"Spire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... foreseen; but in 1859 Polterham was hardly conscious of the stirrings of that new life which, in the course of twenty years, was to transform the town. In those days a traveller descending the slope of the Banwell Hills sought out the slim spire of Polterham parish church amid a tract of woodland, mead and tillage; now the site of the thriving little borough was but too distinctly marked by trails of smoke from several gaunt chimneys—that of Messrs. Dimes & Nevison's ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... from the coals and heap of leaves, but it rose in a strong spire and passed out through the broken part of the roof, the great hole there creating a draught. It rose high and in the night, now clear and beautiful, it could be seen afar. Yet all the eight—five on one side and three on the ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... immemorial, has been embowered. The ancient cloisterhouse and church now reconverted to religious uses—was a plain, rather insipid structure of red brick picked out with white stone, presenting three symmetrical gables to the street, with a slender belfry and spire rising ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the blue waters of Lake Lucerne mirrored the glowing colors of the mountain-peaks beyond its farther shore, and nearer, among the foothills of old Pilatus itself, a little village nestled among green trees, its roofs clustered about a white church-spire. Now the bells in the steeple began to ring, and the sound floated out across the green fields spangled with yellow daffodils, and reached Mother Adolf where she stood. Bells from more distant villages soon joined in the ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... in which one of them overwhelmed in the last century the village of Eccles in southeastern England. The advancing sand gradually crept into the hamlet, and in the course of a decade dispossessed the people by burying their houses. In time the summit of the church spire disappeared from view, and for many years thereafter all trace of the hamlet was lost. Of late years, however, the onward march of the sands has disclosed the church spire, and in the course of another century the place may be revealed ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... their withered stalks, Through all the half-deserted garden walks; And through long autumn nights, The merry dancers scale the northern heights, And tiny crystal points of frost-white fire Make brightly scintillant each blade and spire, Still under shade of shelt'ring wall, Or under winter's shroud of snows, Undimmed, the faithful pansy blows, The ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... noise grew louder, coming their way. The tracks squeaked as the car turned around the rock spire, obviously seeking them out. A large carrier, big as a truck, it stopped before them in a cloud of its own dust and the driver kicked the ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... 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 old and restful and familiar, because it and ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... 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 ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... of breezes and perfume, Brimful of promise of midsummer weather, When bees and birds and I are glad together, Breathes of the full-leaved season, when soft gloom Chequers thy streets, and thy close elms assume Round roof and spire the semblance of green billows; Yet now thy glory is the yellow willows, The yellow willows, full of bees ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... came from an explosion of meteors, a shower of these missiles being then in progress, invisible, of course, in the day-time. Just after the signing of the Declaration of Independence the royal arms on the spire of the Episcopal church at Hampton, Virginia, were struck off by lightning. Shortly before the surrender of Cornwallis a display of northern lights was seen in New England, the rays taking the form of cannon, facing southward. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... in stony state, As if with breath and human soul expand. Well may'st thou be astounded—view it well; Go not from hence before thou see thy fill, And learn the builder's virtues and his name. Of this tall spire in every country tell, And with thy tale the lazy rich men shame; Show how the glorious Canning did excel; How he, good man, a friend for kings became, And glorious paved at once the way to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... think "long, long thoughts"; and if the traveller looks backward when he has crossed this common, he will see Sedgehill Church, crowning and commanding the vast expanse, and pointing heavenward with its slender spire to remind him, and all other wayfaring men, that the beauty and glory of this present world is only an earnest and a foretaste of something ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... picture. In the days of my earliest remembrance, a row of tall Lombardy poplars mounted guard on the western side of the old mansion. Whether, like the cypress, these trees suggest the idea of the funeral torch or the monumental spire, whether their tremulous leaves make wits afraid by sympathy with their nervous thrills, whether the faint balsamic smell of their foliage and their closely swathed limbs have in them vague hints of dead Pharaohs stiffened in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the darkness of our country's crime and suffering be lifted. God will roll back the night of storm, and bring in the morning of joy. Its golden light will gild the city spire, and strike the forests of Maine, and tinge the masts of Mobile; and with one end resting upon the Atlantic beach and the other on the Pacific coast, God will spring a great rainbow arch of peace, in token of everlasting covenant ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... was shelled, and the municipal offices and big buildings in the centre were utterly destroyed, but three buildings stand conspicuously among the ruins. These are two churches, and the Town Hall, with a spire resembling that of a church. The fact that the building next to the latter was leveled utterly, while not a single shell entered the supposed church, indicates that the Russian practice at 5,000 meters was sufficiently accurate to insure the protection of sacred edifices, while ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... present going to pieces. I have always felt this instinctively. It came to me clearly only a few years ago. It is a bad thing to become wholly loosened from the soil, to forget the village church spire. Curiously enough poetry attaches only to objects that have come down to us, that have had long use. What is called progress, a vague and very doubtful term, rouses the lower parts of our intelligence. The higher parts vibrate ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... King Ethelbert, 610 A.D. Three hundred years later this building was burned, but soon it was rebuilt. Again it was destroyed by fire, 1087, and a new edifice begun which was 200 years in completion. This church, old St. Paul's, was 590 feet long, and had a leaden-covered, timber spire, 460 feet high. In 1445 this spire was injured by lightning, and in 1561 the building was again burned. Says Mr. Baedeker, whose guidebook is indispensable in the hands of a traveler, "Near the cathedral stood the celebrated Cross of St. Paul, ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... 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 ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... the tower wouldn't give me any more information, and that the visit of "the two" was the last for some time to come, I closed down my horizon of curiosity over the church-steeple, a little round, shingly spire with a vane,—too vain to tell which way the wind might chance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... market-town, which stood in a hollow among the moors. The grass sloped to a river that sparkled in the sun and then vanished in the alders' shade. Across the stream, old oak and ash trees rolled up the side of the Moot Hill, and round the latter gray walls and roofs showed among the leaves. A spire and a square, ivy-covered tower rose above the faint blue haze of smoke. A few white clouds floated in the sky and their cool shadows crept ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... 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 ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... spire, the loftiest of St. Petersburg, is the church of St. Peter and St. Paul. An anecdote connected with this church, and not known, I believe, out of Russia, is worth telling. The spire, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... derived a very manifest and important advantage; for it secured to them the course of the Maine and the Upper Rhine; by which they received, without difficulty or danger, every species of supply from Mentz, Spire, Worms, and even the country of Alsace, while it maintained their communication with the chain formed by the Austrian forces and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the church at Ormskirk, having two steeples, a tower and spire, contiguous to each other, is briefly glanced at in the tradition. This circumstance, according to some accounts, was occasioned by the removal of part of the bells from Burscough at the dissolution of the monasteries, when the existing spire steeple was ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... 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 door-keeper ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... like our own Wye or Tees in their loveliest reaches; level meadows stretch away on its opposite side; mounds set with slender-stemmed foliage occupy the nearer ground, a small village with its simple spire peeps from the forest at the bend of the valley, and it is remarkable that in architecture thus employed neither Perugino nor any other of the ideal painters ever use Italian forms but always Transalpine, both of church and castle. The little landscape which forms ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... city wrapped in its veil of smoke, the tall spire of the old church rising in picturesque isolation above the line of the surrounding buildings. It seemed at that moment to stand as a symbol of the life of the Mother Country, a life fenced in by convention, by forms and ceremonies sanctified ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... was perfectly well again, and able to do ample justice to her Splendid Pies! I attended high 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... the organist was not difficult, when one had come within sight of the lofty spire of the church, for it was under its shadow she lived; but if he had been accustomed to carry messages to her door for years, he could not now have presented himself with fuller confidence as to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... such a place; though probably 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 afterward. The spire of the parish church, known as the auld kirk, commands a view of the square, from which the entrance to the kirk-yard would be visible, if it were not hidden by the town-house. The kirk-yard has long been crammed, and is not now in use, but the church is sufficiently large to hold nearly ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... and followed its windings through the leafless forest, until it united its waters to those of the Calder, and swept on in swifter and clearer current, to wash the base of Whalley Abbey. But the watcher's survey did not stop here. Noting the sharp spire of Burnley Church, relieved against the rounded masses of timber constituting Townley Park; as well as the entrance of the gloomy mountain gorge, known as the Grange of Cliviger; his far-reaching gaze passed over ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... mounts and winds, and mounts again, and dips and mounts, between fields of stubble, with circular straw-stacks as their only occupants. The first intimation of anything untoward, besides the want of life, was the spire of the little white village of —— on the distant hill, which surely had been damaged. As one drew nearer it was clear that not only had the spire been damaged, but that the houses had been damaged too. The place seemed empty and ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... were to meet M. Bonchamps and M. de Lescure, who, it was supposed, would bring with them as many more. They marched out of Vihiers early on the Tuesday morning, having remained there only about a couple of hours, and before nightfall they saw the spire of Doue church. They then rested, intending to force their way into the town early on the following morning; but they had barely commenced their preparations for the evening, when a party of royalists came out to ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... only by the two stark and stiff erections at each end. The two towers at the west end of Canterbury were not always uniform. At the northern corner an old Norman tower formerly uplifted a leaden spire one hundred feet high. This rather anomalous arrangement must have had a decidedly lopsided effect, and it is probable that the appearance of the cathedral was changed very much for the better when the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... But whichever way they turned dusty roads too confronted them, illimitable stretches of gloomy suburb, unwholesome airs, sickening sights and sounds and perfumes. Narrow streets swept, darkling, under pointed archways, that framed distant vistas of spire or campanile, silhouetted against the solid blue sky of Italy. The crystal hardness of that sapphire firmament repelled Herminia. They passed beneath the triumphal arch of Augustus with its Etruscan mason-work, its ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... pristine bed and, in its stead, lofty mountains lifted their bald beads above the surrounding desolation, and stand to-day as they have stood in massive grandeur ever since the ancient days of their upheaval. Rugged and bleak they tower high, or take the form of pillar, spire and dome, in some seemingly well-constructed edifice erected by the hand of man. But the mountains are not all barren. Vast areas of fertile soil flank the bare rocks where vegetation has taken root, and large fields of forage ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... the purpose of saving me. One of these was M. Frotte, who, as the pupil of my physician Dessault, was allowed free ingress and egress to the Temple. One day he entered my cell, motioned me to be silent, seized me, and dragged me to a cabinet under the spire of the tower. A sick child who had been given over by the faculty was substituted in my place, and he, dying two days after (8th June 1795), was buried as Louis XVII. At my supposed death, there being no more prisoners in the Temple, all the keepers and guards ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... the olives, touched with a gentle solemnity, would give them greeting; the fig trees and mulberry trees would be about them, and the long vineyards watched over by the aristocratic cypress lifting its dark spire to the sun. But now the kingdom of the pine trees joyously held them. They were in the happy woods in which even to breathe was sheer happiness. Now and then they pulled up and looked back to the crescent-shaped plain which held a child instead of armies. They traced the course ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... "regular verse." We refer those interested in the question to the Greek Melic poets, and to the many excellent French studies on the subject by such distinguished and well-equipped authors as Remy de Gourmont, Gustave Kahn, Georges Duhamel, Charles Vildrac, Henri Gheon, Robert de Souza, Andre Spire, etc. ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... Bobby Galleon may be seen sitting on a high hill. It is a Sunday afternoon in spring, and far away there is a thin line of faintly blue hills. Nearer to view there are grey heights more sharply outlined and rough, like drawing paper—painted with a green wood, a red-roofed farm, a black church spire, and a brown ploughed field. Immediately below them a green hedge hanging over a running stream that has caught the blue of the sky. Above them vast swollen clouds flooding slowly with the faint yellow ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... soothing and beautiful Psalms, which took his companion's mind back to his native mountains, and the white spire of the village church where he had worshipped with his mother. The hard lines melted in his face as he listened, but Paul fell upon a bitter verse, and the agent's conscience began to trouble him. He could not look into the boy's eyes, for ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... for some time; but it's many years ago, when I was first made boatswain of a corvette (during this conversation he was looking through the telescope); yes, there it is," said he; "I have it in the field. Look, Mr Simple, do you see a small church, with a spire of glazed tiles, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... early morning I renewed my rambles, going first to the little frame school-house, the old church with its tall spire, the saw-mill, the deacon's cider press, the swimming pool, and a dozen other places of boyish adventure and misadventure. Your true sentimentalist invariably gives the preference to scenes over persons, and is so often rewarded ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... consecrated in 1639, and used as the principal city cemetery for nearly two hundred years. The Church of All-Hallows-on-the-Walls is a modern one that stands on the site of a more ancient edifice. From this point one can see the tapering spire of St. Michael's Church, in the grounds of Mount Dinham, where are the almshouses erected and endowed in 1860 by John Dinham. Here are forty free cottages and episcopal charity schools, the latter founded originally in 1709 by ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath
... till it reached the bright blue dancing ocean, over which several white sails were skimming rapidly. Inland there was a beautifully diversified country. There were several rich woods surrounding gentlemen's seats, and here and there a hamlet and a church spire rising up among the trees, and some extensive homesteads, the gems of an English rural landscape; and there were wide pasture lands, and ploughed fields already getting a green tinge from the rising corn, and many orchards blushing with pink bloom, and white little cottages, and the winding ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... and only the murkiness in the far sky told that a yet larger centre of industry lurked beyond the horizon. Dunfield offered no prominent features save the chimneys of its factories and its fine church, the spire of which rose high above surrounding buildings; over all hung a canopy of foul vapour, heavy, pestiferous. Take in your fingers a spray from one of the trees even here on the Heath, and its ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... Has one great spire Tawny in the sunlight. Gargoyles haunt its nave; High up amid its dark-arches Forgotten songs live shadowy. Gold and sardonyx Deck its altars. Its mighty roof Is copper rivering ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... Cronstadt, on the right are seen the gilded towers of the palace of Peterhof, and a little further we discern a large golden ball, the dome of St. Isaac, with the glittering taper spire rising from the Admiralty. Approaching nearer, we see numerous domes and spires, painted blue and green, ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... old rectory, and still older church, with its reverend screen of trees, and slowly ascending a hill side, from whence he obtained enchanting peeps of the spire and college of Harrow, he reached the cluster of well-built houses which constitute the village of Neasdon. From this spot a road, more resembling the drive through a park than a public thoroughfare, led ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... brow (Hung with the clusters of the bending vine) Shone in the early light, when on the Rhine We bounded, and the white waves round the prow In murmurs parted:—varying as we go, Lo! the woods open, and the rocks retire, As some gray convent-wall or glistening spire 'Mid the bright landscape's track unfolding slow! Here dark, with furrowed aspect, like Despair, Frowns the bleak cliff! There on the woodland's side The shadowy sunshine pours its streaming tide; Whilst Hope, enchanted with the scene so fair, Counts not the hours of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... me speaks as the roll of thunder that cannot be denied—you must hear it; and how can you shut your ears to what this lark sings, this violet tells, this little grey shell writes in the curl of its spire? The bitter truth that human life is no more to the universe than that of the unnoticed hill-snail in the grass should make us think more and more highly of ourselves as human—as men—living things that think. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... gaslamps. On the right was a Gothic building, which would have been sufficiently handsome if built in stone, but with barbarous taste had been executed in wood. At the end of the garden some more steps led to a broad, four-cornered courtyard, on the right of which the iron spire of the National Memorial was dimly visible, while to the left was a large building of red and yellow brick with a four-square tower at either end, a pavilion projecting from the center, and a number of large windows. Over the ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... of us stirred; when the sound of her light footfall was heard no more, there was complete silence. Below, the mists had gathered so thickly that now they spread across the valley one dead white sea of vapour in which village and woods and stream were all buried—all except the little church spire, that, still unsubmerged, pointed triumphantly to the sky; and what a sky! For that which yesterday had steeped us in cold and darkness, now, piled even to the zenith in mountainous cloud-masses, was dyed, ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... Brandon of th'age of —- 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
... believe that any lofty eminence which overlooked our lines was not in constant use by the enemy for observation. The iron towers at Loos, the spire of Calonne, even the crazy relics of the church at Puisieux at different times contributed this uneasy feeling to the denizens of our trenches. But surely never was the sense of being spied on more justified than near St. Quentin, whose tall cathedral raised ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... little village, grouped around a dear old church, with a graceful square tower supporting a spire. The little church faced a small square, from which the principal street runs down the hill to the open country across which the French "push" advanced. No house on this street escaped. Some of them are absolutely destroyed. ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... want a little bringing together or separating before the spirit of the place can be well given, they must be brought together, or separated. Which is a more truthful view, of Shrewsbury, for example, from a spot where St. Alkmund's spire is in parallax with St. Mary's—a view which should give only the one spire which can be seen, or one which should give them both, although the one is hidden? There would be, I take it, more representation in the misrepresentation than in the representation—"the half ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... fits a little fire, A little chapel fits a little choir: As my small bell best fits my little spire. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... right to their churches as we have to ours and that the Huns had no kind of business to destroy them. Just think, Mrs. Dr. dear," concluded Susan pathetically, "how we would feel if a German shell knocked down the spire of our church here in the glen, and I'm sure it is every bit as bad to think of Rangs ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... when Cartoner arrived at St. Petersburg. The long northern twilight had begun, and the last glow of the western sky was reflected on the golden dome of St. Isaac's, while the arrowy spire of the Admiralty shot up ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... 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 to improve ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... as a man can be. He rather stinted himself 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 him ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my youth, Seat of Friendship and Truth, Where Love chac'd each fast-fleeting year, Loth to leave thee I mourn'd, For a last look I turn'd, But thy spire was scarce seen ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... green bank there just coming into sight must be Old Sarum. The little ancient city that faded away when Salisbury lifted its spire into the world. We will stop here for a ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... round the spire and along the roof of the Cathedral of Milan, have been found fault with by persons whose exclusive taste is unfortunate for themselves. It is true that the same expense and labour, judiciously directed to purposes more ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... valiant Spire, Highest one of the perfect three, Guarding the others: the Palace choir, The Temple flashing with opal fire— Bubble and foam of ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... bodies fair and fresh. As tall as ever, moreover, 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, and then, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... easy to 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
... clear Spring sunset dies Like a great pearl dissolved in wine, Forgotten stragglers half-divine Creep to their ancient sanctuaries Where salt-sweet thyme and sorrel-spire Feed on the dust of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... Smet took a careful look in every direction. It was level, open country all about them, dotted here and there with farmhouses, and in the distance the spire of a village church rose above the clustering houses and ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... tide the westering sun Gleams mildly; and the lengthening shadows dun, Chequered with ruddy streaks from spire and roof, Begin to weave fair twilight's mystic woof; Till the dim tissue, like a gorgeous veil, Wraps the proud city, in ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... wall which defends it from the sea. Beyond the sea-wall there curves for miles in a vast and regular sweep the barren beach of shingle, with the village of Brenzett standing out darkly across the water, a spire in a clump of trees; and still further out the perpendicular column of a lighthouse, looking in the distance no bigger than a lead pencil, marks the vanishing-point of the land. The country at the back of Brenzett is low and flat, but the bay is fairly well sheltered from the seas, ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... 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 ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... wondered that she wandered long and wearily to very little purpose. Tall trees seemed to encompass her on every side, or where the view was more open, she beheld the distant blue hills rising one behind another; but no village spire or cottage chimney was there to cheer her on her way, and fatigued with the search, and despairing of finding the cattle, she resolved while it was yet light, ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... about the size of the jay. His plumage is white as snow. On his forehead rises a spiral tube nearly three inches long. It is jet black, dotted all over with small white feathers. It has a communication with the palate, and when filled with air looks like a spire; when empty it becomes pendulous. His note is loud and clear, like the sound of a bell, and may be heard at the distance of three miles. In the midst of these extensive wilds, generally on the dried ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... the nearest stretched To grasp the spoil he almost reached, When old Minotti's hand Touched with the torch the train— 'Tis fired! Spire, vaults, the shrine, the spoil, the slain, The turbaned victors, the Christian band, All that of living or dead remain, Hurl'd on high with the shivered fane, In one wild roar expired! The shattered town—the walls thrown down— The waves a moment backward bent— The ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... but united in death and fame. Directly below is the market which recalls the name of Champlain, the founder of Quebec, and his first Canadian home at the margin of the river. On the same historic ground we see the high-peaked roof and antique spire of the curious old church, Notre-Dame des Victoires, which was first built to commemorate the repulse of an English fleet two centuries ago. Away beyond, to the left, we catch a glimpse of the meadows and cottages of the beautiful Isle of Orleans, and directly across the river ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... western waves of ebbing day Rolled o'er the glen their level way; 185 Each purple peak, each flinty spire, Was bathed in floods of living fire. But not a setting beam could glow Within the dark ravines below, Where twined the path in shadow hid, 190 Round many a rocky pyramid, Shooting abruptly from the dell Its thunder-splintered pinnacle; Round many an insulated mass, The native ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... between two pine cones, a trident, a thyrsus tied 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
... the world. We are not artists, so we sit down in this quiet-retreat and let Nature paint the picture. The breath of the pine and birch fills the place like incense. The softly sighing pines with the distant waterfalls are singing their age-old songs. The evergreens are marshalled in serried ranks, spire above spire, like a phalanx of German soldiers clad in their green coats, their spiked helmets gleaming in the evening light. But they are pushing on to "victory and peace," and each soldier with aeolian melodies ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... To 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 ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 the nights end; Here is ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... 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 ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... the house; in front, a stately flat with stone balustrades. But wherever the eye turned, there was nothing to be seen but park, miles upon miles of park; not a cornfield in sight, not a roof-tree, not a spire, only those lata silentia,—still widths of turf, and, somewhat thinly scattered and afar, those groves of giant trees. The whole prospect so vast and so monotonous that it never tempted you to take a walk. No close-neighbouring poetic thicket into which to plunge, uncertain ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... A young moon was rising over the city, throwing out in dark relief against the sky a hundred steeples and domes. The long, thin spire of the Fortress Church—the tomb of the Romanoffs—shot up into the heavens like a dagger. Near at hand, a thousand electric lights and colored lanterns, cunningly swung on the branches of the pines, made a veritable fairyland. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... finds space and duration enough to multiply into countless millions in the body of a living fly; and then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California, towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast circumference? Or, turning to the other half of the world of life, picture to yourselves the great Finner whale, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... inaccessible rocks, of every variety of form and hue; some springing perpendicularly up like the spire of a church, others running along in broken ridges, or presenting the appearance of high embattled walls; here riven into deep gullies, there opening into wild savage glens, fit spots for robber ambuscade; now presenting a fair smooth surface, now jagged, shattered, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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 and ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... a cup-like depression, lay a nearly circular lake of the purest and stillest water, in whose mirror-like surface were reflected the rocky sides, verdant with beautiful growth, the towering trees and spire-like needles which ran up for hundreds of feet, here and there crumbled into every imaginable form, but clothed by nature with wondrous growth wherever plant could find room to root in the ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... noon rang out from many a spire, the wind grew higher and higher, dust flew into her eyes. She had a whole eternity before her, with which she did not know what to do. Why wouldn't he see her, then, until seven o'clock? Unconsciously, she had reckoned on his spending the whole day with her. What was it that he had ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... refuge in its steeple, whither they were quickly followed. Only by dejected appeals and a promise not to injure Gustavus Vasa did they succeed in escaping from the tower, and the Dalmen, thinking that some of them might remain concealed in the narrow spire, shot their arrows at it from every side. For more than a hundred years after some of these arrows remained sticking in the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... wilderness, where dusty sparrows alone disturb the dreams of frowzy charwomen, who, like Anchorites amid the tombs of the Thebaid, fulfil the contemplative life each in her subterranean cell. Beneath St. Peter's spire the cabman sleeps within his cab, the horse without: the waterman, seated on his empty bucket, contemplates the untrodden pavement between his feet, and is at rest. The blue butcher's boy trots by with empty cart, five miles an hour, instead ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... of the sun sink behind the western crests, and then the last twilight died into the night. Heavy darkness trailed over the forest, but soon moon and stars sprang out, and the sky became silver, the spire of smoke reappearing across its southern face. But Willet, who was in reality the leader of the little party, gave no sign. Grosvenor knew that they were waiting for the majority of St. Luc's force to ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... left, down yonder, lies Rouen, that large town with its blue roofs, under its pointed Gothic towers. They are innumerable, delicate or broad, dominated by the spire of the cathedral, and full of bells which sound through the blue air on fine mornings, sending their sweet and distant iron clang to me; their metallic sound which the breeze wafts in my direction, now stronger and now weaker, according as the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... 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 the ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... of recitative, perhaps reminiscent of Scott's narrative poems, which he was at that time reading aloud to us, "There is of Bebbington the holy peak!" To which I would as constantly rejoin, "'Of Bebbington the holy spire,' father!"—being offended by his use of a word so unmusical as peak. He would only smile and trudge onward. He was somewhat solicitous, I suspect, to check in his son any tendency towards mere poetical sentiment; his own imaginative faculty ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 infidelities, which he would now and again set ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... while the last stars were lingering in the sky and the east was suffused with a faint pink haze, a scarlet spire shot up that was not sunrise. No one remarked it at first. Then a broad flash that might have been lightning but was not, and a cry on the still air startled ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... 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 ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... ... the admiration of the traveller! The castle was, to my eye, of all castles which I had seen, the most elevated in its situation, and the most difficult of access. The clouds of heaven seemed to be resting upon its battlements. But what do I see yonder? "Is it the top of the spire of Strasbourg Cathedral?" "It is, Sir," replied the postilion. I pulled off my travelling cap, by way of doing homage; and as I looked at my watch, to know the precise time, found it was just ten o'clock. It was worth making a minute of. Yet, owing to the hills before—or rather to ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... that surround Bowood, the mansion of the Marquis of Lansdowne, neighbor the poet's humble dwelling. The spire of the village church, beside the portals of which the poet now sleeps, is seen above adjacent trees. Laborers' cottages are scattered all about. They are a heavy and unimaginative race, those peasants of Wiltshire; and, knowing their neighbor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... that camp, and wasted all its fire: And he who wrought that spell?— 30 Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire,[4] Ye ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... remarked a beautiful church-spire rising above some old elms in the park; and before them, in the midst of a lawn, and some outhouses, an old red house with tall chimneys covered with ivy, and the windows shining in the sun. "Is that your church, sir?" ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... well known to every one; and Climping, that no one knows, set on a lonely 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 ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... cabbages, or the digging of potatoes,—how I longed to turn up the historic soil, into which had passed the sweat and virtue of so many generations, with my own spade,—then upon the quaint, old, thatched houses, or the cluster of tiled roofs, then catching at a church spire across a meadow (and it is all meadow), or at the remains of tower or ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... The spire of Shakspeare's church—the Church of the Holy Trinity—begins to show itself among the trees at a little distance from Stratford. Next we see the shabby old dwellings, intermixed with mean-looking houses of modern date, and the streets being quite level, you are struck and surprised ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to feel the cold, Too cold to feel the fire; It cannot get through the heap of mould That soaks in the drip from the spire: Cerement of wax 'neath cloth of gold, 'Neath fur and wool in fold on fold, Freezes in frost ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... of the garlands and posies 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 ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... pyramid, built of great square stones of fluor 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 crystallized horizontally, and terminated imperfectly: but, then, by what caprice does one crystal form ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... eyes, whom we note in the cabin doors, or dawdling about their daily routine. On nearing the Lick, two young horsewomen, out of the common, look interestedly at us, and I stop to inquire the way, although the village spire is peering above the tree-tops yonder. Pretty, buxom, sweet-faced lassies, these, with soft, pleasant voices, each with her market-basket over her arm, going homeward from shopping. It would be interesting to know their ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... English country. Purple hills hemmed in a broad, green, undulating plateau, scored across and across by the stone walls of the north, and all dappled with the shadows of rolling leaden clouds with silver fringes. Miles away a church spire stuck like a spike out of the hollow, and the smoke of a village dimmed the trees behind. No nearer habitation could I see. I have mentioned a hamlet which we passed in the spring-cart. It lay hidden behind some hillocks to ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... at the dark shaft of the tower whence the bell had rung its warning, at the dusky mass of the Capitol, at the spire of St. Paul's, and then down at a flickering figure passing rapidly on the other side of the street. Robert's eyes were keen, and a soldier's life had accustomed him to their use in the darkness. He caught only a glimpse of it, but was sure the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... 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 was purposely ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... details afforded entertainment to the curious eye. There were the rude capitals "St. J.B." and "St. F.X." on the keystone of the round-arched side doors at the foot of the towers. There were the series of circular windows leading one above another, on the towers, up to the charming belfry spire which crowned them. There were high up in the air on the latter, the fleur-de-lys and cock weather-vane, symbolical of France. Nine gables too, had the church, of various sizes. Its roof was shingled and black, and where ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... and columns, apses and chapels, are multiplied with a view to complexity of architectonic effect; flat roofs become intolerable. The whole force employed in the construction has an upward tendency, and the spire is the completion of the edifice; for to the spire its countless soaring lines—lines not of stationary strength, but of ascendent growth—converge. All this the Italians were slow to comprehend. The campanile, for example, never became an integral part of their buildings. It stood alone, and was ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... my "way to the boats, sir;" and I started out much refreshed; passed through back streets, dingy, dirty, and profligate-looking enough; out upon wide meadows, fringed with enormous elms; across a ferry; through a pleasant village, with its old grey church and spire; by the side of a sluggish river, alive with wherries. I had walked down some mile or so, and just as I heard a cannon, as I thought, fire at some distance, and wondered at its meaning, I came to a sudden bend of the river, with a church-tower hanging over ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... fertilization of those barren wastes which always mark the land of slaves—when we see a dense population of freemen—when lovely cottages and improved farms arise upon the now deserted and sterile soil—and where now deep silence reigns, we hear the chimes of religion from the village spire;—will you not—will not every friend of his country, thank this Society for its patriotic labors! Yes! Kings might be proud of the effects which this Society will have produced. Far more glorious than all their conquests would ours ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... sit on hills our childhood wist, Woods, hamlets, streams, beholding! The sun strikes, through the furthest mist, The city's spire to golden. The city's golden spire it was, When hope and health were strongest, But now it is the churchyard grass We look upon the longest. Be pitiful, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various |
