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More "Firmament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were lifted up. Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creatures (or of life) was in the wheels." And above the living creatures was the firmament and the throne of God. So Nature may be material, but it is material interpenetrated by the divine; if you call it a fabric, the woof may be material but the warp is God. This view contains all the truth of materialism ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... mortal eyes the face of Infinite Love; that Love which gave the ever-blessed light, and filled the earth with music of bird, and breeze, and sea; that Love whose melodies we sometimes faintly catch, like spirit voices, from the souls of orators and poets; that Love which inlaid the arching firmament of heaven with jewels sparkling with eternal fires. But thank God, their fall was not like the remediless fall of Lucifer and his angels, into eternal darkness. Thank God, in this "night of death" hope does ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... splendid, fresh and green. And among them fair and virtuous ladies, fragrant garland of beauteous flowers. The eye swoons, drunken with gazing, the poet's song grows mute before such splendour of loveliness. He fixes his eyes, then, upon one only of the stars in that dazzling firmament. His spirit is forced to worship and bow in prayer. And, behold, the vision he has of a miraculous fount, from which his spirit may draw sacred joys, his heart receive ineffable refreshment. And never would he wish to trouble that ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... ladies had withdrawn it was just the same. The soul of Avice—the only woman he had NEVER loved of those who had loved him—surrounded him like a firmament. Art drew near to him in the person of one of the most distinguished of portrait painters; but there was only one painter for Jocelyn—his own memory. All that was eminent in European surgery addressed him in the person of that harmless and unassuming fogey whose hands had been ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... the mountains that were before me, like a barrier shutting out the living world. There, as I lay in an agony of fear, my soul seemed to be whirled on the wind into the bosom of a thundercloud. I felt the weight of the rolling vapours. I saw a blaze. I was stunned by a roar that shook the firmament. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... attitude towards Flossy because she had the same love-blind sickness and could see no one but Fred. Far from being jealous, Manfred viewed his wife in the light of a white man's burden which he could not shake off. Christian's burden was fiction beside it. Flossy was the only star in his firmament—the only ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... serve every exigency of man's welfare, with the picture earlier quoted from Bertrand Russell as the natural scientist gives it to us. It is no longer easy to say the Heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. As far as we can see natural processes go on without the slightest reference to the welfare of man, who is but an accidental product of their indifferent forces. The universe is a system of blind regularities. "Omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way." Nature is ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... deep-flowing Oceanus. There is the land and the city of the Cimmerians, shrouded in mist and cloud, and never does the shining sun look down on them with his rays, neither when he climbs up the starry heavens, nor when again he turns earthward from the firmament, but deadly night is outspread over miserable mortals. Thither we came and ran the ship ashore and took out the sheep; but for our part we held on our way along the stream of Oceanus, till we came to the place which Circe ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... crises as rabbits create their young, nine at a time. In those fuddled incompetent days before the Great War the crisis was a little-known phenomenon. Here and there in the drab routine of peaceful corpulent years there flashed in the prosperous firmament the baleful light of a great anxiety. Agadir was one; CARSON and his gun-runners was another. But they were few; they came like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... shall be to thee a garland of roses in the land of the unbeliever.' And the star floated down from the palm-branches and touched me with his hand, and breathed upon my lips the cool breath of the outer firmament, and departed. Then I awoke and saw him again in his place far down the horizon, and he was alone, for the dawn was in the sky and the lesser lights were extinguished. And I rose from the stony stairway that seemed like a bed of ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... crawling millions of patiently wearing years, while stars grew old and perished from the firmament, with cloud, and frost, and wind, and water, and sharp cutting sands, these strata of the old earth's crust were chiseled into gigantic outlines, and all the worn-down, crumbled atoms of debris were swept through long, tortuous leagues of distance toward the sea by a mad river swirling through ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... blow, and the thunder without the bolt, signifies just nothing at all.... Are then your lightnings of so short a sight, that they don't know how to hit, unless a mountain stands like a barrier in their way? Or perhaps so many eyes open in the firmament make you lose your aim when you shoot the arrow? Is it this? No! but, my dear Lord, it is your custom never to take hold of your arms till you have first bound round your majestic countenance with ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... to bed, but soon got up again, stifling, feeling such a need of fresh, free air that he opened the window wide in order to lean out. But the night was black as ink, the darkness had submerged the horizon. A mist must have hidden the stars in the firmament; the vault above seemed opaque and heavy like lead; and yonder in front the houses of the Trastevere had long since been asleep. Not one of all their windows glittered; there was but a single gaslight shining, all alone and far away, like a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... all these strange things, and of the Hart Hall "Hob" who worked so hard with his flail, and of many other curious folk who frequented the Yorkshire moors in olden days. The last witch had just died before he went to Danby, but he found the whole atmosphere of the folklore firmament so surcharged with the being and work of the witch, that he seemed able to trace her presence and her activity in almost every nook ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... is the firmament; His breath the rush of the breeze. Earth's loveliest sprite, the frost queen at night, Lures him silvery ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... dawned—a sullen, overcast, threatening December day. A watery sun looked out of a lowering sky, and then retreated altogether, and a leaden dullness overspread the whole firmament. An icy wind curdled your blood and tweaked your nose, and feathery snowflakes whirled drearily through the ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... upon the icy battlements and snowdrift towers of the castles that the frost had built them. He would ride by slowly, and shoot his gun in the air to see them rise and wheel upward, appearing snow-white against the blue firmament; and watched them sink again, growing dark as they alighted among the snow and ice. His warning that he himself must be nearing home was to see the return of such members of the bird-colony as had been out for the deep-sea fishing. When he saw them come from afar, flying high, often with ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... gentlemen, although not one of the heavenly bodies, indeed altogether terrestrial, one feels, naturally, rounder in his orbit, and a little more likely to see stars, after such a dinner as this, than before. Do I not, indeed, see around me now, all the stars of the intellectual firmament? Are not SIRIUS and ARCTURUS here, in their glory, as well as ORION and the rest? As my old friend CRISPIN would say, their name is legion! I would blaze, gentlemen, too, if possible, in honor of the occasion; but, as I can't Comet, meteors fall in lamentation ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... a solid dome or roof. This firmament, the sky, was supposed to be the floor of Heaven. The firmament had four corners and rested on the mountains, as the eye could plainly see. When God's car was rolled across the floor we heard thunder, and his movements were always accompanied by lightnings, winds, black clouds ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... enough, it seemed as though two great hosts were there embattled. They could discern the legions, the wind-blown standards, the charging chariots, and the squadrons of impetuous horse. The firmament had become a battle-ground, and lo! it was red as with the blood of the fallen, while the air was full of strange and dreadful sounds, bred, perhaps, of wind and distant thunder, that came to them like the wail of the vanquished and the dull roar ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... beheld a swift procession of mine-and-cattle scenes troop past for swift review. He lived again whole months of nights spent out alone beneath the sky, with the snow and the wind hurled down upon him from a merciless firmament of bleakness. Once more he stumbled blindly forward in the desert—he and Gettysburg—perishing for water, giving up their liquid souls to the horribly naked and insatiate sun. Again he toiled in the shaft of a mine till his ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... of Osiris, and Isis, And Apis! that mystical lore, Like a nightmare, conceived in a crisis Of fever, is studied no more; Dead Magian! yon star-troop that spangles The arch of yon firmament vast Looks calm, like a host of white angels On ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... scarlet in my cradle; I, on whose woes they vainly lavish stars, Who only wear two crosses, not the One! I, exiled, prisoner, sick, who may not ride Along the front of pompous regiments Scattering stars among my heroes; yet I hope—I think—the son of such a father— Into whose hands a firmament was given— I think, in spite of shadows and dead days, A little of the star clings to my fingers:— John Seraph Peter Flambeau, I ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... I could not see that the impartial sunbeams, tempered by this skylight, had burned away the insignia of the malecontent States. Nor had any rampant Secessionist thought to punch any of the seven lost Pleiads out from that firmament with a long pole. Crimson and gold are the prevailing hues of the decorations. There is no unity and breadth of coloring. The desks of the members radiate in double files from a white marble tribune at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... existed. That same race, side by side with the unparalleled growth of its industry produces Shakspeare, Milton, Bacon, and Newton, all four at the summit of human thought,—and then, just below these unapproachable fixed lights, a whole firmament of glories, lesser than they, as all created intelligence must be, yet in whose superior rays the age of Augustus, of Leo X., of Louis XIV., all but the age of Pericles, the culture of Greece, pale and fade. And ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... this one described by Howard Henderson. "A quiet Sunday in the deep woods is a golden day to be remembered for many a year. All nature combines to assist the camper in 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 ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent On either side, pitying the sad death Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath Of Zephyr slew him; Zephyr penitent, Who now ere Phoebus mounts the firmament, Fondles the flower amid ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Scorpionis, and immediately above this is the fifth-magnitude star 19.) The nebula we seek lies between 19 and [omega], nearer to 19 (about two-fifths of the way towards [omega]). This nebula is described by Sir W. Herschel as "the richest and most condensed mass of stars which the firmament offers ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... { Creation of Firmament. Expulsion from Paradise. { Two Angels in red, as the Adam and Eve walking { ministers of Creation. In sorrowfully in the Spandrels { centre, bright sun with direction of the Dome, { inscription, "Fiat lux, which represents the { et facta est lux." ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... careering swiftly through the air. The dense curtain which had overhung and obscured the horizon was now broken, and large sections of the sky were clear, and thinly studded with stars that looked dim and watery, as did indeed the whole firmament; for in some places black clouds were still visible, threatening a continuance of tempestuous weather. The road appeared washed and gravelly; every dike was full of yellow water; and every little rivulet ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... indeed, it is the mystery of the eternal, divine, and blessed life, to which God of His mercy bring us all. And therefore Good Friday, Easter Day, Ascension Day, are set as great lights in the firmament of the spiritual year,—to remind us that we are not animals, born to do what we like, and fulfil the sinful lusts of the flesh, the ways whereof are death; but that we are moral and rational beings, members of Christ, children of ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... that respect from the Indian scouts, because the Indians have no words or signs for expressing any large number, which, when it exceeds their reckoning, they signify by pointing to the stars in the firmament, or to the hair of their head; and this they often do to denote a number less than a thousand, as well as to signify ten ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... heights to the zenith, that balanced the crescent,— Up and far up and over,—the heaven grew erubescent, Vibrant with rose and with ruby from the hands of the harpist Dawn, Smiting symphonic fire on the firmament's barbiton: And the East was a priest who adored with offerings of gold and of gems, And a wonderful carpet unrolled for the inaccessible hems Of the glistening robes of her limbs; that, lily and amethyst, Swept glorying on and on through temples ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... American journalistic firmament in Berlin is Karl Heinrich von Wiegand, the special representative of the New York World. The New York World is not pro-German, but von Wiegand is of direct and noble German origin. Apart from his admitted talents as a newspaper man, his Prussian "von" is of no inconsiderable value ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... struck for De Beriot and Mlle. Garcia, the mold of which was broken immediately. Pauline Garcia, in company with De Beriot, gave a series of concerts through Belgium and Germany, and it soon became evident that a new star of the first magnitude was rising in the musical firmament. In Germany many splendid gifts were showered on her. The Queen of Prussia sent her a superb suite of emeralds, and Mme. Sontag, with whom she sang at Frankfort, gave the young cantatrice a valuable ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... this vast herd of elephants as they drifted on and away, following a leader as does a herd of sheep. They browsed from growing herbage which they encountered as they traveled, and now and again shook the firmament ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... the focal point of America's most self-sufficient summer colony, and that all these subdued and inarticulate masqueraders were personages daily exploited by the press as the brightest stars in the social firmament, the incongruity of this dumb gathering seemed as glaring, as bizarre as ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... buried in angry reverie. If he spoke to me, on these excursions, it was a pain to me to answer him. I could talk on easy terms with him indoors, seated in my high chair, with our heads on a level, but it was intolerably laborious to look up into the firmament and converse with a dark face against the sky. The actual exercise of walking, too, was very exhausting to me; the bright red mud, to the strange colour of which I could not for a long while get accustomed, becoming caked about my little shoes, and wearying me extremely. I would grow ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... It is, however, notable that—doubtless on account of that very common-sense which has nearly always kept him right on great questions—Punch has usually in art been nearly as much a Philistine as the public he represents. When Sir Edward Burne-Jones burst forth into the artistic firmament, Punch joined, if not the mockers, at least the severer critics. "BURN JONES?" said he; "by all means do." Of the exquisite "Mirror of Venus" and "The Beguiling of Merlin" he ignored the poetry, and saw little ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... its mad, but, to me, harmless fury.—And then,—to look at it with that inward eye,—who does not love to shuffle off time and its concerns, at intervals,—to forget who is President and who is Governor, what race he belongs to, what language he speaks, which golden-headed nail of the firmament his particular planetary system is hung upon, and listen to the great liquid metronome as it beats its solemn measure, steadily swinging when the solo or duet of human life began, and to swing just as steadily after the human chorus ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... strange light of the setting moon, while everybody's attention was engrossed by the excitement, the swift oncoming of a thunder-cloud had not been observed by any but Andrew, and it had already climbed half-way to the zenith, blotting out a third of the firmament. This inverted thunder-bolt produced a startling effect upon the over-strained nerves of the crowd. Some cried out with terror, some sobbed with hysterical agony, some shouted in triumph, and it was generally believed that Virginia Waters, who died a maniac ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... darkness flies far from the bosom of the waters. Suddenly rays of glorious light break forth from heaven and pour their golden glory on the sea, the sun rises in his glowing strength above the bank of purple clouds, and as they disperse themselves over the azure firmament, various are the shapes, whether beautiful or grotesque, that they assume. One can imagine he sees towns, hills, castles with tall towers, ships, and a thousand other objects in their flitting shapes, but yet scarcely formed ere they lose ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... That didn't soften the smart any. And to think of the circumstances! the first statesman of the age, the capablest man, the best-informed man in the entire world, the loftiest uncrowned head that had moved through the clouds of any political firmament for centuries, sitting here apparently defeated in argument by an ignorant country blacksmith! And I could see that those others were sorry for me—which made me blush till I could smell my whiskers scorching. Put yourself in my place; feel as mean as I did, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the inn he used to say that there was no one who could show him any one else's mountain boots that could compare with his own. "They don't know," he was accustomed to add, "and they have never learned it in all their life, how such a shoe is to be made so that the firmament of the nails shall fit well on the soles and contain the proper amount of iron, so as to render the shoe hard on the outside, so that no flint, however sharp, can be felt through, and so that it on its inside fits the foot as snug ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... tier, and peak over peak, the finest mountains of the world are soaring into the purple firmament. Like northern lights, they flash, or flush, or fade into a reclining gleam; like ladders of heaven, they bar themselves with cloudy air; and like heaven itself, they rank their white procession. Lonely, feeble, puny, I look up with awe and reverence; ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... how my book has sped. It is full of theories—I trust not unsupported by facts: some thought out on the plains of Southern Australia; some during many a solitary sleigh drive over frozen lakes in North America; some in the great forests of Central and South America; some on the wide ocean, with the firmament above and below blending together on the horizon; and some, again, in the bowels of the earth when seeking for her hidden riches. The thoughts are those of a lifetime compressed into a little book; and, like the genie ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... eagle's vision cannot take it in. The lightning's wing, too weak to sweep its space, Sinks half way o'er it like a wearied bird;— It is the mirror of the stars, where all Their host within the concave firmament, Gay marching to the music of the spheres, Can ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... voice of armies rose With rallying shout through the starred firmament, And with a mighty war-cry both the hosts Encountering closed. Nor longer then did Jove Curb down his force, but sudden in his soul There grew dilated strength, and it was filled With his omnipotence; his whole of might Broke from him, and the godhead rushed abroad. The vaulted sky, the Mount ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... shall be in eternal restless change Self-fed and self-consumed. If this fail, The pillared firmament ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... were paling in the firmament when I opened my window. Mists clothed the horizon. The rushing wind soon tore them aside, and drove them into the gorges, whence descend, in the shape of a fan, the unformed masses of the lower glacier, soiled ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... mount aloft unto the skie, 505 And looke into the christall firmament; There we behold the heavens great hierarchie, The starres pure light, the spheres swift movement, The spirites and intelligences fayre, And angels waighting on ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... alabaster, called Mary Queen of Scots' column, because it is said she reached so far; beyond which is a steep ascent for nearly a quarter of a mile, which terminates in a hollow in the roof, called the Needle's-eye, in which, when the guide places his candle, it looks like a star in the firmament. You only wonder when you get out how you attained ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... he and his only, but the very barbarous nations of the Poictevins, Bretons, Manceaux, and those that dwell beyond the isles of the Canaries, and that of Isabella, have thought it as easy to pull down the firmament, and to set up the depths above the clouds, as to make a breach in your alliance; and have been so afraid of it in their enterprises that they have never dared to provoke, incense, or endamage the one ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... few prettier things than Carlsbad by night from one of the many bridges which span the Tepl in its course through the town. If it is a starry night, the torrent glides swiftly away with an inverted firmament in its bosom, to which the lamps along its shores and in the houses on either side contribute a planetary splendor of their own. By nine o'clock everything is hushed; not a wheel is heard at that dead hour; the few feet shuffling stealthily ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Orion rising if he sits up nights," Gow Johnson said. "The game is with Terry—at last." Then he called to the dispersing gossiping crowd: "Hold on—hold on, you people. I've got news for you. Folks, this is O'Ryan's night. It's his in the starry firmament. Look at him shine," he cried, stretching out his arm towards the heavens, where the glittering galaxy hung near the zenith. "Terry O'Ryan, our O'Ryan—he's struck oil—on his ranch it's been struck. Old Vigon found it. Terry's got his own at last. O'Ryan's in it—in it alone. Now, let's hear ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fifteenth century had done its best to foster the delusion now expressed the altered tone of thought. Raphael, in the cupola of the Capella Chigi, represents the gods of the different planets and the starry firmament, watched, however, and guided by beautiful angel-figures, and receiving from above the blessing of the eternal Father. There was also another cause which now began to tell against astrology in Italy. The Spaniards took no interest in it, not ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, Were made by God's creative power Six thousand years ago or more. Man, too, was formed to till the ground; Birds, beasts, and fish to move around; The fish to swim, the birds to fly, And all to praise the Love most high. This world ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... this eternal order cannot believe the Epicurean doctrine. Human generations pass away, but the earth and the stars abide for ever. Surely the universe is divine. Passing on to the milky way, he gives two fanciful theories of its origin, one that it is the rent burnt by Phaethon through the firmament, the other that it is milk from the breast of Juno. As to its consistency, he wavers between the view that it is a closely packed company of stars, and the more poetical one that it is formed by the white-robed souls of the just. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the coroner, with a pleased laugh. "To me the castin' vote is ez phee-nomenal an' ez astonishin' ez the comet." He chuckled—the fat man's unctuous laugh. "Something like the comet, too: it has its place in the legal firmament, but 't ain't often ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... gale was raging through the town, touzling its thatch of chimney-pots, doing violence to the demureness of its respectable streets. Night was falling, and in Piccadilly those strange, gay hats that greet the darkness were coming out like eager, vulgar comets in a dim and muttering firmament. It was just the moment when the outside mood of the huge city begins to undergo a change, to glide from its comparative simplicity of afternoon into its leering complexity of evening. Each twenty-four hours London has its moment of emancipation, its moment in which the wicked begin to breathe ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... not attempted to fix the precise spot in which Charles Lamb is to shine hereafter in the firmament of letters. I am not of sufficient magnitude to determine his astral elevation—where he is to dwell—between the sun Shakespeare and the twinkling Zoilus. That must be left to time. Even the fixed stars at first waver ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... without delay. To free himself Bailly was obliged to sell his library, to abandon to the chances of an auction that multitude of valuable books, from which he had sought out, in the silence of his study, and with such remarkable perseverance, the most recondite secrets of the firmament. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament, and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... from the rest of the crew. She came to the conclusion that the matter could be related jocularly, or—why not pretend fear? At that moment the brig's yard-arm light she was looking at trembled distinctly, and she was dumfounded as if she had seen a commotion in the firmament. With her lips open for a cry she saw it fall straight down several feet, flicker, and go out. All perplexity passed from her mind. This first fact of the danger gave her a thrill of quite a new emotion. Something had to be done at once. For some ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... messages; and the earth itself would bring forth clouds—clouds of a whiter breed—which formed in shallow valleys and followed the courses of the streams. It seemed the beginning of life. Again God said, "Shall we divide the waters from the land or not? Was not the firmament labour and glory sufficient?" At all events it was the beginning of life pastoral, ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... Rose-cheek'd Adonis, kept a solemn feast: Thither resorted many a wandering guest To meet their loves: such as had none at all, Came lovers home from this great festival; For every street, like to a firmament, Glister'd with breathing stars, who, where they went, Frighted the melancholy earth, which deem'd Eternal heaven to burn, for so it seem'd, As if another Phaeton had got The guidance of the sun's rich chariot. But, far ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... at the beauties of the light summer night he suddenly began to wonder. Could it be that he saw aright? But it actually looked as if the firmament were sinking. Anyway, to his vision it was much nearer to ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... light of day diminished on the approach of twilight, and then myriads of stars shone in the firmament, like sparks sown by the sun as he quitted the horizon. At length, as on that evening to which so many recollections belonged, when Fabian, wounded, reached the wood-rangers by their fire, the moon illumined the summits of the trees and the ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... suffice it to say that though I entertain the highest reverence and love for Baha'ullah's son, Abdul Baha, whom I regard as a Mahatma—'a great-souled one'—and look up to as one of the highest examples in the spiritual firmament, I hold no brief for the Bahai community, and can be as impartial in dealing with facts relating to the Bahais as with facts which happen to concern my own beloved mother-church, the ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... a profusion of bounty, and as colors deepen or fade, and beauties augment or diminish, I bow with admiration at the object, and increased love to Him whose hand garnished the heavens, and whose goodness is as manifest "in these his lower works" as in the constellated glories of the firmament, whose systems combine to enrich with heatless light worlds of space—and the infinite seems exhausted to gem with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... seem to bear a proportion to our vague estimates of the spiritual hosts. All this Roswell was very capable of feeling, and in some measure of appreciating; and never before had he been made so conscious of his own insignificance, as he became while looking on the firmament that night, glowing with its bright worlds and suns, doubtless the centres of other systems in which distance swallowed ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... one potentate whom even Tamburlaine cannot overcome—Death. Zenocrate dies, nor will 'cavalieros higher than the clouds', nor cannon to 'batter the shining palace of the sun, and shiver all the starry firmament', restore her. Tamburlaine himself must die, defiantly, it may be, yielding nothing through cowardice, but as certainly as time must pass and age must come. Techelles seeks to encourage him with the hope that his illness ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... unflinching advocate of the oppressed, regardless of the sacrifices which he was obliged to make on their behalf, we are disposed to view him as one of that noble band whose lives have been consecrated to deeds of charity and benevolence, and whose names will illumine the moral firmament, so long as virtue and truth shall ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... flushes of color were as false notes of the earth, as harmonies of summer thrust into the wrong places and become discords. The time for them was not yet. The hour called for hardy adventurous things, awakened out of their cold sleep on the rocks. The blue of the firmament was not dark summer blue but seemed the sky's first pale response to the sun. The sun was not rich summer gold but flashed silver rays. The ground scattered no odors; all was the budding youth of Nature on ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... into the starry deeps, mail-clad, young and strong, resolute and still. Then the light had passed, and he was no more than a great black outline against the starry sky—a great black outline that threatened with one mighty gesture the firmament of heaven and all ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... alone to destruction. The humble walk hand in hand with Providence to immortality. Their works survive. When the people of the Colonies were defending their liberties against the might of kings, they chose their banner from the design set in the firmament through all eternity. The flags of the great empires of that day are gone, but the Stars and Stripes remain. It pictures the vision of a people whose eyes were turned to the rising dawn. It represents the hope ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... finding out which beliefs are the true ones would have to be answered for before the throne of Almighty God, at the sure risk and peril of everlasting damnation. To what quarter in the large historic firmament can we turn our eyes with such certainty of being stirred and elevated, of thinking better of human life and the worth of those who have been most deeply penetrated by its seriousness, as to the annals of the intrepid spirits whom the protestant doctrine of indefeasible ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... the direction in which the clouds are carried by the wind, but it is here used to denote the firmament. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... narrow banks art pent: The stream I love unbounded goes Through flood and sea and firmament; Through light, through life, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... has elevated our country to its present condition of power and prosperity. Do not let us sacrifice peace, and suffer violence and discord to usurp its reign. We have a magnificent future if we can only preserve the Union as our fathers constructed it. While it lasts there is a great light in the firmament in which all may walk in security, hope, and happiness. It is a light reaching far down the depths of futurity cheering and guiding the steps of our children. It is a light shining to the remotest corner of the earth—raising up the down-trodden and ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... sacrificed his loyalty to the new dynasty, how utterly unfit the Senate would have been to take its old place as ruler of Italy, if Byzantine Emperor and Ostrogothic King could have been blotted out of the political firmament. ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... done when the root of a forget-me-not caught the drop of water by her hair and sucked her in, that she might become a floweret, and twinkle brightly as a blue star on the green firmament of earth. ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... climbed the spire; we gained the roof. What a magnificent terrace! A world itself; a panoramic view sweeping the horizon. Here I saw the names of Goethe and Herder. Here they have walked many a time, I suppose. But the inside!—a forest-like firmament, glorious in holiness; windows many hued as the Hebrew psalms; a gloom solemn and pathetic as man's mysterious existence; a richness gorgeous and manifold as his wonderful nature. In this Gothic architecture we see earnest northern races, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... encounter their assailants. There was a fierce action for a few moments, the shouts of the combatants, the heavy discharge of cannon, the rattle of musketry; the tramp of heavy-aimed foot soldiers, the rush of cavalry, being distinctly heard. The firmament trembled with the shock of the contending hosts, and was lurid with the rapid discharges of their artillery. After a short, fierce engagement, the north-western army was beaten back in disorder, but rallied again, after ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... having lamed his fingers, he turned from a pianist's career to composition and musical criticism. In becoming his wife Clara gave him both hands in more senses than one, and they shone together as a double star in the art firmament. Madame Schumann had acquired a splendid foundation for her career through the wise guidance of her father, whose pedagogic ideas every piano student might consider with profit. Her playing was distinguished by its musicianly intelligence and fine artistic feeling. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... have stretched too far; Amidst heavens peace thy beauty makes a war: For when, last night, I to Jove's palace went, (The brightest part of all the firmament) Instead of all those gods, whose thick resort Filled up the presence of the thunderers court; There Jove and Juno all forsaken sate, Pensive, like kings in their declining state: Yet (wanting power) they would ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... descended like a star going down into another firmament of as deep and dark a blue as that above; and as Saxe watched he saw it reflected from the dark walls. Then lower, lower, and down and down, ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... the earth and sky, Ruling the firmament on high, Clothing the day with robes of light, Blessing ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... radiant as soon as the sun set each evening, there being no twilight to speak of—the night and its glories coming upon us as quickly as the last scrap of daylight fled. In the morning it was the same, the firmament being still bright with starlight when the glorious orb of day rose in all his majesty and paled into insignificance his lesser rivals, who, however, twinkled up to the ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... child in the vicinity of Pleasant River was on the way to the circus,—Boomer's Grand Six-in-One Universal Consolidated Show; Brilliant Constellations of Fixed Stars shining in the same Vast Firmament; Glittering Galaxies of World-Famous Equestrian Artists; the biggest elephants, the funniest clowns, the pluckiest riders, the stubbornest mules, the most amazing acrobats, the tallest man and the shortest man, the thinnest woman and the thickest woman, on the habitable globe; and no connection ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the lower animals surpass man in some of their attributes, so it may be that not every angel's eye can see as broadly and as deeply into the material works of God as man himself, looking at the firmament through an equatorial of fifteen inches' aperture, and searching into the tissues with a twelfth of ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... says Mr. Fenety, "set in semi-darkness on the day that Mr. Wilmot left the forum for the bench. He was the light of the House for sixteen years, the centre from whence radiated most of the sparkling gems in the political firmament. It was at a time of life (comparatively a young man) and a period when talents such as his were most wanted by his party and his country. Notwithstanding his supposed mistake in having joined a Conservative government, the Liberals were always willing to receive ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... that "the stars of our firmament, instead of being scattered in all directions indifferently through space, form a stratum of which the thickness is small, in comparison with its length and breadth; and in which the earth occupies a place somewhere about the middle of its thickness, between the point where it subdivides ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... a prophet, least of all regarding the weather. But I think it may not be doubted that the fine weather, at least, has passed for Darwinism. So having carefully scanned the firmament of science for signs of the weather, I shall for once make a forecast for Darwinism, namely: Increasing cloudiness with heavy precipitations, indications of a violent storm, which threatens to cause the props of the structure to totter, and to ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not: Like stars to their appointed height they climb, And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, And love and life contend ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Just as the light of all the stars is not worth one sixteenth of the light of the moon: as in the last month of the rains in the season of autumn, when the sky is clear and cloudless the sun mounts up on high and overcomes darkness in the firmament: as in the last hour of the night when the dawn is breaking, the morning star shines and gives light and radiance: even so does love which sets free the soul and comprises all good works, shine and give light and radiance." So, too, the Sutta-Nipata bids a man love not only his neighbour ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... of Ezekiel—the storm-wind out of the North, the vast cloud, the fire infolding itself, the brightness round about and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber; the rush and whirl of life that followed, wheels and wings and rings full of eyes; and over this the likeness of a firmament of the colour of the terrible ice and the sound of wings like the noise of many waters, as the Voice of the Almighty and above the firmament a Throne and on the Throne the Appearance of a Man, the Appearance ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... other the conception of a spherical earth was gradually grasped, and the heavenly bodies were perceived all to revolve round it: some moving regularly, as the stars, all fixed together into one spherical shell or firmament; some moving irregularly and apparently anomalously—these irregular bodies were therefore called planets [or wanderers]. Seven of them were known, viz. Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and there is little doubt that this number seven, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... memorable figure, and he, alas! cannot possibly be more near than a collateral. It was on August 12, 1678, that he heard Mr. John Welsh on the Craigdowhill, and "took the heavens, earth, and sun in the firmament that was shining on us, as also the ambassador who made the offer, and the clerk who raised the psalms, to witness that I did give myself away to the Lord in a personal and perpetual covenant never to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... encourage him by admitting him to a gracious audience, and by permitting him to enjoy some glimpses of the glory of those realms of light where "they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... the great performance. The frogs are only beginning to feel a little lively. It is when the sun has gone quite down, and the stars begin to twinkle upon the water, that the ball really opens. Then the gay tumult seems to extinguish every other sound, and to fill the firmament. Oh! they must have a high time of it, these little green-backed frogs that make so much noise throughout the warm nights of June. Sometimes I creep into my canoe and paddle by the light of moon or stars ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... number of Carlyle's Latter-Day Pamphlets, issued by Harper and Brothers, is a mere seven-fold repetition of the ancient discontent of the author, whose mirth is changed into a permanent wail, and for whom the "brave o'erhanging firmament has become only a foul and pestilential congregation of vapors." The subject of this number is the "Statue of Hudson," the great deposed Railway King. It says much more of statues in general, than of this particular one of Hudson's. Like all the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... public life and started a boarding-house, as you may still remember, and I was with her a good while, and almost every day added a few stars to the firmament, as Mr. Dog calls it. Once she flung the milk-pitcher at my head, and when it hit and broke, it seemed to add some to the Milky Way. Several of those fancy designs up there I can remember making. They are ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... hypocrite—far from it! He was in some measure even a devout man. But in his whole presentation of God and our relation to him, there was neither thought nor phrase germane to sunrise or sunset, to the firmament or the wind or the grass or the trees; nothing that came to the human soul as having a reality true as that of the world but higher; as holding with the life lived in it, with the hopes and necessities of the heart and mind. If "the hope of the glory of God" must be fashioned ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... giving Clarissa introductions to some of her dearest friends among the old French nobility—people who had known Lord Calderwood in their days of exile—and more than one dearest friend among the newer lights of the Napoleonic firmament. Then there were a Russian princess and a Polish countess or so, whom Lady Laura had brought to Mrs. Granger's receptions in Clarges-street: so that Clarissa and her husband found themselves at once in the centre of a circle, from the elegant dissipations ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... brief, restoring the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England, and dividing it territorially into twelve sees, and in October Cardinal Wiseman, as Archbishop of Westminster, issued his Pastoral, claiming that Catholic England had been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament. The Duchess of Norfolk, writing from Arundel, had criticised the proselytising action of certain Roman Catholic clergy. See the Queen's reply, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... whom he himself shall reveal it, in so far as he will, as he hath revealed it, to his Prophets and Apostles? But we learn it, so far as in us lieth, by their teaching, and from the very nature of the world. For the Scripture saith, 'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork;' and, 'The invisible things of him from the creation Of the world are clearly understood by the things that are made, even his eternal ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... would have thickened to opacity or not, I cannot tell. I dare not imagine that it might. I rather hope that by degrees my love would have got the victory, and melted it away. But now came a cloud which swallowed every other in my firmament. The next morning brought a letter from my aunt, telling me that my uncle had had a stroke, as she called it, and at that moment was lying insensible. I put my affairs in order at once, and Charley saw me away ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... the Hudson, whose bold summits rise Into the upper ether of the skies, Cleaving with calm content The cloudless crystal of the firmament. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... our foe till with victory crown'd, And the balm of compassion is pour'd in his wound; And still to our bosom be honesty dear, And still to our loves and our friendships sincere; And, till heaven's last thunder the firmament shakes, May happiness beam on the dear land ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the order of the variable winds. How can we penetrate the law of our shifting moods and susceptibility? Yet they differ as all and nothing. Instead of the firmament of yesterday, which our eyes require, it is to-day an eggshell which coops us in; we cannot even see what or where our stars of destiny are. From day to day, the capital facts of human life are hidden from our eyes. Suddenly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... and personal life of our Presidents cannot fail to remember how few have left the office as happy men as when they entered it, how darkly the shadows gathered around the setting sun, and how eagerly the multitude would turn to gaze upon another orb just rising to take its place in the political firmament. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... adoration of the Christ, at which my teachers scoff. But I was caught up in a mighty wave of organ-music that surged from this low earth heavenwards to break against the footstool of God in the crystal firmament. And suddenly I knew what my soul was pining for. I knew the meaning of that restless craving that has always devoured me, though I spake not thereof, those strange hauntings, those dim perceptions—in a flash I understood the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Dunlop street, who in a letter to the writer remarks especially upon Chopin's pale, cadaverous appearance. "My emotion," he says, "was so great that two or three times I was compelled to retire from the room to recover myself. I have heard all the best and most celebrated stars of the musical firmament, but never one has left such an ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... arms." The hosts whose invitation includes the announcement "special dances by Miss —— or Mr. ——" know that there will be few declinations because of other engagements. The fortunate ones who are able to command the presence of any of the well known stars in the dancing firmament at a social gathering, are assured that their guests will carry away with them only pleasant ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... Congress began on November 13, 1797. The words of the President's address, "We are met together at a most interesting period, the situation of the powers of Europe is singular and portentous," was not an idle phrase. The star of Bonaparte already dominated the political firmament. Europe lay prostrate at the feet of the armies of the Directory. England, who was supposed to be the next object of attack, was staggering under the load of debt; and the sailors of her channel fleet had risen in mutiny. Even the Federalists, the aristocrats ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... pattered upon the leaves, and then it seemed as if the windows of Heaven had been opened. The rain descended in torrents, the firmament flamed with a blinding intensity—and the earth trembled with the reverberating thunder. The vivid sheets of electric fire made the darkness and gloom deeper by contrast. The trees, with their swaying branches, and the spear-like columns of rain, stood out and vanished again so rapidly ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... deep, and on the firmament, the orderly withdrawal of the stars, the calm promise of coming day, the rosy suffusion of the sky and waters, the ineffable splendour that then burst forth, attuned my mind afresh after the discords ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... point it out to me. Both he and the first mate, however, said that they had never heard of it, and the second mate was the only one to whom it did not appear entirely unknown. With his help, we really did discover in the spangled firmament four stars, which had something of the form of a somewhat crooked cross, but were certainly not remarkable in themselves, nor did they excite the least enthusiasm amongst us. A most magnificent spectacle was, on the contrary, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... make war upon my senses, and treat them as my enemies. My eyes, which have drawn me into a thousand difficulties, see no longer either gold or precious stones, or ivory, or purple; they behold nothing save the water, the firmament and the rocks. The only female who comes within their sight is a swarthy old woman, dry and parched as the Lybian deserts. My ears are no longer courted by those harmonious instruments and voices ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... happily ended has added new names to the galaxy of naval worthies. New stars are in the firmament. The records indicate that your naval representatives have been faithful to the lesson of their traditions, that they have been true to their history, whilst the men of our Navy have shown that they have lost none of the skill and none of the tact that they have inherited. But they have proven ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... and there again, heaps of dead bodies lying unburied, and the like, just as the imagination of the poor terrified people furnished them with matter to work upon. So hypochondriac fancies represent Ships, armies, battles in the firmament; Till steady eyes the exhalations solve, And all to its ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... first from Tiamat." "The gods came into being in long succession, but, at length, enmity arose between them and Tiamat, who created monsters to oppose them. Merodach, a solar deity, vanquished Tiamat, cut her body in two, and with one-half of it made a firmament supporting the upper waters in the sky, etc., etc." The Babylonian gods, like even those of the classics, were criminals fit only ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... floated on the primordial waters, thou subsequently becamest Hari,[18] and Brahma and Surya and Dharma, and Dhatri and Yama and Anala and Vasu, and Vaisravana, and Rudra, and Kala and the firmament the earth, and the ten directions! Thyself increate, thou art the lord of the mobile and the immobile universe, the Creator of all, O thou foremost of all existences! And, O slayer of Madhu, O thou of abundant energy, in the forest of Chitraratha thou didst, O Krishna, gratify with thy sacrifice ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... during the Middle Ages, and to her alone must be given credit for an advancement in civilization by no means small, considering the difficulties to be met and the obstacles to be overcome. During this long period there were many bright spots in the educational firmament, many brilliant leaders of the Church who also were conspicuous educators, and many important movements toward higher civilization. An examination of this period has led recent historians to abandon the term "Dark Ages." A more careful study of some of these ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... easy to describe the personal attraction of Tennyson as it is difficult to describe that of any one of his great contemporaries, we do not find the same relations existing between him and them as regards his place in the firmament of English poetry. In a country with a composite language such as ours, it may be affirmed with special emphasis, that there are two kinds of poetry; one appealing to the uncultivated masses, whose vocabulary is of the narrowest; the other ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... table, or a joint stool, in his conception, rises into a dignity equivalent to Cassiopeia's chair. It is invested with constellatory importance. You could not speak of it with more deference, if it were mounted into the firmament. A beggar in the hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, rose the Patriarch of Poverty. So the gusto of Munden antiquates and ennobles what it touches. His pots and his ladles are as grand and primal as the seething-pots and hooks seen in old prophetic vision. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... to her guests—her hair hung about her shoulders in true Indian style; and altogether she was a genuine sample of backwoods' civilization. We were placed in a good bed—the state-bed of course—and as we lay, paid our devotions to Urania, and contemplated the beauties of the starry firmament, through an aperture in the roof which would have ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens—a shining frame— Their great Original proclaim. Th' unwearied sun from day to day. Doth his Creator's power display. And publishes to every land The work of an ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... 1780, while he was still in the twenties, he was sent to Parliament by Stafford suffrages; and from his first appearance at Westminster captivated his fellow law-makers by the magic of his eloquence. A new star had arisen in the oratorical firmament, and soon began to pale all other luminaries. Within two years he was a Minister of the Crown; and in another year he had electrified the world by the most brilliant oratory that had ever been heard in our tongue—notably by his historic speech in the trial of Warren Hastings, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... devoted to observation of the heavenly bodies, it is not surprising that they should have mapped out the apparent course of the moon and the visible planets in their nightly tour of the heavens, and that they should have divided the stars of the firmament into more or less arbitrary groups or constellations. That they did so is evidenced by various sculptured representations of constellations corresponding to signs of the zodiac which still ornament the ceilings of various ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... (excepting the far swing of some of the comets), is insignificant compared to the distances of the stars. One of the nearest stars to the earth that we know of is Alpha Centauri, estimated to be some twenty-five million millions of miles away. Sirius, the brightest star in the firmament, is double this distance from ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... lifted her betwixt us and then suddenly with a soft, murmurous cry, she lifted her arms to the glory of the wide firmament above us and with shuddering sigh let them slowly fall, and with this sigh the strange, wild soul of her sped away back to the Infinite whence ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... flood of light is thus shed daily and hourly upon the people of Massachusetts! This intellectual effulgence radiates by day and night. It is the sun in its meridian splendor, and the stars in an ever unclouded firmament. It has a centre and a circumference, but knows no darkness. Ignorance vanishes before it; wealth follows in its train; labor rejoices in its association, and finds its products more than doubled; freedom hails its presence, and religion gives ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... give up making verses. A horrid barbarism prevails, the country laughs at the laurel-bringing art of high-seated Apollo; the coarse peasant orders the learned poet to write verses. 'Though I had mouths as many as the stars that twinkle in the silent firmament on quiet nights, or as many as the roses that the mild gale of spring strews on the ground, I could not complain of all the evils by which the sacred art of poetry is oppressed in these days. I am tired of writing poetry.' Of this effusion Cornelius made ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... me now as speaking of features only, for as to form, alas, that is under such a total crinoline eclipse that this season of total darkness in fashion's firmament forbids any speculation on that subject. The reign of crinoline amplitude is not only not removed, but is more dominant than ever. Who could have predicted that, because an heir to the French throne was in expectancy, all womankind, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Wherewith she, for her foolish fear, Says trembling, 'Do you love me. Dear?' And I reply, 'Sweetest, I vow I never loved but half till now.' She turns her face to the wall at this, And says, 'Go, Love, 'tis too much bliss.' And then a sudden pulse is sent About the sounding firmament In smitings as of silver bars; The bright disorder of the stars Is solved by music; far and near, Through infinite distinctions clear, Their twofold voices' deeper tone Utters the Name which all things own, And each ecstatic treble dwells On one ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... trunks, their crowns lost in shadow. He could have fancied himself in a hothouse roofed with black glass, for there were flagstones under foot, and no sky could be seen, no breeze could stir overhead. The few stars whose glimmer twinkled from afar belonged to our firmament; they quivered almost on the ground, and ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... distance from Europe, was one of the openings into hell, into which a ship sailing to this point, would tumble. The terror of this conception was one of the chief obstacles of the great voyage of Columbus. Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and Zwingli held to the opinion that a great firmament, or floor, separated the heavens from the earth; that above it were the waters and angels, and below it, the earth ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... nature's geometric signs, In starry flake and pellicle, 5 All day the hoary meteor fell; And when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder bent 10 The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below— A universe ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... long memorable, more or less. He kindled the infinite dry dung-heap of things; set it blazing heaven-high;—and we all thought, in the French Revolution time, it would burn out rapidly into ashes, and then there would a clear Upper Firmament, if over a blackened Earth, be once more vouchsafed us. The flame is now done, as I once said; and only the dull dung-heap, smokily burning, but not now blazing, remains,—for it was very damp, EXCEPT on the surface, and is ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... thinkings; such as dodge Conception to the very bourne of heaven, Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven, That spreading in this dull and clodded earth Gives it a touch ethereal—a new birth: Be still a symbol of immensity; A firmament reflected in a sea; 300 An element filling the space between; An unknown—but no more: we humbly screen With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending, And giving out a shout most heaven rending, Conjure thee to receive our humble Paean, Upon ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... Love; that Love which gave the ever-blessed light, and filled the earth with music of bird, and breeze, and sea; that Love whose melodies we sometimes faintly catch, like spirit voices, from the souls of orators and poets; that Love which inlaid the arching firmament of heaven with jewels sparkling with eternal fires. But thank God, their fall was not like the remediless fall of Lucifer and his angels, into eternal darkness. Thank God, in this "night of death" hope does see a ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... a star going down into another firmament of as deep and dark a blue as that above; and as Saxe watched he saw it reflected from the dark walls. Then lower, lower, and down and ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... this level the lower clouds are laid out all neatly combed by the dry fingers of the East. Below that again is the strong westerly blow through which we rose. Overhead, a film of southerly drifting mist draws a theatrical gauze across the firmament. The moonlight turns the lower strata to silver without a stain except where our shadow underruns us. Bristol and Cardiff Double Lights (those statelily inclined beams over Severnmouth) are dead ahead of us; for we keep the Southern Winter ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... ebb, or seas so wane, But they left hope-seed to fill up again. So you, my lord, though you have now your stay, Your night, your prison, and your ebb, you may Spring up afresh, when all these mists are spent, And star-like, once more gild our firmament. Let but that mighty Caesar speak, and then All bolts, all bars, all gates shall cleave; as when That earthquake shook the house, and gave the stout Apostles way, unshackled, to go out. This, as I wish for, so I hope to see; Though you, my lord, have been unkind to me, To wound my ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... the sky by day and but a narrow zone of stars could be seen at night. Only during the few hours of deep sleep, consequent on hard labor, has the roar of the waters been hushed. Now the danger is over, now the toil has ceased, now the gloom has disappeared, now the firmament is bounded only by the horizon, and what a vast expanse of constellations ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... they lived those first days together they found all they had dreamed of, each in the other, and more too; and every fresh discovery was a sweet new world, till many worlds made up the universe of their new being that circled round love's sun in a firmament of joy. Love had been great from the first, but now he grew to be all-powerful; there had been hours when one or the other might have been persuaded to draw back for some weighty reason, but no reason was strong enough to part ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... guile, and his many friends held to be tact, won Nelly to him a year after her adventure with Mr. Gurd. None congratulated them more heartily than the master of 'The Tiger.' Indeed, when 'The Seven Stars' blazed out anew on an azure firmament—the least of many changes that refreshed and invigorated that famous house—'The Tiger' also shone forth in savage splendour and his black and orange stripes blazed again from a mass ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... tall willows—pools which seemed to abound with the finny tribe, for huge trout frequently sprang from the water catching the brilliant fly which skimmed along its deceitful surface. How delightful! The sun was rolling high in the firmament, casting from its girdle of fire the most glorious rays, so that the atmosphere was flickering with their splendour; but their fierceness was either warded off by the shadow of the trees or rendered innocuous either by the refreshing coolness ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... Paul's is the culmination of the whole interior of the building. Rising over the central area, it seems to gather up the power and majesty of the nave, the aisles, the transepts, the choir, and give them expression and expansion in its lofty firmament. ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... few large drops pattered upon the leaves, and then it seemed as if the windows of Heaven had been opened. The rain descended in torrents, the firmament flamed with a blinding intensity—and the earth trembled with the reverberating thunder. The vivid sheets of electric fire made the darkness and gloom deeper by contrast. The trees, with their swaying branches, and the spear-like columns of rain, stood out and ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... be a Jew, and as they had been watched with suspicion in Spain and Portugal by the Christians, so now they watched each other for heresies. They compelled strictest obedience to every form and ceremony. To the Jew the Law forms the firmament above and the earth beneath. All is law to him, and his part and work in this life is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... soon subsided; but it was feared they might take advantage of it to assault the camp. The Marquis of Cadiz, therefore, sallied forth with three thousand horse to check any advance from the city. When they emerged from the camp they found the whole firmament illuminated. The flames whirled up in long light spires, and the air was filled with sparks and cinders. A bright glare was thrown upon the city, revealing every battlement and tower. Turbaned heads were seen gazing from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... for the convenience of their worshippers, and to accommodate their votaries, who were numerous as the stars of heaven. I repaired, and built, and completed my work. Outside the temple I fashioned everything with the same care as inside. The mound of earth on which it was built I enlarged like the firmament of the rising stars (?), and I beautified the entire building. Its towers I raised up to heaven, and its roofs I built entirely of brick. An inviolable shrine(?) for their noble godships I laid down near at hand. Anu and Vul, the great gods, I glorified inside the shrine. I set them up in their ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... myriad rounded stars To spangle my firmament, Sweet like Hesper, glad with the balm Of a ceaseless, passionless, changeless calm And hot like Sirius, and red like Mars With ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... kind I'd like to be. No door at which he ever knocked Against his manly form was locked. If ever man on earth was free And independent, it was he. No broken pledge lost him respect, He met all men with head erect, And when he passed I think there went A soul to yonder firmament So white, so splendid and so fine It came almost to ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... was a globe; that this globe was the center of the universe, and that around the earth the sun, moon and certain stars revolved. The fixed stars he still regarded as being hung against the firmament, and that this firmament was turned in some mysterious ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... This work is now very little known, but it is worthy of being read, if only for the lofty dignity of its style, and the beauty of some of its descriptive parts, particularly the creation of light on the first day, and of the firmament on the second, and the episode of the Phoenix on the fifth. Its association with Milton's far grander work, as literary twins laid for a while in the same cradle, will always invest it with deep interest to ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... been with my Lord in the manger of the ass; I strengthened Moses through the water of Jordan; I have been in the firmament with Mary Magdalene; I have obtained the muse from the cauldron of Ceridwen; I have been bard of the harp to Lleon of Lochlin. I have been on the White Hill, in the court of Cynvelyn, For a day and a year in stocks ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... felt that curious thrill of stealth, that impulse to cautious concealment, which survives in man from the remote days when enemies beset his forest ways. On a southern hillside he found a dogwood-tree with its blossomed firmament of white stars. In low, moist places the violets had sprung through the thatch of leaves and were singing their purple beauties all unheard. Birds were nesting, and squirrels ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... calm eve sinks beneath the horizon, gilding the heavens with its mild yet gorgeous splendor, so did the grand soul of Father Ryan pass into eternity, leaving behind the bright light of his genius and virtues — the one to illumine the firmament of literature, and the other to serve as a shining ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... long succession, but, at length, enmity arose between them and Tiamat, who created monsters to oppose them. Merodach, a solar deity, vanquished Tiamat, cut her body in two, and with one-half of it made a firmament supporting the upper waters in the sky, etc., etc." The Babylonian gods, like even those of the classics, were criminals fit only for prison ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... has! No two clusters alike; all shades and sizes.... A solitary blue-purple one, fully expanded and rising over the brown leaves or the green moss, its cluster of minute anthers showing like a group of pale stars on its little firmament, is enough to arrest and hold the dullest eye. Then, ... there are individual hepaticas, or individual families among them, that are sweet scented. The gift seems as capricious as the gift of genius in families. You ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... restaurateur. Son palais fut l'asyle des sciences. Le nom de ce conquerant et de cet legislateur remplit la terre. Tout fut uni par le force de son genie." De Sismondi calls him "a brilliant star in that dark firmament." Mr. Loudon, in p. 40 of his Encyclopaedia, says, that "The Abbe Schmidt informs us (Mag. Encyc.) that this monarch, who had domains in every part of France, gave the greatest encouragement to the eradication of forests, and the substitution of orchards and vineyards. He ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... well, said Jove, and for consent Thundering he shook the firmament; Our umpire Time shall have his way, With Care I let the creature stay: Let business vex him, avarice blind, Let doubt and knowledge rack his mind, 90 Let error act, opinion speak, And want afflict, and ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... Thursday, November 30th, more memorable than the disgraced Sunday, December 3rd, the SUN was on its way towards the west: in vain some scattered clouds would hamper its splendour—the god in the firmament generously ornamented them with golden fringes, and thus patches of blue sky far off were allowed to the sight, through the gilded openings among ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... stars; some resembled monstrous amethysts, some emeralds fierily green, some rubies spitting sparks vindictively red; others globular sheeny pearls, creamy of lustre but shot with faint gleams of rose; and fugitively sprinkling the firmament here and there were orbs that glistened like diamonds, wonderfully and purely white. Saturn, distinct among all the heavenly bodies, throbbed with a van-colored changing glow like a bulbous opal, and about it, with a strange shimmer, ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... suicide of the skipper that the Trade wind, which up to then had been blowing with its usual steadiness, began to weaken, and upon consulting the barometer I found that the mercury was falling rather rapidly. At the same time I became aware that the aspect of the firmament was undergoing a subtle change, the clear, brilliant blue of the sky gradually fading to a colourless pallor, as though a succession of veils of white gauze was being drawn across it, while the clouds, sailing up out of the north-east, paused ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... was resolved on, though no one knew the number of the enemy, nor could obtain any information in that respect from the Indian scouts, because the Indians have no words or signs for expressing any large number, which, when it exceeds their reckoning, they signify by pointing to the stars in the firmament, or to the hair of their head; and this they often do to denote a number less than a thousand, as well as to signify ten thousand, or any ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... breathe. As when that Voice Primeval o'er the formless chaos rolled, And, straight, confusions ceased, the greater orb Ruling the day, the lesser, night; even so, Born of that Bethlehem Mystery, order lived: Divine commandments fixed a firmament Betwixt man's lower instincts and his mind: From unsuspected summits of his spirit The morning shone. The nation with the man Partook the joy: from duty freedom flowed; And there where tribes had roved a people lived. ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... a sudden a meteor blazed out in the sky, such a meteor as no living man had ever seen in Venice, for the size of it was that of the sun. It seemed to rise out of the ocean to the east and to travel very slowly across the whole arc of the firmament till at last it burst with a terrible noise over the city and vanished. While it shone, the light it gave was that of mid-day, only pale blue in colour, turning all it touched to a livid and ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... many others belong to Theology, and to Heaven, whereunto the Soul is to have regard. Now follows the supernatural things of the visible Works of God, as we see them in the Firmament; to wit, the Planets, Stars, and Elements, which are above our Reason, only their Course and Motion is observed by speculation and reckoning, which belongs to Astronomy; it is a visible but incomprehensible Being, performing ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... his hurrying world, found in life this July morning something he had not found before. Apparently there were cracks in the firmament through which streamed a dazzling light, an invigorating air. After all, there was something wide, it seemed, in war, something sweet. It was bright and hot—they were going, clean and childlike, to help ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine." ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... women; perhaps no other country can boast such an array of illustrious names; they shine from the pages of French history like fixed stars from the firmament. Among them, down the long vista of a hundred years, brilliant and beautiful, shines the name of Madame Roland, the spirit of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... his wild eyes opened and fell upon me. With a conclusive bound he sprang to his feet, and laid bare his horrible teeth. In another instant there burst from his red throat a roar like the thunder of the firmament, and I fell impetuously to the earth. Stifling in a paroxysm of terror, I at last found myself partially awake. My dream, then, was not all a dream. Now, at least, I was in possession of my senses. The paws of some huge and real monster were pressing heavily upon my ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... they say, Immortal Alps look down, Whose bonnets touch the firmament, Whose sandals touch the ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... soon got up again, stifling, feeling such a need of fresh, free air that he opened the window wide in order to lean out. But the night was black as ink, the darkness had submerged the horizon. A mist must have hidden the stars in the firmament; the vault above seemed opaque and heavy like lead; and yonder in front the houses of the Trastevere had long since been asleep. Not one of all their windows glittered; there was but a single gaslight shining, all alone and far away, like ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... The sacred silence of dawn, the deeper hush of night, have voice for his ear. "No speech! and no words! unheard is their voice." But yet, "in all the earth goeth forth their line,[B] and in the end of the habitable world their sayings." The heavens and the firmament, the linked chorus of day and night, are heralds of God's glory, with silent speech, heard in all lands, an unremitting voice. And as he looks, there leaps into the eastern heavens, not with the long twilight of northern lands, the sudden splendour, the sun radiant as a bridegroom ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... Go 'long!—you know what you want me to say, that there never was such a pair o' lovyers under the firmament! Let my deeds prove what I think, say I—for here's a case where deeds ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... little boy who, seeing the ocean for the first time, cried, "I want to drink it all up." And Burton would have drunk it all. He would have swallowed down not only all the waters that were under the firmament but also all the creatures, palatable and unpalatable—especially the unpalatable—that ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... young moon, and a firmament glowing with a myriad of stars. The light was shed softly on the water, though, here and there, the ocean glittered with its rays. A nearly imperceptible, but what seamen call a heavy air came off the sea, bringing with it the refreshing coolness of the hour. ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... creation of God—the centre and source of good—is every where radiant with beauty. From the shell that lies buried in the depths of the ocean, to the twinkling star that floats in the more profound depths of the firmament—through all the forms of material and animated existence, beauty, beauty, beauty prevails! In the floral kingdom, it appears in an infinite variety—in an unstinted and even a richer profusion than in other departments of nature. While these contributions are thrown out so lavishly ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... tent, Silence, build up thy co-eternal wall. Death, who art silent and dark, this firmament Is thine, these withered worlds—Oh, take them all! Pearls dead and lustreless, float back to Death,— You from the sun-dust born and starry spray, Life set you free and warmed you with his breath A day, ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... declare the glory o' God, an' the firmament showeth his handy-work.' I used, whan I was a lad, to study astronomy a wee, i' the houp o' better hearin' what the h'avens declared aboot the glory o' God: I wud fain un'erstan' the speech ae day cried across the nicht to the ither. But I was sair disapp'intit. The things the ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... found themselves, after some weeks' delay, in the uncomfortable position of being unable to pay their hotel bill. In their extremity they applied to one Baron Grant, at that time a bright particular star in the Stock Exchange firmament. Baron Grant was largely interested in the gold concessions of Lydenburg, and he was willing to assist, but on terms. And the quid pro quo which he asked was some public assurance of goodwill, protection, and encouragement to British settlers in the Transvaal. ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... when it began to become dark, we walked on the terrace to enjoy the appearance of the firmament, glittering with ten million stars; to which a slight touch of early frost gave tenfold lustre. As we gazed on this splendid scene, Miss Geddes, I think, was the first to point out to our admiration a shooting or falling star, which, she said, drew a long train after it. Looking to the part ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... alike or little captives me, For all oppression is captivity. What groweth to its height demands no higher; The limit limits not, but the desire. Give but my spirit its desired scope, - A giant in a pismire, I not grope; Deny it,—and an ant, with on my back A firmament, the skiey vault will crack. Our minds make their own Termini, nor call The issuing circumscriptions great or small; So high constructing Nature lessons to us all: Who optics gives accommodate to see Your countenance large as looks the sun to be, And distant ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... proving that the road to heaven is not independent of the popular will. The great Hall of Justice, an edifice of which the Bivouackers are exceedingly proud, is constructed in the same recumbent style, the architect, with a view to protect himself from the imputation of believing that the firmament was within reach of his hand, having taken the precaution to run up a wooden finger-board from the centre of the building, which points to the place where, according to the notions of all other people, the ridge of the roof itself should have been raised. So very apparent was this peculiarity, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... heat soon makes itself sensibly felt. The sun ascends rapidly and vertically the transparent blue sky, from which every vapour seems to disappear; but presently, low in the western horizon, small, flaky, white clouds are formed. These point towards the sun, and gradually extend far into the firmament. By nine o'clock the meadow is quite dry, the forest appears in all the splendour of its glowing foliage. Some buds are expanding; others, which had effloresced more rapidly, have already disappeared. Another ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... peculiarly interesting to youth. Such knowledge teaches us the causes of things. Mysteries, hitherto hidden both in the garden and in the field, and in the heaven and in the air, lie unfolded to our view. Every walk we take, while the surface of the earth remains as it is, and the canopy of the firmament is spread over us, gives its the opportunity, in all the innumerable objects presented to our view, of almost endless investigation and delight. And the deeper we go into the hidden things of nature, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... bright on high; the blue firmament appeared to glow with an inherent brightness; the greater stars were burning in their spheres; the northern lights threw their mysterious glare far over the horizon; the few small clouds aloft were burdened with radiance; but the sky, with all its variety of light, was ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the city shine out with increased distinctness; the moonlight that whitened the sides of the buildings now has left them black masses of vague shadow, and all at once one gets the impression of looking down into an inverted firmament studded with countless stars of as various magnitudes as in the heavens, from the bright electric arc-lights to tiny gaslights; and from this height of over 400 feet one gets the impression, familiar to those who have looked at the world from a balloon, ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... subdue it,— Whereby our feet-soles tingle at an untrod Alpine peak— But shall we not fly anon with wings, to shame these creeping paces, Even as steam hath worked all speed on land and sea before? Is not this firmament of air part of the human heritage, Which man must conquer duteously, as first his Maker willed? There needeth but a lighter gas, well-tutored to our skill, The springing spirit to some shape of delicate steel and silk,— A bird-like frame of Daedalus, and gummed Icarian plumes, Ancient inventions, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the vaulted firmament His path the fire-fly courser bent, And at every gallop on the wind, He flung a glittering spark behind; He flies like a feather in the blast Till the first light cloud in heaven is past, But the shapes of air have begun their work, And ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... spirits are disporting themselves there, and will bless my mortal eye with the brief appearance of their curly locks of golden light, and laughing faces, fair and faint as the people of a rosy dream. Or, where the floating mass so imperfectly obstructs the color of the firmament, a slender foot and fairy limb, resting too heavily upon the frail support, may be thrust through, and suddenly withdrawn, while longing fancy follows them in vain. Yonder again is an airy archipelago, where ...
— Sights From A Steeple (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a beautiful calm night, and a half moon hung silver in the sky. The stars, far brighter than they ever appear in England, twinkled in the blue firmament, behind the mighty peak of Etna. It was not really dark, and it was quite possible to see the main outlines of most of the features of the landscape. Everard walked along cheerily. So far he had met with no hindrance. ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... roaring sound, high aloft. Cochrane jerked his head back. The stars filled all the firmament, but he knew what to look for. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... specks between the green trees. They could see for miles round, far away to places they had never visited, and John saw more of the beautiful world than he had ever known before. The sun shone brightly in the blue firmament above, and through the clear mountain air came the sound of the huntsman's horn, and the soft, sweet notes brought tears into his eyes, and he could not help exclaiming, "How good and loving God is to give ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... sure enough, it seemed as though two great hosts were there embattled. They could discern the legions, the wind-blown standards, the charging chariots, and the squadrons of impetuous horse. The firmament had become a battle-ground, and lo! it was red as with the blood of the fallen, while the air was full of strange and dreadful sounds, bred, perhaps, of wind and distant thunder, that came to them like the wail of the vanquished and the dull roar of triumphant armies. ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... apprehend the intention of a painting is not given to all and is a matter that requires more experience than is generally supposed. To find a landscape has been reversed by the hand that wields the duster, so that the trees stand on their heads, and the sky is as the waters that are beneath the firmament, is an experience that has been denied to few painters, and Mrs. Dixon would have found many to sympathise with her, as she stood in silent stupefaction before the portrait. Larry had been justified in his belief in it, but for such as Mrs. Dixon, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... that want to speak, and eyes that reveal a thinking brain. The trees in his landscapes appear to be gently shaken by the breeze from across the moorland, the clouds only need touching by the breath of the firmament to lazily move across the face of the blue sky. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and stupendous region, and he was awe-stricken—as who shall not be?—by what he there beheld. He worshipped the unseen power, so does this man; he believed in Revelation, so does he; but with him—it is the revelation which is made in that wondrous firmament above, and in the earth beneath, and in the glories that surround us. What knowledge had Newton of geology? what of chemistry? what of the facts which they have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... tempest; for it was a sirocco, and the welkin was overcast with sheets of vapory cloud, not very dense, indeed, or solid, but still sufficient to intercept the feeble twinkling of the stars, which alone held dominion in the firmament; since the young crescent of the moon had sunk long ago beneath the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... jealous tyranny of man's love could dare to say to natures like hers of whom we speak, 'Limit to the household glory of one the light which genius has placed in its firmament for the use and ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he said, "a ferli cas! Other ich am of wine y-drunk, Other the firmament is sunk, Other wexen is the ground, The thickness of four leaves round! So much to-night higher I lay, Certes, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... concerned. To Blair there was ever a more solemn stillness over the sea, and a more imposing grandeur in the wide canopy of the overhanging sky. One great temple it seemed to him, the sunlit waves its shining floor, the firmament its arching roof, and the unseen angels the countless worshippers, singing, "Praise and glory and honor be unto the name of God most high." In this adoring song Blair heartily joined, and he longed and prayed for the time to come when on every white-winged ship there should be gathered ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... a vault like the heaven, composed entirely of sapphires, which are the bluest of stones, and resemble the sky in color. Golden images of the gods whom they worship, are set up about the vault, and show like stars in the firmament. This is the chamber in which the king delivers his judgments. Four golden magic-wheels hang from its roof, and threaten the monarch with the Divine Nemesis, if he exalts himself above the condition of man. These wheels ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... dispossessed, to what other place did they go?" Undoubtedly the atmosphere surrounding this earth, called the first heaven. Satan is called "The prince of the power of the air" (Eph. ii:2). Notice also the work of putting the firmament in order, the atmosphere, on the second day (Gen. ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... conclusion that the matter could be related jocularly, or—why not pretend fear? At that moment the brig's yard-arm light she was looking at trembled distinctly, and she was dumfounded as if she had seen a commotion in the firmament. With her lips open for a cry she saw it fall straight down several feet, flicker, and go out. All perplexity passed from her mind. This first fact of the danger gave her a thrill of quite a new emotion. Something had to be done ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... behold a personification of that great principle which forms the corner stone of our own revered Constitution—the right of self-government. Darkened as has been the horizon of suffering Hungary, in you, sir, still burns that living fire of freedom, which we trust will yet light up her firmament, and shed its lustrous flame over her wasted lands. "The unnamed demi-gods" whose blood has moistened her battle-fields, the martyrs whose lives have been freely offered up on the scaffold and beneath the axe, the living exiles now scattered through distant lands, ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... questions her opening mind had poured upon him, and to all he had given her an answer that was an explanation. About the earth and about the sea, the rivers, and living things; about the stars and sun, the comet, the wonders of the firmament, of geology and astronomy, of science; there was nothing he did not ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... meal, the sky, all day long of cerulean clearness, becomes suddenly clouded. Not as this term is understood in the ordinary sense, but absolutely black, as if the sun were instantly eclipsed, or had dropped altogether out of the firmament. Scarce ten minutes after its commencement the obscurity has reached completeness—that of a total solar eclipse or as in a ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... their sapphire thrones, and a silvery gush played amidst the swaying foliage, where the rain-drops glistened on their leaflet platforms like so many diamonds. Then the lucid milky-way, whose loveliness flushes the firmament, bent itself across the concave above, one broad flame of pure transparent white, as if some burning orb had fled along the sky with so swift a flight, that, for a moment, it had left its lustre in the vault of heaven. Gradually all was lulled ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... on the wall came back again, and nothing else stirred in the room. The old, old fashion! The fashion that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... craven flight before the skilled spear that was his terror and his bane. Once more the lists were dight in Camelot, and all was gay with shimmer of silk and gold; the earth shook with thunder of horses, ash-staves flew in splinters; and the firmament rang to the clash of sword on helm. The varying fortune of the day swung doubtful—now on this side, now on that; till at last Lancelot, grim and great, thrusting through the press, unhorsed Sir Tristram (an easy task), and bestrode her, threatening doom; while ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... transfiguration. The olive after-glow gives place to a deep blue-grey. The yellow moon rises into the vast expanse. A softened light diffuses itself over earth and sky. The orb of night walks in brightness through a firmament of sapphire; or, if the moon is below the horizon, then the purple vault is lit up with many-coloured stars. Silence profound reigns around. A phase of beauty wholly different from that of the day-time smites the sense; and ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... until I feel that I can hear the clash of invisible cymbals. I wonder if you can understand my feeling when I pulled the hat-pin out of my old gray Stetson yesterday, uncovered my head, and looked straight up into the blue firmament above me. Then I said, "Thank you, God, ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... Pity she's dead: So much for the faithful-bent!" . . . I looked, and again a star overhead Shot through the firmament. ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... wickedness! But the reason was clear: the horror came from within; selfishness, and fierceness of temper were its source—no unhappy DOOM. The worship of one's own will fumes out around the being an atmosphere of evil, an altogether abnormal condition of the moral firmament, out of which will break the very flames of hell. The consciousness of birth and of breeding, instead of stirring up to deeds of gentleness and "high emprise," becomes then but an incentive to violence and cruelty; and things which seem as if they ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... to fear from the teaching of Revelation, not even from the claim to miraculous power. For most certainly both Science and Revelation come from one and the same God; 'the heavens declare His glory, and the firmament showeth His handywork; His law is perfect, converting the soul; His testimony is sure, making wise ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... Abraham, who are but as strangers. For come near their house and paths, and they will lead thee to destruction with them or make thee a more miserable life. But these that go to them return not again quickly. They are like fallen stars. Shall they ever be set in the firmament again? It is safest to walk with good and righteous men, for God's blessing and promise is on them. His curse and threatening is on the wicked. Therefore thou may fear wrath on that account, if thou join ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... not a shout of joy, I can make nothing of it. Or the one hundred and fiftieth psalm—'O praise God in his holiness; praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him in his noble acts; praise him according to his excellent greatness. Praise him in the sound of the trumpet; praise him upon the lute and harp. Praise him in the cymbals and dances; praise him upon the strings and pipe. Praise him upon the ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... were fairly launched out into the body of the river. The canoe was above forty feet in length; it was propelled through the water by poles instead of paddles, and moved slowly and silently along. It was a clear and lovely night; the moon shone gloriously as a silver shield, and reflecting the starry firmament on the unruffled surface of the water, the real concave of heaven with its reflection seemed to form a perfect world. The scenery on the borders of the river appeared wild and striking, though not magnificent. In the delicious moonshine it was far from uninteresting: the banks were low and partially ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the heaven-realm's Warder, The Maker's might and his mind's thought, The glory-father's work as he every wonder, Lord everlasting, of old established. He first fashioned the firmament for mortals, Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator. Then the midearth mankind's Warder, Lord everlasting, afterwards wrought, For men ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... unyoked), while, as in happier days, He pour'd his spirit forth. The past forgot, All was enjoyment. Not a cloud obscured Present or future. "He is now at rest; And praise and blame fall on his ear alike, Now dull in death. Yes, BYRON, thou art gone, Gone like a star that through the firmament Shot and was lost, in its eccentric course Dazzling, perplexing. Yet thy heart, methinks, Was generous, noble—noble in its scorn Of all things low or little; nothing there Sordid or servile. If imagined wrongs Pursued thee, urging thee sometimes to do Things long ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... of cavalry; the other came slowly from the south-east. They at length met and joined in a desperate conflict for a few moments; the shouts of the combatants, the heavy discharge of cannon, the rattle of musketry, the tramp of foot soldiers, the rush of cavalry, were distinctly heard. The very firmament trembled with the shock of the contending hosts, and was lurid with the fire of their artillery. Then the north-western army was beaten back in disorder, but, rallying again, formed into solid column, and once more advanced towards the south-eastern ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... this strange world the light was not derived from any one fixed point, such as our sun, but came in a steady and evenly diffused brightness from every part of the clear and luminous vault of heaven. But, notwithstanding that the heat under that cloudless sky and glowing firmament must have been very great, yet to the inhabitants of that world, whose bodies are composed of quite other elements than ours and have a much higher temperature, the atmosphere, hot as it would appear to us, ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... any nation that ever existed. That same race, side by side with the unparalleled growth of its industry produces Shakspeare, Milton, Bacon, and Newton, all four at the summit of human thought,—and then, just below these unapproachable fixed lights, a whole firmament of glories, lesser than they, as all created intelligence must be, yet in whose superior rays the age of Augustus, of Leo X., of Louis XIV., all but the age of Pericles, the culture of Greece, pale and fade. And yet the literature of England is not the only, scarcely the most splendid, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... fields, till the night insensibly fell upon me. I at first amused myself with all the richness and variety of colours which appeared in the western parts of heaven; in proportion as they faded away and went out, several stars and planets appeared one after another, till the whole firmament was in a glow. The blueness of the ether was exceedingly heightened and enlivened by the season of the year, and the rays of all those luminaries that passed through it. The Galaxy appeared in its most beautiful white. To complete the scene, the full moon rose at ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... Herder, Goethe, and Schiller—those were the great names that were soon to shine like stars in the literary firmament. But the lesser men who broke the ground and opened paths for their brilliant followers ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... green prairie, and a luminosity in the sky, drew Carley to the platform of her car, which was the last of the train. There she stood, gripping the iron gate, feeling the wind whip her hair and the iron-tracked ground speed from under her, spellbound and stricken at the sheer wonder and glory of the firmament, and the mountain range that it ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... And, from the firmament clear, thrice did it thunder; then tears Stream'd from mine eyes in torrents, thou weptest, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... of his seruice, and a braine of inuention for the good of the common-wealth; his place is powerful, while his seruice is faithfull, and his honour due in the desert of his employment. In summe, he is as a fixed planet mong the starres of the firmament, which through the clouds in the ayre, shewes the nature of ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... misery itself, shines the hot sun of the tropics; around it, far as eye could reach, extends the calm sea, glassed, and glancing back his lays, as though they were reflected from a sheet of liquid fire; beneath them gleams a second firmament through the pellucid water, a sky peopled with strange forms that are not birds: more like are they to dragons; for among them can be seen the horrid form of the devil-fish, and the still more hideous figure of the hammer-headed shark. And alone is that boat above them, seemingly suspended ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... the heavens, behind thousands of stars, thousands of others twinkled in ever-increasing multitudes, with the clear brilliancy of gems. The Milky Way was already whitening, displaying its solar specks, so innumerable and so distant that in the vault of the firmament they form but a ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... the Mississippi—one swing in the pure ether for every swing over the green grass; or let me oscillate in it beneath the cool dome of St. Peter's; or drop me in it, as in a balloon, from the zenith, with the whole firmament to rock and expatiate in; and I would not exchange my coarse canvas hammock for the grand state-bed, like a stately coach-and-four, in which they tuck in a king when he passes ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... first young girlhood now. She thought in an almost undefined way of mother's words as she held the fluttering thrushes to her lips and kissed their downy breasts. Then had come the unlooked-for interruption. Polly's life seemed cloudless, and all of a sudden there appeared a speck in the firmament—a little cloud which grew rapidly, until the whole heavens were covered with it. Mother had gone away for ever, and there were now nine children in ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... Sunset'—S. R. Gifford, N. A. A glorious tale, gloriously told! 'The heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands. Day to day uttereth speech, and night to night showeth knowledge. * * * He hath set his tabernacle in the sun; and he * * * hath rejoiced as a giant to run the way: His going out is from the end of heaven, and his circuit even to the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... meekness in woman to me is so dear, I love thee the more when such language I hear; True greatness and modesty, when they combine, Like stars of the firmament sparkle and shine. ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... conception, and for which they would not have any reverence. He said one day that the sky was blue, and, on looking she found that it was so. The sky was amazingly blue. It had never struck her before, but there was a colour in the firmament before which one might fall down and worship. Sunlight was not the hot glare which it had been: it was rich, generous, it was inexpressibly beautiful. The colour and scent of flowers became more varied. The world emerged as from shrouds ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... shalt eat thy fill. There is a storm Will break upon this house before the morning, So horrible, that the white moon already Turns grey and sick with terror, the low wind Goes moaning round the house, and the high stars Run madly through the vaulted firmament, As though the night wept tears of liquid fire For what the day shall look upon. Oh, weep, Thou lamentable heaven! Weep thy fill! Though sorrow like a cataract drench the fields, And make the earth one bitter lake of tears, It would not ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... were empty, the music of the Chorus Halls stilled. Here and there, a spirit was moving slowly through the streets, a half-made Martian; a breeze soft and salubrious stirred the thickly leaved trees and the firmament shone with the larger stars, beginning to pale before the rising sun. As the sun rose higher, the effulgence of the City died away, the light of the same great orb which brings the dawn to you, covered with its ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... this lady who knew all these strange things, and of the Hart Hall "Hob" who worked so hard with his flail, and of many other curious folk who frequented the Yorkshire moors in olden days. The last witch had just died before he went to Danby, but he found the whole atmosphere of the folklore firmament so surcharged with the being and work of the witch, that he seemed able to trace her presence and her activity in almost every nook and corner of ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... like a tree, that stands erect after being blasted—it may move by the winds, but the sun has no warmth for it, and there is nothing inside or at the root to give it life. They say that when a beloved wife dies, it is to the husband like the sun going away out of the firmament, and that by-and-by she appears as a pale moon. Ay, sir; everything here is full of change. Mr. Bernard's moon had no waning in it, till he began to catch the echoes of Miss Amelia's voice as he wandered among the woods. It was the grey dawn of another sun, and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... phantasmagoria enhanced by the soft and mystic radiance of the moon. An owl hooted, and the rustling of brushwood told me of the near proximity of some fur-coated burrower in the ground. High above this animal life, remoter even than the tops of my beloved trees or the mountain-ranges, etched on the dark firmament, shone multitudinous stars, even the rings round Saturn being plainly discernible. From the Milky Way my eyes at length wandered to the pines, and a puff of air laden with the odour of their resin and ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... dark, gloomy forests with oaks, pines and firs, so Scandinavian, dreaming in the declining sun? It is twilight; the night comes on, the lamps are lighted in the city below, the stars are kindled in the firmament above, and the tower of Redderholm's church rises aloft towards the starry space. The stars shine through there; it is as if cut in lace, but every thread is of cast-iron and of the thickness ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... trumpet sounded; riding upon the rainbow, came the gods, clad in steel, to fight their last battle on the last battle-field. Before them flew the winged vampires, and the dead warriors closed up the train. The whole firmament was ablaze with the northern lights, and yet the darkness triumphed. It was a terrible hour. And, close to the terrified woman, Helga seemed to be seated on the floor, in the hideous form of a frog, yet trembling, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Jewish Fathers, was formed of the earth of Babylon, his head of the land of Israel, and his other members of other parts of the world. Originally his stature reached the firmament, but after his fall the Creator, laying his hand upon him, lessened him very considerably.[57] Mr Hershon, in his Talmudic Miscellany, says there is a notion among the Rabbis that Adam was at first possessed of a bi-sexual organisation, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... any other object in living nature. For you see no one point precisely; not one distinct feature is revealed; no nose, eyes, ears, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper; nothing but that one broad firmament of a forehead, pleated with riddles; dumbly lowering with the doom of boats, and ships, and men. Nor, in profile, does this wondrous brow diminish; though that way viewed its grandeur does not domineer upon you so. In profile, you plainly perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic depression in ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... child whose infant cry had awakened the echoes of their ancient manse, though seventy long years had flown since their first minister had come among them. Thus she became the child of the regiment and they silently exulted. Jubilant, one hour after this new star had swung into the firmament, I hoisted the Union Jack to the topmost notch of our towering flag-pole, and never has it flaunted ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... him so complacent; she even wished he were to be of the company to which she was going. She had just come in to have a glimpse of him, and now she must be hurrying. And so she went away to take her bright place in that social firmament of which the abandoned Mr. Malcolm thought with so much envy and longing while he dallied ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... regarding them. Oh for a horse upon the boundless plains! he sighed to his heart. He remembered bitterly how he had that day ridden his stool at the bank, dreaming of his wilds, where bailiff never ran, nor duns obscured the firmament. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... augment or diminish, I bow with admiration at the object, and increased love to Him whose hand garnished the heavens, and whose goodness is as manifest "in these his lower works" as in the constellated glories of the firmament, whose systems combine to enrich with heatless light worlds of space—and the infinite seems exhausted to gem with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... but Fred. Far from being jealous, Manfred viewed his wife in the light of a white man's burden which he could not shake off. Christian's burden was fiction beside it. Flossy was the only star in his firmament—the only ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... the hand and the armless man by his friendly foot, if I might be so honored. But I did none of these things, and I am willing to believe the fault was in me, if I was disappointed in the circus. It was I who had shrunk and dwindled, and not it. To real boys it was still the size of the firmament, and was a world of wonders and delights. At least I can recognize this fact now, and can rejoice in the peaceful progress all over the country of the simple circuses which the towns never see, but which help to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... reaches to the stars, when one owns the infinite! Moments divine, ecstatic hours; in which our thought flies from world to world, pierces the great enigma, breathes with a respiration broad, tranquil, and deep as the respiration of the ocean, serene and limitless as the blue firmament; ... instants of irresistible intuition in which one feels one's self great as the universe, and calm as a god.... What hours, what memories! The vestiges they leave behind are enough to fill us with belief and enthusiasm, as if they were visits ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Bohu Bo hu] signifies that through which matter gains existence, hence form. "Water" (Heb. Mayim) is also a general word for any of the various forms, whereas "light" (Heb. Or) stands for the pure subsistent form. By "firmament" (Heb. Rakia') is meant the second kind of form which unites with the pure matter in a permanent and unchangeable manner. "Let there be a firmanent in the midst of the waters" (Gen. 1, 6) indicates that the "firmament" is embraced by the bright light of the first ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... and sumptuous architecture, difficult to be described. The walls were incrusted with the most precious gems, so joined together as to form one smooth and perfect surface. The lofty dome appeared to be self-supported, and was studded with gems, lustrous as the stars of the firmament. There was neither wood, nor any other common or base material to be seen throughout the edifice. There were no windows or rather openings to admit the day, yet a radiant light was spread throughout the place, which seemed to shine from ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... unwholesome sweetmeat. Long candles of blue and gold and bouquets of dusty artificial flowers flanked it. Behind it, in a round niche, stood a painted figure of Christ holding a book. The two adjacent side chapels had domed roofs representing the firmament. Beneath the pulpit stood a small harmonium. At the opposite end of the church was a high gallery holding more chairs. The mean, featureless windows were filled with glass half white, half staring red dotted with yellow crosses. Round the walls were reliefs of the fourteen stations of the Cross ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... hate evil, that does not flame out against it, using all the energies of His being to destroy it, is a God to whose character there cleaves a fatal suspicion of indifference to good, of moral apathy. If I have not a God to trust in that hates evil because He loveth righteousness, then 'the pillared firmament itself were rottenness, and earth's base built on stubble'; nor were there any hope that this damnable thing that is killing and sucking the life-blood out of our spirits should ever be destroyed and cast aside. Oh! it is short-sighted ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... a sphere, but a rectangular plane forming the floor of the universe; the heavens rise on all four sides about this rectangle, like the four walls of a room, and, at an indefinite height above the floor, these blue walls support a vaulted roof or firmament, in which God dwells with the angels. In the centre of the floor are the inhabited lands of the earth, surrounded on all sides by a great ocean, beyond which, somewhere out in a corner, is the Paradise from which Adam and Eve were expelled. In its general shape, therefore, the universe somewhat ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... prevailed to bring down the last of the Caesars, yet the ancient frame of government still subsisted. The political heaven, though shaken, was not yet wholly removed, while the Senate, Consuls and other official dignitaries continued to shine as political luminaries in the firmament of power. But as the last of the Caesars fell from power in the year 476, so the last vestige of imperial dominion in the west was removed in 566, when Rome, the queen of the nations, was by the emperor of the east reduced to the humble condition ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... in a melting mood, I gazed listlessly upon the brazen firmament, with no fellow-feeling for those hot culinary bars. The broiling glow was not at all tempting: I think it would have staggered even the gay salamander that is said to accept so thoroughly the gospel of caloric. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... all that, if he raised his eyes, there was the silent upturned sea of heaven, a blue sea crested with surging white clouds like waves; and at the same time this firmament moved in the water where it billowed under a blueish ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... infinitudes which outlay and encircled his conception of all this mere Mundane Creation. Deep down beneath this MUNDANE CREATION, and far separated from it, he was seeing the HELL from which was to come its woe; all round the Mundane Creation, and surging everywhere against its outmost firmament, was the dark and turbid CHAOS out of which its orderly and orbicular immensity had been cut; and high over all, radiant above Chaos, but with the Mundane Universe pendent from it at one gleaming ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... green meadow-land, the deepest and most fertile possible—the hills of every shape and size—here bold, and bare, and rocky—there swelling up in grand round masses, pile above pile of verdure, to the blue firmament of autumn. By and by we drove through a thriving little village, nestling in a hollow of the hills, beside a broad bright pond, whose waters keep a dozen manufactories of cotton and of iron—with which mineral these hills abound—in constant operation; and passing by the tavern, the departure ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... contrast to Jeremiah's sorrowful attitude of retrospection. The picture brings out clearly the fact that the keynote of Daniel's prophecy is hope. Looking into his rapt face, we may imagine that this is the message he is writing: "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... sought what they never found, and they found what they never sought. Was the search unsuccessful? Seekers after truth, they called themselves; and did they not find the Truth? Like the Magi, they followed a star in the firmament with which they were familiar. But, to their amazement, the star led them to the Saviour, and neither of them ever regretted participating ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... fact disturbed him vaguely. The thought that he was very deeply interested in her in the good old way between man and maid, never entered his stubborn head. She was as far removed from his ideal woman as the furthermost star in the infinite firmament. Perhaps it was this very disquiet within him, caused by Judith, which now turned his ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
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