment a crashing sound was heard overhead. The terror-stricken crew looked up, and for one moment a pinnacle like a church spire was seen to flash through the air right above them. It fell with an indescribable roar close alongside, deluging the decks with water. There was a momentary sigh of relief, which, however, was chased away by a succession of falling masses, varying from a pound ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... child." "Who's Mike?" my brother growled A little roughly. Quoth the fisherman— "Mike, Sir? he's just a fisher lad, no more; But he can sing, when he takes on to sing, So loud there's not a sparrow in the spire But needs must hear. Sir, if I might make bold, I'd ask what song that was you sung. My mate, As we were shoving off the mackerel boats, Said he, 'I'll wager that's the sort o' song They kept their hearts up with ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... that the traveller might pass it by without notice, but withal retaining the massive piers and arches of the first half of the eleventh century. There is Evreux, with its Norman naves, its tall slender Gothic choir, its strange Italian western tower, and almost more fantastic central spire. All these are noble churches, sharing with those of our own land a certain sobriety and architectural good sense which is often wanting in the churches of France proper. In Normandy as in England, you do not see piles, like Beauvais, begun ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... being placed near the tomb of Turenne. The mornings were spent in the celebration of several masses, at a double altar which was raised between the nave and the dome; and for four days there floated from the spire of the dome a long black banner or ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... never hurried to leave his office now. Wonderful sunsets burned over the North River, wonderful stars trembled up among the towers; more wonderful than anything he could hurry away to. One of his windows looked directly down upon the spire of Old Trinity, with the green churchyard and the pale sycamores far below. Wanning often dropped into the church when he was going out to lunch; not because he was trying to make his peace with Heaven, but because the church was ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... a straggling little settlement which they saw, with one long, broken street running through the center. There was a church spire, to be sure, and a square little wooden building in which some business men had started a bank for the sake of the coming settlers now beginning to pass through for the country along the Peace River. There were one or two stores, as ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... other by the base. This again indicates that the result is not determined by chance. Worms appear sometimes to revolve in the act of drawing in the triangles, for five out of the whole lot had been wound into an irregular spire round the inside of the burrow. Worms kept in a warm room drew 63 triangles into their burrows; but, as in the case of the pine-leaves, they worked in a rather careless manner, for only 44 per cent. were drawn in by the apex, 22 per cent. by the middle, ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... children and pine for the kind of teaching which the virtuosos attempt to do, let them realize that they are in a sense the foundation of the structure, and although perhaps not as conspicuous as the spire which towers up into the skies, they are ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... Abbot Islip, who witnessed the erection of Henry VII.'s Chapel. Two hundred and thirty years afterwards Sir Christopher Wren restored Islip's work, and designed the upper portions. The edifice is not yet complete, as the square central tower requires a lofty spire to complete it. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... arm in arm, we two have reached, nay, passed, you see, The village-precinct; sun sets mild on Saint-Marie— We only catch the spire, and yet I seem to know What's hid i' the turn o' the hill: how all the graves must glow Soberly, as each warms its little iron cross, Flourished about with gold, and graced (if private loss Be fresh) with ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... there is the problem that confronts us, South and North together. What shall be done in this dire extremity? I remember years ago hearing of a fire in Charleston in which that beautiful spire of St. Michael's took fire and some one had to be found to go up beyond the reach of the hose to put out the flame kindling and flickering there. No one was found until a Negro stepped forth and climbed that tower, taking his life in his hands, and put out that flame. ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 1, January, 1890 • Various
... screen the herdsman's solitary hut; While far beyond, and overthwart the stream, That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale, The sloping land recedes into the clouds; Displaying on its varied side the grace Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower, Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells Just undulates upon the listening ear, Groves, heaths, and smoking villages, remote. Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily viewed, Please daily, and whose novelty survives ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... brow of which was a breast of pines. In 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 present beautiful landscapes, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Mississippi eastward, and southward to the Gulf, the Tubercled or Small Pale Green Orchis (H. flava) lifts a spire of inconspicuous greenish-yellow flowers, more attractive to the eye of the structural botanist than to the aesthete. It blooms in moist places, as most orchids do, since water with which to manufacture nectar enough to fill their deep spurs is a prime necessity. Orchids have arrived at that ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... seen against others of their kind still freshly green, or against evergreens, are more memorable than whole groves will be by-and-by. How beautiful, when a whole tree is like one great scarlet fruit full of ripe juices, every leaf, from lowest limb to topmost spire, all aglow, especially if you look toward the sun! What more remarkable object can there be in the landscape? Visible for miles, too fair to be believed. If such a phenomenon occurred but once, it would be handed down by tradition to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... encampment below me engrossed all my eyes. In that windless hollow a thin spire of smoke rose blue towards the blue. An iron pot was suspended on three poles; the smoke hugged it closely, united above it, and rose in a column. The couple, a young man and woman, sat still, watching it. Their meal was ended, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... this before," she breathed. "Look—'way off there, with those trees and the houses and that lovely church spire, and the river shining just like silver. Why, Nancy, there doesn't anybody need any pictures with that to look at. Oh, I'm so glad now she let me ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... German plains; mean little hamlets, which are full of litter when you enter them, lie sprinkled about; little church-spires (like suffragans to Chotusitz spire, which is near you); a ragged untrimmed country: beyond the Brook, towards the Dobrowa, two or more miles from Chotusitz, is still noticeable: something like a Deer-park, with umbrageous features, bushy clumps, and shadowy vestiges of a Mansion, the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the lower ground, thrust out into the river, between me and the eastern shore, which lay wholly in shadow, one shadow, one soft mass of dusky green, rounding out into a promontory. Above it, beyond it, at the foot of the hills, a white church spire rose as sharp as a needle. It is all before me, even the summer stillness in which my senses were wrapt. There was a clatter in the house behind me, but I did ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... field, so whiten'd was the ground, While Vulcan breathed the fiery blast around. Swift on the sedgy reeds the ruin preys; Along the margin winds the running blaze: The trees in flaming rows to ashes turn, The flowering lotos and the tamarisk burn, Broad elm, and cypress rising in a spire; The watery willows hiss before the fire. Now glow the waves, the fishes pant for breath, The eels lie twisting in the pangs of death: Now flounce aloft, now dive the scaly fry, Or, gasping, turn their bellies to the sky. At length the river rear'd his languid head, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Hyacinth, or Spire Lily. A hardy, summer-flowering, bulbous plant 3 ft. to 4 ft. in height, gracefully surmounted with from twenty to fifty pendent, bell-shaped snow-white flowers. Thrives in any position and equally suitable for indoor ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... air of being thrown across in order to disguise the alteration, and perhaps owes much of its charm to the contrast it makes with the severity of military lines. Even the great west window looks like an afterthought; one's instinct asks for a blank wall. Yet, from the ground up to the cross on the spire, one feels the Norman nature throughout, animating the whole, uniting it all, and crowding into it an intelligent variety of original motives that would build a dozen churches of late Gothic. Nothing about it is stereotyped ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... just beyond the spire of the Presbyterian Church! Don't you think it's showing brighter in that quarter? Yes, sir, the fire lies over that way, as sure ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... left. Once more the car began to move, sinking in a long still curve towards the face of the mountain; and as it checked, and began to sway again on its huge wings, he turned to the door, seeing as he did so, through the cloudy windows in the glow of light, a spire of rock not thirty feet below rising from the mist, and one smooth shoulder of snow ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... Howard Morely leaned back in his seat, to glance down at the bay. Idly, he allowed his gaze to wander over the expanse of water between the two blunt points of land, then he looked back at the skeletonlike spire which jutted upward from the green hills he had just passed over. He could remember when that ruin had been a support for one ...
— Final Weapon • Everett B. Cole
... miles below this we passed an Indian settlement, the cultivated fields and white houses of which, with the church spire in the midst, quite refreshed our eyes, after being so long accustomed to the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... brow of the Big Hill, he saw at its eastern foot the village church, a plain brick building with a decaying spire. Its side was perforated by four tall arched windows. Each was a memorial window of stained glass, which gave the building a black look from the outside. As Peter walked down the hill toward the church he heard the and somewhat nasal ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... twisting which necessarily follows on mechanical principles from the spiral ascent of a stem, namely, one twist for each spire completed. This was well shown by painting straight lines on living stems, and then allowing them to twine; but, as I shall have to recur to this subject under Tendrils, it may ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... (held by the Elamite, Rim-Sin), and restored E-BAB-BAR (temple of Shamash at Larsa) for Shamash my helper. As overlord I gave fresh life to Erech, furnishing abundance of water to its people, and completed the spire of E-AN-NA (temple of Nana at Erech). I completed the glory of Anu and Ninni. As a protector of my land, I reassembled the scattered people of Nisin (recently reconquered from the Elamites) and replenished the treasury of E-GAL-MAH (temple of Nisin). As the royal potentate of the city ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... the county gentry had something to do with it. They travelled about too much to be good men. Small though Thrums used to be, it had four kirks in all before the Disruption, and then another, which split into two immediately afterwards. The spire of the parish church, known as the auld kirk, commands a view of the square, from which the entrance to the kirkyard would be visible, if it were not hidden by the town-house. The kirkyard has long been crammed, and is not now in use, but the church is sufficiently ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... out of their green shirts... Tubercular towns Coughing a little in the dawn... And the church... There is always a church With its natty spire And the vestibule— That's where they whisper: Tzz-tzz... tzz-tzz... tzz-tzz... How many codes for a wireless whisper— And corn flatter than it should be And those chits of leaves Gadding with every wind? Small towns From ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... cathedrals in the possession of a detached campanile, a massive and beautiful Perpendicular structure with the top storey octagonal. The principal modern restorations are the upper part of the north-west tower, which copies the Early English work of that on the south-west; and the fine central tower and spire, which had been erected at different periods in the 14th century, but collapsed, doing little damage to the fabric, in 1861. Under the direction of Sir Gilbert Scott and others they were reconstructed with scrupulous care in preserving the original plan. The Lady ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... eager. She saw the white spire through the trees, She heard the sweet hymn swelling O pitying Christ! a refuge give That poor ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... let the diving Negro seek For gems hid in some forlorn creek, We all Pearls scorn, Save what the dewy morne Congeals upon each little spire of grasse, Which careless Shepherds beat down as they passe, And Gold ne're here appears Save what the yellow ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... which adjoined the great abbey of the same name, and scanned its ancient spire and dilapidated facade for some moments before he entered, full of thought—"for here," said he "is the temple of my forefathers—the visible link that binds my origin to France." He passed in, regarding every pillar and ornament ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... did more than build an imposing house. He had the stones gathered from the lands and used in building houses for his people. The seigneur's mill was one of the best. A fine church raised its cross-crowned spire near by. A brewery, built of stone, was in full operation. The land was fertile and produced abundant harvests. When Catalogne visited Longueuil in 1712 he noted that the habitants were living in comfortable circumstances, by reason of the large expenditures which the seigneur had made ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... was now looking down into the valley where the village lay. Far, far over, two days' march away, he could see the cluster of houses, and the glow of the sun on the tin spire of the little Mission Church where he had heard the girl and her mother sing, till the hearts of all were swept by feeling and ravished by the desire for "the peace of the Holy Grail." The village ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... prominence of the gables; not only of the fronts towards the streets, but of the sides also, set with small garret or dormer windows, each of the most fantastic and beautiful form, and crowned with a little spire or pinnacle. Wherever there is a little winding stair, or projecting bow window, or any other irregularity of form, the steep ridges shoot into turrets and small spires, as in fig. 8,[6] each in its turn crowned by a fantastic ornament, covered with curiously shaped slates or shingles, ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... was opening before him. Roseate, indeed, were the hues in which his fancy had painted that picture, and foremost of all the objects that it contained was the famous cathedral, with its magnificent spire pointing into the clouds, its richly-sculptured stones, its glorious nave, flanked by noble pillars, and its lofty vaulted roof, echoing to the voices of the choir, or reverberating to the notes of the organ, the whole flooded by the soft light falling from the painted windows. To ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... have been the incarnation of the dream of some single soul of genius. But in truth, its origin was far otherwise. Ages elapsed from the time the first rough stone was laid as a foundation till the last spire and pinnacle were shaped, and the hand which laid the foundation-stone was never the same as that which set the last stone upon the coping. Generations often succeeded one another, labouring at gargoyle, rose-window, and shaft, and died, leaving the ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... a hill he pass'd, and many a plain, While the steep sun toiled up heaven's blue domain: At length, o'erspent with labour, he descries A spire white-glistening in the morning-skies; Around, a hundred cots in order rose, } And mingling trees a shadowy scene compose; } A mighty wood, o'er all, its dark protection throws. } On vale, on village, and protecting wood, The southern sun shot down his fiery flood. Recent from toil, the ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... St. Stiff the Martyr is calling to service, as it is wont to do at all times and hours—for mysterious purposes but little known:—it seems as if the bell disliked its little wooden cottage, on the unfinished spire; or was inspired, or in a towering passion to live in a tower, or saw no fun in waiting for funds; and so, continually pealed an appeal to the public:—however, it was a puny, little, curious bell, with ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... through shaded streets and roads, they came in sight of a church spire, then a few cottages here and there, and were soon in the centre of the village, when Miss Bernard looked inquiringly ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... spar, straight up; and here are the three little pinnacles of mischievous quartz, which have set themselves, at the same time, on the same foundation; only they lean like the tower of Pisa, and come out obliquely at the side: and here is one great spire of quartz which seems as if it had been meant to stand straight up, a little way off; and then had fallen down against the pyramid base, breaking its pinnacle away. In reality, it has crystallised horizontally, and terminated imperfectly: but, then, by what caprice does one crystal ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Thoresby (1352-1373) added to the prebend of Studley the two districts of Dacre and Bewerley, and it was probably about this time that the Lady-chapel (now the Library) was built. In 1375 some part of the church was burnt, and in 1396-7 the central spire seems to have been rebuilt. The town had now recovered its prosperity, for in 1405 it became the residence of the Court, when King Henry IV. was driven from Westminster by a plague. The next reign is marked by an improvement in the status of the Vicars. They had been living ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... of the thing is bells. Here the bells are more than the soul of a Christian spire; they are its body too, its whole self. An army of them fills up all the space between the delicate supports and framework of the upper parts; for I know not how many feet, in order, diminishing in actual size and in the perspective also of that triumphant elevation, stand ranks ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... slowly drifting past the town on the ebb tide; our progress made apparent only by the quiet, stealthy way in which the masts of the vessels lying at anchor in the roadstead successively approached, covered, and receded from some prominent object on shore, such as a church spire, a lofty building, a tall chimney, and what not. The sun had sunk behind the land, leaving behind him a clear sky of softest primrose tint, against which the outline of the land cut sharply, the town being ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... thy use:— And the great cord, renowned of old, Which Varun ever loves to hold. Take these two thunderbolts, which I Have got for thee, the Moist and Dry. Here Siva's dart to thee I yield, And that which Vishnu wont to wield. I give to thee the arm of Fire, Desired by all and named the Spire. To thee I grant the Wind-God's dart, Named Crusher, O thou pure of heart. This arm, the Horse's Head, accept, And this, the Curlew's Bill yclept, And these two spears, the best e'er flew, Named the Invincible and True. And arms of fiends I make thine ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... 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 ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... yeares, was last incumbent there, but not resident, since anno reg. xxvij who sold his interest to Mr Copley for viijli xi s. ij d. {26} At the west end of the building is a large massy tower, lately put into thorough repair, this is surmounted by an octagonal spire, 230 feet in height, and formed of wooden shingles carefully fitted together. The great bell of this church is the largest in the county, and weighs nearly a ton and a half: the whole peal, consisting of eight, is ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... 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 ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... hover. I beat the reedy fens as I trampled past. I heard the mournful loon In the marsh beneath the moon. And then — with feathery thunder — the bird of my desire Broke from the cover Flashing silver fire. High up among the stars I saw his pinions spire. The pale clouds gazed aghast As my falcon stoopt upon him, and gript ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... descend, and then begins the danger; then they differ about throwing out the ballast, the balloon is rent in the quarrel, it sinks with frightful rapidity, and they run the hazard, like the poor Marquis D'Arlande, of being spitted upon the spire of the Invalides, or of being entangled among woods and briers—at last, alighting upon the earth, our adventurers, fatigued and bruised and disappointed, come out of their shattered triumphal car, exposed to the derision of the ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... onward, and all persons closed their doors, and said that Christmas would be cold. In a quarter of an hour they saw their chronology late by a day. In half an hour they noted a gray mist drive across the sky. There was a faint wavering and spreading and deflection at the top of the tallest spire of smoke. Somewhere, high above, there passed a ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... we were passing down an aisle of old espaliers that stretched sturdy, rigid arms, locked finger to finger with each other in their solemn grotesque guardianship of the enciente they enclosed. No doubt in front of them was some kind of herbaceous border. I caught sight of the occasional spire of a hollyhock, and smelt the acid insurgence ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... wed. The cards are dealt, Our frolic games are o'er; I've laughed, and fooled, and loved. I've felt— As I shall feel no more! Yon little thatch is where she lives, Yon spire is where she met me;— I think that if she quite forgives, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... benches, and afford To take your money, ere his oath or word His SCHOLLARS school'd, sayd if he had been wise He should have wove in one two COMEDIES; The first for th' gallery, in which the throne To their amazement should descend alone, The rosin-lightning flash, and monster spire Squibs, and words hotter then ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... shunned the port of London, I only knew the church through his pointing out its spire from on board. Perhaps I might recall, if it were any good to try, the way by which I went to it alone from the river; but how we two went from it to Riderhood's shop, I don't know—any more than I know what turns we took and doubles we made, after we left it. The way ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... promontory to watch the sunrise. Deep down in the canyons below, darkness still lingered. Slowly the world emerged from the shadows like a photographic plate developing and disclosing its images in the darkroom. Beyond the promontory a great spire lifted high above the canyon; I climbed to its top. Above the spire was a higher crag. Again I climbed up. Up and up I climbed until almost noon. Each new vantage point revealed new glory; every ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... fastened on the chief bowman's steel-shod pole, held high—there is silence but for the bells—the bowman's pole is lowered—as with one stroke out sweep the paddles in a poetry of motion. The chimes die away over the water, the chapel spire gleams—it, too, is gone. Some one strikes up a plaintive ditty,—the voyageur's song of the lost lady and the faded roses, or the dying farewell of Cadieux, the hunter, to his comrades,—and the adventurers are launched for ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... disproportionate and even misleading 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. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... Once at San Joaquin a fine military band came down to the beach and played for an hour in the silver moonlight. I enjoyed immensely the music, the bonfire (which was burning enthusiastically), the wonderful light, the tranquil expanse of the China Sea, and the delicate spire of the village church, rising in the ethereal distance from glinting palm fronds. Nothing is more beautiful than the glisten of ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... silence seemed to fall. The fir trees gathering closer in the shadows Listened in every spray, While the whole camp with little Nell, on English meadows, Wandered and lost their way. Lost is that camp and wasted all its fire, And he who wro't that spell; Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire, Ye have one tale to tell. Lost is that camp, but let its fragrant story Blend with the breath that thrills With hop vines' incense all the pensive glory That fills the Kentish hills. And on that grave where English oak and holly And ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... whose blunt gray spire protruded through the young green elms, lay in a little valley through which a stream rushed to the sea. The lane was not very steep, but there were loose stones. Bruno stumbled, he was down; the carriage stood still, and the two girls ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... waters are clear as crystal. Beyond these groves, still looking south, you discover the woods about Wardour Castle, and amongst them the silvery gleam of another sheet of water. To the south-west is the giant spire of Salisbury, which since the fall of Fonthill Tower now reigns in solitary stateliness over these vast regions of down and desert. Stourton Tower presents itself to the north, whilst to the west, in the extreme distance, several high ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... The carven stone and the graven clod Painted and baked. And cromlechs, proving the human heart Has always ached; Till it puffed with blood and gave to art The dream of the dome; Till it broke and the blood shot up like fire In tower and spire. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... and the fresh-whitened towers. Thus drove Hermann on till he came to the well-known causeway. Rapidly, loitering nowhere, but hastening up hill and down hill. But as he now before him perceived the spire of the village, And no longer remote the garden-girt houses were lying, Then in himself he thought that here he ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Upon a lofty spire of granite stands a wireless telegraph instrument. Fogs are thick about it, wild surges crash in the unfathomable depths below; the silence is that of chaos, before the first day of creation. Out of the emptiness, a world away, comes a message. At the first syllable, the wireless ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... him into a thick forest of oaks and beeches, and so to the crest of a hill overlooking a long open valley with wooded heights beyond. Below him was the pointed spire of some temple or shrine, lying at the edge of the wood, with no houses near it. Farther down he could see a cluster of white houses with the tower of a church in the center. Other villages were dimly visible up ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... walked thoughtfully along, like one, on a serious errand, the old familiar sights of other days distracted him somewhat, his eyes wandered mechanically over the walls of the little church of St. Alban, the martyr, whose angular spire, stood prominently out in the clear moonlight. A corner away from this, and the glittering roof of St Joseph's Church attracted his gaze, he was passing close by it now, and a strange instinct directed his steps towards it; he pushed ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... 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 walls. On very stormy days the entire apse seemed to awake and to grumble under ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... pictures outside too and pleasant ones. From the south window, straight down the street, the houses and trees and the brown spire of the Methodist church stretched away—roofs and gable ends and the enormous tufty heads of the elm trees that half hung over them. At the back of these houses, the eye went uninterruptedly over meadows and fields to the belt of woods which skirted at a little ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... church, far unlike the brick and pine-built meeting-houses with which the children were familiar; a church, the stones of which were laid, every one of them, before the world knew of the country in which he was then speaking: and how it had a spire, the lower part of which was mantled with ivy, and up which, towards its very spire, the ivy was still creeping; and how there was a tradition, that, if the ivy ever reached the top, the spire would fall upon the roof of the old gray church, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stood still for a time, leaning, sick and faint from the violence that had been used to him, against the back wall of the house. The wall looked on a court where a well was, and the backs of other houses, and beyond them the spire of the Muntze Tower and ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... most beautiful, of which there were more than Earth generally vouchsafes. There was no sound in the deep lanes, none of that sweet, overhead sighing of yesterday at the same hour, but there was a quality of silence—a dumb mist murmuration. We passed a tree with a proud pigeon sitting on its top spire, quite too heavy for the twig delicacy below; undisturbed by the mare's hoofs or the creaking of saddle leather, he let us pass, absorbed in his world of tranquil turtledoves. The mist had thickened to a white, infinitesimal rain-dust, and in it the trees began to look strange, as though ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... think how happy she must be! The Ball-Room, with its painted sky Where heavy angels seem to fly, Is a dull place; its size and gloom Make them prefer, for drawing-room, The Library, all done up new And comfortable, with a view Of Salisbury Spire between the boughs. When she had shown me through the house, (I wish I could have let her know That she herself was half the show; She is so handsome, and so kind!) She fetch'd the children, who had dined; And, taking one ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... up. Hark! how it howls! Methinks Till now I never heard a sound so dreary, Doors creak and windows clap, and night's foul bird, Rocked in the spire, screams loud: the gloomy aisles, Black-plastered and hung 'round with shreds of scutcheons And tattered coats-of-arms, send back the sound, Laden with heavier airs, from the low vaults, The mansions ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... There was not a creature in the little church of Saint Martha, which I made a point of visiting before I returned to the station, and which, with its fine romanesque side-portal and its pointed and crocketed gothic spire, is as curious as it need be in view of its tradition. It stands in a quiet corner where the grass grows between the small cobble-stones, and you pass beneath a deep archway to reach it. The tradition relates ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... gutters were large puddles which the wind ruffled. Everything,—houses, bridges, river and sky,—was in shades of cold grey-green, broken by one jagged ochre-colored rift across the sky against which the bulk of Notre Dame and the slender spire of the crossing rose dark and purplish. Andrews walked with long strides, splashing through the puddles, until, opposite the low building of the Morgue, he caught a crowded ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... I forgot again. By the way, when you see Lois—Miss Caruthers—tell her for me, the cathedral still lacks the chief spire, but otherwise is getting on ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... in its caverns feed unseen. Like distant thunder, from below The sound of many torrents came, Too deep for eye or ear to know If 'twere the sea's imprisoned flow, Or floods of ever-restless flame. For each ravine, each rocky spire Of that vast mountain stood on fire;[227] And tho' for ever past the days When God was worshipt in the blaze— That from its lofty altar shone,— Tho' fled the priests, the votaries gone, Still did the mighty flame burn on,[228] Thro' ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the limited, across the widening distance, at a town passed a moment ago. A flourishing city, according to the prospectus; a commonplace aggregation of architecture, you say; respectable middle-class homes; time-serving cottages built on the same plan; a heaven-seeking spire; perhaps a work of art in library or townhall. You are rather glad that you have left it behind; rather certain that soon you will have rolled through ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... been long celebrated for its beauty and cleanliness, for its striking approach from the south, its magnificent Grand Stand, and celebrated Race Course, its public buildings, its venerable Gothic Church, and stately tower; and latterly, by the erection of a beautiful Gothic Church, with an elegant spire, giving an additional feature to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... of education obviously, and a man of some property, since he lived in idleness. He had come to Debenham years ago, while still young, and by a mere continuance of living had grown to be an adopted townsman. His blue camlet cloak was a local antiquity, like the church-spire. His place in the parlour at the George, his absence from church, his old, crapulous, disreputable vices, were all things of course in Debenham. He had some vague Radical opinions and some fleeting ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... its history, claim particular notice. This church was probably commenced about the beginning of the thirteenth century; but it was completed by William Cannynge, Sen., mayor of the city, in 1396. In 1456, the lofty spire was struck by lightning, and one hundred feet fell upon the south aisle. The approach from Redcliffe Street is very impressive. The highly-ornamented tower, the west front of the church, its unrivalled north porch, and the transept, with flying ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... the multitude of snow-green peaks, caused it to appear like a spectral world. Their nearest neighbour towered high above them on the other side of the valley, due south, some five miles distant. It was a slender, inaccessible, dizzy spire of black rock, the angles of which were too steep to retain snow. A great upward-curving horn of rock sprang out from its topmost pinnacle. For a long time it ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... is of a brightly shining yellowish or greenish horn colour. The whorls of its spire are small, but the body whorl, whilst preserving a wide diameter throughout, gradually increases in trumpet-like manner to the round mouth. It belongs to the same group with H. olivetorum and H. nitida, ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... at all, With stained cathedral glass, With lofty spire and arching hall, And terraced lawns of grass: No organ peals, no chanting choir, No frescoed walls that men admire Had this old meeting-house; But roses wild their petals piled About its sacred door, And locust ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... work my fancy is active. As I transplant my young hollyhocks, I see them, not little round-leaved bunches in my hand, but tall and stately, aflare with colors—yellows, whites, pinks. As I dig about my larkspur and stake out its seedlings, they spire above me in heavenly blues. As I arrange the clumps of coarse-leaved young foxgloves, I seem to see their rich tower-like clusters of old-pink bells bending always a little towards the southeast, where most sun comes from. As I thin my forget-me-not I see it—in my mind's eye—in ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... the incident 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 ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the pleasure of seeing her; and he would often walk half-way over to the parsonage, and then back again, as if to whet his appetite. Indeed there was one corner of the road, whence he could see the church-spire wedged into a crevice of the valley between sloping firwoods, with a triangular snatch of plain by way of background, which he greatly affected as a place to sit and moralise in before returning homewards; and the peasants got so much into the habit of finding ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... future she was about to enter on with increasing distinctness. Looking across the fields she could see two houses, one in grey stone, the other in red brick with a gable covered with ivy; and between them, lost in the north, the spire of a church. On questioning a passer-by she learnt that the first house was the Rectory, the second was Woodview Lodge. If that was the lodge, what must the ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... spire it was, When hope and health were strongest; But now it is the churchyard grass, We look upon the longest.—E. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... stately pile of granite, with lofty spire and fine memorial windows. Doves fluttered about the eaves. Upon this particular Sunday morning there seemed to be something in the air that was not a component part of any of the elements. It was simply a bit of news which the church-goers ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... fine pool of water, which, notwithstanding its Nymphaeas, Charas, and Typhas, was slightly brackish and bitter. Limnaea, and two species of Melania, were found in it; the one species, with a long sharp spire, had been found in a reedy brook, at the upper Burdekin. Limmen Bight river was not half a mile from our camp; and I now hoped that we should soon be out of the system of salt-water creeks joining ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... the one whence Pope Leo the Magnificent, the patron of Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and Da Vinci, drew his supply of Ay wine. The village of Ay lies right before us at the foot of the vine-clad slopes, with the tapering spire of its ancient church rising above the neighbouring hills and cutting sharply against the bright blue sky. The vineyards, which spread themselves over a calcareous declivity, have mostly a full southern aspect, and the predominating vines are those known as golden ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... faded prosperity, but certain it is that Donington commands a wider interest as the birthplace of Flinders than it ever did in any other respect during its long, uneventful history. The parish church, a fine Gothic building with a lofty, graceful spire, contains a monument to the memory of the navigator, with an inscription in praise of his character and life, and recording that he "twice circumnavigated the globe." Many men have encircled the earth, but few have been ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... dice, the library had been utterly destroyed, the magnificent plate melted up, and what covetous fanaticism had spared had been further ravaged by a terrible fire. At this time Bishop Bancroft had done his utmost towards reparation, and the old spire had been replaced by a wooden one; but there was much of ruin and decay visible all around, where stood the famous octagon building called Paul's Cross, where outdoor sermons were preached to listeners of all ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of this building so clearly expresses its purpose that a definition of style promptly suggests the title of Horticultural Architecture. Its decorative spire-like finials resemble the cypress and poplar. The clusters of floral ornaments and festoons reflect one of the fundamental purposes of decorative glory to which all plant life has been decreed. The bulblike glass dome is like an enormous dewdrop of beautiful ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... all the cruel, uncompromising clearness of the Californian atmosphere. There was the straight Main Street with its new brick block of "stores," ending abruptly against a tangled bluff; there was the ruthless clearing in the sedate pines where the hideous spire of the new church imitated the soaring of the solemn shafts it had displaced with almost irreligious mockery. Yet this foreground was Cissy's world—her life, her sole girlish experience. She did not, however, ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... directing his thoughts to the great Author of all the beauty that he beholds. 'The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork.' The trees under which one reclines rear their heads heavenward, pointing their spire-like minarets far up toward the blue-vaulted roof. It inspires the very soul to worship in these unbuilt cathedrals with wilderness of aisle and pillars, which for elegance and beauty have never been equalled by the architects ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... in again. It was pitched beside a diminutive strip of boggy natural prairie under the towering range, though the latter was then shrouded in sliding mist out of which the climbing firs raised here and there a ragged spire or somber branch. The smoke of the cooking-fire hung in heavy blue wreaths about the tent, and a thick rain beat into the ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... banner floating over it. The passengers in the street below would discern her anxious visage and send up a shout: "When the golden Indian on the province-house shall shoot his arrow, and when the cock on the Old South spire shall crow, then look for a royal governor again!" for this had grown a by-word through the town. And at last, after long, long years, old Esther Dudley knew—or perchance she only dreamed—that a royal governor was on the eve of returning to the province-house to ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... beach and lost at the vague end of an impassable road; and Barlton, and Burton, and Duncton, and Coldwatham, that stand under in the shadow and look up at the great downs; and Petworth, where the spire leans sideways; and Timberley, that the floods make into an island; and No Man's Land, where first there breaks on you the distant sea. I never knew a Sussex man yet but, if you noted him such a list, would answer: 'There I was on such and ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... a grave beneath a spire I lie and watch the pointed climbing fire, I lie and watch the smoky weather-cock That climbs too high, and bends to the breeze's shock, And breaks, and dances off across the skies Gay as a flurry of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... solid block of stone, and all of these together make up the Tripitaka, upon which the Buddhist pins his faith. In the center of the grand enclosure stands a beautiful white pagoda, with wreaths of gold about its graceful spire. The long rows of little temples, with their attempt to preserve the holy book in an enduring form, are a monument to the faith of King Thebaw's uncle who planned it. Few people, however, read the writing upon the stones. For any practical ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong |
