"Sky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gracefully towards the plain, whose shores the sea washes—the sea whence the cool breezes blow over the city. What a glorious sight can be seen from Mount Lofty on a full moonlight night! Stand on Mount Lofty, look up and revel in the sight of an Australian summer night's sky, the dark but ethereally clear bluish dome overhead, myriads of little stars, blinking at the steady brilliant light of the greater constellations. Look right and left—on all sides the spurs, covered with misty haze, lose themselves as they merge ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... weather. Every seaman on board the Doraine scanned the cloudless sky with searching, anxious eyes. They sniffed the steady wind that blew them farther south. Always they scanned the sky ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... inn, hoping that Robert Audley would meet his death. She and her maid then left the inn to make the long tramp back to the Court. Half the distance had been covered, when Phoebe looked back and saw a red glare in the sky. She stopped, suddenly fell on her knees, and cried: "Oh, my God! Say it's not ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... registered whilst at work one morning. The triumphant sunshine, refusing to be excluded even from London workshops, gleamed upon his tools and on the scraps of jewellery before him; he looked up to the blue sky, and thought with heavy heart of many a lane in Surrey and in Essex where he might be wandering but for this ceaseless necessity of earning the week's wage. A fly buzzed loudly against the grimy window, and by one of those associations which time and change cannot affect, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... from the Kings of the Hebrides in the western seas. They complain'd much of the hostilities which the Earl of Ross,[9] Kiarnach, the son of Mac-camal, and other Scots committed in the Hebrides when they went out to Sky.[10] They burned villages, and churches, and they killed great numbers both of men and women. They affirmed, that the Scotch had even taken the small children and raising them on the points of their spears shook ...
— The Norwegian account of Haco's expedition against Scotland, A.D. MCCLXIII. • Sturla oretharson
... city which Mr Podsnap so explanatorily called London, Londres, London, is at its worst. Such a black shrill city, combining the qualities of a smoky house and a scolding wife; such a gritty city; such a hopeless city, with no rent in the leaden canopy of its sky; such a beleaguered city, invested by the great Marsh Forces of Essex and Kent. So the two old schoolfellows felt it to be, as, their dinner done, they turned towards the fire to smoke. Young Blight was gone, the coffee-house waiter was gone, the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... evening the wind blew fair north-west, but the sky grew thick, and the night coming on, they, for fear of falling upon the coast, tacked off again to sea, and out of their course. About eleven o'clock at night the storm began much more violent than the night before, continuing ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... contemplated the spoil—his fish—with the joyful thrill of a miser; and seeing as he looked up at the sky that the sun was getting low: "Well, boys," said he, "suppose ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... party, with the exception of Miss Burnaby, who had gone to bed at her usual time, had stood outside the front door under the starry sky while the many clocks of Wyndfell Hall rang out the twelve strokes which said farewell to the Old Year, and brought the New Year in. Then they had all crowded back again into the hall, and, hand in hand, sung "Auld ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... of melody! No, reader; that is not the spring we depict: not quite so beautiful, though far more prized by those who spend a monotonous winter of more than six months in solitude. The sun shines brightly in a cloudless sky, lighting up the pure white fields and plains with dazzling brilliancy. The gushing waters of a thousand rills, formed by the melting snow, break sweetly on the ear, like the well-remembered voice of a long-absent friend. The whistling wings of wild-fowl, as they ever and anon desert ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... another day," he said, "we will go far away from here. We will travel afoot through the fields and woods, and by the side of rivers, and trust ourselves to God in the places where He dwells. It is far better to lie down at night beneath an open sky than to rest in close rooms, which are always full of care and weary dreams. Thou and I together, Nell, may be cheerful and happy yet, and learn to forget this time, as if ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Dianora's window, and, aided by their friend, they should find their way to a priest prepared to give them his blessing. The night appointed came—still and beautiful as heart could wish; the stars sparkling in the deep blue sky, bright as they may now be seen in that fair clime. Hyppolito has reached the house; he has fixed the ladder of ropes; there is no moon to betray him; in a minute, his light step will have reached the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... kind and good, sahib. Ramoo knows that he will meet no friends like those he has here, but he longs for the bright sun and blue sky of India, and though it will well nigh break his heart to leave the young missie and you, he feels ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... Elmwood, walking in the country about, and full of eagerness at the prospect which lay before him. In a letter to his friend Charles F. Briggs, written in December, 1848, he says: "Last night ... I walked to Watertown over the snow, with the new moon before me and a sky exactly like that in Page's evening landscape. Orion was rising behind me, and, as I stood on the hill just before you enter the village, the stillness of the fields around me was delicious, broken only by the tinkle of a little brook which runs too swiftly for ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... of August—a perfect day, with a burning sun and cloudless sky—and in the straight, narrow road leading up the hill their feet kicked up ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... about thus for several hours, when I looked up to the warm, glowing, tropical sky, and then down into the transparent depths below; and when my eye, wandering from the bewitching scenery around, fell upon the grotesquely-tattooed form of Kory-Kory, and finally, encountered the pensive gaze of Fayaway, I thought I had been transported ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... was blue and exquisitely iridescent under the pale sun; the wrinkled waves were finely pitted by the falling spray. These were rare moments; mostly, when it was not like painted canvas, is was hard like black rock, with surfaces of smooth cleavage. Where it met the sky it lay flat and motionless, or in the rougher weather carved itself along the horizon in successions ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... like rain this minute," she said as she cast an anxious glance at the sky. "Hadn't you better ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey
... and Wind went out to dine with their uncle and aunt Thunder and Lightning. Their mother (one of the most distant Stars you see far up in the sky) waited ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... with thy sword drawn, that thou mayest know what commands I bring with me. Helen indeed, whom thou minded to destroy, working Menelaus to anger, didst fail of thy purpose, she is here, whom ye see wrapt in the bosom of the sky, preserved, and not slain by thy hands. Her I preserved, and snatched from thy sword, commanded by my father Jove. For being the daughter of Jove, it is right that she should live immortal. And she shall have her seat by Castor and Pollux in the bosom of the sky, the guardian of mariners. ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... through dread of the arrow of whose cunning the warrior of the fifth heaven[FN173] trembled in the sky, like the reed, having bestowed her attention on the pilgrim bramin (Brahman), despatched him to an orchard; and having gone home, said to her husband, "I have heard that in the orchard of a certain husbandman there is a date tree, the fruit of which is of remarkably fine ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... declined once more into a walk, and a slow one too,—for we entered a gloomy pass or gorge, whose rocky walls on either side effectually excluded what little light yet lingered in the sky. Cautiously picking our way, we slowly travelled on, until at length we became sensible of a faint red flush in the narrow strip of sky overhead. It seemed as though the sun had just wheeled back ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... moonlight when we pushed from the islet. But soon, the sky grew dun; the moon went into a cavern among the clouds; and by that secret sympathy between our hearts and the elements, the thoughts of all but ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... fire, but it needs a shock or sudden pressure to liberate it. So as the northerly wind drifted steadily down from the Arctic with no opposition in the air currents that would give the requisite counter pressure, the sky held up its store and we all continued to go forth, sniff, shake our heads and prophesy. The cold drifted farther and farther south till Jacksonville recorded, shamefacedly and reluctantly, the same freezing temperature that New York had. All this while "Aunt Sue's snowbank" lifted in dun clouds ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... the boys were given until eleven o'clock to do as they pleased. At once some old barrels were piled high at one end of the campus, smeared with tar, stuffed with wood, and set on fire, and the blaze, mounting to the sky, lit up the neighborhood to the lake on one side and the ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... breeze came, east or west, And burning was the sky, And stifling was each breath we drew Of the air so hot ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... gondolas plying, and fishing-boats with colored sails, the men in them looking as small as children. For he was born in the Ghetto of Venice, on the seventh story of an ancient house. There were two more stories, up which he never went, and which remained strange regions, leading towards the blue sky. A dusky staircase, with gaunt whitewashed walls, led down and down—past doors whose lintels all bore little tin cases containing holy Hebrew words—into the narrow court of the oldest Ghetto in the world. A few yards to the right was a portico leading to the bank of a canal, but a grim iron gate ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... now and still. He could hear the footsteps of his recent visitor pounding up the road, and the splashy grumble of the surf on the bar was unusually audible. He stood for a moment looking up at the black sky, with the few stars shining between the cloud blotches. Then he turned and looked at the little ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... robes, and there was a crown of pure gold upon his head. Instead of the starry sky for a roof, he now lived in ...
— David the Shepherd Boy • Amy Steedman
... The sky-lights and companion way are of mahogany, and with the decks, spars, and rail, are varnished, the rest of the hull being painted black, white, or green, and that portion below the water-line being varnished, and dusted over with bronze powder, and when perfectly dry, varnished ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... That ever penury, in contempt of man, Brought near to beast: my face I'll grime with filth; Blanket my loins; elf all my hair in knots; And with presented nakedness outface The winds and persecutions of the sky. The country gives me proof and precedent Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary; And with this horrible object, from low farms, Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills, ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... reverend gentlemen, Ann alone was not of gentle birth. Yet was she in no wise the least, neither in demeanor nor in attire; and when I beheld her in the ante-chamber, all lighted up with wax tapers, in her sky-blue gown, thanking the master of the house and his sister—who kept house for him—for their condescension, as she upraised her great eyes with loving respect, I could have clasped her in my arms in the face of all the world, and I marvelled how my brother Herdegen could have sinfully ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... him the great ocean was covered with its coat of solid, unbroken ice; for although winter was past, and the sun of early spring was at the time gleaming on bergs that raised their battlements and pinnacles into a bright blue sky, the hoary king of the far north refused as yet to resign his sceptre and submit to the interregnum of ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... direction of Newton, had continued her course for two days against the adverse, yet light breeze, when the weather changed. The wind still held to the same quarter: but the sky became loaded with clouds, and the sun set with a dull red glare, which prognosticated a gale from the N.W.; and before morning the vessel was pitching through a short chopping sea. By noon the gale was at its height; and Newton, perceiving that the sloop did not "hold her ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... mighty stone Atlas carrying the hills on its shoulder. From this rock one looked out eastward over the rolling country below to where, far beyond sloping hills covered with forest, it merged into a soft blue that faded away into the sky itself. In that misty space lay everything that Gordon Keith had known and loved in the past. Off there to the eastward was his old home, with its wide fields, its deep memories. There his forefathers had lived for generations and had been ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... else? And that night and the next and the next, I wrote "Gentleman Adventurers," which the critics called the epitome of all that is balladesque. One pitied the dead because they could go forth no more on water and under sky. This poem, written in a mood which beneficent nature sends on the too-sick spirit, has served for more than a quarter of a century as the complete and accepted catalogue of the reasons for living. ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... him in astonishment. Nothing on earth or sky looked less likely. It had been cold, but that might have been only a current from the frozen peaks beyond, reaching the lower valley. The ridge on which they had halted was still thick with yellowish-green summer foliage, mingled with the darker evergreen of pine and fir. Oven-like canyons ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... open door which framed a bright picture of sky, and flowers growing against a low green and gold background ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... people, observing the face of things, could do no other but look for the Messias. And hence it is that the Lord Jesus gives the Pharisees, those mortal enemies of his, such sore rebukes, saying, 'O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky, but can ye not discern the signs of the times?' The kingdom is lost, the heathens are come, and the sceptre is departed from Judah. 'Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky, and of the earth, but how is it that ye do not discern this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Nettlepoint detained me after seeing that my movement would not be taken as a hint, and I perceived she wished me not to leave my fellow-visitors on her hands. Jasper complained of the closeness of the room, said that it was not a night to sit in a room—one ought to be out in the air, under the sky. He denounced the windows that overlooked the water for not opening upon a balcony or a terrace, until his mother, whom he had not yet satisfied about his telegram, reminded him that there was a beautiful balcony in front, with room for a dozen ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... were carried by great nobles before the corpse. The pall was borne by the chiefs of the illustrious houses of Howard, Seymour, Grey, and Stanley. On the gorgeous coffin of purple and gold were laid the crown and sceptre of the realm. The day was well suited to such a ceremony. The sky was dark and troubled; and a few ghastly flakes of snow fell on the black plumes of the funeral car. Within the Abbey, nave, choir and transept were in a blaze with innumerable waxlights. The body was deposited under a magnificent ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... forth with the triumphant note, "The heavens declare the glory of God." Everything in earth and sky shows forth His wisdom, His power ...
— The One Great Reality • Louisa Clayton
... obscure, by doubling the obscurity; to solve difficulties, by multiplying them. O enthusiastic philosophers! To prove the existence of a God, write complete treatises of botany; enter into a minute detail of the parts of the human body; launch forth into the sky, to contemplate the revolution of the stars; then return to the earth to admire the course of waters; behold with transport the butterflies, the insects, the polypi, and the organized atoms, in which you think you discern the greatness of your God. All these things ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... appear; the hours passed slowly, and with the afternoon came a clouded sky, and weariness and reaction of spirits; fatigue of body, and something like illness; and on that a great terror. If they drugged her in her food? The thought was like a knife in the girl's heart, and while she ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... side of the Marne the undulating hill, with its wide stretch of fields, is dotted with little villages that peep out of the trees or are silhouetted against the sky-line,—Vignely, Trilbardou, Penchard, Monthyon, Neufmortier, Chauconin, and in the foreground to the north, in the valley, just halfway between me and Meaux, lies Mareuil-on-the-Marne, with its red roofs, gray walls, and church spire. With a glass I can find where Chambry and Barcy are, on ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... at right angles to the street, had a southern exposure, and was protected on the north by the immense wall of the adjoining house, against which the smaller structure was built. The cupola of the Pantheon and that of the Val-de-Grace looked from there like two giants, and so diminished the sky space that, walking in the garden, one felt cramped and oppressed. No place could be more ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... cling powerfully, and grasp the crag tightly with their knotty fingers. The trees on both sides are so thick, that the sight and the thoughts are almost immediately lost among confused stems, branches, and clustering green leaves,—a narrow strip of bright blue sky above, the sunshine falling lustrously down, and making the pathway of the brook luminous below. Entering among the thickets, I find the soil strewn with old leaves of preceding seasons, through which may be seen a black or dark mould; the roots ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... the cloudy aspect of the sky prevented them from judging of the character of the land, but it had the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... ardent, and to triumph shy, Fair Victory named him from the polar sky. Fanes to the gods, to men he manners gave; Rest to the sword, and respite to the brave; So high could ne'er Herculean power aspire: The god should bend his looks to the Tarpeian fire." [Footnote: Book ix. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... cards which had just been dealt to him. The game progressed, and Concepcion Vara, on the Toledo road, approached at a steady trot. This man showed to greater advantage on horseback and beneath God's open sky than in the streets of a city. Here, in the open and among the mountains, he held his head erect and faced the world, ready to hold his own against it. In the streets he wore a furtive air, and glanced from left to ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... was biting cold. A northwest wind had been busy for hours sweeping and dusting the sky until, now that it was resting from its labors, the blue vault was as clean and bright as our mahogany dining-table after Uncle Ike had polished it ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... one of the few times in America when I did not miss the poetry of the past. The poetry of the present, gigantic, colossal, and enormous, made me forget it. The "sky-scrapers," so splendid in the landscape now, did not exist in 1883; but I find it difficult to divide my early impressions from my later ones. There was Brooklyn Bridge, though, hung up high in the air ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... truth became falsehood. I found in the human soul all the forces in the world, and none of them was dormant, and in the mad whirlpool each soul became like a fountain, whose source is the abyss of the sea and whose summit the sky. And every human being, as I have learned and seen, is like the rich and powerful master who gave a masquerade ball at his castle and illuminated it with many lights; and strange masks came from everywhere and the master greeted ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... only appeared to overcome Judaism. It was too noble, too spiritual to abolish the crudeness of practical needs except by elevation into the blue sky. ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... carrying my satchel slung across my back and my gun diagonally across my chest. It was a cold, windy, gloomy day, with clouds scurrying across the sky. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky!" ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... "played house," and they knew how to make the old blankets, and pieces of carpet they found in the cave, into a sort of bed. It was not so light now, for it was coming on toward night, and the sky was covered ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... with blossom. Into the night stole its pervasive sweetness and the old house was like a temple built of blue gray shadows with columns touched into ivory whiteness by the lights of door and window. A low line of hills loomed beyond, painted of silver gray against the backdrop of starry sky and the pallor of moon mists. From the porch came the desultory tinkle of a banjo and the voices of young people singing and in a pause between songs more than once the boy heard a laugh—a laugh which he recognized. He could even make out a scrap of light color which ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... north of this road, at the point where it disappeared over the sky-line on the opposite slope, lay the Queen's Battery House and earthworks, completely commanding the valley on all sides, and distant 1900 yards ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... When approaching the anchorage there was one striking view: an irregular castle perched on the summit of a lofty hill, and surrounded by a few scattered fir-trees, boldly projected against the sky. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Fourteenth Street, beyond the thunder of the Sixth Avenue Elevated and where the sky line began to dip down ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... river that morning with his rod and net, and his piscatory fidus Achates, Irons, at his elbow. It was a nice gray sky, but the clerk was unusually silent even for him; and the sardonic piscator appeared inscrutably amused as he looked steadily upon the running waters. Once or twice the spectacles turned full upon the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... rules the heavens. He is a big chief; the moon is his squaw, and the stars are his children. The sun devours his children whenever he is able to catch them. They are constantly afraid of him as he is passing through the sky. He gets up very early in the morning; his children, the stars, fly out of sight, and go away into the blue; and they are not seen again until he goes to bed, which is deep down under the ground, in a great hole. When he goes to his hole, he creeps and crawls, and sleeps ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... no such hesitancy. From him we get names and dates. Ibn Khallikan gives the credit boldly to one Sissah, who, says he, "imagined the game for the amusement of King Shihram." Whether Sissah built it out of a clear sky, or had foundations on which to erect, is not stated. Anyway, the pastime was a complete success. "It is said that, when Sissah invented the game of chess and presented it to Shihram, the latter was struck with ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... winter months moved on. With slow and steady stride they went from mountain top to mountain top, around the circle of the sky-line. The earth began to clothe itself in green. The great trees, holding out their naked arms like huge babies waiting to be dressed, were getting greener and greener, and last year's birds sat in their branches singing this year's songs. ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... in through the open window, bringing with it the suggestion of warm sunshine, fields, gardens, flowers, and the blue sky and waving trees. ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... was there anything to indicate the nearest land. Hence one must conclude that no one on board knew where the "Viking" was at the time of the disaster. Driven on, doubtless, by a tempest of resistless power, the vessel must have been carried far out of her course, and the clouded sky making a solar observation impossible, there had been no way of determining the ship's whereabouts for several days; so it was more than probable that no one would ever know whether it was near the shores of North ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... when I reached the water-side, at a place where many pleasure-boats are moored and ready for hire; and as I went along a stony path, between wood and water, a strong wind blew in gusts from the far end of the lake. The sky was covered with flying scud; and, as this was ragged, there was quite a wild chase of shadow and moon-glimpse over the surface of the shuddering water. I had to hold my hat on, and was growing rather tired, and inclined ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sun's disk had sunk behind the hills, its trailing glory lingering above their summits while slowly in the sky faded continents, mountains and spires. The day had died regretfully upon a couch o'erhung with gorgeous canopies, and the ensanguined bier still seemed to tremble with his last sigh. Birds in the tops of trees and crickets beneath the sod were giving ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Sergeant Bellews as the sergeant picked up his new combination of devices and headed out of the Rehab Shop. Outside, in the sunshine, there were roarings to be heard. Lecky looked up. A formation of jets swam into view against the sky. A tiny speck, trailing a monstrous plume of smoke, shot upward from ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... A SUDDEN—MOON. "Do we not," writes Brimley, "seem to burst from the narrow steep path down the ravine, whose tall precipitous sides hide the sky and the broad landscape from sight, and come ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... two o'clock, half an hour before the chill dawn of a May morning, Sunday, the 26th of the month. The pale sight of a waning moon was faintly perceptible in the sky. Suddenly the sentinels upon the Kowenstyn—this time not asleep—descried, as they looked towards Lillo, four fiery apparitions gliding towards them across the waves. The alarm was given, and soon afterwards the Spaniards began to muster, somewhat reluctantly, upon ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... even for the Orient, where queerness in men and things is commonplace and accepted as a part of the East's inseparable sense of mystery. With his big goggles of smoked glass he reminded one of some sea-monster, an illusion dispelled by his battered pith helmet with its faded sky-blue pugri bound round its crown, the frayed ends falling over his shoulders and flapping ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... for which Saint Cecile let fall her instruments, he was at once Beethoven and Paganini, creator and interpreter. It was an outpouring of music inexhaustible as the nightingale's song—varied and full of delicate undergrowth as the forest flooded with her trills; sublime as the sky overhead. Schmucke played as he had never played before, and the soul of the old musician listening to him rose to ecstasy such as Raphael once painted in a picture which you may ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... But I bought the old cottage, through and through, Of some one Charley had sold it to; And held back neither work nor gold, To fix it up as it was of old. The same big fire-place wide an' high, Flung up its cinders toward the sky; The old clock ticked on the corner-shelf— I wound it an' set it agoin' myself; An' if every thing wasn't just the same, Neither I nor money was to blame; Then—over the hill to ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... he, "when I was startled by a rather violent earthquake. The next instant the sun was obscured and darkness settled over the city. Looking in the direction of the distant volcano, I saw heavy clouds of smoke rolling from it, with an occasional tongue of flame flashing against the dark sky. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... The bodies of drowned buffaloes floated past them in vast numbers; many had drifted upon the shore, or against the upper ends of the rafts and islands. These had attracted great flights of turkey-buzzards; some were banqueting on the carcasses, others were soaring far aloft in the sky, and others were perched on the trees, with their backs to the sun, and their wings stretched out to dry, like so many vessels in harbor, spreading ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... some strange, awe-inspiring voice that shall break the silence of the midnight sky; our need is an ear trained to hear, a spirit to understand and reverence the sublime voices that are ever speaking in our world, the voices of the beauty of nature, the joy of living, the stories of every-day divine heroism, the forces that are making a new world ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... concluded, "a vast wave came hurtling down on us. It was so huge that it shut out all the sky. It crashed over the already sinking ship in a torrent of irresistible force. Under that dreadful blow the laboring vessel sank, and all those left on board of ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... stepped into the street that the character of the night had changed. Thick clouds obscured the sky, and a few drops of rain were falling. At first I felt inclined to take a cab, but on second thoughts I changed my mind, and putting up my umbrella strode along in the direction ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... soldiers brawling and bustling at the door—gentlemen of the Life Guards, clad in scarlet, with blue facings, and laced with gold at the seams; gentlemen of the Horse Grenadiers, in their caps of sky-blue cloth, with the garter embroidered on the front in gold and silver; men of the Halberdiers, in their long red coats, as bluff Harry left them, with their ruffs and velvet flat caps. Perhaps the king's Majesty himself is going to St. James's as we pass. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the first mate went through the ship, seeing that all the candles were extinguished, or that the hoods were drawn over the sky-lights, in such a way as to conceal any rays that might gleam upwards from the cabin. At the same time attention was paid to the binnacle lamp. This precaution observed, the people went to work to reduce the sail, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... a fair-sized dwelling-house in its garden. And there confronted us, glooming under the gray and threatening sky that seemed the only proper and fitting canopy for it, what looked like a pile reared in medieval Europe rather than a home in America. Its stained brick walls, partly covered with ivy and lichens; its smokeless chimneys; its barred doors; its many shuttered windows, like blind ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... scrawl, and I am but a dull fellow. Just at present, I am absorbed in 500 contradictory contemplations, though with but one object in view—which will probably end in nothing, as most things we wish do. But never mind,—as somebody says, 'for the blue sky bends over all.' I only could be glad, if it bent over me where it is a little bluer; like the 'skyish top of blue Olympus,' which, by the way, looked very white when ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... back to the lonely by-road along which I had walked from the market-town to the house. From time to time, as we two went on our way, the bright figure of the child paused, hovering low in the cloudless sky. Its radiant face looked down smiling on me; it beckoned with its little hand, and floated on again, leading me as the Star led the Eastern sages in ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... of Prussia, Russia, and even of Austria, McClellan would be condemned as unfit to have any military command whatever. I would stake my right hand on such a verdict; and here the would-be strategians, the traitors, the intriguers, and the imbeciles prize him sky-high. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... third day of their pilgrimage that they encountered their first adventure. Toward evening the sky was suddenly darkened and ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... a common, such as he was sure did not exist on the way to Minsterham. He must have got upon the Elchester road, and there was nothing for it but to turn back. However, there was a pale brightness showing in the sky, and the moon came up, an old moon without very much light in her, but she was a great comfort to him, and told him ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... again, she passed, after a time, the scattered houses, and came out upon the open road which showed white and deserted beneath the stars. Looking overhead, as she went on, her gaze swept the heavens with that sense of absolute stillness which comes under the solitude of the sky, and standing presently in the dust of the road, she fixed her eyes upon the Pleiades shining softly far above the jagged line of the horizon. Her feet ached beneath her, but her head seemed suddenly spinning through clear spaces among ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... he cried, "of being a pessimist. Throughout my life I have striven personally, and politically, to look upon the brightest side of things. But I count it a crime to shut one's eyes to the cloud in the sky, even though it be no larger than a man's hand. Years ago that cloud was there for those who would to see. To-day it looms over us, a black and threatening peril, and those who, ostrich-like, still hide their heads in the sand, are the men ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... name, whom hunters and shepherds adore and kill are animals pure and simple, not animals regarded as embodiments of other supernatural beings. Our first example is drawn from the Indians of California, who living in a fertile country under a serene and temperate sky, nevertheless rank near the bottom of the savage scale. The Acagchemem tribe adored the great buzzard, and once a year they celebrated a great festival called Panes or bird-feast in its honour. The ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... flew, looking down at times upon the tops of the houses in the quaint coast towns, at other times having beneath him and above him blue sea and blue sky. ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... Asiatic, all retirements are matters of danger. While the village was being destroyed the enemy had been collecting. Their figures could be distinguished on the top of the mountain—a numerous line of dark dots against the sky; others had tried to come, from the adjoining valleys on the left and right. Those on the right succeeded, and the Buffs were soon sharply engaged. On the left the cavalry again demonstrated the power of their arm. A large force of tribesmen, numbering at least 600 men, endeavoured to reach ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... toward evening and she was on her way back to Los Portales. The girl was a lover of the outdoors and she had been hunting alone. In the clear, amber light of afternoon the smoke of the town rose high into the sky, though the trading post itself could not be seen ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... terrible sound, the gate flew open, and closed again with a thundering clang the moment the Prince had passed through it, while from every tower and battlement rose a wheeling, screaming crowd of bats which darkened the whole sky with their multitudes. Anyone but Prince Vivien would have been terrified by such an uncanny sight, but he strode stoutly forward till he reached the second gate, which was opened to him by sixty black slaves covered from head ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... Florence, Sienna, Pisa, Mantua, Bologna, Ferrara, Genoa, Venice, a heroic history, sublime ruins, magnificent ruins, and superb cities, you are, like ourselves, poor. You are covered with marvels and vermin. Assuredly, the sun of Italy is splendid, but, alas, azure in the sky does ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... thermometer 88 degrees, four degrees above what I have learned to call South Sea temperature; but for all that, land so near, and so much grief being happily astern, we are all pretty gay on board, and have been photographing and draught-playing and sky-larking like anything. I am minded to stay not very long in Samoa and confine my studies there (as far as any one can forecast) to the history of the late war. My book is now practically modelled: if I can execute what ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... months have glided into the past since the events recorded in the foregoing chapter. The political world of Charleston is resolved to remain in the Union a few months longer. It is a pleasant evening in early May. The western sky is golden with the setting sun, and the heavens are filled with battlements of refulgent clouds, now softening away into night. Yonder to the East, reposes a dark grove. A gentle breeze fans through ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... break up the defiant league of smugglers, great and small, that had for so long been playing a game of hide-and-seek with the Coast Guard revenue officers, the task thus assigned was particularly to the liking of those two bold and dependable sky detectives. ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... the palace to the port, behind him and around him was the tramp of the rude Coman barbarians, proclaiming that the city was taken. The houses, hastily thrown open as the first streaks of the summer day lit up the sky, resounded with the acclamations of those, yesterday his own subjects, who welcomed the new-comers with cries of "Long live Michael the Emperor of the Romans!" The house of Courtenay had played its last card and lost the game. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... the trailing banner, and stand devotedly by the dear old flag. If they enter into the work heart and soul, good results will follow. There is here a strong secession element; copperheads abound; the sky looks dark and threatening; but Gov. Morton's vigorous policy and Gen. Burnside's "Order No. 38," will show the traitors that we have a government—a strong one, too—that will bring them ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... silent tear from Mr. Blanchard's eyes, and those two significant words from his lips. But oh! to Franklin's soul, wrought up almost to despair—almost, to madness—they were rapture, they were ecstasy, they were like the first streak of golden sky which announces to the half-wrecked sailor ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... imagination. Warburton has rightly observed, in his "Divine Legation," p. 203, that "Systems, Schemes, and Hypotheses, all bred of heat, in the warm regions of Controversy, like meteors in a troubled sky, have each its turn to ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... moonlight, up into the sky. And at the look in her face, the primeval savage in me strained to close round that slender white throat of hers and crush and crush until it had killed in her the thought of that other man which was transforming her from ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... the afternoon air was sweet and warm with the passing of spring. The girl's eager eyes travelled the length of the sky-seeking cliff almost at the back door of the ranch-house, which stood like some mighty barricade thrown up in that mythical day given over to the colossal struggle of a contending race of giants, and she found that there, alone, time had shown no change. Elsewhere, improvements at every ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... was still and cold, and the sky full of little white clouds that lapped the one over the other, like shells on a seashore. Now and again the moon would strike through, in a long, bright ray, that seemed like a keen blade or lance severing the misty air. The three went on and on, through many winding ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... bays was all a dream; all a dream as they drove up the long, white, wide Logan Pike under the nodding trees and the soft evening sun. Everything was peaceful—the blue sky, the waving corn-fields, the magnolia, the songs of the homing birds. The air tasted rich as with great breaths he drew it into his lungs. It gave him hope. With this air to aid him he ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... pleasant idea of the state of society. The next few days were busy ones for all, though rather dismal to me, as I was confined almost entirely indoors, owing to the awful state of the streets; for in the colonies, at this season of the year, one may go out prepared for fine weather, with blue sky above, and dry underfoot, and in less than an hour, should a colonial shower come on, be unable to cross some of the streets without a plank being placed from the middle of the road to the pathway, or the alternative of walking in water up ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... hour would he lose after having transacted business with his bankers. He believed (for it had been announced) that Greek vessels were coming to meet him; nor did he doubt that the Turkish fleet was still anchored at Lepanto. Sea and wind were favorable, the sky serene, fortune for once seemed to smile; but it was only the better to deceive him. The Turks had been informed of his departure; and hoped to make an easy prey of him and his riches. They left the waters of Lepanto, and heading their course toward Patras, set off in pursuit ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... down it. He sprang at it with the force of a desperate man, seized it with both hands, and, being young and agile, succeeded in swinging himself to the summit of the cliff. Here he stood in full relief against the sky, when the red- cap cocked his pistol and fired. The ball whistled by Sam's head. With the lucky thought of a man in an emergency, he uttered a yell, fell to the ground, and detached at the same time a fragment of the ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... like the sky-flower, is not admitted either in the Veda or in the world; if the knowledge of such a thing were derived from the Veda, the Veda itself would then cease to be ...
— The Tattva-Muktavali • Purnananda Chakravartin
... carried us out of our true course, so that the captain lost his reckoning and finding himself in strange waters, bade the watch go up to the mast-head and look out. So he climbed the mast and looked out and said "O captain, I see nothing to right and left save sky and water, but ahead I see something looming afar off in the midst of the sea, now black and now white." When the captain heard the look-out's words, he cast his turban on the deck and plucked out ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... boy's shrill voice rose into the sky. He traversed the dark unseen, leaving the track of his song across the hush of ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... The principality of the Osirian Reliquary, of which it was the metropolis, occupied the valley from one mountain to the other, and gradually extended across the desert as far as the Great Theban Oasis. Its inhabitants worshipped a sky-god, Anhuri, or rather two twin gods, Anhuri-shu, who were speedily amalgamated with the solar deities and became a warlike personification ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... all; the second got the length of putting forth a blade; this one has got as far as the ear, but not so far as 'the full corn in the ear.' It has fruited, but the fruit is green and scanty, not ripened, as it ought to be, since it grows under such a sky and was taken out of such a seed-basket as our seed has come from. It brings forth no fruit to perfection';—is not that a picture of so many Christian people? One cannot say that they are not Christians. One cannot say that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... were made in times of ignorance. They suited very well a flat world, and a God who lived in the sky just above us and who used the lightning to destroy his enemies. This God was regarded much as a savage regarded the head of his tribe—as one having the right to reward and punish. And this God, being much greater than a chief of the tribe, could give greater rewards ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... surrounding the house. The autumn sun, rising over the ——shire hills, disclosed a pleasant country; woods brown and mellow varied the fields from which the harvest had been lately carried; a river, gliding between the woods, caught on its surface the somewhat cold gleam of the October sun and sky; at frequent intervals along the banks of the river, tall, cylindrical chimneys, almost like slender round towers, indicated the factories which the trees half concealed; here and there mansions, similar to Crimsworth Hall, occupied ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... winter, however briefly I investigate the earthen surface, riddled with galleries. I find the Tachytes cowering singly in the hot oven formed by the end of a tunnel. If the temperature be mild and the sky clear, she emerges from her retreat in January and February and comes to the surface of the bank to see whether spring is making progress. When the shadows fall and the heat decreases, she reenters ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre |
