"Burnish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through the tide, Then his clear glitt'ring side Is burnish'd with silver and gold; And the sweep of his flight Seems a rainbow of light, As again he sinks down ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the same school with Donald. She was a shy little thing with big brown eyes, which looked at you wistfully, and a mass of yellow hair, which the sun in the summer mornings loved to burnish. Minnie at the age of ten felt drawn to Donald, as timid women generally feel drawn toward masterful men, ignoring the steadier love of gentler natures. Donald had from the start constituted himself her protector in a lordly way. He had once resented a belittling ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... worn-out with rust, Whereto their banner vile they trust: Why, all these things I hold them just As dragons in a missal book, Wherein, whenever we may look, We see no horror, yea delight We have, the colours are so bright; Likewise we note the specks of white, And the great plates of burnish'd gold. ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... And on the other side the Persians form'd: First a light cloud of horse, Tartars they seem'd, The Ilyats of Khorassan:[21] and behind, 135 The royal troops of Persia, horse and foot, Marshall'd battalions bright in burnish'd steel. But Peran-Wisa with his herald came Threading the Tartar squadrons to the front, And with his staff kept back the foremost ranks. 140 And when Ferood, who led the Persians, saw That Peran-Wisa kept ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... gathered in the garden, sufficed amply for her support. The pastoral solitude of the place had in it a quiet, dreamy fascination, a novelty, an unwearying charm, after the austere loneliness to which her former existence had been subjected in Rome. And when evening came, and the sun began to burnish the tops of the western tress, then, after the calm emotions of the solitary day, came the hour of absorbing cares and happy expectations—ever the same, yet ever delighting and ever new. Then the rude shutters were carefully closed; the open door was ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... other's fame, Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown, The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time, Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels, But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum, To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour For ever slaves ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... a puddle of gloom and of shadowy things, He sped till the red and the gold of invisible day Was burnish and flames to the undermost spread of his wings, So he outlighted the stars as he poised in ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... ranchers and obscure townsfolk who stood in with them. Knapp had been discouraged. Now he took a handful and spread it on his palm, golden eagles, heavy, shining, solid. Swaying his wrist, he let the sun play on them, strike glints from their edges, burnish their surface. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... sad iron; burnisher, turpentine and beeswax; polish, shoe polish. [art of cutting and polishing gemstones] lapidary. [person who polishes gemstones] lapidary, lapidarian. V. smooth, smoothen[obs3]; plane; file; mow, shave; level, roll; macadamize; polish, burnish, calender[obs3], glaze; iron, hot-press, mangle; lubricate &c. (oil) 332. Adj. smooth; polished &c. v.; leiodermatous[obs3], slick, velutinous[obs3]; even; level &c. 213; plane &c. (flat) 251; sleek, glossy; silken, silky; lanate[obs3], downy, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a pivot are that it shall be round and well polished. Avoid the burnish file at all hazards; it will not leave the pivot round, for the pressure is unequal at various points in the revolution. A pivot that was not perfectly round might act fairly well in a jewel hole that was round, but unfortunately the greater proportion of jewel holes are not as they should ...
— A Treatise on Staff Making and Pivoting • Eugene E. Hall
... palaces and column'd towers, Unconscious of the stony hours; Harsh gateways startled at a sound, With burning lamps all burnish'd ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Greek or Latin tongue, Thou hast redeem'd, and opened us a mine Of rich and pregnant fancy, drawn a line Of masculine expression, which, had good Old Orpheus seen, or all the ancient brood Our superstitious fools admire, and hold Their lead more precious than thy burnish'd gold, Thou hadst been their exchequer.... Let others carve the rest; it will suffice I on thy grave this epitaph incise:— Here lies a King, that ruled as he thought fit The universal monarchy of wit; Here lies ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... is Nature made for? is it for us The beautiful world is burnish'd and blent? If we had not eyes, would blossoms shine thus? If we had not nostrils, would ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... his path ere it is trod; Burnish the arms that he must wield; And pray, with all thy strength, that God May crown ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... in his majesty Who doth the world so gloriously behold, That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold." ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... family cordiality, an exaggeration of family importance, and—the sniff. Danger—so indispensable in bringing out the fundamental quality of any society, group, or individual—was what the Forsytes scented; the premonition of danger put a burnish on their armour. For the first time, as a family, they appeared to have an instinct of being in contact, with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... turpentine and beeswax; polish, shoe polish. [art of cutting and polishing gemstones] lapidary. [person who polishes gemstones] lapidary, lapidarian. V. smooth, smoothen^; plane; file; mow, shave; level, roll; macadamize; polish, burnish, calender^, glaze; iron, hot-press, mangle; lubricate &c (oil) 332. Adj. smooth; polished &c v.; leiodermatous^, slick, velutinous^; even; level &c 213; plane &c (flat) 251; sleek, glossy; silken, silky; lanate^, downy, velvety; glabrous, slippery, glassy, lubricous, oily, soft, unwrinkled^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... seeded grasses The changing burnish heaves; Or marshalled under moons of harvest Stand still all night the sheaves; Or beeches strip in storms for winter And stain ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... count on your services, Comrade Wilberfloss? Excellent. I see I may. Then perhaps you would not mind passing the word round among Comrades Asher, Waterman, and the rest of the squad, and telling them to burnish their brains and be ready to wade in at a moment's notice. I fear you will have a pretty tough job roping in the old subscribers again, but it can be done. I look to you, Comrade Wilberfloss. Are ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... for us, we appeared ridiculously inadequate. We ought to have been at least twenty feet high to fit the hour and the scene. Gradually the lights faded, the shadows faded, then both began to merge till a soft grey-blue dropped over all blending into the sky everywhere except west where the burnish of sunset remained. Before dark the old camp was reached; we found the saw by the last dying rays and then picked our backward path by starlight following the trail as we had come. Silence and the night were one as in the ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... and suspend it after the manner of a grindstone. The plates being secured to the inner side of the wheel or case, and as this case revolved, the seeds would constantly keep to the lower level, and their sliding over the surface of the plates would polish or burnish their surfaces. This, with the former, was soon abandoned; rounded shots of silver placed in the same wheel were found not to perform the polishing so well as linseed. Buff-wheels of leather with rotten-stone and oil, proved to be far superior to all other contrivances; ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... overflowing long ago. Zaniloff, charged with the command to restore order in the city at any cost, cared not a straw what the world without might say of him. The rifle, the bayonet, the revolver, the whip—here were fine tools and proved. Let but a breath of suspicion frost the burnish of a reputation and he would have that man or woman at the bar, though arrest might cost a hundred lives. Thus it came about that those within the gates were a heterogeneous multitude to which all classes had contributed. ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... a double throne. Like burnish'd cloud of evening shone; While, group'd the base around, Four Damsels stood of Faery race; Who, turning each with heavenly grace Upon me her immortal face, Transfix'd me ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... horsemen are return'd from viewing The number, strength, and posture of our foes, Who now encamp within a short hour's march; On the high point of yon bright western tower, We ken them from afar; the setting sun Plays on their shining arms and burnish'd helmets, And covers all the field with ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... contests generally begin with the harvests. During the season of tillage all is quiet; but, when the crops begin to ripen, the governor begins to rise in his demands for revenue, and the Rajput landholders and cultivators to sharpen their swords and burnish their spears. One hundred of them always consider themselves a match for one thousand of the king's troops in a fair field, because they have all one heart and soul, while ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the beaker beplated, The dear drink-vat; the doughty have sought to else-whither. Now shall the hard war-helm bedight with the gold Be bereft of its plating; its polishers sleep, They that the battle-mask erewhile should burnish: Likewise the war-byrny, which abode in the battle O'er break of the war-boards the bite of the irons, Crumbles after the warrior; nor may the ring'd byrny After the war-leader fare wide afield 2260 On behalf of the heroes: nor ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... keepe it: if not, he puts it vp into his Saptargat, that is to say, his foure square budget, which they vse to cary about with them for the sauing of all such prouision, and wherein they lay vp their bones, when they haue not time to gnaw them throughly, that they may burnish them afterward, to the end that no whit of their food may come ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... and never shall be one. Our Imperium was organized to secure our rights within the United States and we will make any sacrifice that can be named to attain that end. Our efforts have been to wash the flag free of all blots, not to rend it; to burnish every star in the cluster, but ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... some other light ships, was between the blockading fleet and the blockaded, where perpetual vigilance was needed. This sharp service was the very thing required to improve his character, to stamp it with decision and self-reliance, and to burnish his quiet, contemplative vein with the very frequent friction of the tricks of mankind. These he now was strictly bound not to study, but anticipate, taking it as first postulate that every one would cheat him, if permitted. To a scrimpy and screwy man, of the type ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... when the wattle gold trembles 'Twixt shadow and shine, When each dew-laden air draught resembles A long draught of wine; When the sky-line's blue burnish'd resistance Makes deeper the dreamiest distance, Some song in all hearts hath existence, — Such songs have ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... of a superb adventure. To rummage about in the lumber-room of a bygone period: to wipe away the dust from long-neglected annals: to burnish up old facts and fancies: to piece together the life-story of some loved hero long dead: that is a work of reverent thought to be undertaken in peace and seclusion. But to plunge boldly into the study of a living personality: to strive to measure the greatness ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... and bright with burnish'd shields, The embattled legions stretch their long array; Discord's red torch, as fierce she scours the fields, With bloody tincture stains ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... ancient bridegroom and the bride, Smiling contented and serene, Upon the blithe, bewildering scene, Behold, well pleas'd, on every side Their forms and features multiplied, As the reflection of a light Between two burnish'd mirrors gleams, Or lamps upon a bridge at night Stretch on and on before the sight, Till the long vista ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... last into a stagnant pond, foul and evil-smelling. Then comes the third group, and it too has a drift. Unknown as the names in it are, it is the epoch of restoration, and its 'bright consummate flower' is 'Jesus who is called the Christ.' He will be a better David, will burnish again the tarnished lustre of the monarchy, will be all that earlier kings were meant to be and failed of being, and will more than bring the day which Abraham desired to see, and realise the ideal to which 'prophets and righteous men' unconsciously were ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Fenelon and D'Aguesseau! In that illustrious catalogue of names, which she claims as of her children, and with honest pride holds up to the admiration of other nations, the name of LA FAYETTE has already for centuries been enrolled. And it shall henceforth burnish into brighter fame: for, if in after days, a Frenchman shall be called to indicate the character of his nation by that of one individual, during the age in which we live, the blood of lofty patriotism ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... or the colours dashed on to the canvas with the proper amount of daring. Still, I fear, they must be satisfied with what is offered: my palette affords no brighter tints; were t to attempt to deepen the reds, or burnish the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... place A happy rural seat of various views, Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm, Others, whose fruit, burnish'd with golden rind, Hung amiable, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... in that direction. He saw a girl in a dress of pink silk, standing in the front of the box, with her hands upon the ledge and leaning her head a little forwards beyond it. The glare striking up from the stage beneath her gave a burnish of copper to her hair and a warm light to her face. She seemed of a fragile figure and with features regular and delicate. Drake received a notion of unimpressive prettiness and turned his attention to the stage. ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... turn'd him in a path, And drew a burnish'd brand, And fifteen of the foremost slew, Till back the ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... devices for throwing up the burnished lip, and then select a jewel that just fills the space, and then with a smooth pointed punch, such as I described I used for closing up a pivot hole, I turn this lip back by sliding this round pointed punch around the outside, making it act as a burnish. Cap jewels I either treat in the same manner as the last, or cut away the setting, and insert them as they are inserted in most ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... Microscope, is little else observable, but their deformity. The most curious Carvings appearing no better then those rude Russian Images we find mention'd in Purchas, where three notches at the end of a Stick, stood for a face. And the most smooth and burnish'd surfaces appear most rough and unpolisht: So that my first Reason why I shall add but a few observations of them, is, their mis-shapen form; and the next, is their uselessness. For why should we trouble our selves in the examination ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... ivory; and clear and powerful in the dark terra cotta, which can ennoble even the fattest and flattest faces with its wonderful faculty for making mere surface markings, mere crowsfeet, interesting. Thus also with bronze: the polished, worked bronze, of fine chocolate burnish and reddish reflections, mars all beauty of line; how different the unchased, merely rough cast, greenish, with infinite delicate greys and browns, making, for instance, the head of an old woman like an exquisite withered, shrivelled, veined autumnal leaf. It is moreover, as I have said, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... to be finished," returned Steve, with a laugh. "She's a city girl now. I've been looking schools over. There are several establishments where they burnish up young ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... freshly Boyl'd, as the Artificers call it, (which is done by, first Brushing, and then Decocting it with Salt and Tartar, and perhaps some other Ingredients) you shall find it to be of a Lovely White. But if you take a piece of Smooth Steel, and therewith Burnish a part of it, which may be presently done, you shall find that Part will Lose its Whiteness, and turn a Speculum, looking almost every where Dark, as other Looking-glasses do, which may not a little confirm our Doctrine. For by this we may guess, what it is chiefly that made the Body ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... "But, generally speaking, he closed his literary toils at dinner;" "Considering the burnish of her French tastes, her noticing even ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... so they looked in passing; but a slight difference of appearance induced me to stop, and on getting across the trench the buttercups were found to be yellow Welsh poppies. The petals are larger than those of the buttercup, and a paler yellow, without the metallic burnish of the ranunculus. In the centre is the seed vessel, somewhat like an urn; indeed, the yellow poppy resembles the scarlet field poppy, though smaller in width of petal and much more local in habitat. So concealed were the stalks by the ferns that the flowers appeared to grow on their fronds. ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... sair distrest, Down droops her ance weel burnish'd crest, Nae joy her bonie buskit nest Can yield ava, Her darling bird that she lo'es best— ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... dry out of the ground, Were of one colour with the robe he wore. From underneath that vestment forth he drew Two keys of metal twain: the one was gold, Its fellow silver. With the pallid first, And next the burnish'd, he so ply'd the gate, As to content me well. "Whenever one Faileth of these, that in the keyhole straight It turn not, to this alley then expect Access in vain." Such were the words he spake. "One is more precious: but the other needs ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... state; I never meant it to appear as a book. Knowing well that I have never had one hour of inspiration since it was begun, and have only beaten out my metal by brute force and patient repetition, I hoped some day to get a "spate of style" and burnish it—fine mixed metaphor. I am now so sick that I intend, when the Letters are done and some more written that will be wanted, simply to make a book of it by the pruning-knife. I cannot fight longer; I am sensible of having done worse than I hoped, worse than I feared; all I can do now is to do the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out incisively; the reporter took off his spectacles, and began to burnish them, for his ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burn'd on the water; the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water, which they beat, to follow faster, As ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... to see you tonight, child. He would be more malleable set near such a fire. Your cheeks are burning bright! As for your big eyes, I believe you burnish them. Do you know how handsome ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... selections notice that the first tells us how to burnish a photograph; the second, how to split a sheet ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... had taken off, and the sun danced in the gold lustres of her hair. She was all aglow; she belonged out in the fresh air and the sunlight like this; she could stand it; that dusky-gold radiance played from her like a burnish. Steering sat down on the log bench and watched her, hypnotised by her into haunting fancies of something, somebody, somewhere. She was one of those beings whose rich magnetism of face and personality brings them close to you, not only for the present, ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... oath that was half a prayer, and the pert secretary did the first thing that was familiar since he was seen with the company—he laid his hand on Don Ruy's shoulder and felt that the horse lost was as a brother lost, and Chico had a fancy of his own to caress it, and even burnish the ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... wish'd The Prince had found her in her ancient home; Then let her fancy flit across the past, And roam the goodly places that she knew; And last bethought her how she used to watch, Near that old home, a pool of golden carp; And one was patch'd and blurr'd and lustreless Among his burnish'd brethren of the pool; And half asleep she made comparison Of that and these to her own faded self And the gay court, and fell asleep again; And dreamt herself was such a faded form Among her burnish'd sisters of the pool; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... as he could, supplied his father's place, the time often hung heavy on his hands, especially during the long hours of the evening. After thanking his father for his kindness, he rushed wildly off to order his horse to be prepared for him to accompany the troop, to re-burnish the arms which he had already chosen as fitting him from the armory, and to make what few preparations ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... look'd a lion with a gloomy stare, And o'er his eye-brows hung his matted hair; Big-boned, and large of limbs, with sinews strong, Broad-shoulder'd, and his arms were round and long. Four milk-white bulls (the Thracian use of old,) Were yoked to draw his car of burnish'd gold. Upright he stood, and bore aloft his shield, Conspicuous from afar, and overlook'd the field. His surcoat was a bear-skin on his back; His hair hung long behind, and glossy raven-black. His ample forehead bore a coronet With ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... always busy at his work, burnishing gold and melting silver, had no time to warm his love or to burnish and make shine his fantasies, nor to show off, gad about, waste his time in mischief, or to run after she-males. Now seeing that in Paris virgins do not fall into the beds of young men any more than roast pheasants ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... The whole arc of the sky, the whole circle of the world's rim, lay bare to the eye, infinitely varied by clouds and cloud-shadows, by pasture and arable, dark patches of woods and pallor of pools, by the lambent burnish of the west and the soft purpling of the east, even by differing weathers—here great shafts of sunlight, there the blurred column of a distant shower, or the faint smear, like a bruise upon the horizon, of ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... thorn (suitable for hedging), hawthorn, wild May cherry, or service berry, water beech, fringe tree, red bud, black alder, common alder, sumach, elder, laurel, witch-hazel, hazel-nut, papaw, chinkapin, burnish bush, nine bark, button-bush, honeysuckle, several varieties of the whortleberry or huckleberry, ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... blackbird will seem to love it, having a keen eye for the cutworm, its only enemy. The quail does love it, not for itself, but for its protection, leading her brood into its labyrinths out of the dusty road when danger draws near. Best of all winged creatures it is loved by the iris-eyed, burnish-breasted, murmuring doves, already beginning to gather in the deadened tree-tops with crops eager for the seed. Well remembered also by the long-flight passenger pigeon, coming into the land for the mast. Best of all wild things whose safety ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... word here, enbarnis, which has so long been lost to French that it is not even in Littre. But Dryden's "burnish into man" probably preserves it in English; for this is certainly not the other "burnish" ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... and illustrious together; their several achievements, both at home and in observatories on strange shores to which they voyaged, always associated; with what affectionate care she trained the favorite nephew, who was to burnish into still more effulgent brightness the star-linked name of Herschel, the story of all this is full of attractiveness, and forms one of the warm and poetic episodes in the high, cold annals of science. The ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... . . . . HOPE holds to Christ the mind's own mirror out To take His lovely likeness more and more. It will not well, so she would bring about An ever brighter burnish than before And turns to wash it from her welling eyes And breathes the blots off all with sighs on sighs. Her glass is blest but she as good as blind Holds till hand aches and wonders what is there; Her ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... that by no possibility could Coleridge's wild Rhyme have had aught to do with those mystical impressions which were mine, when I saw that bird upon our deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird to be an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish a little brighter the noble merit of the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... nails? You see guilders will not work, but inclosed. They must not discover how little serves, with the help of art, to adorn a great deal. How long did the canvas hang afore Aldgate? Were the people suffered to see the city's Love and Charity, while they were rude stone, before they were painted and burnish'd? No: no more should Servants approach their mistresses, but when ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... distressed and he reported his misgivings to God, and God upbraided the Prophets for their sloth. "Is there no one who can do this for me?" He cried. "Are all the cunning men in Hell? Shall I make all Heaven drink the dregs of my fury? Burnish your rusted armor. Depart into Hell and cry out: 'Is there one here who knows the Welsh Nonconformists?' Choose the most crafty and release him and ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans |
