"Sirius" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the shelter of thy garden-bower, "Priapus, from the harm of suns or snows, "With beard all shag, and hair that wildly flows,— "O say! o'er beauteous youth whence comes thy power? "Naked thou frontest wintry nights and days, "Naked, no less, to Sirius' burning rays." ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... heights. All height is inward through narrow circles to the Central Fire of Silent Love from which the angels shrink in spiral messages of inspiring flame, and toward which humanity aspires in narrowing and advancing circles of expiring flesh. But depth is outward to the hearts of men. Sirius sings to my living stars tonight its light in the music of the ancient winds, telling me of the crucifixion in burning colors of a dying world. Why am I unworthy of an equal death? The blood runs toward it in a passion of harmony. The ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... "proving" that steamers could never cross the Atlantic, because they could not carry sufficient coal to raise steam enough during the voyage. But this theory was also tested by experience in the same year, when the Sirius, of London, left Cork for New York, and made the passage in nineteen days. Four days after the departure of the Sirius, the Great Western left Bristol for New York, and made the passage in thirteen days five hours.[1] The problem was solved; and great ocean steamers ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... often preached to you, Rachel," said he, as he lay back on his chair, "that all these things were fixed ere Sirius was born? Yea," he added, as a smile played amid the seriousness of his face, "ere yet there was a space for the dog-star to wag his tail. The croppings out will now come thick, and you will know whether you are to be a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... immediately ahead of the VICTORY, and across her bows, fired single guns at her, to ascertain whether she was yet within their range. As soon as Nelson perceived that their shot passed over him, he desired Blackwood and Captain Prowse, of the SIRIUS, to repair to their respective frigates; and, on their way, to tell all the captains of the line-of-battle ships that he depended on their exertions; and that if, by the prescribed mode of attack, they found it impracticable to get ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... it. Now why is this? It is true that they cannot prove its non-existence; but this is no reason for professing a solemn uncertainty as to its existence. We cannot prove that each time a cab drives down Regent Street a stick of barley-sugar is not created in Sirius. But we do not proclaim, to the world our eternal ignorance as to whether or no this is so. Why then should our positivists treat in this way the alleged immaterial part of consciousness? Why this emphatic protestation on their part that there may exist a something which, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... of war may be of interest at this time. Some one has called attention to the illuminating discourse between Micromegas, gigantic dweller on one of the planets revolving about Sirius, and a company of our philosophers, as reported in the seventh chapter of the amusing fantasy bearing the name of the above-mentioned Sirian visitor. A free translation of a part of this conversation is here offered. After congratulating his terrestrial ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... credit on this philosophical speech and determination of Mr. Link. Had Mrs. Vrain been an imposter, her house of cards would have been knocked down, as soon as reared, by the searching inquiry instituted by the Sirius Assurance Company. It appeared that the life of the late Mark Vrain was on the books of the company for no less a sum than twenty thousand pounds; and under the will this was to be paid over to Lydia ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... floated down the stream of Aryan migration, from some infallible fountain in Bactria. I should not be much more astonished to hear that Cynosure had grown giddy, had swung down and waltzed in the arms of Sirius." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... make me a myriad rounded stars To spangle my firmament, Sweet like Hesper, glad with the balm Of a ceaseless, passionless, changeless calm And hot like Sirius, and red like ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... bounds all things are known, all things are explained; there are no mysteries but the whims of the gods. But when the plain on which we tread becomes a portion of the surface of a great globe, and the domed firmament becomes the heavens, stretching beyond Alcyone and Sirius, with this enlargement of the realm of philosophy the verity of philosophy is questioned. The savage is a positive man; the ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... thou feel the heat That blazes in the days of Sirius, But men shall quaff thy soda sweet, And girls imbibe thy ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... been said" writes Walter Bagehot, [Footnote: On the Emotion of Conviction, Literary Studies, Vol. Ill, p. 172.] "that if you can only get a middleclass Englishman to think whether there are 'snails in Sirius,' he will soon have an opinion on it. It will be difficult to make him think, but if he does think, he cannot rest in a negative, he will come to some decision. And on any ordinary topic, of course, it is so. A grocer has a full creed as to foreign policy, a young lady a complete ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... RELIGION OF PERSIA.—The ancient literature of Persia is mainly the exposition of its religion. Persia, Media, and Bactria acknowledged as their first religious prophet Honover, or Hom, symbolized in the star Sirius, and himself the symbol of the first eternal word, and of the tree of knowledge. In the numberless astronomical and mystic personifications under which Hom was represented, his individuality was lost, and little is known of his history or of his doctrines. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... may flash and meteors glare, And Hell invade the spheral school; But Law and Love are sovereign there, And Sirius and Orion rule. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... sincere than any of our feeble ogles; if I have ever committed these or any other impertinences, it was only to retire beaten and discomfited, and to confess that masculine philosophy, while it soars beyond Sirius and the ring of Saturn, stops short at the steel periphery which encompasses ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... believe that the great star Sirius, the brightest in the heavens, is about six times as far off as alpha Centauri. His probable diameter is twelve million miles, and the light he emits two hundred times more brilliant than that of the sun. Yet, even through the telescope, he has no measurable diameter; he looks merely like a very ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... "And Sirius and the Bull and the River," added Gladys. "It's just like getting a peep at the actors in their dressing-rooms before it is time for them to come out on the stage, to see ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... to the Enemy, HIS LORDSHIP, accompanied by Captain HARDY, and the Captains of the four frigates (Euryalus, Naiad, Sirius, and Phoebe) who had been called on board by signal to receive instructions, visited the different decks of the ship. He addressed the crew at their several quarters, admonishing them against firing a single shot without being sure of their object; and expressed himself ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty
... United States was founded, is justly celebrated for its astronomical staff. There are assembled the greatest men of science; there is the powerful telescope which enabled Bond to resolve the nebula of Andromeda and Clarke to discover the satellite of Sirius. This celebrated institution was, therefore, worthy in every way of the confidence ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... pass to Canis Major (map No. 2). There is no hope of our being able to see the companion of alpha (Sirius), at present (1901), even with our five-inch. Discovered by Alvan Clark with an eighteen-inch telescope in 1862, when its distance was 10" from the center of Sirius, this ninth-magnitude star has since been swallowed up in the blaze ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... marble, having on the left a marble wall forming a parapet about five feet high. At intervals solid pedestals rise from this wall, bearing every token of having served to support colossal statues of Sirius, the barking Anubis, or the Dog star. One hundred and thirty-three of these pedestals with the marks just mentioned are still in their places, but only two figures of the dog were recognizable when I was there; these, however, though ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... these stars were of much the same size and brilliance as our sun, we should be able roughly to calculate their distance from their faintness. We cannot do this, as they differ considerably in size and intrinsic brilliance. Sirius is more than twice the size of our sun and gives out twenty times as much light. Canopus emits 20,000 times as much light as the sun, but we cannot say, in this case, how much larger it is than the sun. Arcturus, however, belongs to the same class of stars as our sun, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... dost think that thy mind wonderful Nature can grasp. Thus the astronomer draws his figures over the heavens, So that he may with more ease traverse the infinite space, Knitting together e'en suns that by Sirius-distance are parted, Making them join in the swan and in the horns of the bull. But because the firmament shows him its glorious surface, Can he the spheres' mystic dance ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Might love in individual happiness. But now there opened on me other thoughts Of change, congratulation or regret, A pensive feeling! It spread far and wide; The trees, the mountains shared it, and the brooks, The stars of heaven, now seen in their old haunts— White Sirius glittering o'er the southern crags, Orion with his belt, and those fair Seven, Acquaintances of every little child, And Jupiter, my own beloved star! Whatever shadings of mortality, Whatever imports from the world of death Had come among these objects heretofore, Were, in the main, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... stars exhibit changes of complexion in themselves. Sirius, as before stated, was once a ruddy, or rather a fiery-faced orb, but has now forgotten to blush, and looks down upon us with a pure, brilliant smile, in which there is no trace either of anger or of shame. On the countenances of others, still ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... these two centres of civilization are just exactly the two points that close the circuit in the battery of our planetary intelligence! And I believe there are spiritual eyes looking out from Uranus and unseen Neptune,—ay, Sir, from the systems of Sirius and Arcturus and Aldebaran, and as far as that faint stain of sprinkled worlds confluent in the distance that we call the nebula of Orion,—looking on, Sir, with what organs I know not, to see which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... princes, or princesses, or of pious people whom the gods loved, or of animals which were worshipped. A few instances may be selected at random. When the Teutonic gods slew the giant Thjasse, he appeared in the heavens as Sirius. In India the ghosts of the "seven Rishis", who were semi-divine Patriarchs, formed the constellation of the Great Bear, which in Vedic times was called the "seven bears". The wives of the seven Rishis were the stars of the Pleiades. In Greece the Pleiades were ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... were cutting a keel for the boat. The crew fishing and making nets. This evening there was a cry that a ship's light was seen in the offing, which produced a considerable sensation for the moment; but it turned out to be only Sirius rising. ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... gloom And sits in Sirius' disc all night, Till day makes him retrace his flight, With smell of burning on every plume, Back past the sun to ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... danger from great beasts. Betelgeux, the bright star on Orion's right shoulder, denoted martial honours or wealth; Bellatrix, the star on Orion's left shoulder, denoted military or civic honours; Rigel, on Orion's left foot, denoted honours; Sirius and Procyon, the greater and lesser Dog Stars, both implied wealth and renown. Star clusters seem to have portended loss of sight; at least we learn that the Pleiades were 'eminent stars,' but denoting accidents to the sight or blindness, while the cluster Praesepe or ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... had, at an early period, observed that the rising of the Nile coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius, the Dog-star, and hence they very plausibly referred it to celestial agencies. Men are ever prone to mistake coincidences for causes; and thus it came to pass that the appearance of that star on ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... die of it, of course; and when he dies and comes to us, there will be joy from here to Sirius, and beyond. ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... through. From this I conclude that all bodies in the solar system had one genesis, and were part of the same nebulous mass. But this does not include the other systems and nebulae; for, compared with them, our sun, as we have seen, is itself advanced and small beside such stars as Sirius having diameters of twelve million miles." As they left Pallas between themselves and the sun, it became a crescent and finally disappeared. Two days later they sighted another asteroid exactly ahead. They examined it ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... the dreamy archdeacon, "that it would be better worth while to operate upon a ray of Sirius. But 'tis exceeding hard to obtain this ray pure, because of the simultaneous presence of other stars whose rays mingle with it. Flamel esteemed it more simple to operate upon terrestrial fire. Flamel! there's predestination in the name! Flamma! yes, fire. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... even though he has never yet proved to my entire satisfaction that the reason why my copy of Justinian has faded from a royal purple to a pale blue is, first, because the binding was renewed at the wane of the moon and when Sirius was in the ascendant, and, secondly, because (as Dr. O'Rell has discovered) my binder was born at a moment fifty-six years ago when Mercury was in the fourth house and Herschel and Saturn were aspected in conjunction, with Sol ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... that his eye is endowed with the power of beholding, to an incomprehensible distance, an immensity of worlds revolving in the ocean of space? Or of what use is it that this immensity of worlds is visible to man? What has man to do with the Pleiades, with Orion, with Sirius, with the star he calls the north star, with the moving orbs he has named Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury, if no uses are to follow from their being visible? A less power of vision would have been sufficient for man, if the immensity he now possesses were ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... is insignificant compared to the distances of the stars. One of the nearest stars to the earth that we know of is Alpha Centauri, estimated to be some twenty-five million millions of miles away. Sirius, the brightest star in the firmament, is double this distance ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... That splendid brow of chastity, That soft and yet subduing light, At which, as at the sudden moon, I held my breath, and thought 'how bright!' That guileless beauty in its noon, Compelling tribute of desires Ardent as day when Sirius reigns, Pure as the permeating fires That ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... whose speed of flight has been estimated all the way from fifty to two hundred miles per second. Arcturus, we have every reason to believe, possesses hundreds of times the mass of our sun — think, then, of the prodigious momentum that its motion implies! Sirius moves more moderately, its motion across the line of sight amounting to only ten miles per second, but it is at the same time approaching the sun at about the same speed, its actual velocity in space being the resultant ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... SIRIUS or THE DOG-STAR, the brightest star in the heavens, one of the stars of the Southern constellation of Canis Major; is calculated to have a bulk three times that of the sun, and to give 70 times as much ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Isis, Sirius or the dog star, whose course in the time of the Pharaohs coincided with the exact Solar year, and served at a very early date as a foundation for the reckoning of time among ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... night. Casseopeia's Chair and Orion were being tossed about the burning heavens like golden furniture out of a house on fire; and one great star-jewel had fallen on the apex of cruel Khufu's Pyramid. I should have liked to believe it was Sirius, the "lucky" star sacred to Isis and Hathor; but Monny's schoolgirl knowledge of astronomy bereft me of that innocent pleasure. No wonder that the ancient Egyptians, with such jewels in their blue treasure-house, were famous astrologers and astronomers before the days when Rameses' daughter ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... not one of the heavenly bodies, indeed altogether terrestrial, one feels, naturally, rounder in his orbit, and a little more likely to see stars, after such a dinner as this, than before. Do I not, indeed, see around me now, all the stars of the intellectual firmament? Are not SIRIUS and ARCTURUS here, in their glory, as well as ORION and the rest? As my old friend CRISPIN would say, their name is legion! I would blaze, gentlemen, too, if possible, in honor of the occasion; but, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... means we're within two light years of Sirius, since we were headed in that direction. Let's turn the ship so we can take a look ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... because of the hot blood of youth, I forgive thee, Harmachis. But now listen to me, and let my words sink into thy heart like the waters of Sihor into the thirsty sand at the rising of Sirius.[*] Listen to me. The boaster was sent to thee as a temptation, he was sent as a trial of thy strength, and see! it has not been equal to the burden. Therefore thy hour is put back. Hadst thou been strong in this matter, the path had been made ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... little mire and plenty of moisture. Behold the august choir of the stars, the assembly of the suns; they equal or excel ours in magnitude and power and after I have shown you on a clear winter's night, through my telescope, Sirius, your eyes and soul will ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... that Aristaeus found out the solstitial rising of Sirius, or the dog-star; and he adds, it is certain that this star had a particular relation to Aristaeus; for this reason, when the heats of the dog-star laid waste the Cycl{)a}des, and occasioned there a pestilence, Aristaeus was entreated to put ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... Rear-Admiral Louis, your information respecting the intended movements of the enemy. I am momentarily expecting the Phoebe, Sirius, Naiad, and Niger, from Gibraltar; two of them shall be with you, directly as I can get hold of them: and, if you meet them, and there is any way of sending information, and their dispatches from Gibraltar, keep Naiad and Phoebe. Juno is a fixture ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... 60's classified the spectra of the brighter stars, according to the absorption lines in their spectra, into Types I, II III and IV, which correspond: Type I, to the very blue stars, such as Spica and Sirius; Type II, to the yellow stars similar to our Sun; Type III, to the red stars such as Aldebaran; and Type IV, to the extremely red stars, of which the brightest representatives are near the limit of naked-eye ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... still, now echo a few wild notes of melody. The blue wing of the halycon goes dazzlingly past, and tells us his own bright days are come; and the "whip-poor-will" brings his lay so close, that the ear is startled with the human sound on the soft damp air. The scene is changed when Sirius is triumphant, telling us of the tropics, and that we live in rather an inexplicable climate. Beneath his burning influence I have glided down this creek when no sound was heard on earth or air save the ripples of the paddle as it rose or fell at the will of the child-like form ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... that pass so easily into the air go on voyages of discovery past Sirius? And yet the air refuses to bear us, and wafts them gently on its lightest zephyrs! We have sublime faculties—the fit companions of a soul. It is not our self-conceit. The Milky Way is not our conceit. The eclipses are not our conceit. The awful sweep of our whole family of ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... he was, Grant could hardly fail to see that Bates meant well by him. The mental effort needed for such a long speech said as much. The allusion to Sirius, amusing at any other time, was now most valuable, because an astronomical almanac would give the hour at which that brilliant star became visible. Other considerations yielded at once, however, to the fear lest Robinson ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... rolled the dead body of Orion to the land, and bewailing her fatal error with many tears, Diana placed him among the stars, where he appears as a giant, with a girdle, sword, lion's skin, and club. Sirius, his dog, follows him, and the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... eclipses at least one thousand six hundred years before the commencement of our era. Nor is this improbable, if the speculations of modern philosophers respecting the age of the world are entitled to respect. The Egyptians discovered, by the rising of Sirius, that the year consists of three hundred and sixty-five and one quarter days, and this was their sacred year, in distinction from the civil, which consisted of three hundred and sixty-five days. They also had observed the courses of the planets, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... tremendous orbits—the latter nearly three thousand millions of miles away from the centre of our system. . . But the true awfulness is yet untouched. What of the millions of millions of suns that blaze in immeasurable space beyond our comparatively little solar sphere? Sirius alone, at the foot of the constellation of Orion, is 125 times larger than our sun. Fifteen hundred millions of millions of miles away, where ordinary eyes dimly descry half a dozen points of light, the telescope reveals more than a thousand orbs, some seventy of them vaster ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... group of the first magnitude, which include all the brightest stars visible, as Sirius, Canopus, ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... their profession—a lesson of what can be done in the safe construction of huge floating structures, and a warning that the highest flights of constructive genius may prove abortive if not strictly subordinated to the practical conditions and commercial requirements of the times. The Sirius and Great Western crossed the Atlantic in 1838, and in 1840 the first ship of the since celebrated Cunard Company made her first voyage. This was the Britannia, which, with her sister ships, the Arcadia, Caledonia, and Columbia, kept up the mail ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... luminary; light &c. 420; flame &c. (fire) 382. spark, scintilla; phosphorescence, fluorescence. sun, orb of day, Phoebus, Apollo[obs3], Aurora; star, orb; meteor, falling star, shooting star; blazing star, dog star, Sirius; canicula, Aldebaran[obs3]; constellation, galaxy; zodiacal light; anthelion[obs3]; day star, morning star; Lucifer; mock sun, parhelion; phosphor, phosphorus; sun dog|!; Venus. aurora, polar lights; northern ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Conclusions are drawn. 3. Industry will enrich. 4. Stars have disappeared. 5. Twilight is falling. 6. Leaves are turning. 7. Sirius has appeared. 8. Constantinople had been captured. 9. Electricity has been harnessed. 10. Tempests have been raging. 11. Nuisances should be abated. 12. Jerusalem was destroyed. 13. Light can be reflected. 14. Rain must ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... her eyes to the patch of sky where her son had passed in his shining metal sarcophagus. Sirius blossomed there, blue-white and beautiful. She raised her eyes still higher—and beheld the vast parterre of Orion with its central motif of vivid forget-me-nots, its far-flung blooms of Betelguese and Rigel, of Bellatrix and Saiph ... And higher yet—and there flamed the ...
— Star Mother • Robert F. Young
... had not yet arisen, but there was a beautiful clear sky. The great Southern Cross hung in the heavens like a giant lantern. On one side, and on line with each other, shone the two brightest stars in the heavens, the first being the Dog Star Sirius, and the next in order, Canopus, the one white, and the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... well seen in the winter evenings above Orion, had been found to move in an exceedingly small orbit, one too small to be detected except through the most refined observations of modern precision. The same thing had been found in the case of Sirius, and had been traced to the action of a minute companion revolving around it, which was discovered by the Clarks a dozen years before. There could be no doubt that the motion of Procyon was due to the same cause, but no one had ever seen the planet that produced it, though its direction ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... a group of peasants, to ascertain if they saw it, and found them gazing at it with as much astonishment as himself. He went to his instrument, and fixed its place, from which it never after appeared to deviate. For some time it increased in brightness—greatly surpassed Sirius in luster, and even Jupiter. It was seen by good eyes in the daytime; a thing which happens only to Venus, under very favorable circumstances; and at night it pierced through clouds which obscured the rest ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... your charts, the charts you use and you at sea, the charts of the heavens, where what stars we know are marked, the sun and the moon and Venus and Jupiter, and Sirius the dog star, and Saturn, and the star you steer your ship by, the polar star.... And all the constellations, the Milky Way, and the belt of Orion, and the Plow and the Great Bear and the great glory you see when you pass the line, the Southern Cross ... and the little ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... walking. This was a voice of beauty. Some lilac bud was singing in its sleep. Sirius had dropped a ray across its lips of blue and coaxed it out to dance. There was a murmur and a stir among the fruit-trees too. The apple blossoms painted the darkness with their tiny fluttering dresses, while old Aldebaran trimmed ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... call "Forlorn Hope," and finally make a safe landing on Ganymede, where Stevens plans to build a power-plant and a radio transmitter, to enable him to communicate with the earth or with the IPV Sirius, which is used by Westfall and Brandon (two of the world's best scientists) as ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... engaged in his government. For this purpose an order was signed by his Majesty in Council, directing the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to appoint John Hunter esquire (then a master and commander) second captain of the Sirius, with the rank of post. Although this ship mounted only 20 guns, and those but six-pounders, yet on this particular service her establishment was not confined to what is usual in a ship of that class; but, with a first and second ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... stared at the distant stars through the clear crystal roof of his jet boat. He breathed as lightly as he could, taking short, slight breaths, holding them as long as he could and then exhaling only when his lungs felt as if they would burst. He could see Regulus overhead, and Sirius, the two great stars shining brilliantly in the absolute blackness of space. He raised himself slowly on one elbow and looked at the oxygen indicator. He saw that the needle had dropped past the empty mark. ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... says Humboldt, "the contemplation of these nebulous masses leads us into regions from whence a ray of light, according to an assumption not wholly improbable, requires millions of years to reach our earth—to distances for whose measurement the dimensions (the distance of Sirius, or the calculated distances of the binary stars in Cygnus and the Centaur) of our nearest stratum of fixed stars ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Inventor. On the first day of April of the year of our Lord, 1962, Francis Farnsworth Pfleuger brought into being a Moebius coincidence field and established multiple contact with the twenty-first satellite of the star Sirius, thereby giving the people of Valleyview access, via their back doorways, to a New World. Here we have come to live. Here we have come to raise our children. Here, in this idyllic village, which the noble race ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... away they swarm 'neath the Dragon's feet, With a whoop and a flutter they swing and sway, And surge pell-mell down the Milky Way. Betwixt the legs of the glittering Chair They hover and squeak in the empty air. Then round they swoop past the glimmering Lion To where Sirius barks behind huge Orion; Up, then, and over to wheel amain, Under ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... have been uncovering secrets of upper-air electricity. But the interior of the earth is still one of the great mysteries. It is a paradox of astronomy that much more is known about the center of the sun or a star like Sirius than about the center ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... its proper eastward motion had carried it some way across Leo towards Virgo, and its brightness was so great that the sky became a luminous blue as it rose, and every star was hidden in its turn, save only Jupiter near the zenith, Capella, Aldebaran, Sirius and the pointers of the Bear. It was very white and beautiful. In many parts of the world that night a pallid halo encircled it about. It was perceptibly larger; in the clear refractive sky of the tropics it seemed ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... not a sound Disturbed the icy air; No watchman on his midnight round Or traveller was there; But over All-Saints', high and bright, Pulsed to the music Sirius white, The ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... HOUND, Sirius, the Dog-star, the brightest of the fixed stars. The constellation Orion was named from a giant hunter who was beloved by Aurora and ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... million times as far from us as the sun. If we take the distance of Sirius from the earth and subdivide it into one million equal parts, each of these parts would be long enough to span the great distance of 92,700,000 miles from the earth to the sun,' yet Sirius is one of the NEAREST ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... like a stranger discovering an unknown world; "like a kindly giant from Sirius, holding a magnifying glass to his eye, retaining his breath, lest it should overturn and sweep away the pigmies which ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... Halley[5] detected the proper motions of Arcturus and Sirius. In 1738 J. Cassinis[6] showed that the former had moved five minutes of arc since Tycho Brahe fixed its position. In 1792 Piazzi noted the motion of 61 Cygni as given above. For a long time the greatest observed ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... refer to the part played by Anubis in helping Isis to collect the fragments of Osiris; and the role played by Anubis, and his Greek avatar Cerberus, in the world of the dead. Whether the association of the dog-star Sirius with Hathor had anything to do with the confusion ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... limerick," said Jeffers lightly. "It's about a young spaceman named Mike, who said: 'I can do as I like!' And to prove his bright quip, he took a round trip, clear to Sirius B on a bike. Or, the tale of the pirate, Black Bart, whose head was as hard as his heart. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... an imaginary line through the stars forming the belt and prolong it downwards slantingly, you will see, in the very height of winter, the brightest star in all the sky, either in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere. This is Sirius, who stands in a class quite by himself, for he is many times brighter than any other first magnitude star. He never rises very high above the horizon here, but on crisp, frosty nights may be seen gleaming like a big diamond between ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... threw light. After sunset, the sky darkened rapidly—there was a very brief twilight interval indeed—and the stars shone out. They were recognisably the same as those we see, arranged in the same constellations. Mr. Cave recognised the Bear, the Pleiades, Aldebaran, and Sirius: so that the other world must be somewhere in the solar system, and, at the utmost, only a few hundreds of millions of miles from our own. Following up this clue, Mr. Wace learned that the midnight ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... Out beyond Sirius, far in the deeps of space, beyond the flight of a cannon-ball flying for a billion years, beyond the range of unaided vision, blazes the star that is our Utopia's sun. To those who know where to look, with a good opera-glass ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... went on to the other constellations, and talked of suns of the first and second magnitude, and pointed out Sirius, in whose honor great temples had once been built in Egypt, and Arcturus, the same old Arcturus that a Hebrew poet by the name of Job had sung about, and Vega and Capella and Rigel, which he said sent out eight thousand ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... of course, four months in extent. Originally, as just mentioned, the season of the inundations began and coincided with the actual time of inundation. The more precise fixing of new year's day was accomplished through observation of the time of the so-called heliacal rising of the dog-star, Sirius, which bore the Egyptian name Sothis. It chances that, as viewed from about the region of Heliopolis, the sun at the time of the summer solstice occupies an apparent position in the heavens close to the dog-star. Now, as is well known, the Egyptians, seeing divinity back of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Star Sirius and the Pole Star dwell afar Beyond the drawings each of other's strength: One blazes through the brief bright summer's length Lavishing life-heat from a flaming car; While one unchangeable upon a throne Broods o'er the frozen heart ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... all: simply "[Greek: os gar ameinon]." That is like Homer. The stars continue their signals. Vintage time is when Orion and Sirius are come to mid-heaven, and rosy-fingered Dawn ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... man of your desert: Just leave the whole to me: I'll do my best To make you no man's victim, no man's jest." Bid him go home and nurse himself, while you Act as his counsel and his agent too; Hold on unflinching, never bate a jot, Be it for wet or dry, for cold or hot, Though "Sirius split dumb statues up," or though Fat Furius "spatter the bleak Alps with snow." "What steady nerve!" some bystander will cry, Nudging a friend; "what zeal! what energy! What rare devotion!" ay, the game goes well; In flow the tunnies, and your fish-ponds swell. Another plan: ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... "Sirius is my love, and I am his, O son of Arrius. We have been comrades for twenty years—in tent, in battle, in all stages of the desert we have been comrades. I will show him ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... baleful comet die, The brood of blazing Sirius fly: God's orb shall quench their sultry heats And drive them ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... the first ships to cross the Atlantic under steam power alone—the "Sirius" and the "Great Western"—came into New York from Liverpool, a few hours apart, forerunners of the fleets that furrow all the seas today, making quick pathways for the gospel messengers to all lands. Verily, they are a gift of God's providence to this generation, when all the ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... Being now in the House of Taurus, she had overborne the benignant sway of Aldebaran, and was pressing hard on Castor and Pollux (in the House of Gemini). Also, her horizontal attitude was so full of menace that Rigel and Betelgeux (in Orion) seemed to wilt under her sinister supremacy. Sirius (in Canis Major), strongest and most malevolent of the astral powers, hung southwest of the zenith, reinforcing the evil bias of the time, and thus, from his commanding position, overruling the guardianship of Canopus (in Argo), south-west of the same point. Lower still, toward the south, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... has risen high above the horizon, and continues a brilliant object long after the shades of night have descended. Again a little longer and Venus has gained its full brilliancy and splendour. All the heavenly host—even Sirius and Jupiter—must pale before the splendid lustre of Venus, the unrivalled queen ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... blister or two. By Jove, wasn't it splendid, coming back in the moonlight with that silver lane flickering on the water in front of us? We were so completely alone. We might have been up in the interstellar spaces, you and I, travelling from Sirius to Arcturus in one of those profound gulfs of the void which Hardy talks ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... Among the stars, Sirius is the brightest; but twenty thousand millions of such stars would be required to transmit to the earth a light equal to that of the sun. And if it were difficult to ascertain the nature and quality of the sun, it would appear to be still more so to determine these points with regard to the stars; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... is altogether one of the most brilliant in the entire firmament. We must no longer postpone our homage to the brightest star in the sky, the magnificent Sirius, which shines on the left below Orion: it returns every year toward the end of November. This marvelous star, of dazzling brilliancy, is the first, [alpha], in the constellation of the Great Dog, which forms a quadrilateral, ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... The lower that brilliant Sirius sinks in the western sky after ruling the winter heavens, and the higher that red Arcturus rises, so the buds thicken, open, and bloom. When the Pleiades begin to rise in the early evening, the leaves are turning colour, and the seed vessels of the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... stars. If your station lies well beyond the glare of cities, which is often strong enough to conceal all but the brighter objects, you will find the task a difficult one. Ranging through the six magnitudes of the Greek astronomers, from the brilliant Sirius to the faintest perceptible points of light, the stars are scattered in great profusion over the celestial vault. Their number seems limitless, yet actual count will show that the eye has been deceived. In ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... when the day of trial came, all this imposing force was of no use whatever, and might as well have not existed. Their ruin could not have been more complete or more rapid if they had not possessed an ironclad or a regiment. And all this was accomplished by me, Captain John Sirius, belonging to the navy of one of the smallest Powers in Europe, and having under my command a flotilla of eight vessels, the collective cost of which was eighteen hundred thousand pounds. No one has a better right to tell ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... statutes and homesteads; when suddenly from a tainted space of sky came, noisome on men's bodies and pitiable on trees and crops, pestilence and a year of death. They left their sweet lives or dragged themselves on in misery; Sirius scorched the fields into barrenness; the herbage grew dry, and the sickly harvest denied sustenance. My father counsels to remeasure the sea and go again to Phoebus in his Ortygian oracle, to pray for grace and ask what issue he ordains to our exhausted state; whence ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... are assigned for the duration of the dog days: perhaps July 3 to Aug. 11 is that most commonly accepted. The dog days were so called because they coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius or Canicula ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... Freemasonry finds its prototype in the temple worship of ancient Egypt, we have but to study the Masonic arms, as illustrated in Fellows' chart, in which are pictured, as its objects of adoration, the sun and moon, the seven stars, known as Pleiades in the sign of Taurus; the blazing star Sirius, or Dog-star, worshipped by the Egyptians under the name of Anubis, and whose rising forewarned those people of the rising of the Nile River; the seven signs of the Zodiac from Aries to Libra, inclusive, through which the sun was ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... Morey. "We can—and we can move faster than your ship, if not faster than they. The people of the dead star have moved to a very live star—Sirius, the brightest in our heavens. And they are as much alive now as their new sun. They can move faster than light, also. We had a little misunderstanding a while back, when their star passed close to ours. They came off second best, and we haven't ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... piercing power and sultry heat of the sun abate, and almighty Zeus sends the autumn rains [1312], and men's flesh comes to feel far easier,—for then the star Sirius passes over the heads of men, who are born to misery, only a little while by day and takes greater share of night,—then, when it showers its leaves to the ground and stops sprouting, the wood you cut ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... the River (Eridanus) makes now its best show. Its leading brilliant, Achernar, is, however, never seen in the United States. In the southeast the Great Dog, with the splendid Sirius ("which brightliest shines when laved of ocean's wave"), shows resplendently. Above is Orion now standing upright, treading on the Hare (Lepus) and facing the Bull (Taurus), now at its highest. ...
— Half-Hours with the Stars - A Plain and Easy Guide to the Knowledge of the Constellations • Richard A. Proctor
... their pleasure pass'd: at noon of day The sun with sultry beams began to play: Not Sirius shoots a fiercer flame from high, When with his poisonous breath he blasts the sky: Then droop'd the fading flowers (their beauty fled) And closed their sickly eyes, and hung the head; And rivell'd up with heat, lay dying in their bed. The ladies gasp'd, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... superficial studies of the positive sciences, including, of course, the most popular of all, astronomy, kept his guests politely listening to speculative conjectures on the probable size of the inhabitants of Sirius, that very distant and very gigantic inhabitant of heaven who has led philosophers into mortifying reflections upon the utter insignificance of our own poor little planet, capable of producing nothing greater than Shakspeares and Newtons, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mighty tumult could break the dead brooding silence that surrounded the travellers. Nay, the Moon, realizing the weird fancy of the Arabian poet, who calls her a "giant stiffening into granite, but struggling madly against his doom," might shriek, in a spasm of agony, loudly enough to be heard in Sirius. But our travellers could not hear it. Their ears no sound could now reach. They could no more detect the rending of a continent than the falling of a feather. Air, the propagator and transmitter of sound, was absent ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... only had some evidence of that; but it is all dark, dark, on the other side of death, and on the other side of life too. Whence came we—whither do we tend? What power sent Sirius and all that galaxy of suns marching serenely through space? We, in our little planet-ship, falling into line, going like comets one day, and then vanishing; but the worlds moving on unconscious of our departure, and yet some power controls them and us. Medoline, ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... of the same month, Captain Tench, then in charge of the newly-formed outpost of Rose Hill, started on an expedition to the westward. He was accompanied by Mr. Arndell, assistant-surgeon of the settlement, Mr. Lowes, surgeon's mate of the SIRIUS, two marines, and a convict. His relation of his trip is interesting, as being the earliest record of land exploration, and also as containing the account of the discovery of the Nepean River. An extract from his journal ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals, pp. 331-341.—Theory that the fire-festivals are charms to ensure a supply of sunshine, 331; coincidence of two of the festivals with the solstices, 331 sq.; attempt of the Bushmen to warm up the fire of Sirius in midwinter by kindling sticks, 332 sq.; the burning wheels and discs of the fire-festivals may be direct imitations of the sun, 334; the wheel which is sometimes used to kindle the fire by friction may also be an imitation of the sun, 334-336; the influence which the bonfires are ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... had lost those divisions of caste and prejudice, of landed aristocracy and moneyed interest, institutions in which the vulgar see only barriers to Liberty but which are indeed the only possible defences against the coming of that periodic Sirius of politics, ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... knew when he'd found it. He fixed his eyes on it. It was a very white star, and for a space of minutes it seemed in no wise different from its fellows. But it grew brighter. Presently it was very bright. It was brighter than Sirius. In seconds more it was brighter than Venus. It increased more and more rapidly in its brilliance. It became the brightest object in all the heavens except the crescent moon, and the cold intensity of its light was greater than any part of that. Then Cochrane could see that this star was not ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... "matter," from the star Sirius and the stars of the Milky Way, as distant from Sirius as Sirius is from us, right to the last atom that can be perceived with the microscope, and I am ignorant as to what ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... "I shall not say like Renan, my beloved master: 'What does Sirius care?' because somebody would reply with reason 'What does little Earth care for big Sirius?' But I am always surprised when people who are adult, and even old, let themselves be deluded by the illusion of power, as if hunger, love, and death, all the ignoble or sublime necessities ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... throughout a signal success. The actors crowded round her. "We'd no idea of it!" "Capital!" "A great hit!" they exclaimed. "Mother Hubbard is the star of the evening," said Leonard Brookhouse. "No, indeed," returned Leslie, patting Sir Charles's head,—"this is the dog-star." "Rather a Sirius reflection upon the rest of us," rejoined Brookhouse, shrugging his shoulders, as he walked off to take his place in the "Oath," and Leslie disappeared to ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... exist in the earth, and some that we had not discovered when the sun wrote their names, or rather made their mark, in the spectrum. Thus, also, we find that Betelguese and Algol are without any perceivable indications of hydrogen, and Sirius has it in abundance. What a sense of acquaintanceship it gives us to look up and recognize [Page 30] the stars whose very substance we know! If we were transported thither, or beyond, we should not be altogether strangers ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... been, when one of the most gifted of mortals from that spot looked out upon the heavens, and in thought went forth on voyages of discovery into the distant regions of the universe! At the calm, still hour of midnight, Sirius watching over the city of sleepers, Jupiter carrying his brilliant lamp along his ancient pathway, every one of the luminaries in the place appointed by Him who calleth them all by their names—there stood the thoughtful ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... abides a temperate air; And fruitful Venus' star contains the seeds Of all things. Ruler of the boundless deep The god (11) Cyllenian: whene'er he holds That part of heaven where the Lion dwells With neighbouring Cancer joined, and Sirius star Flames in its fury; where the circular path (Which marks the changes of the varying year) Gives to hot Cancer and to Capricorn Their several stations, under which doth lie The fount of Nile, he, master of ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... ceaseless swell! you power that does this work! You unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space's spread, Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations, What are the messages by you from distant stars to us? what Sirius'? what Capella's? What central heart—and you the pulse—vivifies all? what boundless aggregate of all? What subtle indirection and significance in you? what clue to all in you? what fluid, vast identity, Holding the universe ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... of that high wall he rushed, his ear Drawn by the immortal horses of his sire. As from the ocean-verge upsprings the sun In glory, flashing fire far over earth— Fire, when beside his radiant chariot-team Races the red star Sirius, scatterer Of woefullest diseases over men; So flashed upon the eyes of Ilium's host That battle-eager hero, Achilles' son. Onward they whirled him, those immortal steeds, The which, when now he longed to chase the foe Back from the ships, Automedon, who wont To rein them for ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus |
