"Solstice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thousands of leagues per minute; at its aphelion it does not pass over more than a few yards. Its proximity to the Sun in its passage near that body caused Newton to think that it received a heat twenty-eight thousand times greater than that we experience at the summer solstice; and that this heat being two thousand times greater than that of red-hot iron, an iron globe of the same dimensions would be fifty thousand years entirely losing its heat. Newton added that in the end comets will approach ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... contractor may be wisely safe-guarded. For if a contract is skilfully drawn, each may obtain a release from the other without disadvantage. From astronomy we find the east, west, south, and north, as well as the theory of the heavens, the equinox, solstice, and courses of the stars. If one has no knowledge of these matters, he will not be able to have any comprehension of ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... Foerstemann the tortoise is the symbol of the summer solstice, as the snail, which occurs only as a head ornament in the manuscripts and not independently, is the symbol of the winter solstice; both, as the animals of slowest motion, represent the apparent standstill ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... p. 27) identifies the turtle with the summer solstice and the snail as the animal associated with the winter solstice. There does not seem to be any one animal used in connection with any one of the cardinal points. In Tro-Cortesianus 88c the dog seems to be associated ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... dedication to his wife, whilst desiring "to acknowledge an influence which has lent half the charm to my labor," he adds: "If I were in a court of justice, or injustice, under oath, I should not like to say that, either in the wooing days of spring, or under the suns of the summer solstice, you had been, either with hoe, rake, or miniature spade, of the least use in the garden." Perhaps our fair cousins on the other side of the Atlantic do not grub so energetically as we do. Certainly, with us it is very common for the ladies of the family to be the practical ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... nothing which has not received a new increase and lustre in our own times. Our age has, in some sort, arrived at the summit of perfection. And since for some years the rate of the progress is much slower and appears almost insensible—as the days seem to cease lengthening when the solstice is near—it is pleasant to think that probably there are not many things for which we need envy ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... the impassive and noble insect that sings in the summer solstice from the dazzling dawn all the day long in the fragrant pine-wood. And my song is always the same, regular as the equal course of the season and of the sun. I am the speech of the hot and beaming sun, and when the reapers, weary of heaping the sheaves together, lie down in the lukewarm shade, ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... the emperor, greatly distressed, began in haste to gather an army and ships, and sent orders to the troops of Valerian and Martinus[121] to proceed with all speed. For they had been sent, as it happened, with another army at about the winter solstice, with instructions to sail to Italy. But they had sailed as far as Greece, and since they were unable to force their way any farther, they were passing the winter in the land of Aetolia and Acarnania. And the Emperor Justinian sent word of ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... by, each longer and more terrible to endure than the one before it as the heat steadily increased. Summer solstice arrived and there was no escape from the heat, even in the deepest caves. There was no night; the blue sun rose in the east as the yellow sun set in the west. There was no life of any kind to be seen, not even an insect. Nothing ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... south wind has tossed you in the deep, will you therefore sell your ship on the other side of the Aegean Sea. On a man sound in mind Rhodes and beautiful Mitylene have such an effect, as a thick cloak at the summer solstice, thin drawers in snowy weather, [bathing in] the Tiber in winter, a fire in the month of August. While it is permitted, and fortune preserves a benign aspect, let absent Samos, and Chios, and Rhodes, be commended by you here at Rome. Whatever ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... passage [from it] into Britain is of equal distance with that from Gaul. In the middle of this voyage is an island which is called Mona;[39] many smaller islands besides are supposed to lie [there], of which islands some have written that at the time of the winter solstice it is night there for thirty consecutive days. We, in our inquiries about that matter, ascertained nothing, except that, by accurate measurements with water, we perceived the nights to be shorter there than on the continent. The length of this side, as their account states, is ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... splashing rain-drops and lowering clouds did not serve to raise the spirits. It was an inauspicious beginning of active service, and typical of the many long and weary weeks of wet discomfort that the Sixth of Michigan was destined to experience before the summer solstice had fairly passed. The points of interest,—the public buildings, the white house, the massive Greek architecture of the Treasury building, the monument, all these as they glided like phantoms, through the mist, attracted ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... Torrid Zone, in which are situated all those places on the globe where the sun is ever directly overhead. The tropics are generally said to be twenty-three and a half degrees from the equator, which is near enough for ordinary purposes, but it is not quite accurate. When the sun is at the summer solstice, June 21, it is overhead on this tropic, and enters the constellation of Cancer, after which it is named. Nicer calculations than I can follow show that the sun is not precisely overhead at this place every year. In January of this year the tropics were in latitude 23 deg. ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... heard that in Syene, in Upper Egypt, deep wells were enlightened to the bottom on the day of the summer solstice, and that ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... with astronomy in Greece was Thales, the founder of the Ionic school of philosophers, born 639 B.C. He is reported to have predicted an eclipse of the sun, to have made a visit to Egypt, to have fixed the year at three hundred and sixty-five days, and to have determined the course of the sun from solstice to solstice. He attributed an eclipse of the moon to the interposition of the earth between the sun and moon; and an eclipse of the sun to the interposition of the moon between the sun and earth. [Footnote: Sir G. G. Lewis, Hist. of Astron., p. 81.] ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... awakens from her dell, The fox is heard upon the fell; 715 Enough remains of glimmering light To guide the wanderer's steps aright, Yet not enough from far to show His figure to the watchful foe. With cautious step, and ear awake, 720 He climbs the crag and threads the brake; And not the summer solstice, there, Tempered the midnight mountain air, But every breeze, that swept the wold, Benumbed his drenched limbs with cold. 725 In dread, in danger, and alone, Famished and chilled, through ways unknown, Tangled and steep, he journeyed on; ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... So he took them off, and as he shook them the fern-seed dropped out, and he was no longer invisible. There are numerous stories of this kind; and, according to Dr. Kuhn, one method for obtaining the fern-seed was, at the summer solstice, to shoot at the sun when it had attained its midday height. If this were done, three drops of blood would fall, which were to be gathered up and preserved—this being the fern-seed. In Bohemia, [9] on old St. John's Night (July 8), one must lay a communion chalice-cloth ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... like the thunderous knock of a traveller from Beyond. The white mill and the grey manor stood out with ghostly vividness in the light of the rising moon. Yet there were times innumerable when they looked like cool retreats for those who wanted rest; when, in the summer solstice, they offered the pleasant peace of the happy fireside. How often had Jean Jacques stood off from it all of a summer night and said to himself: "Look at that, my Jean Jacques. It is all yours, Manor and mills ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Ben Lomond, 3,240 feet above the lake, which is 32 feet above the level of the sea; Ben Venue, and Ben Ledy, or the hill of God, in Perthshire, 3,009 feet in height, so called from the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, in former times, meeting on its summit at the summer solstice, three days and nights for the purpose of devotion. These three mountains, with their vicinities are enshrined in Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake; and the village of Balquidder, at the foot of Ben Ledy, is the burial place of Rob Roy. We have just described the circle: over ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... pagan worship of the house-spirits, of which we find so many traces among the Indo-European peoples. These house-spirits had their chief seat on the family hearth; and their great festival was that of the New Year, celebrated at the winter solstice. The policy of the Church in early and mediaeval times was to baptize to Christian uses as many of the heathen beliefs and ceremonies as possible. The New Year festival thus became united with the anniversary of the birth of Christ; and it is matter of history that as the Danes ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... drawn partly from the Athenians on the muster-roll, partly from the allies. The colleagues chosen for Nicias were Demosthenes, son of Alcisthenes, and Eurymedon, son of Thucles. Eurymedon was sent off at once, about the time of the winter solstice, with ten ships, a hundred and twenty talents of silver, and instructions to tell the army that reinforcements would arrive, and that care would be taken of them; but Demosthenes stayed behind to organize the expedition, meaning to start as soon ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... prepares to tune up his unseasonable matins, we are not naturalists enough to determine. But for a mere human gentleman—that has no orchestra business to call him from his warm bed to such preposterous exercises—We take ten, or half after ten (eleven, of course, during this Christmas solstice), to be the very earliest hour, at which he can begin to think of abandoning his pillow. To think of it, we say; for to do it in earnest, requires another half hour's good consideration. Not but there are pretty sun-risings, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... two influences, the annual and diurnal successions of cold and heat, in their joint effect, we find, that about, or a little after the summer solstice, the influence of the sun being at its maximum, the nervous sensibility, heat, circulating excitement, and cutaneous secretions of the body, are also at their maximum. The temperature of the day and night differ so little, that the sedative effects of evening ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... on the solstice, the tenth day before the Kalends of July, and trudged comfortably to Sarsina, where we put up at the inn, frequented by foot-farers like us. So also at Caesena and Faventia. There we agreed that we had had enough of the highway, as we might encounter ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... "it is time you went." But Confucius, who had more at stake than his disciple, was disinclined to give up the experiment on which his heart was set. Besides, the time was approaching when the great sacrifice to Heaven at the solstice, about which he had had so many conversations with the duke, should be offered up, and he hoped that the recollection of his weighty words would recall the duke to a sense of his duties. But his gay rivals in the affections of the duke still ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... evening; but evening, morning, midnight, and noon-day, are much the same here: I wrote at midnight by the clear light of heaven. The scientific reader need not be informed, that within the arctic circle the sun is but a very short time beneath the horizon, during the summer solstice. The people of Fort Good Hope see him rising and setting behind the same hill; and in clear weather his rays shed a light above the horizon even after he is set; while during the winter solstice the same hill nearly conceals him from view. Yet the gentleman ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... birds of several species sing last year after Midsummer; enough to prove that the summer solstice is not the period that puts a stop to the music of the woods. The yellowhammer no doubt persists with more steadiness than any other; but the woodlark, the wren, the red-breast, the swallow, the white-throat, the goldfinch, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... crossing, on which side they ought to go; and also every thing which prudence requires they should know before hand, as well as the water, or rather the moisture and verdure which are to be perceived. In general, these people who approach the sea-coast during the winds and hurricanes of the summer solstice, rarely keep on the breach properly so called, because they and their cattle are too much tormented by myriads of flies which never quit the sea-coast. In this same season the appearance of the gnats, or mosquitoes, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... solstice, the season when the wild boar had ripped open the divine hunter, and the summer had already done damage to the spring, the priests were accustomed to prepare a painted wooden image of a corpse made ready for burial, which they hid in what were called the gardens of Adonis—terra-cotta pots ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Fenapa, Ushampa, Swadhavat, and Verhishada), as also those others that have forms; the wheel of time, and the illustrious conveyer himself of the sacrificial butter; all sinners among human beings, as also those that have died during the winter solstice; these officers of Yama who have been appointed to count the allotted days of everybody and everything; the Singsapa, Palasa, Kasa, and Kusa trees and plants, in their embodied forms, these all, O king, wait upon and worship the god of justice ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... from this province Be transported to other lands. God grant you may dwell there Ever as faithful subjects, a happy and peaceable people! Prisoners now I declare you; for such is his Majesty's pleasure!" As, when the air is serene in sultry solstice of summer, Suddenly gathers a storm, and the deadly sling of the hailstones Beats down the farmer's corn in the field and shatters his windows, Hiding the sun, and strewing the ground with thatch from the house-roofs, Bellowing fly the herds, and seek to break their enclosures; So on ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... twenty-eighth of the before named month, they entered the country of Ilduz[13], which was occupied by the tribe of Jel, and under the dominion of Shir Behram, or Scheir Begrahim; and though the sun was then in the summer solstice, they were often astonished to find ice two inches thick in this vast desert. On the eighth of Jomada-al-akher, they were alarmed, by receiving, news that the son of Ahmed Beg had plundered the Daji, who was ambassador from Awis, or Oweys Khan; and they made every possible ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... signification of the ayash tyucotz when performed about the time of the summer solstice. However clumsy and meaningless it may seem, it is still a solemn performance. It gives public expression, under very strange forms, to the idea that has found its most perfect utterance in the German philosopher's[8] definition of "abject reliance upon God;" whereas in its lowest form it ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... important festivals was held at the summer solstice, or midsummer's eve, in honour of Balder the good, for it was considered the anniversary of his death and of his descent into the lower world. On that day, the longest in the year, the people congregated out of doors, made great bonfires, and watched ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... clock strikes. The spring is upon us, The seed of our forefathers Quickens again in the soil, And these flags are the small, early flowers Of the solstice of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... seasons—Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Owing to the position of the Earth's axis with regard to her orbit, the Sun appears to travel 23-1/2 deg. north and 23-1/2 deg. south of the equator. When, on June 21, the orb attains his highest northern altitude, we have the summer solstice and the longest days; when, by retracing his steps, he declines 23-1/2 deg. below the equator, at which point he arrives on December 21, we have the winter solstice and the shortest days. Intermediate between those two seasons ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... on towards the winter solstice; then the bonders get ready to go fetch the fat beasts for slaughter from the island; so they manned a great barge, and every owner had one to go in his stead, and ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... hour of the Roman day, corresponding nearly to eight o'clock before noon—as the winter solstice was now passed—when Arvina reached the magnificent dwelling of the Consul in the Carinae at the angle of the Caerolian place, hard by the foot of ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... just as the first rays of the sun began to gild the horizon. It was in the winter solstice, and the sun rose at the extremity of an immense plain at twenty-four minutes past nine, so I am able to state that the longest night in Russia consists of eighteen hours and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... prefixed, and a mention by D'Israeli, I should suppose that it had originally a separate title-page, and some circulation as a separate tract. Wilkins treats this subject half seriously, half jocosely; he has evidently not quite made up his mind. He is clear that "arts are not yet come to their solstice," and that posterity will bring hidden things to light. As to the difficulty of carrying food, he thinks, scoffing Puritan that he is, the Papists may be trained to fast the voyage, or may find the bread of their Eucharist "serve well enough for their viaticum."[503] He also puts the case ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... raised a furore because Li Hung Chang admitted even the distinguished American. As I freely walked about the place, photographed the Temple and stood on the circular altar that is supposed to be the centre of the earth and where the Emperor worships alone at the winter solstice, British Sikhs lounged under the trees, army mules munched the luxuriant grass and quartermasters' wagons stood in long rows near the sacred spot where a Chinese would prostrate himself ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... were near the coast and supplied with everything that could render their life comfortable in that latitude. They could take sleigh-rides and see in the distance the whales enjoying their diversions. The summer solstice was approaching. Since the fifteenth the occupants of the "Alaska" had beheld a new and astonishing spectacle, even for Norwegians and the natives of southern Sweden; it was the sun at midnight touching ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... famous in Greek history, were celebrated once every four years, between the new and full moon first following the summer solstice, on the small plain named Olympia in Elis, which was bounded on one side by the river Alpheus, on another by the small tributary stream the Cladeus, and on the other two sides by mountains. The games lasted five days. Their origin, lost ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... in size the Garden Scolia and like her, no doubt, requiring a copious diet, will be entered in the insects' "Who's Who" as the destroyer of the Pine-chafer, that magnificent Beetle, flecked with white upon a black or brown ground, who of an evening, during the summer solstice, browses on the foliage of the fir-trees. Though unable to speak with certainty or precision, I am inclined to look upon these devourers of Scarabaeus-grubs as valiant ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... consider woman? I have not consulted the astronomers. The stars of the heavens are in their places. Male and female, the groups come to us in winter and retire in summer: their faint splendors fall down upon our harvest nights, and then give way to the more august retinue of the wintry solstice. The boreal pivot, whose journal is the awful, compact blue, may, for aught I know, be hobnobbing at this moment with the most masculine of starry masculinities. But if it be, it is in little sympathy with the magnetic pole of human thought, whose ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Points, or Solstices, are points of the Ecliptic at a distance of 90 deg. from the Equinoxes, at which the sun attains its highest declination in each hemisphere. They are called the Summer and Winter Solstice according to the season in which the sun appears to pass these ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... calm day towards the end of March when the hedgehog awoke. Gradually, since the winter solstice, the shadows of noon, cast from the wooded slope across the meadows in the glen, had become shorter; and now, when the sun reached its meridian, its beams fell directly on the spot where the hedgehog rested ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... winter solstice, our supply of water from the Cape Sheridan River having failed, Eskimos were sent out to reconnoiter the ponds of the neighborhood. The English expedition on the Alert had melted ice during their entire ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... appeared to be to the two friends! How eager they were to get out of their cabins! When they came on deck in the morning the dawn had for some hours been silvering the eastern horizon. They were nearing the June solstice, the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, when there is hardly any night along the ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... autumnal equinox, and he will see that the shadow thrown by the erect stone would fall straight through the hole of the Men-an-tol. We know that the great festivals of the ancient world were regulated by the sun, and that some of these festive seasons—the winter solstice about Yule-tide or Christmas, the vernal equinox about Easter, the summer solstice on Midsummer-eve, about St. John Baptist's day, and the autumnal equinox about Michaelmas—are still kept, under changed names and with new objects, in our own time. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... then, sometimes, the movement forces itself on our attention; for at such times the whole sky may be filled with visible masses of floating web. All the great movements of gossamers I have observed have occurred in the autumn, or, at any rate, several weeks after the summer solstice; and, like the migrations of birds at the same season of the year, have been in a northerly direction. I do not assert or believe that the migratory instinct in the gossamer is universal. In a moist island, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... glimmering light To guide the wanderer's steps aright, Yet not enough from far to show His figure to the watchful foe. With cautious step and ear awake, He climbs the crag and threads the brake; And not the summer solstice there Tempered the midnight mountain air, But every breeze that swept the wold Benumbed his drenched limbs with cold. In dread, in danger, and alone, Famished and chilled, through ways unknown, Tangled and steep, he journeyed on; Till, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... voyage whose testimony one may more safely accept than his; but had he possessed knowledge of astronomy he would have limited himself to saying that the day is about as long as the night. For in no place in the world does the night during the solstice precisely equal the day; and it is certain that on this voyage the Spaniards never reached the equator, for they constantly beheld on the horizon the polar star, which served them as guide. As for Melchior's companions, they were without knowledge or experience, therefore I offer ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... be fulfilled; leaves bud, and ever Something is wanting, something falls behind; The flowered Solstice comes indeed, but never That light and lovely summer ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... folklorists of the Tataukyamu, a priesthood which, controls the New-fire ceremonies at Walpi, and is prominent in the Soyaluna, or the rites of the winter solstice, that the Piba or Tobacco phratry brought the fetishes of that society to Walpi, and there are many obscurely known resemblances between the Mamzrauti and the Wuewuetcimti celebrations in Walpi which appear to support that claim. The Piba phratry is likewise said to have come to Walpi comparatively ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... month of December, as I said above, in my twenty-third year; and this, being the southern solstice (for winter I cannot call it,) was the particular time of my harvest, and required my being pretty much abroad in the fields: when going out pretty early in the morning, even before it was thorough daylight, I was surprised with ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... acted as May kings and May queens represented these spirits. According to the original custom a new May tree was cut down in the forest every year, but later a permanent May pole was set up on the village common. On Midsummer Eve (June 23), which marked the summer solstice, came the fire festival, when people built bonfires and leaped over them, walked in procession with torches round the fields, and rolled burning wheels down the hillsides. These curious rites may have been once connected with sun worship. Hallow Eve, so called from being the eve of All ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... organization, and these in turn had retaliated thus establishing a vendetta which became part and parcel of the lives of certain families, as naturally and unavoidably as birth, love and death. As regularly as the solstice they alternated in picking each other off. Branches of the Hip Leong and On Gee tongs sprang up in San Francisco and New York—and the feud was transferred with them to Chatham Square, a feud imposing a sacred obligation rooted in blood, honor and religion ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... told in the sacred documents as follows: Cronos (Ea) appeared to him in his sleep, and announced that on the fifteenth of the month of Daisios (the Assyrian month Sivan—a little before the summer solstice) all men should perish by a flood. He therefore commanded him to take the beginning, the middle, and the end of whatever was consigned to writing, and to bury it in the City of the Sun, at Sippara; then to build a vessel, and to enter it with his ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... strong likelihood that the Taronhiawagon, he who comes from the Sky, of the Onondagas, who was their supreme God, who spoke to them in dreams, and in whose honor the chief festival of their calendar was celebrated about the winter solstice, was, in fact, Ioskeha under another name.[172-1] As to the legend of the Good and Bad Minds given by Cusic, to which I have referred in a previous chapter, and the later and wholly spurious myth of Hiawatha, first ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... ancient writers, from Herodotus downwards. He had a magnificent temple in insular Tyre, founded by Hiram, to which gifts streamed from all countries, especially at the great feasts. The solar character of this deity appears especially in the annual feast of his awakening shortly after the winter solstice (Joseph. C. Apion. i. 18). At Tyre, as among the Hebrews, Baal had his symbolical pillars, one of gold and one of smaragdus, which, transported by phantasy to the farthest west, are still familiar to us as the Pillars ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... serene in the sultry solstice of summer, Suddenly gathers a storm, and the deadly sling of the hailstones Beats down the farmer's corn in the field and shatters his windows, Hiding the sun, and strewing the ground with thatch from the house roofs, Bellowing fly the herds, and seek to break their inclosure; So on the hearts ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... ceremonies and holidays of the church were based on pagan models. In the fourth century Christmas was placed on the 25th of December because on that date was celebrated the birth of the sun (Natalis Invicti) who was born to a new life each year after the solstice.[3] Certain vestiges of the religions of Isis and Cybele besides other polytheistic practices perpetuated themselves in the adoration of local saints. On the other hand as soon as Christianity became a moral ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... described as a harvest festival, and swinging is practised by the Letts of Russia with the avowed intention of influencing the growth of the crops. In the spring and early summer, between Easter and St. John's Day (the summer solstice), every Lettish peasant is said to devote his leisure hours to swinging diligently; for the higher he rises in the air the higher will ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... sun would disappear behind the horizon for six months, and with its disappearance the long polar night would begin. Since the September equinox it had emerged from the northern horizon, rising by lengthened spirals up to the 21st of December. At this period, the summer solstice of the northern regions, it had begun to descend; and to-morrow was to shed its last rays upon them. I communicated my fears and observations ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... cycles, hummed in a minor key as she harvested weed of the solstice crop, twelve miles off the northern islands. A rest period was due in the next cycle day, and she and her mate were ahead of quota which should make the supervisor give them ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier
... remains of glimmering light 5 To guide the wanderer's steps aright, Yet not enough from far to show His figure to the watchful foe. With cautious step, and ear awake, He climbs the crag and threads the brake; 10 And not the summer solstice there, Tempered the midnight mountain air, But every breeze that swept the wold, Benumbed his drenched limbs with cold. In dread, in danger, and alone, 15 Famished and chilled, through ways unknown, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... for his being placed in the rank of mythological beings, and discovers the illusion of his pretended existence as a man; since it is evident that Mercury was not a human being, but the Genius or Decan, who, placed at the summer solstice, opened the Egyptian year; hence his attributes taken from the constellation Syrius, and his name of Anubis, as well as that of Esculapius, having the figure of a man and the head of a dog: hence his serpent, which ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... forms the Constellations for the use of the Argonauts; and places the Solstitial and Equinoctial Points in the fifteenth degrees or middles of the Constellations of Cancer, Chelae, Capricorn, and Aries. Meton in the year of Nabonassar 316, observed the Summer Solstice in the eighth degree of Cancer, and therefore the Solstice had then gone back seven degrees. It goes back one degree in about seventytwo years, and seven degrees in about 504 years. Count these years back from the year of Nabonassar 316, and they will place the Argonautic expedition about ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... In the early epochs of our race, men dwelt in temporary huts, of bowers of branches, as easily constructed as a bird's-nest, and which they built,—if it should be called building, when such sweet homes of a summer solstice rather grew than were made with hands,—which Nature, we will say, assisted them to rear where fruit abounded, where fish and game were plentiful, or, most especially, where the sense of beauty was to be gratified ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the sun, and made that worship paramount and universal in England, Ireland and Scotland, as well as in Bretagne and the northwest of France. So thoroughly has the religion of Baal been fastened upon the peoples of these regions that portions of them at this day salute the arrival of the Summer Solstice, June twenty-fourth, with burning fires, the precise meaning of which is forgotten, but through those fires in all the early portions of the present century the inhabitants have jumped with their little ones in their arms, as the phrase goes, on Saint John's eve, ...
— Prehistoric Structures of Central America - Who Erected Them? • Martin Ingham Townsend
... Schoolmen, in his View of Astronomy, repeats Adelard upon the question of Arim, "where there is no latitude," while (4) Roger Bacon discusses not only the true and the traditional East and West, but even a twofold Arim, one "under the solstice, the other under the equinoctial zone." Arim he finds not to be in the centre of the real world, but only of the traditional. In another passage of the Opus Majus, Bacon, our first English worker in the exact sciences, allows the world-summit not to be exactly 90 degrees from the east, although ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... uplands of the continent are warmed and the northern zone of low pressure pushes southward. So, in Adelie Land, short spells of calm weather may be expected over a period of barely three months around the summer solstice. This explanation is intentionally popular. The meteorological problem is one which can only be fully discussed when all the manifold observations have been gathered together, from other contemporary Antarctic expeditions, from our two stations on the Antarctic ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... watches,—I doubt if he told why, any more than Dr. Johnson told what he did with the orange-peel,—but probably with reference to this virtue. He was as much to be depended upon at the appointed time as the solstice or the equinox. There was another point I have heard him speak of as an important rule with him; to come at the hour when he was expected; if he had made his visit for several days successively at ten o'clock, for instance, not ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... dark? Ah, the fragrant bay may blossom, and the sprouting verdure shine With the tears of amber dropping from the tassels of the pine. And the morning's breath of balsam lightly brush her sunny cheek— Little recketh Manuela of the tales of Spring they speak. When the Summer's burning solstice on the mountain-harvests glowed, She had watched a gallant horseman riding down the valley road; Many times she saw him turning, looking back with parting thrills, Till amid her tears she lost him, in the shadow of the hills. ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... of nuts and fruit the notable features were grapes and winter-melons. Possibly because they are an obscure survival of some Bacchic custom connected with the celebration of the winter solstice, the grapes are considered a very necessary part of the Great Supper; but as Provencal grapes are of a soft substance and soon wither, though a world of care is taken to preserve a few bunches until Christmas, this part of the feast usually is a ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... explained the terrestrial phenomena by saying, that through the gate of horn (first the bull, afterwards the ram,) vivifying fires descended, which, in spring, gave life to vegetation, and aquatic spirits, which caused, at the solstice, the overflowing of the Nile: that through the gate of ivory (originally the bowman, or Sagittarius, then the balance,) and through that of Capricorn, or the urn, the emanations or influences of the ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... warm embrace And quickens in his arms.—All, all, but thou! For thou art single as the northern pole; As cold, as distant, and unreachable To what hath passion's warmth; and, though Thy life be at its summer solstice—bright With day—thy heart still turns to barren ice, More bleak than many a ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... years Spite Europe's embattled lines, Back to the Past one glance be cast— The Age of the Antonines! O summit of fate, O zenith of time When a pagan gentleman reigned, And the olive was nailed to the inn of the world Nor the peace of the just was feigned. A halcyon Age, afar it shines, Solstice of ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... meritorious; 'untellable' for ineffable; 'dearworth' for precious; Chaucer has 'forword' for promise; Sir John Cheke 'freshman' for proselyte; 'mooned' for lunatic; 'foreshewer' for prophet; 'hundreder' for centurion; Jewel 'foretalk', where we now employ preface; Holland 'sunstead' where we use solstice; 'leechcraft' instead of medicine; and another, 'wordcraft' for logic; 'starconner' (Gascoigne) did service once, if not instead of astrologer, yet side by side with it; 'halfgod' (Golding) had ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... was the priestly one of accurately fixing the religious festivals. The tropical year being thus ascertained, their tables showed the exact time of the equinox or sun's transit across the equatorial, and of the solstice. From a very early period they had practised agriculture, growing Indian corn and "Mexican aloe." Having no animals of draft, such as the horse, or ox, their farming was naturally of a rude ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... at Marseilles. As he glided along the Ligurian coast, he was delighted by the sight of myrtles and olive trees, which retained their verdure under the winter solstice. Soon, however, he encountered one of the black storms of the Mediterranean. The captain of the ship gave up all for lost, and confessed himself to a Capuchin who happened to be on board. The English heretic, in the meantime, fortified himself against the terrors of death with devotions ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... necessary horses: one would say, he is himself quitting France, not without outlay? We observe finally that their Majesties, Heaven willing, will assist at Corpus-Christi Day, this blessed Summer Solstice, in Assumption Church, here at Paris, to the joy of all the world. For which same day, moreover, brave Bouille, at Metz, as we find, has invited a party of friends to dinner; but indeed is gone from home, in the interim, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... or Demi-God, and his life, as will be understood by what has been said above, must be outlined by the course of the Sun, as the shadow of the Logos. The part of the course lived out during the human life is that which falls between the winter solstice and the reaching of the zenith in summer. The Hero is born at the winter solstice, dies at the spring equinox, and, conquering death, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... passed on, as the lonely days of sorrow do come, and go, and come again; but as the lengthened shades of the summer solstice had again become less, another cloud had arisen in the firmament of mingled joys and sorrows, threatening to encompass even the bright rays ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... by irregular intercalations, at the direction of the Sacred College. But the Sacred College during the last distracted century had neglected their office. The lunar year was now sixty-five days in advance of the sun. The so-called winter was really the autumn, the spring the winter. The summer solstice fell at the beginning of the legal September. On Caesar as Pontifex Maximus devolved the duty of bringing confusion into order, and the completeness with which the work was accomplished at the first moment of his ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... is not so much his political power, which fluctuates with the strength of his personality, as certain religious prerogatives. The Emperor is the Son of Heaven; he sacrifices to Heaven at the winter solstice. The early Chinese used "Heaven" as synonymous with "The Supreme Ruler," a monotheistic God;[3] indeed Professor Giles maintains, by arguments which seem conclusive, that the correct translation of the Emperor's title would be "Son of God." The word ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... Midsummer comes at the time of the summer solstice, about June 21st, but Midsummer Day, the Feast of St. John the Baptist, is the 24th ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... leads the earth over a circuit of five hundred millions of miles back to the solstice at the appointed moment without the loss of one second,—no, not the millionth part of a second,—for ages and ages of which it traveled ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... of danger. As soon as agriculture was engaged in, however, attention must have been fixed on the recurrence of the seasons, and the measures of time afforded by the moon must, at least, have been observed. The summer and the winter solstice, the equinoxes, the new moons, these were to the early cultivator epochs to be observed; and certain annual feasts are found to have come into use in very early times, epochs of man's simplest and earliest calendar, and occasions for tribal gatherings and for such ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... the solstice of the year, When the sun apace must turn, The seven bright angels 'gan to hear Heaven's twin gates outward yearn: Forth with its light and minstrelsy A lordly troop came speeding by, And joyed to see each cresset sphere So ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... with the distance from the pole. At the north point of Nova Zembla, 75 degrees north latitude, there is uninterrupted light from May 1st to August 12th, and uninterrupted darkness from November 8th to February 9th. At the arctic circle at the summer solstice the day is twenty-four hours long. At the antarctic circle at the same time the night is ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... Chrysanthemum Till the Day Dawn My Birthday By the Cradle A Thunder Storm Through the Door Readjustment At the Gate A Home The Legend of Kintu Easter Bind-Weed April May Secrets How the Leaves Came Down Barcaroles My Rights Solstice In the Mist Within Menace "He That Believeth Shall Not Make Haste" My Little ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... numerals, the fractional by an S for semissis, the half, and by small horizontal lines for the quarters. Lastly, the sign of the zodiac in which the sun is to be found is named, and the days of the equinoxes and of the summer solstice are determined; for the winter solstice we read, Hiemis initium, the beginning of winter. Next the calendar proceeds to the agricultural portion, in which the farmer is reminded of the principal operations ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... To the amazement of the passengers this richly dressed female brandished lusty epithets. "You Irish mick!" she said. (One would not have believed it possible if he had not heard it.) "That's what I am, and proud of it," said he. The shopping solstice is not all fur coats and pink cheeks. If you watch the conductors in the blizzard season, and see the slings and arrows they have to bear, you will coin a new maxim. ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... the Puritan poet in alluding to the season of the Nativity takes an opposite line of thought, and regards the diminished sunshine of winter as a veiling of an inferior flame before the light of "a greater Sun." Prudentius proclaims the increase of the sun's light, which begins after the winter solstice, as symbolic of the ever-widening influence of the True Light. The idea is given in a terse form by St. Peter Chrysologus, Serm. 159: Crescere dies coepit, quia verus dies illuxit. "The day begins to lengthen out, inasmuch as the true Day hath ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... said to Dom Manuel, "Now Horvendile informs me that you were duly born in a cave at about the time of the winter solstice, of a virgin mother and of a father who was ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... rest, restore, restaurant, contrast; (2) stature, statute, stadium, stability, instable, static, statistics, ecstasy, stamen, stamina, standard, stanza, stanchion, capstan, extant, constabulary, apostate, transubstantiation, status quo, armistice, solstice, interstice, institute, restitution, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... and the excellent constitution of leg which helped Sir Christopher Hatton into the chancellorship, was not more remarkable perhaps than the success of similar endowments in other contemporaries. Leicester, although stately and imposing, had passed his summer solstice. A big bulky man, with a long red face, a bald head, a defiant somewhat sinister eye, a high nose, and a little torrent of foam-white curly beard, he was still magnificent in costume. Rustling in satin and feathers, with jewels ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... anything of solstices and equinoxes, and where these are noted in the more advanced rituals, they appear to be attachments to observances founded on other considerations—so the Roman Saturnalia, celebrated near the winter solstice, and apparently the plebeian festival of the summer solstice attached to the worship of Fortuna; and the same thing is probably true of the Semitic and Greek festivals that occurred near the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... came no nearer and the days grew no longer; but in addition to this, a change takes place in the accidents of the cause (its series of diurnal positions), tending to increase the quantity of the effect. When the summer solstice has passed, the progressive change in the cause begins to take place the reverse way, but, for some time, the accumulating effect of the mere continuance of the cause exceeds the effect of the changes in it, and the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... approaching. Candles were blazing at all the windows. The public places were as bright as at noonday. All the great avenues were barricaded. More than twenty thousand pikes and muskets lined the streets. The late daybreak of the winter solstice found the whole City still in arms. During many years the Londoners retained a vivid recollection of what they called the Irish Night. When it was known that there had been no cause of alarm, attempts were made to discover ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... northern climate may fairly be said to extend from the middle of March to the middle of June. At least, the vernal tide continues to rise until the latter date, and it is not till after the summer solstice that the shoots and twigs begin to harden and turn to wood, or the grass to lose any of ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... time of peace and tranquillity. The expression takes its rise from a sea-fowl, called among naturalists halcyon, or alcyon, which is said to build its nest about the winter solstice, when the weather is usually observed to be still and calm. Aristotle and Pliny tell us that this bird is most common in the seas of Sicily, that it sat only a few days, and those in the depth of winter, and during that period the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... gravely talk of courting the muse in shady bowers, waiting the call and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the equinox, sagaciously observing how much the wild freedom and liberty of imagination is cramped by attention to established rules, and how this same imagination begins to grow dim in advanced age, smothered and deadened by too much judgment. When we talk such language, or entertain such ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... off in the direction of the summer solstice, by which must, I think, be meant the northerly western point where the sun sets in summer, and are forty days at sea—it will be noticed that the periods in this story are nearly always of forty days. At the ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... aught but praise to be bestowed on his mellow notes, which, though full and soft, are powerful, and may on a calm morning, before the everyday hum of human toil begins, be heard a mile away, over wood, field, and lake. Toward the summer solstice his notes are on the wane, and when he gives them forth we often hear him utter them as if laboring under great difficulty, ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... is, in a very literal and real sense, the creator-god in whom this world lives, moves and has its being; and he is the saviour-god who was born of a virgin nebula, and every winter descends into hell and rises from the dead (the southern solstice) by a new birth and ascends into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the father (the sky) at the northern solstice, and finally he is the illuminator god who lighteth every man that cometh ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... of nice observation might ascertain from the book in what latitude, season, or circumstances, it had been written. The opponents are powerful. Reynolds ridiculed the notion of thoughts shooting forth with greater vigour at the summer solstice or the equinox; Johnson ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... the need of hurry, for the sun had already passed its northern solstice and was leading the winter south again. Skirting the shores of the bay, where the Mackenzie disembogues into the Arctic Ocean, they entered the mouth of the Little Peel River. Then began the arduous up-stream toil, and the two Incapables fared worse than ever. ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... year is divided into eight parts, the first of forty-five days from the date of the rising of the west wind (February 7) to the date of the vernal equinox (March 24), the second of the ensuing forty-four days to the rising of the Pleiades (May 7), the third of forty-eight days to the summer solstice (June 24), the fourth of twenty-seven days to the rising of the Dog Star (July 21), the fifth of sixty-seven days to the Autumn equinox (September 26), the sixth of thirty-two days to the setting of the Pleiades (October 28), the seventh ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... slightest danger here. Just fancy, if you please, beings who don't know when they are hungry without consulting a wretched little mechanism, and who measure their radius of conception by the length of their own feet.—Of course I shall be on hand for the Solstice! I wouldn't miss that for an asteroid!—Oh, did I really promise that? Well, I'll tell ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... I would appear pedantic to you." said Ebba, "I would tell you what Eric has told me about our Christmas festival. It appears to date back to a remote day before the Christian era. At this season our pagan ancestors celebrated the winter solstice, just as on the 25th of June they did that of summer. The early name of this festival, which we yet preserve, indicates an astronomical idea. It was called Julfest. (the feast of the wheel,) certainly because the sun, the evolutions of which are on the 25th December marked by the shortest day, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... mental attitude is a terrible vice, for a simple and obvious reason. By an inevitable process like the swaying of the solstice the business world alternates between periods of boom and periods of depression. The wheel is always revolving, fast or slow, round the full cycle of over-or under-production. It is clear that a policy ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... says, "To whatever height we rise on the southern declivity of the Himalaya, the climate retains the same character, and the same division of the seasons as in the plains of India; the summer solstice being every year marked by the same prevalence of rain which continues to fall without intermission until the autumnal equinox. But a new, a totally different climate begins at Kashmir, whose elevation I estimate to be 5350 feet, nearly equal to that of the cities ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Peyron replied, after a brief calculation. "You have just six months in all to live from that date. They will offer you up by Tu-Kila-Kila's hut the day the sun reaches the summer solstice." ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... the change in my countenance, than sullenly retiring to yonder rock, he sat careless of the sun and scorching winds; for it was now the summer solstice. Equally was he heedless of the unwholesome dews. When midnight came my horrors were augmented; and I meditated several times to abandon my hovel, and fly to the next village; but a power more than human chained me to the spot and ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... canals become double. This phenomenon seems to appear at a determinate epoch, and to be produced simultaneously over the entire surface of the planet's continents. There was no indication of it in 1877, during the weeks that preceded and followed the summer solstice of that world. A single isolated case presented itself in 1879. On the 26th of December, this year—a little before the spring equinox, which occurred on Mars on the 21st of January, 1880—I noticed the doubling of the Nile [a canal thus named] between the Lakes of the Moon and the Ceraunic ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... His gusts should fertilize, amend, As vernal storms the fields athwart. Youth freshens beneath Passion's showers, Develops and matures its powers, And thus in season the rich field Gay flowers and luscious fruit doth yield. But at a later, sterile age, The solstice of our earthly years, Mournful Love's deadly trace appears As storms which in chill autumn rage And leave a marsh the fertile ground And devastate ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... before, and even a little in the morning. But in June, showers do not count for much. An hour after a storm, it can hardly be seen that the beautiful blonde day has wept. The earth, in summer, is as quickly dried as the cheek of a child. At that period of the solstice, the light of full noonday is, so to speak, poignant. It takes everything. It applies itself to the earth, and superposes itself with a sort of suction. One would say that the sun was thirsty. A shower is but a glass of water; a rainstorm is instantly drunk up. In the morning everything was ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Thebes, a light as of a conflagration used to penetrate from one end to the other of the sanctuaries of Amen; for the middle artery is open towards the north-west, and is aligned in such a fashion that, once a year, one solitary time, on the evening of the summer solstice, the sun as it sets is able to plunge its reddened rays straight into the sanctuaries. At the moment when it enlarges its blood-coloured disc before descending behind the desolation of the Libyan mountains, it arrives in the very axis of ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... "where to spend the Summer?" is usually discussed by paterfamilias, anxious mammas and uneasy children long before the summer solstice drives them from the pent-up confines of the busy metropolis to the pure air and quite recreation of country life. Many will visit the seaside, some will climb the mountains or explore the forests. Fashion, in most instances, determines ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... Cigales appear about the summer solstice. Along the beaten paths, calcined by the sun, hardened by the passage of frequent feet, we see little circular orifices almost large enough to admit the thumb. These are the holes by which the larvae of the Cigale have come up from the depths to undergo metamorphosis. We ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... derived from [Greek: hals, kyo], i. e., sea-conceiving, from the fact of this bird's being said to lay her eggs in rocks near the sea); and the [Greek: halkyonides hemerai]—halcyon days—were those fourteen 'during the calm weather about the winter solstice,' during which the bird was said to build her nest and lay her eggs; hence, by an easy transition, perfect ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... harvesting, for determining the new year, and for fixing the dates of certain other ceremonial observances. By the aid of such devices as the native priests have at their command they are enabled to fix the date of the winter solstice with a fair degree of accuracy. Such rude determination of time was probably an aboriginal invention, and may have furnished the motive in other cases for placing stone pillars in such unusual positions. The explanation ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... last day of the sixth month of the Egyptian year, called by the Copta Mekhir.] I have seen the Eye of R[a] when it was full in Annu; [Footnote: The allusion here seems to be to the Summer or Winter Solstice.] therefore let not evil befall me either in this land or in this Hall of Ma[a]ti, because I, even I, know the names of the ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Britain, Ireland, and parts of France were known as Celts, and that their religion was directed by strange priests called Druids. Three times in the year, on the first of May, for the sowing; at the solstice, June 21st, for the ripening and turn of the year; and on the eve of November 1st, for the harvesting, those mysterious priests of the Celts, the Druids, built fires on the hill-tops in France, Britain, and Ireland, in honor of the sun. At this last festival the Druids of all ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... remembered that, according to Poe's account, Pym and Peters passed through the 'great white curtain' on March 22d. Peters says that this statement is probably correct. That date corresponds to their autumnal equinox—about. Three months later corresponds to our summer solstice—their midwinter. By the latter time, and for weeks before, the antarctic sun never rose above the horizon. But this season was in Hili-li the most beautiful and enjoyable period of the year. The open crater of almost pure ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... The forest will give him more, too. Out of its mysterious darkness will slip easily into his mind the old-time loved and half-forgotten legends that grew out of the winter night in the twilight of the early days of the Aryan race. At the time of the winter solstice it was the custom of the gods to leave their dwellings in heaven and come down to earth. In the shout of the wind in the pines he may well hear Wotan riding overhead in his gray cloak and broad-brimmed hat pressed low over ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... endure with singular tenacity. Like their sports, which follow laws of their own, uninfluenced by meteorological considerations, tending to the sedentary games of marbles in the cold, chilly spring, and bursting into base-and foot-ball in the midsummer solstice, strict tradition hands down from boy to boy the well-worn talk. There are still "busters," as in our young days, and the ardent youth upon floating cakes of ice "run bendolas" or "kittly-benders," or simply "benders." In different latitudes the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... onwards for over a century no Emperor ventured out from behind the frowning Walls of the Forbidden City save for brief annual ceremonies such as the Worship of Heaven on the occasion of the Winter Solstice, and during the two "flights"— first, in 1860 when Peking was occupied by an Anglo-French expedition and the Court incontinently sought sanctuary in the mountain Palaces of Jehol; and, again, in 1900, when with ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... say that it's a genital complaint; others maintain that it's an organic disease. This doctor explains that there is no danger: while another, again, holds that there's fear of a crisis either before or after the winter solstice; but there is, in one word, nothing certain said by them. May it please you, sir, now to favour us with ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... period of the social solstice when the fag end of the season had fizzled out like a wet firecracker in the April rains; and Geraldine and Kathleen were tired, mentally and bodily. And Scott was buying polo ponies from a British friend and shotguns from a needy ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... summer. "It is always summer where they are," some youngster was heard to murmur. But it was really the summer solstice, or very near it. The pond-lilies were ripe; bushels of them were heaped upon the platforms at every station we came to; and before the first stage of our journey was far advanced the girls were sighing over lapfuls of lilies, and the lads tottering under the ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... thee the radiant day returns, Nymph! not for thee the golden solstice burns, 15 Refulgent CEREA!—at the dusky hour She seeks with ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... precious; Chaucer has 'forword' for promise; Sir John Cheke 'freshman' for proselyte; 'mooned' for lunatic; 'foreshewer' for prophet; 'hundreder' for centurion; Jewel 'foretalk', where we now employ preface; Holland 'sunstead' where we use solstice; 'leechcraft' instead of medicine; and another, 'wordcraft' for logic; 'starconner' (Gascoigne) did service once, if not instead of astrologer, yet side by side with it; 'halfgod' (Golding) had the advantage ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... start from the assumption that it was erected in connection with the worship of the sun, or at least in order to take certain observations with regard to the sun. Sir Norman Lockyer noticed that the avenue at Stonehenge pointed approximately to the spot where the sun rises at the midsummer solstice, and therefore thought that Stonehenge was erected to observe this midsummer rising. If he could find the exact direction of the avenue he would know where the sun rose at midsummer in the year when the circle was ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... and well considered of the difference between the Lords of Kissbreech and Suckfist, the court saith unto them, that in regard of the sudden quaking, shivering, and hoariness of the flickermouse, bravely declining from the estival solstice, to attempt by private means the surprisal of toyish trifles in those who are a little unwell for having taken a draught too much, through the lewd demeanour and vexation of the beetles that inhabit the diarodal (diarhomal) ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais |
