"Sapphire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... incongruity, so to speak, of the existing elements of the scene. The hideous leer of the thing with horns, looking down at the exquisite picture of the fete champetre—the distorted features of the woman's face in the center of the ruby and emerald and sapphire of the Venetian mirror—the cry of horror mixed with the laugh of the woman who mocked at religion and honor and ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... The men scampered in insane fever of haste, racing as if to achieve a sudden success before an exhilarating fluid should leave them. It was a blind and despairing rush by the collection of men in dusty and tattered blue, over a green sward and under a sapphire sky, toward a fence, dimly outlined in smoke, from behind which spluttered the ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... all the western sky were lines of softly-rounded, broken cloud, rank behind rank, in endless perspective, the whole shaped like a mighty fan. The under side of them was flushed with living rose. The clear spaces behind them paved with sapphire at the zenith, and palest topaz where they skirted the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... toadstone. 2nd. A heavy ring enamelled in colours, and bearing a jacynth. 3rd. An amethystine sapphire. 4th. A polished ruby, surrounded by diamonds. 5th. The engraved ring of an abbess. 6th. A gloomy intaglio; ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Annesley exclaimed. "My favourite stone. Yet I never saw a sapphire like it before. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... saw the Dragon fly Come from the wells where he did lie. An inner impulse rent the veil Of his old husk: from head to tail Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... star-lettered, on the flaming scroll The night unwinds toward the southern pole. And sometimes wiling idle days, she wove In quaint device, gems from her treasure-trove, Rare garlanded, or set in flashing zone Soft emerald, sapphire pale, and many a stone Out-gleaming amethyst. Her yellow hair Among, the glinting diamonds shone. And there The sultry topaz burned. And laughing, twined She round her bare white throat red rubies shrined In pearls. Or she among the haunts would rove That ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... rock aloft, Where having spied her tower, long stared he on't, And prayed the narrow toiling Hellespont To part in twain, that he might come and go; But still the rising billows answered, "No." With that he stripped him to the ivory skin And, crying "Love, I come," leaped lively in. Whereat the sapphire visaged god grew proud, And made his capering Triton sound aloud, Imagining that Ganymede, displeased, Had left the heavens; therefore on him he seized. Leander strived; the waves about him wound, And pulled him to the bottom, where the ground Was strewed with pearl, and in low ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... coronet: About thy neck a carcanet is bound, Made of the ruby, pearl and diamond: A golden ring that shines upon thy thumb: About thy wrist, the rich dardanium.[G] Between thy breasts (than down of swans more white) There plays the sapphire with the chrysolite. No part besides must of thyself be known, But by ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... hear you talking about marriage like that. Wasn't there ever any kind of romance between you and Father? Not even when he was wooing you? Wasn't there ever one magic Midsummer morning when you saw suddenly "a livelier emerald twinkle in the grass, a purer sapphire melt into the sea"? Wasn't there ever one passionate ecstatic moment when "once he drew with one long kiss my whole soul through my lips, as sunlight drinketh dew"? Or did you talk about bread-sauce ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... out of the picture. One felt like a model in all manner of dress and undress. She laughed softly. "Don't," she begged, "be so mysterious about yourself! Tell me—" she held him with eyes of ingratiating sapphire—"I've always been interested in finding out ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... No sapphire of Ind, no ruby rich of price, There lacked then, nor emerald so green, Balais, Turkeis, nor thing, *to my devise,* *in my judgement* That may the castle make for to sheen;* *be beautiful All was as bright as stars in winter ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... bride for her bridegroom. O monumental structures of earth! ye come not near these of the Holy City. There the richness of the matter rivals the perfection of the form. There hang, royally suspended, the galleries of diamond and sapphire feebly imitated by human skill in the gardens of Babylon. There rise triumphal arches, fashioned of brightest stars. There are linked together porticoes of suns extended across the spaces of the firmament, like the columns of Palmyra over the sands of the desert. This architecture is alive. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... I saw the level plain So rich and small beneath my feet, A sapphire sea without a stain, And fields of golden-waving wheat; Lingering I said, "At noon I'll be At peace by that sweet-scented tide. How far, how fair my course shall be, Before ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... your road and away, my lad, Come, choose your road and away! We'll out of the town by the road's bright crown, As it dips to the sapphire day! All roads may meet at the world's end, But, hey for the heart of the May! Come, choose your road and away, dear lad, Come ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... realised a new and terrible aspect of it. That which has the power to bestow has another power. She had seen the great procession of those who had received gifts of the desert's hands. Would she some day, or in the night when the sky was like a sapphire, see the procession of those from whom the desert had taken away perhaps their dreams, perhaps their hopes, perhaps even all that they passionately loved and had desperately ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... though the weather was so hot that the very candles in their sconces drooped, dripping their melted wax on egrette and lace, scarlet coat and scarf. A sort of midsummer madness attacked the city; we danced in the hot moonlit nights, we drove at noontide, with the sun flaring in a sky of sapphire, we boated on the Bronx, we galloped out to the lines, escorted by a troop of horse, to see the Continental outposts beyond Tarrytown—so bold they had become, and no "skinners," either, but scouts of ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... of being depressed, are covered with pearls, and are surmounted by an orb of brilliants. Upon this is placed a Maltese or cross pattee of brilliants. Four crosses and four fleurs-de-lis surmount the circlet, all composed of diamonds, the front cross containing the "inestimable sapphire," of the purest and deepest azure, more than two inches long, and an inch broad; and, in the circlet beneath it, is a rock ruby, of enormous size and exquisite colour, said to have been worn by the Black Prince at the battle of Cressy, and by Henry V. at the battle of Agincourt. The circlet is ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... at her own gate, the evening before that glorious day, and sang his way down the street, feeling that he floated on the airy uplift of his own barcarole beneath sapphire skies, for Bertha had put her ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... at the Beehive, whose mouth is built up exactly like a hive, at the Turban (which is not in the least like a turban), and at many, many other geysers, hot holes, and springs. Some of them rumbled, some hissed, some went off spasmodically, and others lay dead still in sheets of sapphire and beryl. ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... day in midwinter, when the sky was like a crystallized sapphire dome, and the earth spotless in snow, a single sleigh came bowling along the smooth road towards the 'Corner.' 'A heavy fall of snow is equivalent to the simultaneous construction of macadamized roads all through Canada,' saith ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... beyond description. In the strictest literality it might be said to the dwellers in such a cluster, "Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw herself." The surrounding walls of such a celestial palace must seem indeed "garnished with all manner of precious stones." Sapphire, emerald, sardius, chrysolite, and pearl, must seem but dim mirrors of its glorious refulgence. Under its ever rising suns the gates need not be shut at all by day, "for there shall be no night there." That glorious place now exists, though ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Of amorous colour and implicated light Under the golden guard and gaze of noon, So glowed their aweless amorous plenilune, Azure and gold and ardent grey, made strange With fiery difference and deep interchange Inexplicable of glories multiform; Now, as the sullen sapphire swells towards storm Foamless, their bitter beauty grew acold, And now afire with ardour of fine gold. Her flower-soft lips were meek and passionate, For love upon them like a shadow sate Patient, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... pleased; such things did not appeal to me.' But here, in a letter from Hyderabad, bidding one 'share a March morning' with her, there is, at the mere contact of the sun, this outburst: 'Come and share my exquisite March morning with me: this sumptuous blaze of gold and sapphire sky; these scarlet lilies that adorn the sunshine; the voluptuous scents of neem and champak and serisha that beat upon the languid air with their implacable sweetness; the thousand little gold and blue and silver breasted birds bursting with the shrill ecstasy of life ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... now appeared to be rather slender; for there was not a cloud to be seen, and the moon, well advanced in her second quarter, was already visible in the deep sapphire of the eastern sky ere the west had well begun to glow with the rich warm hues of sunset. And to add to our difficulty in this respect, the wind again fell lighter, and ere ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... world, that dreamy go-between, hardly silence, hardly to be called noise, keeps us perpetual company, and our eyes must ever be open for beautiful little living things. Now a green and gold lizard flashes across a bit of grey rock, now a dragon-fly disports its sapphire wings amid the yellowing ferns or purple ling, butterflies, white, blue, and black and orange, flit hither and thither, whilst little beetles, blue as enamel ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... basin, called the impluvium, which was in the middle to receive rain falling through the opening during bad weather; this was surrounded by anemones and lilies. In that house a special love for lilies was evident, for there were whole clumps of them, both white and red; and, finally, sapphire irises, whose delicate leaves were as if silvered from the spray of the fountain. Among the moist mosses, in which lily-pots were hidden, and among the bunches of lilies were little bronze statues representing children and water-birds. In one corner ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... over a little mountain lake, a body of water scarcely large enough to berth one of their huge ships, but high in the clear air of the mountains, fed by the melting of eternal snows. It was a magnificent sapphire in a setting green as emerald, a sparkling lake of clear water, deep as the sea, high in a ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... light the rays of the orient blaze, The glow of the radiant noon; I wing my flight with the sapphire night, And glide with the gentle moon. O'er earth I roam, and the bright expanse Where the proud bark bounds away; And I join the stars in their choral dance Round the golden ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... creature in all the universe. Thou art even as a turquoise, a patch of radiant summer sky, eyes of sapphire, lips—" ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... of this shadowy state, Glory that with the fleeting season dies; But when she entered at the sapphire gate What joy was radiant in celestial eyes! How heaven's bright depths with sounding welcomes rung, And flowers of heaven by shining hands were flung! And He who, long before, Pain, scorn, and sorrow bore, The Mighty Sufferer, with aspect sweet, Smiled on the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... and won one of the most brilliant girls of his day, whose signal talent shone in the crowded drawing-rooms of London like a sapphire blazing among pebbles. Yet her husband lacked gentleness. Slowly harshness crept into Carlyle's voice. Soon the wife gave up her favorite authors to read the husband's notes; then she gave up all reading ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... and biscuits were consumed more as a duty than a pleasure. Then, together with many others of equally inquiring frame of mind, he betook himself to the crest of the ridge which shut in the ravine on the north. The scene from there was indeed pleasing—a sapphire sea meeting a widely sweeping beach, a green, tree-dotted flat, and some scrub-covered hills, all sparkling with dew and bathed in the clear, tempered sunshine of an early summer morning. Mac's first impressions of Turkey left ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... vicinity of the volcano pitiful scenes were witnessed—women tearing their hair in their grief and old men crying aloud at the loss of their beloved homesteads, while in the distance, in striking contrast, were the sapphire-colored Mediterranean, the violet-hued mountains of the Sorrento peninsula and the island of Capri in ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... from his duties to congratulate her on her recovery, and several men loitered near at hand casting reverently admiring glances. But she had eyes for nothing save the vivid scene before her. The smiling island, with its head in the mists and its feet in a sapphire sea still as a painted lake; boats full of flowers, corals, ivories, silken embroideries and unknown fruits; the burnished bodies of diving boys; the odour of spices and sandalwood; the clatter of strange ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... shivered slightly. She had been silent up to this, and she spoke now with eyes fixed far away as if viewing the picture of Java with its palms and sapphire skies. ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... haunt, Radiate surge of colour came, Diffusing blush-wise, palpitant, Dying all the filmy frame. With some sweet tenderness they would Turn to an amber-clear and glossy gold; Or a fine sorrow, lovely to behold, Would sweep them as the sun and wind's joined flood Sweeps a greening-sapphire sea; Or they would glow enamouredly Illustrious sanguine, like a grape of blood; Or with mantling poetry Curd to the tincture which the opal hath, Like rainbows thawing in a moonbeam bath. So paled they, flushed they, swam ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... the honours of his own table, could scarcely have conceived the fire and animation of his countenance at such times, when his eyes seemed literally to kindle, and even (as some one has remarked) to change their colour and become a sort of deep sapphire blue; but, perhaps, from being close to him and in the open air, I was more struck with this peculiarity than those whose better sight enabled them to mark his varying expression at other times. Yet I must confess this was an enthusiasm I found as little infectious ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... His complexion somewhat resembled the coral when first formed, and was somewhat white. In some respects that complexion resembled the hue of gold and in some that of the lapis lazuli. In some respects it resembled the hue of the blue lapis lazuli and in some that of sapphire. In some respects it resembled the hue of the peacock's neck, and in some that of a string of pearls. Bearing these diverse kinds of hues on his person, the eternal Deity appeared before Narada. He had a thousand eyes and was possessed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... a sapphire or two, sparkled and gleamed on her fingers as she wrote; but except for her rings and a small, plain brooch, she had no jewellery which was meant to show. Under the black chiffon of her blouse, however, there was ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the AEgean, heard no more afar, Lulls his chafed breast from elemental war; Again his waves in milder tints unfold Their long array of sapphire and of gold, 1220 Mixed with the shades of many a distant isle, That frown—where gentler ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... a heart-breaking tangle?" she murmured, locking her hands together till the points of her sapphire ring cut into the flesh. But she only pressed the harder. She understood now how it was that monks and fanatics strove to ease the soul through torments of the flesh. A pang of physical pain would have ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... down and rested on a couch. There Yush sat silent, carved with an emerald tongue and two great eyes of sapphire, and there many rested and were happy. And an old priest, coming from comforting a child, came over to that traveller who had seen the ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... visited. As we approached the land we caught sight of Adam's Peak, with its summit enveloped in clouds, and then by degrees the old forts, built as a defence to the city, on rocks rising out of the sea, blue as sapphire, appeared before us, with the bright yellow sand fringed with palm-trees bending over the water, while the ground behind was covered with flowers of the most brilliant hues; and beyond, again, rose hills of graceful shapes, clothed to their summits with forests of perennial ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... proposed to Mercy that they should walk together; but when the issuing crowd had broken into twos and threes, they found themselves side by side. The company took its way along the ridge, and the road eastward. The night was clear, and like a great sapphire frosted with topazes—reminding Ian that, solid as is the world under our feet, it hangs in the will of God. Mercy and he walked for some time in silence. It was a sudden change from the low barn, the dull ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... behind her to shut in the voices. She wanted to be alone with the wind while she made her decision. Before her the sandy shingle, made firm by a straggling growth of some pale sea-ivy, sloped down to the sapphire cup of the harbour. Around her were the small, uncouth houses of the village—no smaller or more uncouth than the one which was her home—with children playing noisily on the paths between them. The mackerel ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a well-cut sapphire of flawless tint. It is beautiful surely, but in some way its depth of colour needs illumination. Surround it with evenly matched diamonds and at ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... England's wars Hath left his sapphire cave of sea, To battle with the storm that mars The star of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... thumb that persistently and patiently rubs the scales from sapphire and golden wings in order to be certain that the vination of the Ornithoptera is still underneath, is not the digit of inspiration," ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... seeds, lovage, the seeds of rue, and sinon, of each a dram and a half; of pure gold, pure silver, pearls not perforated, the blatta byzantina, the bone of the stag's heart, of each the quantity of fourteen grains of wheat; of sapphire, emerald and jasper stones, each one dram; of hazel-nuts, two drams; of pellitory of Spain, shavings of ivory, calamus odoratus, each the quantity of twenty-nine grains of wheat; of honey or sugar a sufficient quantity. Boil ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... found I all I had forecast: The long roll of the sapphire sea That keeps the land's virginity; The stalwart giants of the wood Laden with toys and flowers and food; The precious forest pouring out To compass the whole town about; The town itself with streets of lawn, Loved of the moon, blessed by the dawn, Where the brown children ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... a sword, long, and three-edged, and heavy. And the scabbard was of red cut leather, and the belt of new red deer-skin, having upon it many golden slides and a buckle of the bone of the sea-horse, the tongue of which was jet-black. A golden helmet was upon the head of the knight, wherein were set sapphire-stones of great virtue. And at the top of the helmet was the figure of a flame-coloured lion, with a fiery-red tongue, issuing above a foot from his mouth, and with venomous eyes, crimson-red, in his head. And ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... corners where the sordid crime of this ghastly butchery has scarcely been heard of, where the horror and the taint of it are as though they never existed, where the sun and moon are still unashamed, and the grey monsters ride nowhere upon the sapphire seas." ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spirit, standing, man, Where thou dost stand—an hour ago, And round his feet three rivers ran, Of equal depth, and equal flow— A golden stream—and one like blood; And one like sapphire seemed to be; But, where they joined their triple flood It tumbled in an inky sea The spirit sent his dazzling gaze Down through that ocean's gloomy night; Then, kindling all, with sudden blaze, The glad deep sparkled wide and bright— White as the sun, far, far ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... a beautiful creature. Thus the Prophet speaks of him: "Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... his banks the rich and wealthy stream Hath fair beset with pearl and precious stone Like stars in sky or lamps on stage that seem, The darkness there was day, the night was gone, There sparkled, clothed in his azure-beam, The heavenly sapphire, there the jacinth shone, The carbuncle there flamed, the diamond sheen, There glistered bright, there smiled the ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... is determined, and is square. It is bounded by battlements of living sapphire, and towers of opal. In the midst is situated a Mount, the dwelling place of the Most High, surrounded by golden lamps, which diffuse night and day alternately—for without twilight and dawn, his dearest memories, Heaven would ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... if external nature, in her soft luxuriant beauty, looked summer-like: a sweet pervading accompaniment to my poor words, giving them a force and meaning far beyond their own. What talk concerning summer skies is like the sapphire radiance, so distant and pure, looking in through the church windows? You do not remember how blue and beautiful the sky is, unless when you are looking at it: nature is better than our remembrance of her. What description of a ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... alone upon the inner steps of the Temple of Poseidon at Paestum, looking out upon the sapphire sea and azure sky, the noble columns in front of them all bathed in golden light, and a solemn crow perched above as priest to bless them, Halcyone drew the wrappings from ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... between us two, Noiseless as the silver dew; Hearts that had no need of speech In the silence spoke to each; And along the sapphire blue, Shot with shafts of sunset through, Fell a voice, a ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... sudden, aslant the road, A brightness to dazzle and stun, A glint of the bluest blue, A flash from a sapphire sun. ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... of water of such a blueness, such a limpid, clear, deep sapphire blue as I never ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... the maskers like arrows of light To gather their gear for the revel bright. To the dazzling peaks of far-off Peru, In emulous speed some sportively flew, And deep in the mine, or 'mid glaciers on high, For ruby and sapphire searched heedful and sly. For diamonds rare that gleam in the bed Of Brazilian streams, some merrily sped, While others for topaz and emerald stray, 'Mid the cradle ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... matter in the water, but gradually this settled, and the sea became bluer and bluer—not the deep indigo of the old ocean, but a much lighter and more brilliant hue—and here, over the site of New York, the waters were of a bright, luminous sapphire, that ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... by bulb, or root, or slip, as well as by seed, may show you at once how immaterial the seed-forming function is to the flower's existence. A flower is to the vegetable substance what a crystal is to the mineral. "Dust of sapphire," writes my friend Dr. John Brown to me, of the wood hyacinths of Scotland in the spring. Yes, that is so,—each bud more beautiful, itself, than perfectest jewel—this, indeed, jewel "of purest ray serene;" but, observe you, the glory is in the purity, the serenity, the radiance,—not ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... the canvas that glorious paradise, seen by the interior eye of him whose outward sight had failed with long watching and labouring for liberty and truth, if there were a painter who could set before us the mazes of the sapphire brook, the lake with its fringe of myrtles, the flowery meadows, the grottoes overhung by vines, the forests shining with Hesperian fruit and with the plumage of gorgeous birds, the massy shade of that nuptial bower which showered down roses on the sleeping lovers, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are ravishing and strange, with their shining crescents and outstretched shafts of wood that call to the great birds of space. Spite of ourselves we raise our heads, fascinated by all the beauty that is in the air; but there is only this square of marvellous sky, a sort of limpid sapphire, set in the battlements of El-Azhar and fringed by those audacious slender towers. We are in the religious East of olden days and we feel how the mystery of this magnificent court—whose architectural ornament consists merely in geometrical designs repeated to infinity, and does not commence till ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... engaged too great a portion of my time; my business in the city had lain too long at the mercy of ignorant underlings; my head, my taste, my unequalled knowledge of the more precious stones, that art by which I can distinguish, even on the darkest night, a sapphire from a ruby, and tell at a glance in what quarter of the earth a gem was disinterred—all these had been too long absent from the conduct of affairs. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... the shadow of the land made an ebon frame for the picture. When I had seen the same view on former occasions, the line where the rock rose from the sea was a fringe of white foam. But then, in the daylight, the sea was sapphire blue; now it was an expanse of dark blue—so dark as to seem almost black. It had not even the relief of waves or ripples—simply a dark, cold, lifeless expanse, with no gleam of light anywhere, of lighthouse or ship; neither was there any special sound to be heard that one could distinguish—nothing ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... at three o'clock in the afternoon of a day as fair as was ever selected for a deed of darkness. The sky was clear, except for a few light clouds that floated, white and feathery, high in air, like distant islands in a sapphire sea. A salt-laden breeze from the ocean a few miles away lent a crisp sparkle ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... already steeped in lakes of bluish shadow, whilst the summits sparkled with the smiling farewell of the sun. The hills of Visens upon this side were empurpled, and shewed like a promontory of coral, in front of the stagnant lake of the ether, which was bright with a sapphire-like transparency. But, on the east, in front of you, the horizon again spread out to the very point of intersection of the seven valleys. The castle which had formerly guarded them still stood with its keep, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... on her half-bare shoulders and breast. In each ear was the lustre of a great pearl. Her thick black hair fell unconfined down her back; across her brow was a frontlet blazing with great diamonds, with one huge sapphire in their midst. As she stood in the sunlight she was as a goddess, an Aphrodite descended from Olympus, to drive men to sweet madness by the ravishing ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... is, of the angel. And the structure of its wall was jasper: and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. And the foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was a jasper; the second, a sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; the fifth, a sardonyx; the sixth, a sardius; the seventh, a chrysolite; the eighth, a beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... the scarlet berries [58] Lie red and ripe in the prairie grass. The S-yo [59] clucks on the emerald prairies To her infant brood. From the wild morass, On the sapphire lakelet set within it, Mag [60] sails forth with her wee ones daily. They ride on the dimpling waters gaily, Like a fleet of yachts and a man of war. The piping plover, the laughing linnet, And the swallow sail in the sunset skies. The whippowil from her ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... place, covered walks, etc., are all lit up; and you can't fancy how beautiful was the contrast of the great masses of lamplit foliage and the dark sapphire night sky with just one blue star set overhead in the middle of the largest patch. In the dark walks, too, there are crowds of people whose faces you cannot see, and here and there a colossal white statue at the corner of an alley that gives the place a nice, artificial, eighteenth-century ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... in response to the beauty of this glorious mountain world. The air was wine. She loved the sapphire skies and the warm, lazy, caressing touch of the sun of ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... When she turns round, comes again in heaven, Opens out anew for worse or better! Proves she like some portent of an iceberg Swimming full upon the ship it founders, 170 Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals? Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain? Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest, 175 Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire. Like the bodied heaven in his clearness Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work, When they ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... shafts of radiance. They poured down upon the blue eye like cylindrical torrents; they were like shining pillars of light rising from a sapphire floor. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... landscape. There is a chain of fresh-water lakes also along this road; sometimes we cross a bridge over a rushing torrent; sometimes a calm expanse of water, doubling the evergreens at its margin, comes in view; anon a gleam of sapphire strikes through the verdure, and an ocean-bay with its shingly beach curves in and out between the piny slopes. At last we reach the crest of a hill, and at the foot of the road is another bridge, a house, a wharf, and two or three coasters at anchor in a ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... see the clay bleaching white with a wonderful purity. Then, slowly, it would begin to come clear, an' by an' by it would be clearer an' lovelier than a drop o' dew at sunrise. Lo and behold! the clay has become a sapphire. So, sor, in the waters o' time God washes the great world. In every grain o' dust the law is written, an' I may read the destiny o' the nobler part in ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... trifles into a dazzling mythology. But when one goes to sift it, and find if there be a real meaning, it eludes search. Whole sheets of warm, florid writing are here, in which the eye is caught by "sapphire," "heliotrope," "dragon," "aloes," "Magna Dea," "limboes," "stars," and "purgatory," but can connect all this, or any part of it, with no ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... morning the other side of the picture was revealed in the colours of the sunlight. There was never a cloud in the sky that rested on the snow-line of the horizon as a sapphire on white velvet. Hills of pure white, or speckled and furred with woods, rose up above the solid white levels of the fields, and the sun rioted over their embroideries till the eyes ached. Here and ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... my little Dinkie was a grown youth in a Greek academy, wearing a toga and sitting on a marble bench overlooking a sea of lovely sapphire. There both Peter and Percy, also arrayed in togas, held solemn discourse with my offspring and finally agreed that once they were through with him he would be ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... thousand times on the sphere of the skies—and the eye of the sun rose up—still somewhat sleepy, it blinked and trembled and shook its gleaming lashes; it glittered with seven tints at once: at first sapphire, it straightway turned blood red like a ruby, and yellow as a topaz; next it sparkled transparent as crystal, then was radiant as a diamond; finally it became the colour of pure flame, like a great moon, or like a twinkling star: ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... Vulcan's rainbow, with some monstrous roof Curves hugely: now, far in the deep abyss, It seems an angry lightning, and doth hiss Fancy into belief: anon it leads Through winding passages, where sameness breeds Vexing conceptions of some sudden change; Whether to silver grots, or giant range Of sapphire columns, or fantastic bridge Athwart a flood of crystal. On a ridge 240 Now fareth he, that o'er the vast beneath Towers like an ocean-cliff, and whence he seeth A hundred waterfalls, whose voices come But as the murmuring surge. ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... sailors, and they had need to be, for although the sky above them was as blue and clear as the heart of a sapphire, and although the sunlight shone on the decks and the rigging, a strong north-easter had been blowing all the morning, and there was a considerable sea on. The far blue plain was whitened with the tumbling crests of the waves, that shone ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... As he cantered along, the mist rose and formed a pearly haze overhead into which there came a tinge of pink, dissipating it, before the colour could grow into a deeper tone, to reveal the clear sky, blue as a sapphire and bright with the first rays of the ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... watching the changing sea and sky, and admiring the brilliant vegetation. The English flowers, roses and geraniums and Michaelmas daisies and mignonette, were a continual joy, whilst the crimson clouds piled above the sapphire sea often made her think of the "city of pure gold." Later, she was able to ascend the hill at the back, and "there" she says, "I sat and knitted and crocheted and sewed and worked through the Bible all the day long, fanned by the sea-breeze and warmed by the sun, and ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... I could find; tunics and cloaks of pure silk and of the brightest or most effeminate hues; crimson, emerald-green, peacock-green, grass-green, apple-green, sea-green, sapphire-blue, sky- blue, turquoise-blue, saffron, orange, amethystine, violet and any and every unusual tint; boots of glazed kidskin or of dull finish soft skin, of hues like my silk garments, always with the edges of the soles heavily gilded. And, for my shoes as well as for my garments, I chose ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the things she had seen, and done! She could talk French and German; she had taken painting-lessons from real artists, and had some pretty studies for Hanny, in a box not yet unpacked. She had brought the friendship ring, which was two tiny hands clasped over a sapphire with diamond sparks around it. Hanny's eyes shone with delight; she was getting quite a collection ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... example of the very fine texture and the even clipping that characterize the Sinna rugs. Thickly studding the dark blue field are minute designs in blue and rose hues, with which pale green, yellow, and a sapphire blue blend most harmoniously. All these small designs rest in the usual diaper design, which may be traced throughout the rug. The border is charming, with its groundwork of fine yellow, on which are delicate tracings of light green, ivory, ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... Hobart who picked it up. A beautiful stone, like a sapphire; blue but uncut and of a strange pellucid transparency—a jewel undoubtedly; but of a kind we have never seen. We all of us examined it, and were all, I am afraid, a bit disappointed. It was a ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... humming-bird hangs in the air over a flower like, as St. Pierre says, an emerald set in coral, but "how weak it is to say that that exquisite little being, whirring and fluttering in the air, has a head of ruby, a throat of emerald, and wings of sapphire, as if any triumph of the jeweller's art could ever vie with that sparkling epitome of ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... a ladder thrown From the weary earth to the sapphire walls; But the dreams depart, and the vision falls, And the sleeper awakes ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... With the sun, with a final rush of the hurrying wind, a final torrent, the storm spent itself, and there was only the drip from bough and leaf, or pearly opalescent points of moisture on the drenched black trunks of maple and oak; a sapphire sky, high arched, remote overhead; and ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... front a flood of light Streams from the setting sun, and colours bright Prophets, transfigured Saints, and Martyrs brave, 20 In the vast western window of the nave, And on the pavement round the Tomb there glints A chequer-work of glowing sapphire-tints, And amethyst, and ruby—then unclose Your eyelids on the stone where ye repose, 25 And from your broider'd pillows lift your heads, And rise upon your cold white marble beds; And, looking down on the warm rosy tints, Which ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... bright, but I doubted if the day would long be fine, and looked into the milky sapphire I wore, to see whether the star in it was clear. It was even less defined than I had expected. I rose from the breakfast-table, and went to the window to glance at the stone again. There had been heavy rain in the night, and on the lawn was a thrush breaking his way into the shell ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... those cold and solemn visages of stone he looked like a dazzling butterfly or stray bird of paradise. His white garb glistened at every point with gems, and from his shoulders, where it was fastened with large sapphire elasps, depended a long mantle of cloth of gold, bordered thickly with swansdown,—this he held up negligently in one hand as ho remained for a moment in full view of the assembled soldiery, graciously acknowledging ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... took a mouthful of the tea, which, like the morality of the palace, was strong and bitter. But his ample chest expanded with just the slightest sigh of regret, causing the massive episcopal cross of gold filigree, set with a single sapphire, which rested thereon, to rise and fall gently. Miss Matilda's hawklike eye saw and noted this as the first slight sign of rebellion, and she hastened to mete out justice ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... called for Adam and his wife who had hidden themselves behind a tree; nor in the God of Exodus who appeared to Moses and Aaron and seventy of the Elders of Israel, standing with his feet upon a paved walk as if it were a sapphire stone; nor even in the God of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah who in his compassion for the sheep who had gone astray, having turned everyone to his own way, laid on the Man of Sorrows the iniquity of us all." (Walter Lippmann: "A Preface ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... large building with a courtyard. It was a large room on the top floor, with a long table occupied by busy orderlies opening and stamping letters with astonishing rapidity. At the back, flanking an open balcony over whose balustrade I could see the blue Mediterranean and a flawless sapphire sky, were two roll-top desks concealing two officers whose polished bald heads shone above stacks of papers. At the deferential insistence of an orderly, one of the heads rose, and a large, ruddy Yorkshire face examined the ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... the open doorway, came the silver sound of Star's voice. "But I don't think there can be any harm in my just telling you a little about it, Imogen. And the floor is the paved work of a sapphire: sapphire is a stone, just like the water over there, in the bluest place, and oh! so clear and bright, Daddy says. He saw one once. And there will be most beautiful music, Imogen. Oh! you can't think what lovely ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... billows heave their head, And shake their arrowy crests on high, Serene, in Ocean's sapphire bed, Beneath the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... thence to Capri. The grotto was one of the few novelties remaining for me in Italy. I had heard much of it, but the reality exceeded all descriptions. We seemed to be actually under the sea in a palace of gems. Our boat glided over a lake of glowing sapphire, and our oars dropped rubies. High above our heads were great rocks of sapphire, deepening to lapis-lazuli at the base, with here and ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... balsams, and had gone out from the forest gloom and had seated himself on the shore of the lake where the little waves made soothing music as they played among the pebbles at his feet. The sun had gone down in splendour, leaving a glorious radiance of sapphire and crimson on hills and waves. Quietly and imperceptibly the shadows of night mantled the long twilight gloaming, and then one by one the stars came out from their hiding places, until the whole high dome of heaven was bright. The milky way brightened into wondrous distinctness, until it ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... chamber was the birth Of Understanding? The great Sea uplifts Its hand in adjuration, and declares "'Tis not with me," and its unfathom'd deep In subterranean thunders, echoing cry "No, not with me." Offer ye not for them Silver, or Ophir's gold, nor think to exchange Onyx, or sapphire, or the coral branch Or crystal gem where hides imprison'd light, Nor make ye mention of the precious pearl Or Ethiopian topaz, for their price Transcendeth rubies, or the dazzling ray Of concentrated jewels. In what place Are found these wondrous treasures? Who will show Their habitation? which ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... Lay lost in the gulf of heaven: while over her mixed and melted The beautiful children of Morn, whose bodies are opal-belted; The beautiful daughters of Dawn, who, over and under, and after The rivered radiance, wrestled; and rainbowed heaven with laughter Of halcyon sapphire.—O Dawn! thou visible mirth, And hallelujah of ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... flaw in it, you see; but the colour is good, and it does just as well for a plaything, though I don't like flawed things, as a rule. This sapphire is a good one,—deep, you see; I like a ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... thoughts with him through the frozen Northwest, across the sapphire seas, and into the jungles of the tropics, to which he ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... objects for study, they are indissolubly bound together and every part carries in some part of its constitution some well defined marks which characterize the other parts with which it has no immediate connection. To illustrate: the absolutely pure sapphire, pure aluminic oxide, crystallized, is commonly colorless, but we know that Nature's most beautiful sapphires are not colorless, but are blue, and of other beautiful tints. These color tints are due to minutest traces of other substances, not ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... stately groves and mazy boskages, of dim woods and flashing streams; a blended harmony of greens be-splashed, here and there, with blossoming thickets or flowering trees, the whole shut in by towering, tree-girt cliffs and bounded by a limitless ocean, blue as any sapphire. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... a caressing lightness, Chrystie's hand, milk-white, satin-fine, a diamond and sapphire ring ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... headstone: a symbol of the soul; fragile, beautiful, helpless thing that any rough hand may crush and ruin. Hadria turned to watch the graceful, joyous movement of the child, and her delight in the beauty of the rich brown wings, with their enamelled spots of sapphire. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... apparition of awe and grief and wonder. To compare a great thing to a small, she was to their eyes as a ruined, desecrated shrine to the eyes of the saint's own peculiar worshipper. I may compare her to what I please, great or small—to a sapphire set in tin, to an angel with draggled feathers; for far beyond all comparison is that temple of the holy ghost in the desert—a woman in wretchedness and rags. She carried her puny baby rolled hard in the corner of her scrap of black shawl. To the youths ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... The blue—really blue—grass, blue-violet shrubbery and, loveliest of all, the great golden tree with sapphire leaves and pale pink blossoms, instead of looking alien, resembled nothing so much as a fairy-tale ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith
... 1813, pp. 6, 7. Cornelia Knight, in her Autobiography (1861, i. 227), notes that the frolic prince, the "Adonis of fifty," who was in a good humour, and "had given to Princess Charlotte the centre sapphire of Charles's crown," acted "the manner of decapitation on my shoulders." He had "forgotten" Cromwell, who, as Lord Auchinleck reminded Dr. Johnson, had "gart kings ken that they had a lith in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... was one to challenge attention anywhere. He wore a loosely cut suit of pongee silk, the collar of the shirt flowing open, and a blue scarf knotted at the throat. On one of his long dark hands there was a blazing sapphire ring, and about his wide- brimmed Panama hat the folded silk was of the same colour. Harriet could catch the intonations of his voice, a deep and musical voice, which turned the trifles they were discussing into matters ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... She's the dearest dear in the world! I don't wonder you're so crazy about her. How red your hand is next to mine! Madge Cunningham says that I have the whitest and prettiest hands of any girl in school—and she's made a special study of hands. Isn't that the cunningest sapphire ring? Sister Polly sent it to me on my last birthday; so now you know what month I was born in. Jeannette Crawley says it's just the color of my eyes. She writes poetry. She wrote some awfully sweet verses about my hair. 'The regal color of the flaming sun', she called it. She's dreadfully ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... University. Engaged in newspaper and magazine work in New York City since 1901. Now assistant editor of Harper's Magazine. First story, "My Lady's Bracelet," Munsey's Magazine, October, 1904. Author of "The White Sapphire." Lives in ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... from the heights, among the rocks and pines, The sea and shore seem some tremendous page Of some vast book, great with our heritage, Breathing the splendor of majestic lines. Yonder the dunes speak silver; yonder shines The ocean's sapphire word; there, gray with age, The granite writes its lesson, strong and sage; And there the surf its rhythmic passage signs. The winds, that sweep the page, that interlude Its majesty with music; and the tides, That roll their thunder in, that period Its mighty rhetoric, deep and dream-imbued, ...
— An Ode • Madison J. Cawein
... bride stood with bowed head beside the President, lay far behind her on the floor. Her only jewelry as a superb diamond necklace, the President's wedding present, and an engagement-ring containing a sapphire and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... wore white buckskin shoes—I begin with these as they were the first point of his person to attract the notice of the onlooker—lilac silk socks, a white flannel suit with a zig-zag black stripe, a violet tie secured by a sapphire and diamond pin, and a rakish panama hat. On his knees lay the Matin; the fingers of his left hand held a fragrant corona; his right hand was uplifted in a gesture, for he was talking. He was talking to a couple of ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... around for a light, while Venner and Tomlin walked toward him with sudden interest in their faces. Over the tall Hele clock a lantern hung; a gaudy thing of beaten gold, in which an oil wick burned, gleaming out in multicolored light through openings glazed with turquoise and sapphire, ruby, and emerald. He took this down, and impatiently tore away the side of it to secure a stronger light. Again he went to the powder store, and now Venner and Tomlin were at his back, peering over his shoulder or under his arms in curiosity as ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the roof gold, Ivory the doors, the sapphire windows lent Whence on my heart of old Its earliest sigh, as shall my last, was sent; In arrowy jets of fire thence came and went Arm'd messengers of love, whereof to think As then they were, with awe —Though ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the city comes in distant bells and whistles, changing their sound, just as scenery moves, according to the state of the atmosphere. The islands shift as if enchanted, now near and plain, then removed and dim. The bay widening, sapphire blue, or narrowing, green and gray, or, ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various |
