"Burnished" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will be seen at one moment floating on the water, still and motionless; the next moment they will be darting here and there over the surface of the water, their black and burnished backs shining in the sunlight like brilliant gems. Suddenly, it is "heels up and heads down," and they disappear beneath the surface, each of them carrying a bubble of air caught beneath the wing-tips; or, as the late William Hamilton Gibson expresses it, "they carry a brilliant lantern that goes ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... elder nursling of the nest; Ere all the intertangled west Be one magnificence Of multitudinous blossoms that o'errun The flaming brazen bowl o' the burnished sun Which they do flower from, How shall I 'stablish THY memorial? Nay, how or with what countenance shall I come To plead in my defence For loving thee at all? I who can scarcely speak my fellows' speech, Love their love, or mine own love to them teach; A bastard barred ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... anthem which summer will harmonize. Ah! what shades and sunlight! what coloring! Green in the grass and trees, blue in the violets and sky, gray in the moss, yellow in the jessamines, falling around in a perfect Danaean shower of burnished gold! My truant fancy sees all this—and more! A dear hand that held mine, a "pure hand," a boy's hand, that ere many summers had spread out their gorgeous pageantry had drawn the sword for that dear ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... proportions. The tables were impossibly high, the chairs were stiff, and the cabinets immense and formal in outline. It had, however, much stately beauty, and very lovely are certain old pieces of carved and gilded wood where the gilt, put on over a red preparation and highly burnished, has rubbed off with time, and shows a soft glow of colour ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... voyage, one of the vessels went half a degree south of the equator, and encountered a vessel "like a European caravel," which was, in fact, a Peruvian balsa, loaded with merchandise, vases, mirrors of burnished silver, and curious ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... as the sun was sending shafts of light across river and swamp—making them glow like burnished silver, and covering every tall spike of rush and flag with diamonds—a few straggling cottages or ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... me: I acquiesce. The occasion is plausible to let him pass.—Now let the burnished beams upon his brow blaze broad, for the brand he cast ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... 384. Adj. shining &c. v.; luminous, luminiferous[obs3]; lucid, lucent, luculent[obs3], lucific[obs3], luciferous; light, lightsome; bright, vivid, splendent[obs3], nitid[obs3], lustrous, shiny, beamy[obs3], scintillant[obs3], radiant, lambent; sheen, sheeny; glossy, burnished, glassy, sunny, orient, meridian; noonday, tide; cloudless, clear; unclouded, unobscured[obs3]. gairish[obs3], garish; resplendent, transplendent[obs3]; refulgent, effulgent; fulgid[obs3], fulgent[obs3]; relucent[obs3], splendid, blazing, in a blaze, ablaze, rutilant[obs3], meteoric, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a beautiful red copper that shone in the sunlight like burnished gold and seemed almost a dark red in the shadow. He had never seen anything half so fine before. The ceiling was of mother-of-pearl, with tints of red and blue and yellow and green, all blending into gleaming white, as only ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... were all over scales, which, if not iron, were something as hard and impenetrable. They had wings, too, and exceedingly splendid ones, I can assure you, for every feather in them was pure, bright, glittering, burnished gold; and they looked very dazzling, no doubt, when the Gorgons were flying about in ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... islands That gleam amid yon flood of purple light, 210 Nor the feathery curtains That canopy the sun's resplendent couch, Nor the burnished ocean waves Paving that gorgeous dome, So fair, so wonderful a sight 215 As the eternal temple could afford. The elements of all that human thought Can frame of lovely or sublime, did join To rear the fabric of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... almost as loudly as they did their lovely Ruler. Behind him stalked with regular, jerky steps, the famous machine-man called Tik-tok, who had been wound up by Dorothy for the occasion. Tik-tok moved by clockwork, and was made all of burnished copper. He really belonged to the Kansas girl, who had much respect for his thoughts after they had been properly wound and set going; but as the copper man would be useless in any place but a fairy country Dorothy had left him ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... heavy ornately carved black wood, panels of Chinese embroidery in imperial yellow, and a neutral mauve carpet. The effect, with glittering iridescent pyramids of glass, massive frosted repousse silver, burnished gold-plate and a wide table decoration of orchids and fern, was tropical and intense. It was evident to Linda that the Feldts were very ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... is such perfection expected. The silver polishing of perfection in huge houses is done by such an expert that no one can tell whether a fork has that moment been sent from the silversmiths or not. It is not merely polished until it is bright, but burnished so that it is new! Every piece of silver in certain of the great establishments, or in smaller ones that are run like a great one, is never picked up by a servant except with a rouged chamois. No piece of silver is ever allowed by the slightest ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... charged with baleful thoughts and dreams, The household bunch of keys, the housewife's gown, Voluminous indented, and yet rigid As though a shell of burnished metal frigid, Her feet thick-shod to tread ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... and around the watchers as they gazed. They were in it; it lay at their very feet, and beside them at either hand. Below, the sheet of water in the "Clay-Pits," gleamed like burnished gold. Here and there, from among the tree-tops, came up the smoke of little cascades, reaching for baptism into the ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... left far behind their vast forests and mighty crags. We entered smiling Italy. Mingled grass and corn grew in her plains, the unpruned vines threw their luxuriant branches around the elms. The grapes, overripe, had fallen on the ground, or hung purple, or burnished green, among the red and yellow leaves. The ears of standing corn winnowed to emptiness by the spendthrift winds; the fallen foliage of the trees, the weed-grown brooks, the dusky olive, now spotted with its blackened ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... the fair impression. Cruel wave, treacherous sand, frail reed; I said, 'I hate ye I'll trust ye no more, but with a giant's arm, I'll reach to the coast of Norway, and pluck its tallest pine, and dip it in the crater of Vesuvius, and write upon the burnished heavens; 'My Country, I love thee! And I'd like to see any durned wave ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... of the sun in the moon is powerfully luminous, and is only on a small portion of its surface. And the proof may be seen by taking a ball of burnished gold and placing it in the dark with a light at some distance from it; and then, although it will illuminate about half of the ball, the eye will perceive its reflection only in a small part of its surface, and all the rest of ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... articles of more or less value filling the greater part of the temple. Lanterns and chandeliers displayed the skill and patience of the Chinese in manipulating metals. There were imitations of butterflies and other insects, and of delicate leaves and flowers in metal, painted or burnished in the color of the objects represented. The aggregate time consumed in the manufacture of these decorations must be thousands of years. In a suspended vase I saw one boquet which was a clever imitation of nature, with the single exception of odor. The Chinese make artificial roses containing ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... their presents to a pole, which they fixed in the ground, and then retiring, saw the Indians advance, who, taking what they found upon the pole, left in return such feathers as they wear upon their heads, with a small bone about six inches in length, carved round the top, and burnished. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... in the greatest kind of luck to be allowed to live at all, and especially were they fortunate past the lot of children to be permitted to live in a flat. There were many flats in the great city, so polished and carved and burnished and be-lackeyed that children were not allowed to enter within the portals, save on visits of ceremony in charge of parents or governesses. And in one flat, where Cecil de Koven le Baron was born—just by accident and without ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... within the castle learned that their chief was bound they raised great lamentation, and their fears were sore. And Gurdafrid, too, when she learned it, was grieved, but she was ashamed also for the fate of Hujir. So she took forth burnished mail and clad herself therein, and she hid her tresses under a helmet of Roum, and she mounted a steed of battle and came forth before the walls like to a warrior. And she uttered a cry of thunder, and flung it amid the ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... declared Ferguson. "I'm no novice at that business. Here, don't touch them, Mr. Kent," as his companion bent toward the chair. "There may be finger marks on the steel; if so"—he drew out his handkerchief, and taking care not to handle the burnished metal, he folded the handcuffs carefully in it and put them in his coat pocket. "There's no use lingering here, Mr. Kent; this apartment is vacant now except for us. I ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... was considerable difference of opinion among us which young gobbler, out of twenty or more, was the best and promised to "dress off" finest by Thanksgiving. Addison chose a dark, burnished bird with a yellow skin; at that time our flock was made up of a mixture of breeds—white, speckled, bronze and golden. Halstead chose a large speckled gobbler with heavy purple wattles and a long "quitter" that bothered him in picking ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... plaques in the form of the facade with the hawk, which usually encloses the ka name of the king. The gold hawks have been cast in a mould with two faces, and the junction line has been carefully removed and burnished. The gold was worked by chisel and burnishing; no grinding or file marks are visible. In the second bracelet, with the rosette, two groups of beads are united at the sides by bands of gold wire and thick hair. The fastening of the bracelet was by a loop and button. This button is a hollow ball ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... saying, he sprang to his feet and waved his handkerchief energetically in the direction of the great conical shape that, gleaming and flashing like burnished silver in the rays of the setting sun, at that moment hove in sight over the tree-tops on the north-western margin of the enclosure. Three white-clad figures were standing in the bows of the superstructure, examining the open space through binoculars; and as Lethbridge waved his handkerchief ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... he sware with accents true and tender, "Though years roll by, my love shall ne'er wax old!" And so to him my heart I did surrender, Clear as a mirror of pure burnished gold; ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... superabundant energy were noised abroad, there was an immediate and noticeable change in the entire deportment of the camp. Those long grown careless drew forth their old morals and manners, brushed the moths from them, burnished the rust and wore them with undeniable self-consciousness, but ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... sand at our feet an iridescent flower-beetle crawled, its metallic green-and-blue wings burning like a spark. Great gnats, with filmy, glittering wings, danced aimlessly above the young golden-rod; burnished crickets, inquisitive, timid, ran from under chips of driftwood, waved their antennae at us, and ran back again. One by one the marbled tiger-beetles tumbled at our feet, dazed from the exertion of an aerial flight, then scrambled and ran a little way, or darted into the wire grass, where ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... buttons of stone, And knobs of amber and polished bone, And a turquoise brooch and a collar of jade, And a belt and a pouch of rich brocade, And a gleaming dagger with inlaid blade And jewelled handle of burnished gold Rakishly stuck in the red scarf's fold— A dress, in short, that might suit a wizard On a calm warm day In the month of May, But was hardly fit for ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... a creature so tiny should make a toilet at all was wonderful to think of, and to see her do it was charming. Each minute feather on gossamer wing or widespread tail was passed carefully through her beak; from all soft plumage, the satin white of the breast and the burnished green of the back, every particle of dust was removed and every disarrangement was set right. Her long white tongue, looking like a bristle, was often thrust out far beyond the beak, and the beak itself received an extra amount of care, being scraped and polished its whole length by ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... morning Kari made me put on my armour, the same which I had taken from the French knight, and fled in from London, that he had burnished till it shone like silver, and seat myself in a chair upon what remained of the poop of the ship. When I asked him why, he answered in order that he might show me to the inhabitants of that land. In this chair he bade me sit and wait, ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... smooth stone. As they proceeded the light became stronger, and they next entered another, the walls of which were formed of large iron plates. Passing through this they reached another lined with bright sheets of copper, which led to a large hall with a roof and pillars of burnished silver. From this hall a pair of folding-doors gave access to a splendid room, with walls, roof, and floor of solid gold, and windows of transparent crystal. The next room was covered with red rubies, having windows formed of ...
— The Pearl Story Book - A Collection of Tales, Original and Selected • Mrs. Colman
... tremendous exception; Homer is the one poet of authentic epic who had sufficient genius to make unfailingly, nobly beautiful poetry within the strict and hard conditions of purely auricular art. Compare Homer's ambrosial glory with the descent tap-water of Hesiod; compare his continuous burnished gleam of wrought metal with the sparse grains that lie in the sandy diction of all the "authentic" epics of the other nations. And, by all ancient accounts, the other early Greek epics would not fare much better in the comparison. Homer's singularity in this respect ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... pestilent cackle of many people affects me when they rave about the sea. Why do they not keep silent, like the stars? God! These fools, I think, would clatter up the steps of the Great White Throne, talking, talking, talking! When the pearly gates swing wide to let us in, when we pace the burnished vistas towards the Presence, when the measureless music of the Most High ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... apprehended the slightest act of personal violence from the old man, for he was harmless of evil as a child, but because they feared the polished hoofs of Silvertail, which shone amid the clouds of dust they raised as he passed, like rings of burnished silver. Even the very Indians, with whom the streets were at this period habitually crowded, were glad to hug the sides of the houses, while Sampson passed; and they who, on other occasions, would have deemed ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... water—inconceivably fresh music for African ears. A scent of mint and aniseed; fields with grass growing high and straight in which you plunge up to the knees. Here and there, deeply engulfed little valleys with their bunches of green covert, slashed with the rose plumes of the lime trees and the burnished leaves of the hazels, and where already the northern firs lift their black needles. Far off, blended in one violet mass, the Alps, peak upon peak, covered with snow; and nearer in view, sheer cliffs, jutting fastnesses, ploughed through with black gorges which make ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... o'clock in the afternoon of the first of May: I stepped in there before going up to the hall. It was very clean and neat: the ornamental windows were hung with little white curtains; the floor was spotless; the grate and fire-irons were burnished bright, and the fire burnt clear. Bessie sat on the hearth, nursing her last-born, and Robert and his sister ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... thus fair Yolanda spoke, A horn's shrill note on all men's hearing broke, And all eyes turned where rode a gallant knight, In burnished armour sumptuously bedight. His scarlet plumes 'bove gleaming helm a-dance, His bannerole a-flutter from long lance, His gaudy shield with new-popped blazon glowed: Three stooping falcons that on field vert showed; But close-shut vizor hid ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... yet mastered all its changes of expression; its details were blurred in the hot, dusty glare; the mountains opposite had faded to a flat outline against the indomitable sky. A light wind blew up the slope, flickering the pale leaves of a manzanita, whose burnished, cinnamon-colored stems glowed in the sun. As the breeze strengthened, the young girl stood up, lifting her arms, to welcome its coolness on ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... Hunt had carried her away before the unmasking at twelve o'clock. She tore off the offending waist and skirt, pulled from beneath the bed the pasteboard box containing her costume; and in five minutes of flying hands the transformation was completed. Her thick hair of burnished black was piled on top of her head in gracious disorder, and from it swayed a scarlet paper flower. About her lithe body, over a black satin skirt, swathing her in its graceful folds, clung a Spanish shawl of saffron-colored background ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... chains of gold, and capable of shaking the saintship of anchorites, being decked with thin attire, appeared highly graceful. And her feet with fair suppressed ankles, and possessing flat soles and straight toes of the colour of burnished copper and dorsum high and curved like tortoise back and marked by the wearing of ornaments furnished with rows of little bells, looked exceedingly handsome. And exhilarated with a little liquor which she had taken, and excited by desire, and moving ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... interpret them in all the fulness of their meaning, and not be content to take only that part of the meaning which falls in with the dictates of their own love of ease. In France such words ought to be printed in capitals on the front of every newspaper, and written up in letters of burnished gold over each faction of the Assembly, and on the door of every bureau in the Administration. In England they need a commentary which shall bring out the very simple truth, that compromise and barter do not mean the undisputed triumph of one ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... during cloudless wind-storms that these colossal pines are most impressively beautiful. Then they bow like willows, their leaves streaming forward all in one direction, and, when the sun shines upon them at the required angle, entire groves glow as if every leaf were burnished silver. The fall of tropic light on the crown of a palm is a truly glorious spectacle, the fervid sun-flood breaking upon the glossy leaves in long lance-rays, like mountain water among boulders at the foot of an ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... very few words—just incessant flashes of fire, great volumes of smoke, and, interspersed with the smoke, patches of flying debris. Very little else. No great masses of troops advancing in serried lines, column after column, with colours proudly flying, and burnished bayonets glistening in the sun; none of the old-fashioned pomp and circumstance of war when the opposing armies marched toward each other with bands playing, discharged their muskets when they were near enough to see the whites of their opponents' eyes, and then charged with fixed bayonets, fighting ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... wearied with social bustle and the empty amenities of present-day existence to pass a few weeks in the comparative solitude of several pleasant companions "under the stars" in North-Western Rhodesia, where they can still catch a glimpse of the elusive zebras, with coats shining in the sun like burnished steel, and hear the persistent call of the honey-bird. At night the roar of lions may now and then cause them to turn in their sleep, and in their dreams they may have visions of the animals that have charmed them during the day—the stately eland, ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... follow the trail through the darkening forest to the Indian village. Cartier placed the soldiers in their burnished armor on guard and spent the night watching the council fires gleam from the mountain. And did some soldier standing sentry, watching the dark shadow of the hill creep longer as the sun went down, cry out, "Mont Royal," so that the place came to ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... mankind, enclosed In serpent, inmate bad! and toward Eve Addressed his way: not with indented wave, Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear, Circular base of rising folds, that towered Fold above fold, a surging maze! his head Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape And lovely; never since of serpent-kind Lovelier, not those that in Illyria changed, Hermione and Cadmus, or the god In ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... of metal swung on past the ship, as he returned to the rocket and stopped its clattering explosions. He watched the tiny black speck of the magnet. It vanished from sight in the darkness of space, appeared again against the white, burnished hull ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... tesselated cornices and on the heavy ceiling, which was supported by square pillars, round which were twisted serpents of gold and enamel, with eyes to which enormous emeralds gave a green and lifelike glare: various scrolls and musical instruments lay scattered upon marble tables: and a solitary lamp of burnished silver cast a dim and subdued light around the chamber. The effect of the whole, though splendid, was gloomy, strange, and oppressive, and rather suited to the thick and cave-like architecture which ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of the sky were ringed with a rich crimson border. Higher still they shaded off into paler tints, mingled with a copper-like hue that merged in the lighter clouds into gold. Above these were fleecy, rounded fragments of cloud floating over the deep blue like burnished brass upon lapis lazuli; and higher yet, about midway to the zenith, every cloudlet was tinged with pale yellow. Could such a sky be represented on canvas it would be condemned as unnatural—a case of the painter's imagination carrying him beyond the limits of true art. But it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Thou wilt approve my simple minstrelsy, Thine ear will listen to Thy servant's gift. The rich man's halls are nobly furnished; Therein no nook or corner empty seems; Here stands the brazen laver burnished, And there the golden goblet brightly gleams; Hard by some crock of clumsy earthen ware, Massive and ample lies a silver plate; And rough-hewn cups of oak or elm are there With vases carved of ivory delicate. Yet every vessel in its place is good, So be it ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... so arrests our speech when we are tempted to betray hidden trouble as to find ourselves face to face with a kind of burnished, radiant happiness. Sensitive eyes not more quickly close before a blaze of sunlight than the shadowy soul shuts her gates upon the ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... cities of the desert, so steeps the pavements, so soaks through the pores of solids, so sharpens angles and softens curves, as Fromentin tells us, that even squalor borrows brilliant dyes, and rags and filth lighten into picturesque and burnished glory. And this is well for the reader, as all have not time for philosophy, nor can all transmute pain into treasure. But for her, sweet sounds and sights abound in everything; bird and breeze and bee alike are winged with melody; the music of the sea satisfies her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... before the Sun could come back to the Moon, and while he was gone, the Moon gave birth to her baby. It was a girl. A beautiful child it was, with curly hair like binubbud, [36] with burnished nails that looked like gold, and having the white spots called pamoti [37] on its body. The mother felt very sad to think of killing it, and so she hid it in the big box (kaban [38]) where ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... heroine of revolt! Nay, worse than that; those very powers and supremacies that he had thought were his protection—were they not, also, a part of the Snare? His culture and his artistry, his visions and his exaltations—what had they been but a lure for the female? The iris of the burnished dove, the ruff about the grouse's neck, the gold and purple of the butterfly's wing! Even his genius, his miraculous, ineffable genius—that had been the plume of the partridge, the crowning glory before which his mate ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... deep, cold, and rather dangerous-looking stream, but a fallen tree that stretched from bank to bank served them as a bridge. They crossed over, bestriding the tree with dangling feet, at first amusing themselves by stirring the water which looked like a mirror of burnished steel, but then suddenly hastening, frightened by the strange eyes which opened in the depths of the sleepy current at the slightest splash. But it was the last stream which delayed them the most. It was sportive like themselves, ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... blackguards were to be seen assembled daily, playing at husselcap up to their ankles in mire. Cavendish Square was then for the first time dignified with a statue, in the modern uniform of the Guards, mounted on a charger, a l'antique, richly gilt and burnished; and Red Lion Square, elegantly so called from the sign of an ale-shop at the corner, presented the anomalous appendages of two ill-constructed watch-houses at either end, with an ungainly, naked obelisk in the centre, which, by the by, was understood ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... looking down into it, he saw a maiden who in splendour was like a blazing fire. And beholding her within it, the blessed king addressed that girl of the complexion of the celestials, soothing her with sweet words. And he said, 'Who art thou, O fair one, of nails bright as burnished copper, and with ear-rings decked with celestial gems? Thou seemest to be greatly perturbed. Why dost thou weep in affliction? How, indeed, hast thou fallen into this well covered with creepers and long grass? And, O slender-waisted girl, answer me ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and the pride of all well-to-do housewives, and even the tables of royalty did not disdain the pewter. At the grand dinner on George IV.'s Coronation-day, though gold and silver plate was there in abundance for the most noble of the noble guests, the majority were served on brightly-burnished pewter, supplied from Thomason's of Birmingham. The metal is seldom seen now except in the shape of cups ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... yellow patches under the oaks of the pasture-lands, and burnished the green hedges. The air was heavy and yet cold, and everything seemed preparing for a great storm. The rooks whirled in black clouds round the trees and the conical red caps of the oast-houses which give that country the look of being studded with turreted castles; then they descended—a ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... narrow valley that is little more than a deep ravine, the sides of the precipitous hills covered with forest to the brink of the stream, which twists and turns at sharp angles like a wounded snake, shining as burnished silver when one catches glimpses of it through the trees, and playing an important part in a landscape which at brief distance seems as wild and as unconscious of the presence of man as if it were a part of the wilderness of Oregon rather than the adjunct of a busy town which ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... tent. The walls were hung with scarlet cloth tied up with ropes of gold. Round the room crouched recumbent lions richly gilt, who grasped in their paw a lance, the top of which was a colored lamp. The ceiling was emblazoned with the Hauteville arms, and was radiant with burnished gold. A cresset lamp was suspended from the centre of the shield, and not only emitted an equable flow of soft though brilliant light, but also, as the aromatic oil wasted away, distilled an ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... will with thee share, Nor grudge thee the blossoms Of apple or pear. The sweet-scented woodbine I shall not withhold, Nor rare perfumed lilies, Like pure burnished gold. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... answered, while my eyes rested on the water, through which an approaching barge rose like a vessel of frosted or burnished white metal, 'we were taught on the earth that, with gravitation reduced one-half, the same weight on Mars would seem only half as heavy as on the earth, and that the effort which there carried us eight feet ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... she understood, and turned quite white, standing there in her boudoir-robe of China silk, her heavy, burnished hair in two loose ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... burned blue, flickered again, and then went out. The hall was now in darkness, saving only for the feeble light of the fire, and the moonbeams that slanted in through the mullioned windows and shone here and there upon some burnished helmet ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... to him, "Oh man! is it true that is reported of thee that thou knowest how to burnish swords?" "I know full well how to do so," answered Kai. Then was the sword of Gwrnach brought to him. And Kai took a blue whetstone from under his arm, and asked him whether he would have it burnished white or blue. "Do with it as it seems good to thee, and as thou wouldest if it were thine own." Then Kai polished one half of the blade and put it in his hand. "Will this please thee?" asked he. "I would rather than all that is in my dominions that the whole of it were ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... decoration of the MS. are in keeping with its special use. The gratulatory preface occupying ten pages is introduced by the following heading in letters of burnished gold: ...
— Catalogue of the William Loring Andrews Collection of Early Books in the Library of Yale University • Anonymous
... velvet-like patch of shade on the gleaming gold of the sand, and herds of white goats stood near, their silky coats flashing in the morning sunlight. Silka looked out, too, over her sister's shoulder. She saw the burnished gold of the plain and the luminous sky, and between these two a figure that stood by a low brown tent, with the sunlight falling full on its noble brow and the straight profile turned towards them. Doolga wrung Silka's hand, that she still clutched, ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... holly! oh, twine it with bay— Come give the holly a song; For it helps to drive stern winter away, With his garment so sombre and long; It peeps through the trees with its berries of red, And its leaves of burnished green, When the flowers and fruits have long been dead, And not even the daisy is seen. Then sing to the holly, the Christmas holly, That hangs over peasant and king; While we laugh and carouse 'neath its glittering boughs, To the ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... housewifely care; while, a little farther again, were others, pressed close together in a floating garden-bed, as though pansies had flown out of a garden like butterflies and were hovering with blue and burnished wings over the transparent shadowiness of this watery border; this skiey border also, for it set beneath the flowers a soil of a colour more precious, more moving than their own; and both in the afternoon, when it sparkled beneath the lilies in the kaleidoscope of a happiness ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... you hate me, you! Sitting quietly there, With the burnished hair That frames the two Deep eyes of your face ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... her frantic efforts to put up a straggling lock of brown hair that had escaped from the coil, and which would perpetually get loose again. Malcolm noticed at once the ripe, rich tint of the brown. "It is the real thing," he said to himself, "it is the burnished brown of the horse-chestnut; one seldom sees it, it is quite out of the common." And then he told himself that he had never seen a face so capable of expression. Perhaps this was why he watched her so closely when she talked to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the broadaxe and the whipsaw—hung overhead in massive beams. From these low, blackened timbers there swung many antique lamps, splendid enough for a palace and strangely out of place in a log house of the wilderness. On the rough walls there were also large sconces of burnished silver but poorly filled with tallow candles. In the bare spaces between these silver sconces were the heads of wild animals mingled with many rifles, both old and new, and other arms of the hunter. Over the tall mantelpiece there were crossed two untarnished swords which had been ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... drawing-room pleased her. That room was like an asylum of bourgeois rectitude, luxurious dignity, in which she felt protected, saved. Some little objects on which her eyes lighted, a pocket scent-bottle ornamented with an opal, a paper-knife of burnished silver left inside a book, fully reassured her. She was moved, almost surprised at the sight of them, as if they had acquired some new and particular meaning. Then she shivered slightly and perceived that her hands ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... another great city, Bristol. At the extreme western point, too, are seen the waters of the Bristol Channel, glittering under the glowing rays of the setting sun, and shining like a vast plateau of burnished gold. ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... in for Brunhild also; her resentment was all forgotten when she saw the body of Sigurd laid on the pyre, arrayed as if for battle in burnished armour, with the Helmet of Dread at his head, and accompanied by his steed, which was to be burned with him, together with several of his faithful servants who would not survive his loss. She withdrew to her apartment, and after distributing her possessions ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... very young and inexperienced as she stood there, a slim girlish figure with masses of burnished hair the colour of ripe corn, braided and coiled as closely as possible round her small head, but there was no trace of timidity or subservience in her manner. In the slight form, with the milk-white skin, delicate profile and exquisite hands, there ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... out. "Rischt!" how it blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright flame, like a candle, as she held her hands over it: it was a wonderful light. It seemed really to the little maiden as though she were sitting before a large iron stove, with burnished brass feet and a brass ornament at top. The fire burned with such blessed influence; it warmed so delightfully. The little girl had already stretched out her feet to warm them too; but—the small flame went out, the ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Directly opposite, across the corridor, was the kitchen, from which issued a delightful combination of vinous, aromatic odors. The light of a strong, bright lamp made it as brilliant as a ball-room; it was a ball-room which for decoration had rows of shining brass and copper kettles—each as burnished as a jewel—a mass of sunny porcelain, and for carpet the satin of a wooden floor. There was much bustling to and fro. Shapes were constantly passing and repassing across the lighted interior. The Mere's broad-hipped figure ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... figure of the dance never seemed to be confused, and the dancers were both expert in their capers and perfect in their evolutions. Nothing could be more licentious than the movements of the dancers, and they only seemed to be restrained within limits of common decency by the cocked hats and burnished helmets of the police and gendarmes which towered in the midst of them. After quadrilling and waltzing away, at a signal given they began galloping round the room; then they rushed pellmell, couple ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... I was aware There grew before my eager eyes A little maid too bright and fair, Too strangely lovely for surprise. It seemed the beauty of the place Had suddenly become concrete, So full was she of Orient grace, From her slant eyes and burnished face Down to her little gold-bronzed feet. She was a girl of old Japan; Her small hand held a gilded fan, Which scattered fragrance through the room; Her cheek was rich with pallid bloom, Her eye was dark with languid fire, Her red lips breathed a vague desire; Her teeth, of pearl inviolate, ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... so different from what it did when he left, that he stared at it in amazement, and would have hesitated about entering, had it not been for the name on the newly burnished door-plate. But he was still more astonished ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... weary, making way for the magic of evening and the oncoming dark with its mystery. The tree-stems redden with the sunset; there is a chill sigh in the wind; the leaves turn before it, burnished against the purple sky. As the gloom rises up out of the earth, bands of dark red gather on the horizon, seaming the clear bronze of the sky, that passes upward into olive-color, merging in dark blue overhead. ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... that ran right up to the top were as if they were golden green. If we looked to the right, the cliffs seemed as if on fire where the rock was bare, and as our eyes fell to where the tide was coming in, the waves, as they curled over, were burnished, and flashed ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... of her brother, but full of household matters; among others, that she had lost the "master tooth which had been so long ailing, and she sent it to him for a token." The tooth was "tipped with gold and burnished featly," but Raymond knew it was none of his lady's; and gathering her meaning, hurried home, and was made Protector of Ireland till the King's pleasure should be known. Henry sent as governor William Fitz Adhelm, a selfish voluptuary, under ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... is, Till the sunshine striking this Alchemize its dulness, When the sleek curls manifold Flash all over into gold With a burnished fulness. ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... arsenal. From floor to ceiling, Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms; But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing Startles ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... irritation. With a loud flourish of words Scully destroyed the game of cards, and bustled his son up-stairs with part of the baggage of the new guests. He himself conducted them to three basins of the coldest water in the world. The cowboy and the Easterner burnished themselves fiery-red with this water, until it seemed to be some kind of a metal polish. The Swede, however, merely dipped his fingers gingerly and with trepidation. It was notable that throughout this series of small ceremonies the three travellers were made to feel that ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... scattered the seeds, and while they disputed with one another, complaining mournfully, another bird, flying straight to the roof from a distance, suddenly joined them. It was white, with feet like tiny branches of coral, whereas the doves from the mosque were grey, or burnished purple. ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... before me, with a stairway leading to the second floor. A lamp with burnished reflector was burning brightly midway down its length. Another just like it fully lighted a big room to my left,—the dining-room, evidently,—on the floor of which, surrounded by overturned chairs, was lying a woman in a deathlike ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... slumber, on the deck reclined, Lo, in a dream, returning near him drew The God, and seemed his warning to renew. Like Mercury, the very God behold! So sweet his voice, so radiant was his hue, Such loveliness of limb and youthful mould, Such cheeks of ruddiest bloom, and locks of burnished gold. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... sea upon his face, and the voices of the market-men woke "Beelzebub" Blythe. He sat up, blinking, and leaned his back against the wall of the market. Drawing a blighted silk handkerchief from his pocket, he assiduously rubbed and burnished his glasses. And while doing this he became aware that his bedroom had been invaded, and that polite brown and yellow men were beseeching him to vacate in favour of their ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... of being auburn like her parent's, was as black as the raven's wing. It hung in luxuriant wavy masses below her waist, being gathered by a white clasp of burnished silver at the back of the neck, without which it would have enveloped all the upper part of her body in ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... human being could desire. Finally we came out onto a point overlooking the ranch. The view was simply entrancing. Imagine a vast amphitheater of 57,000 acres, surrounded by hills, dotted here and there with lakes, with streams of water like threads of burnished silver glittering in the evening light, softened by the clouds hanging over the San Luis Rey River. There were no clouds on the ranch; they stopped abruptly at the southwest corner. This vast meadow was an emerald green, studded with brilliant colored ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... suffered the very object of his visit to escape from his remembrance. Suddenly, and in the act of imprisoning a multitude of these illuminated beings, he perceived a Maiden sitting at the extremity of the moor, her back towards him. Her form was slender, and her hair, golden as the sun, travelled in burnished tresses from her shoulders to the earth, where it curled along the moor-grass like rays of the divine orb itself. After the manner of Sclavonian girls, the stranger wore a closely-fitting snow-white cap, or rather frontlet, from which, as from a chaplet, the beautiful hair streamed down. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... to deepen from the pale pink to a crimson which stained the tops and steeps of snow, and deepened the dark of the woods massed on the mountain slopes between the irregular fields of white. The burnished brown of the hard-wood trees, the dull carbon shadows of the evergreens, seemed to wither to one black as the red strengthened in the sky. Westover realized that he had lost the best of any possible picture in letting that first delicate color escape him. This crimson was harsh ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in the plains afar Glimmers the inland city like a star, With gilded gates and sunny spires ablaze, And burnished domes half seen through luminous haze. Lo, with what opportunity earth teems! How like a fair its ample beauty seems! Fluttering with flags its proud pavilions rise: What bright bazaars, what marvellous merchandise, Down seething alleys what melodious din, ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... over it and onward; and the next change it assumed was one of singular beauty: the reflection of the burnt cane, yet standing in perfect order as it grew, only made transparent by the action of fire, had the appearance of the harvest of an Eastern tale, composed of grain whose tall stalks were of burnished gold; whereas on the grass of the wide prairies the effect of the fire is lost as soon as passed, the bare and blackened ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... yonder double star. On the snow this moonlight falls tenderly, not in hard white light and strong black shadow, but in tones of cream and ivory, rounding the curves of drift. The mountain peaks alone glisten as though they were built of silver burnished by an agate. Far away they rise diminished in stature by the all-pervading dimness of bright light, that erases the distinctions of daytime. On the path before our feet lie crystals of many hues, the splinters of a thousand gems. In the wood there are caverns of darkness, alternating ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... was produced; and it justified the trust reposed in it. Well it knew its duty, and well it played its part; for it burnished memory bright, stirred emotion from its hiding place, and even led tears out by long ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... videttes of the Garde Republicaine. Farther on, in the Rue St. Honore, a squad of dismounted cuirassiers stood listlessly holding the bridles of their horses. The afternoon sun flashed electric rays from the plates of burnished steel. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... autumn hues, Monument Mountain looks like a headless sphinx, wrapped in a rich Persian shawl. Yesterday, through a diffused mist, with the sun shining on it, it had the aspect of burnished copper. The sun-gleams on the hills are peculiarly ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... beyond the devilish power that you control in this hidden chamber beneath the palace of your master. See how easy," and with the words the black dator rose from his seat and, crossing the room, laid his hand upon a large, burnished lever that ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... knights practiced their chargers on the plain to pass, to wheel, to curvet, that the swords of their riders might not descend amiss on foeman's casque. Hardy burghers were there, marching on foot. No waving plume, no crest they wore, but corselet, gorget, and brigantine, brightly burnished. The yeomen, too, were on foot, yet dressed in steel. Each at his back carried forty days' provisions. His arms were the halbert, axe, or spear, a crossbow, a dagger, or a sword. Each seemed almost sad at leaving ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel; "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel; ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... to stop the titanic struggle. He saw all around him the regiments ready for a new attack, and he plainly heard in front of him the thud of axes as the Northern men cut down trees for their defense. Now and then stray moonbeams, penetrating the forest and the smoke, fell over them like discs of burnished silver, ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... near by and found permanent relief in their shade. As soon as I was comfortable enough to examine my surroundings I saw that the trees were of metal, apparently copper, with leaves of what resembled pure silver, but may have contained alloy. Some of the trees bore burnished flowers shaped like bells, and in a breeze the tinkling as they clashed together was exceedingly sweet. The grass with which the open country was covered as far as I could see amongst the patches of forest was of a bright ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... the sentence. Beryl pinned the flowers at her mother's throat, kissed her cheek, and kneeling before her, crossed her arms on the invalid's lap, resting there the noble head, with its burnished crown of reddish ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... gleam of snow-fields, bright As burnished shields of tempered steel, And round each sovereign lonely height I watch the storm-clouds vault and reel, Heavy with hail and ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... dressing-room. In the latter there was a wide field for his operations. A full-dress uniform was lying across a chair, and it struck Bunty the gold buttons were looking less bright than they should, so he spent a harmless quarter of an hour in polishing them up. Next, he burnished some spurs, which also was harmless. Then he cast about for ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... moonlight night, and, like gleams of burnished silver, the moonbeams flashed from the lofty domes and minarets of Calcutta, or shone like sparkling gems on the sleeping waters of the bay. It was a night when the Hindoo lover told his tale to the dusky maiden at his side, and the soldier, wearing the ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes |
