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More "Firmament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heard among her brother deities? But Jove, great Jove—old Jove, the King of Olympus, hero among gods and men, how does he carry himself in these councils summoned by his voice? Does he lie there at his ease, with his purple cloak cut from the firmament around his shoulders? Is his thunderbolt ever at his hand to reduce a recreant god to order? Can he proclaim silence in that immortal hall? Is it not there, as elsewhere, in all places, and among all nations, that a king of gods and a king of men is and will be king, rules and will ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... of the more remarkable constellations; and are not without some conception that the issues of human affairs are occasionally influenced, or at least indicated, by the movements of the stars. The Pleiades, for instance, they believe to be seven of their departed countrymen, fixed in the firmament; one eye of each of them appearing in the shape of a star, being the only part that is visible. But it is a common superstition among them, as we have already noticed, that the left eyes of their chiefs, after death, ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... last union were born, Ganesa, the elephant-headed god of wisdom, and Indra, the god of the firmament, both chiefs of inferior divinities, the number of which, if all the objects of adoration of the Hindus be included, ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... as now according, unto your request, I will give you here to understand. I being once laid in my bed, and I could not sleep for thinking on my calendar and practice, I marvelled with myself how it were possible that the firmament should be known, and so largely written of by men, or whether they write true or false, by their own opinions and suppositions, or by due observation and true course of the heavens; behold, I thought my house would have been blown down, so that all my doors and chests ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... their invectives; the ignorant and coarse amongst the priests spoiled everything. The Blessed Sacrament was exposed for a whole week in the churches, and it ended by an announcement to Israel, that their cry had reached the firmament, that David had grown cold to Bathsheba (they did not add, nevertheless, that David preferred another to Bathsheba with his whole heart). But the Duchesse de Fontanges gave offence neither to the Archbishop of Paris nor to ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... had she sat content, Her young unlessoned back to a morning gay, To a solemn noon, to a cloudy firmament, And looked upon ...
— A Father of Women - and other poems • Alice Meynell
... growing dark, and the natural obscurity of the hour was increased by the thickness of the lowering clouds, which overspread the whole firmament of heaven, and seemed to portend a tempest. But from the jaws of the semicircular arch of Roman brick, within which the group was collected, a broad and wavering sheet of light was projected far into the street, and over the fronts of ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... glittering, frosted—a symphony in metals—silver, aluminium, lead—rendered buoyant for the nonce, ethereal—as though the world were really gone Christmas mad, and, having a sudden attack of topsy-turvydom in its inside, had taken to showering its treasures about the firmament, instead of keeping them snugly put away in mines below ground. A sheet of snow, and bitter white rain driving still. A huge building looming black, its many eyes staring into the dark—lidless, bilious, vacant. This is ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... mankind any so effective and brilliant an awakening as the resuscitation of classical literature. It was not one solitary star arising after another at long intervals and far apart in space, but a sudden blazing forth of a whole firmament of light. But that is a phenomenon to all appearance not to be repeated, or, more correctly speaking, not to be completed, since it broke up unfinished, leaving the world in partial darkness. Literature has been ever since wailing the loss of the seventy per cent of Livy's History, of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... occasion has excited. These thousands of human faces, glowing with sympathy and joy, and from the impulses of a common gratitude turned reverently to heaven in this spacious temple of the firmament, proclaim that the day, the place, and the purpose of our assembling have made a deep impression on ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... endowed with energy eternal, with all the wisdom of the ages, and with a strength that can bend the mountains or turn the ocean from its bed, and we begin to be. Oh! how I sicken for that hour when first, like twin stars new to the firmament of heaven, we break in our immortal splendour upon the astonished sight of men. It will please me, I tell thee, Leo, it will please me, to see Powers, Principalities and Dominions, marshalled by their kings and governors, bow themselves before our thrones and humbly crave the liberty to do our ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... avis, our new star of the literary firmament, has come to a complete collapse. Something has snuffed her out; she has ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... clusters, others in a row, or rather alone, at certain distances from each other. A zone of luminous dust, extending from north to south, bifurcated above their heads. Amid these splendours there were vast empty spaces, and the firmament seemed a sea of azure with archipelagoes ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... and on the firmament, the orderly withdrawal of the stars, the calm promise of coming day, the rosy suffusion of the sky and waters, the ineffable splendour that then burst forth, attuned my mind afresh after the discords of the night. Methought that all I looked on said to me, and that all I heard ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... the sturdy north blows from his cheek A blast, that scours the sky, forthwith our air, Clear'd of the rack, that hung on it before, Glitters; and, With his beauties all unveil'd, The firmament looks forth serene, and smiles; Such was my cheer, when Beatrice drove With clear reply the shadows back, and truth Was manifested, as a star in heaven. And when the words were ended, not unlike To iron in the furnace, every cirque Ebullient ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... detonation. In the strange light of the setting moon, while everybody's attention was engrossed by the excitement, the swift oncoming of a thunder-cloud had not been observed by any but Andrew, and it had already climbed half-way to the zenith, blotting out a third of the firmament. This inverted thunder-bolt produced a startling effect upon the over-strained nerves of the crowd. Some cried out with terror, some sobbed with hysterical agony, some shouted in triumph, and it was generally believed that Virginia Waters, who died a maniac many years afterward, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... [i.e., Ra] himself, and therefore in his name which I bear, I can tread on all my enemies. O great Ra, who climbest the heavenly vaults and who sailest in thy boat across the firmament with undisputed authority, do thou save me from that austere god whose eyebrows are as menacing as the balance that weighs the deeds of men. Save me, I pray thee, from these guardians of the passages who will, if they-may, impede my progress. O Tmu, who livest in the august ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... sometimes described as human heads with appended entrails, which issue from the tomb to attack the living during the night watches. The so-called Spectre Huntsman of the Malay Peninsula is said to be a man who scours the firmament with his dogs, vainly seeking for what he could not find on earth—a buck mouse-deer pregnant with male offspring; but he seems to be a living man; there is no statement that he ever died, nor yet that he is a spirit. The incubus ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... into an ocean of blue, immeasurable. There was no end to this azure liquid. Gazing thus, his intelligence became aware of the fact that there are skies of different kinds. This one was not quite like his native firmament. Here was no suggestion of a level space overhead, remote, but still conceivable—a space whereon some god might have sat enthroned, note-book in hand, jotting down men's virtues, and vices, and what not. A sky of this kind was obviously not ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... reached the summit of his power; and the subversion of his throne, with the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in 1814 and 1815, is evidently here symbolized. Napoleon had become the idol of France, which worshipped at the shrine of his glory. With his fall, their sun was stricken from its firmament, and ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... System Address at Gettysburg Address on Mexican Affairs Understanding America Address before the Southern Commercial Congress The State of the Union Trusts and Monopolies Panama Canal Tolls The Tampico Incident In the Firmament of Memory Memorial Day Address at Arlington Closing a Chapter Annapolis Commencement Address The Meaning of Liberty American Neutrality Appeal for Additional Revenue The Opinion of the World The Power of Christian Young Men Annual Address to Congress A Message Address before the United States ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... as I lay in an agony of fear, my soul seemed to be whirled on the wind into the bosom of a thundercloud. I felt the weight of the rolling vapours. I saw a blaze. I was stunned by a roar that shook the firmament. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... There hang, royally suspended, the galleries of diamond and sapphire feebly imitated by human skill in the gardens of Babylon. There rise triumphal arches, fashioned of brightest stars. There are linked together porticoes of suns extended across the spaces of the firmament, like the columns of Palmyra over the sands of the desert. This architecture is alive. The City of God has a soul of its own. There is no mere matter in the abiding places of the Spirit; no death in the locality ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... to themselves to be alone, the only two beings in the universe. In his exaltation, Evariste raised his eyes to the firmament flashing with ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... dust and smoke of a furious bombardment. It seemed to me, too, that the guns on the other fronts had come nearer. Deve Boyun was hidden by a spur of hill, but up in the north, white clouds, like the streamers of evening, were hanging over the Euphrates glen. The whole firmament hummed and twanged like a taut string ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... was so quick that Alex had not time to save himself.-However, she took the incident not only without displeasure but with apparent satisfaction, saying she was very glad to renew her acquaintance with him. She had not seen him since the time of his spouting, "The spacious firmament on high"—"Ye shepherds so cheerful and gay," etc.,—all of which she remembers hearing. Ah—I have never recollected till this instant that I ought to have gone to her the next day !-how shocking!—and now that I have the consciousness, I can do nothing, for I am lame from a little ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... the ground is very firm beneath us, without either inspiration, teaching, or any aid whatever. Since, then, there must be a world Maker, let us judge of His nature by His work. We cannot observe the glories of the firmament, its infinite extent, its beauty, and the Divine skill wherewith every plant and animal hath its wants cared for, without seeing that He is full of wisdom, intelligence, and power. We are still, you will perceive, upon solid ground, without having to call to our aid ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... every side. The moon, in her last quarter, was barely visible—a mere shadow of silver in the sky; so indistinct was his vision, that it seemed to him as though he were looking at the image of the firmament reflected in water, rather than at the stars themselves. Yet, in the certain renewal of his sight, there came to him a gladness which he had not known for many ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... Lesbia, miss, you ask would be enough for me? I cannot sum the total number; nay, that were too tough for me. The sands that o'er Cyrene's shore lie sweetly odoriferous, The stars that sprent the firmament when overly stelliferous— Come, Lezzy, please add all of these, until the whole amount of 'em Will sorely vex the rubbernecks attempting to keep count ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... mists from earth are clouds in heaven: Clouds, slowly castellating in a calm Sublimer than a storm; while brighter breathes O'er the whole firmament the breadth of blue, Because of that excessive purity Of all those hanging snow-white palaces, A gentle contrast, but ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... a fixed star in the firmament of fictional characters as surely as David Harum or Col. Sellers. He is a source of infinite delight, while this story of Mr. Roster's is one of the finest examples of ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... Fletcher," says Lowell, in his lectures on 'Old English Dramatists,' "are as inseparably linked together as those of Castor and Pollux. They are the double star of our poetical firmament, and their beams are so indissolubly mingled that it is vain to attempt any division of them that shall assign to each his rightful share." Theirs was not that dramatic collaboration all too common among the lesser Elizabethan dramatists, at a time when managers, eager to satisfy a restless ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... suggested. In his lectures on science, he says: "When storms are breaking in the heavens, and sometimes long before their commencement, and when their approach has not yet been manifested by any appearances in the firmament, phenomena are observed, apparently sympathetic, proceeding from the deep recesses of the earth, and exhibited under very various forms at its surface." Dr. Lardner cites many instances of fountains which, when a storm is approaching, burst forth with a violent flow ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... in the country, my power, my popularity, my consequence, nay, my character, are all risked; but I have done right, and therefore in the end it must turn out to have been wise. If this fail me, the pillared firmament is rottenness, and earth's ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... contain'd Angels of higher and lower stations, of greater and of lesser degree, express'd in the Scripture by Thrones, Dominions, and Principalities: This, I think, we have as much reason to believe, as we have, that there are Stars in the Firmament (or starry Heavens) of ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... these truths seems inadequate; and the defence which the understanding sets up for the faith, always seems partial and cold. Who ever fully expressed his deepest convictions? The consciousness of the dignity of the moral law affected Kant like the view of the starry firmament, and generated a feeling of the sublime which words could not express; and the religious ecstasy of the saints cannot be confined within the channels of speech, but floods the soul with overmastering power, possessing all its faculties. ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... in a melting mood, I gazed listlessly upon the brazen firmament, with no fellow-feeling for those hot culinary bars. The broiling glow was not at all tempting: I think it would have staggered even the gay salamander that is said to accept so thoroughly the gospel of caloric. And what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... it was instructive as well as ornamental. Three of the bedrooms were on the ground floor and were small apartments. The upstair rooms were much larger, were situated in the roof, and were lit by skylight windows which commanded a limited view of the firmament above but none whatever of the green earth below. These upper rooms were reached by an almost perpendicular staircase surmounted by a trap door, a mode of access convenient enough for the young and active, but not ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... courbait, se tordait, et, sous les sombres voutes, On ne distinguait rien qu'une sombre rougeur Empourprant le profil du monstrueux forgeur. Et l'ouragan l'aidait, etant demon lui-meme. L'Etre, parlant du haut du firmament supreme, Dit:—Que veux-tu de plus?—Et le grand paria, Levant sa tete enorme et triste, lui cria: —Le poitrail du lion et les ailes de l'aigle. Et Dieu jeta, du fond des elements qu'il regle, A l'ouvrier d'orgueil et de rebellion L'aile de l'aigle avec le poitrail du lion. Et le demon reprit son ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... this our Poet was not Inferior to Carew, Lovelace, nor any of those who were accounted the brightest Stars in the Firmament of Poetry. ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... have brought me to the end of my first year at the Academy, and now we come to the events of the second. In June of 1871, the proverbial silver lining, which the darkest cloud is said to have, began to shine very faintly in the West Point firmament, and I thought that at last the darkness of my cadet life was to be dispelled by the appearance above the horizon of another colored cadet. And, indeed, I was not disappointed, for, one day, I was greeted by the familiar face and voice of Mr. H. A. Napier, a former fellow-student at Howard ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... which struck our hero as being most remarkable was the magnitude and dazzling brightness of the host of stars that covered the black firmament. It seemed as if they were magnified in glory, and twinkled so much that the sky seemed, as it were, to tremble with light. A feeling of deep solemnity filled Fred's heart as he gazed upwards; and as he thought upon ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... are favoured with a special season of their own; but the prevailing temperature can scarcely be defined by mounting mercury, neither can it be adequately described. It is during these blazing hot months that the ever-azure firmament seems to blink with blue: that the roads and pavement blister the soles of your feet; and that the gay-coloured house-fronts scorch your clothes of white drill and tan your Anglo-Saxon complexion. The Cubans have a mania for painting the fronts of their town residences ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... it cast shadows at night, as distinct as those made by the moon. No such cometary monster had ever before been seen. People shuddered when they looked at it. It moved with amazing speed, sweeping across the firmament like a besom of destruction. Calculation showed that it was not more than 3,000,000 miles from ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... question perpetually recurred to their minds, 'Where is he who abideth forever?' they lifted up their eyes, and saw, as they thought, beyond sun, and moon, and stars, and all which changes, and will change, the clear blue sky, the boundless firmament of heaven. That never changed, that was always the same. The clouds and storms rolled far below it, and all the bustle of this noisy world; but there the sky was still, as bright and calm as ever. The Almighty Father must be there, unchangeable in the unchangeable heaven; bright, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... there no more to do but to lose a hatchet to make us rich? Now for that; it is as easy as ——, and will cost us but little. Are then at this time of the year the revolutions of the heavens, the constellations of the firmament and aspects of the planets such that whosoever shall lose a hatchet, shall immediately grow rich? Ha, ha, ha! by Jove you shall even be lost and it please you, my dear hatchet! With this they all fairly lost their hatchets out of hand. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... without ceasing. Thus war became sweeter in their eyes even than returning home in their ships. As when some great forest fire is raging upon a mountain top and its light is seen afar, even so as they marched the gleam of their armour flashed up into the firmament of heaven. ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... which 'infinite' belongs—the class representing thoughts of thought—he who has a right to say he thinks at all, feels himself called upon, not to entertain a conception, but simply to direct his mental vision toward some given point, in the intellectual firmament, where lies a nebula never to be resolved. And yet to this very point, which the intellect cannot define, are our spirits forever tending. No artistic creation ever fully pleases unless there is given in it some ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... That which was to be, and to continue under God's dominion, rule and control, God named himself. He called the light, day; the darkness he called night; the dry land he called earth; and the gathering together of the waters, he called seas; and the firmament he called heaven, etc. And what was to be under Adam's dominion, rule and control, Adam named himself, but by God's direction and authority. But mark: Adam did not name himself—for no child ever names himself. But ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... spirits of evil on the mountains, and is therefore termed, "The Thunderer," like the Greek Zeus, and his abode is called, "The Thunder-Home." Ukko is often represented as sitting upon a cloud in the vault of the sky, and bearing on his shoulders the firmament, and therefore he is termed, "The Pivot of the Heavens." He is armed as an omnipotent warrior; his fiery arrows are forged from copper, the lightning is his sword, and the rainbow his bow, still called Ukkon Kaari. ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... gives that sweet and strange affinity which adds the glory of orderly arrangement to its elements, gifting them with the fair variety of change and assimilation that turns the dust into crystal, and separates the waters above the firmament from those below. It is the walking and clinging together that gives power to the winds, weight to the waves, heat to the sunbeams, and stability to the mountains. It is the 'clinging together' which throws our syllables into words, gives metre to poetry, and melody and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... zenith, emitting streams of light. I stood like a statue, and gazed with fear and awe up to the glittering sky. Millions of stars seemed to be dashing across the blue dome of heaven. In fact I thought the whole starry firmament was tumbling down to earth. The neighbours were terror struck: the more enlightened of them were awed at contemplating so vivid a picture of the Apocalyptic image—that of the stars of heaven falling to the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... Russian hearts, is the purpose of these lectures to show. For while the laws of the spirit are ever the same in essence, the character of their manifestation varies with time and place, just as in Nature the same force appears in the firmament as gravitation when it binds star unto star, as attraction when it binds in the molecule atom unto atom, and in man as love when it binds heart unto heart. The phenomena therefore, natural to all literature, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... positions which have already been asserted. Gregory, in writing to William the Conqueror, had used the figures of the sun and moon to illustrate the relations of Church and State. Innocent draws out the analogy in much detail: "As God, the builder of the universe, has set up two lights in the firmament of heaven, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, so for the firmament of the universal Church, which is called by the name of heaven, He has set up two great dignities, the greater to rule souls, as it were ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... heaven were falling upon the earth like the figs cast by the fig-tree which the wind has shaken. The sun, the great luminary of the universe, had become as sackcloth of hair. The moon was blood-red. The firmament was as a scroll rolled away. The archangel Michael, the prince of the heavenly host, appeared glorious and terrible against the sky. With one foot on the sea and one foot on the land he blew from the arch-angelical trumpet the brazen death of time. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... that the darkening firmament does but show the stars, and that when treason and murder surge round the fated chambers of royalty, their foulness and violence do but enhance the loyal self-sacrifice of such doorkeepers as Catherine Douglas, Madame Auguier, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to approach, he caused the boat to be softly and with silence rowed towards the pillar; but ere he came near it, the pillar and cross of light broke up, and cast itself abroad, as it were into a firmament of many stars, which also vanished soon after; and there was nothing left to be seen but a small ark, or chest of cedar, dry and not wet at all with water, though it swam; and in the fore-end of it, which was towards him, grew a small green branch of palm; and when the wise man ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... of our firmament, guide of our Nation, Pride of her children, and honored afar, Let the wide beams of thy full constellation Scatter each cloud that would darken a star! Up with our banner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... seared, as though the lightning's scathe had rent, In the swiftness of its wrath, through the midnight firmament, The darkly deepening clouds; and the shadows dim and murky Of destiny are on me, for ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... "The spacious firmament on high With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... night once more, and made all dim. And only the cold light of the firmament lit thoughts in me restless as the sea on which I tossed, whose moon was dark, yet walked in ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... what men can do who are eager in the pursuit of wealth. Under the influence of such an incentive, railroads, canals, and fortresses spring into being, and fleets bedeck the seas like the stars of the firmament. Money is not wanting when lucrative investment is the end in view. Even professed Christians can collect together heavy sums, when some great enterprise promises a profitable income. They profess, perhaps, to be accumulating money for Christ; but, alas, ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... individuality it has! No two clusters alike; all shades and sizes.... A solitary blue-purple one, fully expanded and rising over the brown leaves or the green moss, its cluster of minute anthers showing like a group of pale stars on its little firmament, is enough to arrest and hold the dullest eye. Then,...there are individual hepaticas, or individual families among them, that are sweet scented. The gift seems as capricious as the gift of genius in families. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... is a wonderful night, Farquhar," he said. "Truly the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... I built up a larger fire and spread my blanket beside it to sleep under the open sky instead of in the deserted house, for the night was soft, warm, and windless. Overhead was a firmament of cloudless blue, with here and there a shining star beginning to show; but away to the south-west a dark line of cloud was rising and spreading, and I felt cheered at the sight, for it was a sign of rain. ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... ridges we looked back upon a wondrous sight. Far away across the fertile plain appeared the town that we had left, and behind it the sun sank. It would seem as though some storm had broken there, although the firmament above us was clear and blue. At least in front of the town two huge pillars of cloud stretched from earth to heaven like the columns of some mighty gateway. One of these pillars was as though it were made of black marble, and the other like to molten gold. ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... moment the thing that had brought him there, and a look of awe and wonder came over his rugged features, as the shepherd, with his face turned upward and his deep voice full of emotion, repeated, "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... of a guilty woman in conformity with the law of the first Church, which has enriched heaven with as many saints and martyrs and confessing souls as there are stars in the firmament?" persisted Veronique, vehemently. "Who said: Confess yourselves to one another? Was it not the disciples, who lived with the Saviour? Let me confess my shame publicly on my knees. It will redeem ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... duties which it imposes. If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, heaven will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty, and human happiness. Auspicious omens cheer us: great examples are before us: our own firmament now shines brightly upon our path: WASHINGTON is in the clear upper sky. These other stars have now joined the American constellation; they circle around their centre, and the heavens beam with a new light. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... make war upon my senses, and treat them as my enemies. My eyes, which have drawn me into a thousand difficulties, see no longer either gold or precious stones, or ivory, or purple; they behold nothing save the water, the firmament and the rocks. The only female who comes within their sight is a swarthy old woman, dry and parched as the Lybian deserts. My ears are no longer courted by those harmonious instruments and voices which have so transported my soul; they hear nothing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... this softened mood, the gods pointed to the firmament where her father's eyes glowed like radiant stars in the northern hemisphere. They told her they had placed them there to show him all honour, and finally added that she might select as husband any of the gods present at ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... by his genius to a height, which lifts him above the reach of the critic. He shines in the firmament of letters like a sun before whose lustre all, Parsee-like, bow down in worship. Preceding generations have read him with reverence and admiration: as one of the greatest masters of history, he must continue to be so read. But though ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... from the southeast; as if from an entrenched camp, to encounter their assailants. There was a fierce action for a few moments, the shouts of the combatants, the heavy discharge of cannon, the rattle of musketry; the tramp of heavy-aimed foot soldiers, the rush of cavalry, being distinctly heard. The firmament trembled with the shock of the contending hosts, and was lurid with the rapid discharges of their artillery. After a short, fierce engagement, the north-western army was beaten back in disorder, but rallied ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... illegitimate, yet esteemed above and beyond all the royal progeny of the proudest intellect, enshrined in the sanctum sanctorum, the veritable holy-of-holies of the human heart. Hope is not a virtue; it is but a rainbow with which Fancy paints the black o'erhanging firmament, a golden shaft of sunlight with which she gilds Life's rugged mountain peaks,—a melody most divinely sweet with which she cheers the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... "firmament" means a solid dome or roof. This firmament, the sky, was supposed to be the floor of Heaven. The firmament had four corners and rested on the mountains, as the eye could plainly see. When God's car was rolled across the floor we heard thunder, and his movements ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... in a most romantic manner for the origin of thunder. A summer-storm was sweeping over the land, and I had sought a temporary shelter in the lodge of a Sioux Indian on the banks of the St. Peters. Vividly flashed the lightning, and an occasional peal of thunder echoed through the firmament. While the storm continued my host and his family paid but little attention to my comfort, for they were all evidently stricken with terror. I endeavored to quell their fears, and for that purpose asked them a variety of questions respecting their ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... fire far up the sooty night Mixt fuels — Labor's Right and Labor's Crime — Sent upward throb on throb of scarlet light Till huge hot blushes in the heavens blent With golden hues of Trade's high firmament. ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... the hills decay and that rivers as the dusty years proceed run feebly and lose themselves at last in desert sands; and in its aeons the very firmament grows old. But evil also is perishable and bad men meet their judge. ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... is too often obsessed with one idea. Across his mental firmament he sees only one blazing word: INJUSTICE. And, fine fellow though he often is, he is inclined to be impatient with any talk of art or beauty. "How can beauty grow in these vile cities?" he cries. "What is the use of ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... themselves to all those who seek them. Here, amongst the waters,—that is, in the mirror of similitude, in those works where shines the brightness of divine goodness and splendour, which works are symbolized by the waters superior and inferior, which are above and below the firmament, he sees the most beautiful bust and face—that is, external power and operation, which it is possible to see, by the habit and act of contemplation and the application of mortal or divine mind, of man ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... the people. The mighty in their pride walk alone to destruction. The humble walk hand in hand with Providence to immortality. Their works survive. When the people of the Colonies were defending their liberties against the might of kings, they chose their banner from the design set in the firmament through all eternity. The flags of the great empires of that day are gone, but the Stars and Stripes remain. It pictures the vision of a people whose eyes were turned to the rising dawn. It represents the hope of a father for his posterity. It was never ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... their votaries, who were numerous as the stars of heaven. I repaired, and built, and completed my work. Outside the temple I fashioned everything with the same care as inside. The mound of earth on which it was built I enlarged like the firmament of the rising stars (?), and I beautified the entire building. Its towers I raised up to heaven, and its roofs I built entirely of brick. An inviolable shrine(?) for their noble godships I laid down near at hand. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... have of the Creator when you behold His creation?" the priest went on in the rapid customary jargon. "Who has decked the heavenly firmament with its lights? Who has clothed the earth in its beauty? How explain it without the Creator?" he said, looking inquiringly ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... basis of life and intelligence; because they worked powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, to make reason and the will of God prevail. With Saint Augustine they said: "Let us not leave Thee alone to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as thou didst before the creation of the firmament, the division of light from darkness; let the children of thy spirit, placed in their firmament, make their light shine upon the earth, mark the division of night and day, and announce the revolution of the times; for the old order is passed, and the ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... a-hawking through the firmament, thou wouldst say? Why, when did I take spleen at a man for standing his ground against me? Roundhead as he is, man, I like him the better of that, not the worse. I hunger and thirst to have another turn with him. I have thought on his passado ever since, and I believe, were ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... your sulphur, and your mercury, Your oil of height, your tree of life, your blood, Your marchesite, your tutie, your magnesia, Your toad, your crow, your dragon, and your panther; Your sun, your moon, your firmament, your adrop, Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heautarit, And then your red man, and your white woman, With all your broths, your menstrues, and materials, Of piss and egg-shells, women's terms, ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... he sits up nights," Gow Johnson said. "The game is with Terry—at last." Then he called to the dispersing gossiping crowd: "Hold on—hold on, you people. I've got news for you. Folks, this is O'Ryan's night. It's his in the starry firmament. Look at him shine," he cried, stretching out his arm towards the heavens, where the glittering galaxy hung near the zenith. "Terry O'Ryan, our O'Ryan—he's struck oil—on his ranch it's been struck. Old Vigon found it. Terry's got his own at last. O'Ryan's in it—in it alone. Now, let's hear ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... only know the fullness of the firmament, the myriad of suns and planets, the brilliancy of the constellations, and the overpowering revelation of the infinite above. In less fervent latitudes one can never feel the bigness of the vault on high, nor sense the intimacy one had here ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the carriages bearing away Savinien, Herzog and his daughter, resounded in the calm starry night. In the villa everything was quiet. Pierre breathed with delight; he instinctively turned his eyes toward the brilliant sky, and in the far-off firmament, the star which he appropriated to himself long ago, and which he had so desperately looked for when he was unhappy, suddenly appeared bright and twinkling. He ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... they gambled. More than one member of both Chambers came there to buy what Paris pays for by its weight in gold,—namely, the amusement of intercourse with anomalous untrammelled women, those meteors of the Parisian firmament who are so difficult to class. There wit reigns; for all can be said, and all is said. Carabine, a rival of the no less celebrated Malaga, had finally inherited the salon of Florine, now Madame Raoul Nathan, and of Madame Schontz, now ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... that it must be seven or eight o'clock. Between the rifts of the lower hills the lake was flashing silver, while where Vermont had been nothing but a mass of shadow, blue-green mountains were emerging in a triple row, from which the last veils of vapor were being dragged up into the firmament On the left, the Adirondacks were receding into translucent dimness, in a lilac haze ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... task well appointed, Like a bevy of beautifal girls in the court of their monarch, Or a regiment of soldiers all bright in new rose-colored armour. Two altars arose between earth and the cloud-speckled firmament; Cain walked in a stern and defiant advance to his altar, A recklessness flashed from his eyes, and passions unconquered, As he scornfully looked on the kneeling, worshipping Abel, Ay scornfully thus he addressed his ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... let fly the white Gae Bulga from the fork of his irresistible right foot. [7]Ferdiad began to defend the ford against Cuchulain, so that the noble Cu arose with the swiftness of a swallow and the wail of the storm-play in the rafters of the firmament, so that he laid hold of the breadth of his two feet of the bed of the ford, in spite of the champion.[7] Ferdiad prepared for the feat according to the testimony thereof. He lowered his shield, so that the spear went over its edge into the watery, water-cold river. And he looked at Cuchulain, ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... flake, and pellicle, All day the hoary meteor fell; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below,— A universe of sky and snow! The old familiar sights of ours Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, Or garden wall, or belt of wood; A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, A fenceless drift what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... in the room. The old, old fashion. The fashion that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. The old, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... radiant with light and life, though he could not have closed them since his arrival at Charing Cross the night before. But midnight was his hour. Raffles was at his best when the stars of the firmament are at theirs; not at Lord's in the light of day, but at dead of night in the historic chambers to which we now repaired. Certainly he had a congenial subject in the celebrated Daniel, "a villain after my own black heart, Bunny! A foeman worthy of ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... fulfilled that night; for though the sun set in its usual course there was no darkness; and on the morrow the sun rose on a land already illumined; a day and a night and another day had been as one day; and this was but one of the signs. A new star appeared in the firmament of the west, even as was seen by the magi in the east; and there were many other marvelous manifestations as the prophets had predicted. All these things occurred on what is now known as the American continent, six hundred ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... to the temple of the sun, but toward Napoleon's box, and, amid their soul-stirring chorus, the high-priest stepped forth from the temple. Advancing to the edge of the stage, he bowed to the imperial sun, and commenced singing in a powerful voice, "The sun rises gloriously on the firmament, illuminating and heating the world; but thou, his greater brother, thou conquerest him, and he drives back his car, acknowledging that, since thou art here, the world needs no other sun." While the high-priest sang these words the temple on the stage suddenly ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... twelve the charms of her person and the graces of her mind caused her to be remarked by persons of her own sex as the star of morning in the bosom of the firmament. Her well-stored memory always enabled her to display the soundness of her judgment. She was so well acquainted with the Koran as to repeat chapters of it at pleasure, and she explained its meaning with a precision that delighted ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... as they are precipitated into the abyss, is described with tremendous discords and strange modulations; but before it closes, the music relates the beauties of the newly created earth springing up "at God's command." Raphael describes the making of the firmament, the raging of the storms, the flashing lightning and rolling thunders, the showers of rain and hail, and the gently falling snow, to an accompaniment which is closely imitative in character. The work of the ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... Be it so then. I feel, and deeply too, that your immortal minds, those gems which were created to sparkle and shine in the firmament of heaven, are in danger of having their lustre for ever tarnished, and their brightness everlastingly hid beneath a thicker darkness than that which once covered ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... the American journalistic firmament in Berlin is Karl Heinrich von Wiegand, the special representative of the New York World. The New York World is not pro-German, but von Wiegand is of direct and noble German origin. Apart from his admitted talents as a newspaper man, his Prussian "von" is of ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue etherial sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great original proclaim. The unwearied sun, from day to day, Does his Creator's power display, And publishes to every land ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... recurred to their minds, 'Where is he who abideth forever?' they lifted up their eyes, and saw, as they thought, beyond sun, and moon, and stars, and all which changes, and will change, the clear blue sky, the boundless firmament of heaven. That never changed, that was always the same. The clouds and storms rolled far below it, and all the bustle of this noisy world; but there the sky was still, as bright and calm as ever. The Almighty Father must ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations. We must realize that human nature is about the most constant thing in the universe and that the essentials of human relationship do not change. We must frequently take our bearings from these fixed stars of our political firmament if we expect to hold a true course. If we examine carefully what we have done, we can determine the more accurately what ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... lower clouds are laid out, all neatly combed by the dry fingers of the East. Below that again is the strong westerly blow through which we rose. Overhead, a film of southerly drifting mist draws a theatrical gauze across the firmament. The moonlight turns the lower strata to silver without a stain except where our shadow underruns us. Bristol and Cardiff Double Lights (those statelily inclined beams over Severnmouth) are dead ahead of us; for we keep the Southern Winter Route. Coventry Central, ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... the latest star in the German musical firmament, was born, Sept. 1, 1854, at Siegburg on the Rhine, and received his earliest musical training at the Cologne Conservatory. He made such rapid progress in his studies, showing special proficiency in composition, ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... THE SUN.—A photometric experiment of Huygens, resumed by Wollaston, a short time before his death, teaches us that 20,000 stars the same size as Sirius, the most brilliant in the firmament, would need to be agglomerated to shed upon our globe a light equal to that ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... quenched full, And the torn members of her hideous corpse; Of lying prophets, the confounded crew, And flames upon the altar fall'n from heaven; Elijah speaking like a potentate Unto the elements, the firmament As heated brass becoming, closed by him; The earth three years without both rain and dew; The dead reviving at Elisha's voice? O, Abner, own in these transcendant deeds, A God such as He was throughout all time. Who knoweth, when He wills, to show His glory, His ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... were glad to join company, a third was beginning to come, and it had led to a more friendly intercourse. Mary sent him away, very happy with some books for them, some new Spanish reading for himself, an astronomical book, and her little celestial globe—for the whole firmament of stars had been by no means lost on him. That interview was her Christmas treat. Well for her that she did not hear Robson say, 'That young man knows how to come over the ladies. I shall keep a sharper look-out ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vigorous and analytic understanding, and when age shall have somewhat tempered her emotional susceptibilities she will shine with the steady light of a planet, reaching her perihelion and taking a permanent place in the firmament of letters. ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... to enter Paradise:" the most encouraging, "O my servants, who have mortified yourselves, despair not of the mercy of God!" that in which are ten points, "God created the heavens and the earth, the revolutions of night and day; also, the firmament over the waters that it might profit man:" that which is believed alike by jews and christians, "The Jew saith that the Christian is in error, and the Christian saith that the Jew is mistaken, they both believe so; and both are in error:" that ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... rapier a-hawking through the firmament, thou wouldst say? Why, when did I take spleen at a man for standing his ground against me? Roundhead as he is, man, I like him the better of that, not the worse. I hunger and thirst to have another turn with him. I have thought on his passado ever since, and I believe, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... for'ard, and inside of three-quarters of an hour his craft was only a pale torch again in the distance. Yes, it was a mistake, Peters—that remark of mine. I don't reckon I'll ever get over being sorry about it. I'd 'a' beat the bully of the firmament if I'd kept ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... the medium of reflection;—for, as with the bounties of the Creator, so with the wonders of His creation—man is too prone to undervalue them in proportion to the frequency with which they are spread before him; and thus the deep azure vault, so often seen in the firmament above, is less likely to attract his attention and engage his meditations, than when the same glorious scene ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... carcass of some dead mule or ox, some jetsam of the desert, lying near at hand, at which my horse was uneasy as I drew rein in contemplation, and which explains the nearness of the beasts of prey, and the long line of zopilotes, or buzzards, which I had observed to cross the fading gleam of the firmament. All is solitary, deserted, peaceful. The day is done, the night has come, "in which no ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... noticed in more northern latitudes a very perceptible difference in the appearance of the firmament. The moon, for instance, on cold, clear nights, presents a silvery, glittering disk, but the soft mellow light of a southern clime ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... Minerals, is it, in like manner, the less admirable, that the handling and use there of rendreth the greatest Pleasures of the World. It is Loves Fire, and Charities Fountain. Yea, if Man and Wife in their house keeping may be esteemed or compared to the Sun and Moon in the Firmament; verily, those merry white or yellow boies, may very well be considered ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... loneliness in his new abode. It was a St. Martin's summer, a 'Springtime of the Dead,' calmly sad and sweet, in which Rome lay all golden, like a city of the Far East, under a milk-white sky, diaphanous as the firmament reflected ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... he spoke to the dusky firmament thickly studded with stars, and just then caught sight of a fleecy silver- rimmed cloud passing swiftly beneath the moon and floating downwards toward the earth,—it was shaped like a white-winged bird, and was here and there tenderly streaked with pink, as though it had just travelled ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... that are intelligent shall shine as with the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... loved him from that night. He cried over my story: that I suppose wins everybody's heart: and we went together, looking at the placid river and the pale blue firmament, very far into the paradise of faith. My tears dropped upon his upturned face; and when the stars came out, and we were told it was time to go back to the house, we went back hand in hand, firm friends for all life ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... became more evident, as the maples shed their crimson and gold and purple rags of summer. The oaks remained, great shaggy masses of dark gold and burning russet; later they took on soft hues, making clearer the blue firmament between the boughs. Daniel watched the autumn trees with pure delight. "He will go to-day," he said of a flaming maple after a night of frost which had crisped the white arches of the grass in his dooryard. All day he sat and watched the ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creatures (or of life) was in the wheels." And above the living creatures was the firmament and the throne of God. So Nature may be material, but it is material interpenetrated by the divine; if you call it a fabric, the woof may be material but the warp is God. This view contains all the truth of materialism ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... Strabus, commenting on the text "In the beginning God created heaven and earth," says: "By heaven he does not mean the visible firmament, but the empyrean, that is, the fiery or intellectual firmament, which is not so styled from its heat, but from its splendor; and which was filled with ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... summer. The months of August and September, however, are favoured with a special season of their own; but the prevailing temperature can scarcely be defined by mounting mercury, neither can it be adequately described. It is during these blazing hot months that the ever-azure firmament seems to blink with blue: that the roads and pavement blister the soles of your feet; and that the gay-coloured house-fronts scorch your clothes of white drill and tan your Anglo-Saxon complexion. The Cubans have ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... you ask would be enough for me? I cannot sum the total number; nay, that were too tough for me. The sands that o'er Cyrene's shore lie sweetly odoriferous, The stars that sprent the firmament when overly stelliferous— Come, Lezzy, please add all of these, until the whole amount of 'em Will sorely vex the rubbernecks attempting to keep count ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... she said in a quiet voice, yet to her ears the words seemed to be uttered with a roar of thunder that echoed through the firmament, and pierced upwards to ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... thatch of chimney-pots, doing violence to the demureness of its respectable streets. Night was falling, and in Piccadilly those strange, gay hats that greet the darkness were coming out like eager, vulgar comets in a dim and muttering firmament. It was just the moment when the outside mood of the huge city begins to undergo a change, to glide from its comparative simplicity of afternoon into its leering complexity of evening. Each twenty-four hours London has its moment of emancipation, ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... in human form, sits benignly, making the sun, moon, and stars, and hanging them from the solid firmament which supports the "heaven above" and overarches the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... rate, Ikey toiled and snipped and basted and pressed and patched and sponged all day in the steamy fetor of a tailor-shop. But when work was done Ikey hitched his wagon to such stars as his firmament ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... This, you may be sure, was touching me very closely, and I began to wish the whole infernal mess at the bottom of the sea. If Jane went, his august majesty, King Henry VIII, would be without a Master of the Dance, just as sure as the stars twinkled in the firmament. It was, however, soon decided that Brandon would have his hands more than full to get off with one woman, and that two would surely spoil the plan. So Jane was to be left behind, full of tribulation and indignation, firmly convinced that ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... They exist very easily in the same room with the microscope, and even in railway carriages: what banishes them is the vacuum in gentleman and lady passengers. How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth, from the farthest firmament to the tender bosom of the mother who nourished us, make poetry for a mind that has no movements of awe and tenderness, no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... vast book which speaks to us unceasingly of God, and it is intelligible to all. If we contemplate the magnificence of the starlit sky we must exclaim with David: "The heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands" (Ps. xvlii). Yet not only the heavens, but also the earth shows us, at every step, the omnipotence of God, His wisdom and love. Mountain and valley, forest and field, river and ocean, they all remind us of God, their creator. Every ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... at last to mount towards heaven in the living body, and in spite of wind and storm, in spite of the greedy maw of old father Time, to be hovering beneath the sun and moon and all the stars of the firmament, where even the unreasoning birds of heaven, attracted by noble instinct, chant their seraphic music, and angels with tails hold their most holy councils? Don't you see? And, while monarchs and potentates become a prey to moths and worms, to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the face of Sextus Was seen among the foes, A yell that rent the firmament From all the town arose. On the house-tops was no woman But spat toward him and hissed, No child but screamed out curses, And shook its ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... thought that one half of the body of Tiamat, which was split up by Marduk, was made into the celestial ocean, and the other half into the terrestrial ocean, in other words, into "the waters that were above" and "the waters that were beneath" the firmament respectively. ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... the ear, could detect; or lying in deep still pools, from the bottom of which gleamed up bright green stones, or yet brighter water-plants, cool in their little grotto, with water for an atmosphere and a firmament, through which the sun-rays came, washed of their burning heat, but undimmed of their splendour. He would lie for an hour by the side of a hill-streamlet; he would stand gazing into a muddy pool, left on the road by last night's rain. Once, in such a brown-yellow pool, he beheld a glory—the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... should be gratuitously evil, having no temptation to ill, but the ill itself. It was foul, and I loved it; I loved to perish, I loved mine own fault, not that for which I was faulty, but my fault itself. Foul soul, falling from Thy firmament to utter destruction; not seeking aught through the shame, but the ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... and, fortunately, unobserved by this vast herd of elephants as they drifted on and away, following a leader as does a herd of sheep. They browsed from growing herbage which they encountered as they traveled, and now and again shook the firmament with their deep bellowing.(20) ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... thrall." The men of wealthy Sestos every year, For his sake whom their goddess held so dear, Rose-cheek'd Adonis, kept a solemn feast: Thither resorted many a wandering guest To meet their loves: such as had none at all, Came lovers home from this great festival; For every street, like to a firmament, Glister'd with breathing stars, who, where they went, Frighted the melancholy earth, which deem'd Eternal heaven to burn, for so it seem'd, As if another Phaeton had got The guidance of the sun's rich ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... raindrop, then 'his starting-point was the rain' (i. 131). Roth preferred 'idh,' 'indh,' to kindle; and later, his taste and fancy led him to 'ir,' or 'irv,' to have power over. He is variously regarded as god of 'bright firmament,' of air, of thunderstorm personified, and so forth. {110} His name is not detected among other Aryan gods, and his birth may be after the 'Aryan Separation' (ii. 752). But surely his name, even so, might have been carried to the Greeks? This, at ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... therefore, this cause is also eternal, infinite, indestructible, without limits, omnipotent and omnipresent;—that the central point of influence (strength) from whence this cause principally acts, is the blue firmament (tien) from whence its emanations spread over the whole universe;—that it is, therefore, the supreme duty of the prince, in the name of his subjects, to present offerings to tien, and particularly at the ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... time we had reconnoitred thus far the night became overcast, and a thick bank of clouds began to rise to windward; some heavy drops of rain fell, and the thunder grumbled at a distance. The black veil crept gradually on, until it shrouded the whole firmament, and left us in as dark a night as ever poor devils were out in. By-and-by a narrow streak of bright moonlight appeared under the lower-edge of the bank, defining the dark outlines of the tumbling multitudinous ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... evening suit and open waistcoat. Spirits don't freeze, but when one's in fleshly form, well ... in brief, I didn't think, and set off, and you know in those ethereal spaces, in the water that is above the firmament, there's such a frost ... at least one can't call it frost, you can fancy, 150 degrees below zero! You know the game the village girls play—they invite the unwary to lick an ax in thirty degrees of frost, the tongue instantly freezes to it and ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... look in the furthest saloon?" asked the learned man. "Was it there as in the fresh woods? Was it there as in a holy church? Were the saloons like the starlit firmament when we stand ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... man to strain his littleness against, But o'er me hangs the majesty of heaven, Bright with the glory of the noontide sun; Beneath, the Earth, that whispers "Thou art dust, "Gat like a child forth from my fertile womb, "And bone of my bone, thus, flesh of my flesh!" Thou glorious firmament that like God's love Enfoldest all creation utterly, Making the pathway of the wheeling spheres A splendour, and a triumph, and a joy, That on the brightness of thine azure breast Settest the constellated stars like ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Ocean, Colored with gold from the glow of the morning. Saga is Spring-time, Writ on the green of the fresh springing field, with flowers for letters. Balder, the kingly, is pictured there, throned on the sun at midsummer, Which pours from the firmament riches untold,— personified goodness; For lights are the good, radiant, resplendent, but the evil are darkness. Constantly rising the sun groweth weary; the good also falter, Giddy with walking precipitous heights; sighing they downward Sink to the land of the shades,—down to Hel. That is of Balder ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... gloriously from their sapphire thrones, and a silvery gush played amidst the swaying foliage, where the rain-drops glistened on their leaflet platforms like so many diamonds. Then the lucid milky-way, whose loveliness flushes the firmament, bent itself across the concave above, one broad flame of pure transparent white, as if some burning orb had fled along the sky with so swift a flight, that, for a moment, it had left its lustre in the vault of heaven. Gradually all was lulled into stillness, and nature ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... in bonds as bound with them; and he powerfully illustrates the diabolism of that system which keeps in chains and darkness a host of minds, which, if free and enlightened, would shine among men like stars in a firmament." ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... of the land, hove upward to the eye, verdant and smooth; while the fine oaks of the park formed a shadowy background to the picture, inland. Seaward, the ocean was glittering, like a reversed plane of the firmament, far as eye could reach. If our own hemisphere, or rather this latitude, may boast of purer skies than are enjoyed by the mother country, the latter has a vast superiority in the tint of the water. While the whole American coast is bounded by a dull-looking sheet of sea-green, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 30th, more memorable than the disgraced Sunday, December 3rd, the SUN was on its way towards the west: in vain some scattered clouds would hamper its splendour—the god in the firmament generously ornamented them with golden fringes, and thus patches of blue sky far off were allowed to the sight, through the gilded ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... such a rise in the ground seawards, that the broad ocean was invisible till they were half way up the grassy down. Then right and left they began to see the nether firmament, stretching away infinitely. But the happy lovers paused not till they stood upon the loftiest breezy knoll, and seemed alone together between the blue cloudless heaven and another azure-sphere which lay ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... habitues of the house supped there when they pleased. After supper they gambled. More than one member of both Chambers came there to buy what Paris pays for by its weight in gold,—namely, the amusement of intercourse with anomalous untrammelled women, those meteors of the Parisian firmament who are so difficult to class. There wit reigns; for all can be said, and all is said. Carabine, a rival of the no less celebrated Malaga, had finally inherited the salon of Florine, now Madame Raoul Nathan, and of Madame Schontz, now wife ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... Intent, the weary months of toil, difficulty and danger as Angria's prisoner, were past; and it was with whole-hearted joyousness he realized that he was now on his way to Bombay, where Clive was—Clive, the hero who was as a fixed star in his mental firmament. ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... firmament there are sometimes two suns which determine the path of one planet, and in certain cases suns of different colours shine around a single planet, now with red light, now with green, and then simultaneously illumine and flood it with motley colours: so we modern men, owing to the complicated mechanism ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Estes, the gentleman who is going to be so very kind as to put all these stories into a book for me, (for neither my dog nor I could possibly do that for ourselves, and I don't know of any book-binding star in the whole firmament,) says he really cannot undertake to print any more of my nonsense at present, as he has many grave and learned books to publish. It is my private opinion that there is often as much moonshine in grave and learned books as there ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... rose With rallying shout through the starred firmament, And with a mighty war-cry both the hosts Encountering closed. Nor longer then did Jove Curb down his force, but sudden in his soul There grew dilated strength, and it was filled With his omnipotence; his whole of might Broke from him, and the godhead ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... concern with the masses is as SIGNS, sciences may be founded thereon of the highest use and dignity. Such, for instance, is the sublime science of astronomy, having for its objects the vast masses which "God placed in the firmament of the heaven to be for signs and for seasons, for days and years." For the whole doctrine of physics may be reduced to three great divisions: First, quantitative motion, which is proportioned to the quantity of matter exclusively. This is ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... it had been; and it was as though the firmament had been rolled up before his eyes, exposing the everlasting mysteries, when he saw his wife in the arms of the master-carpenter. It ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... nature will certainly learn that Science has nothing to fear from the teaching of Revelation, not even from the claim to miraculous power. For most certainly both Science and Revelation come from one and the same God; 'the heavens declare His glory, and the firmament showeth His handywork; His law is perfect, converting the soul; His testimony is sure, ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... a beautiful calm night, and a half moon hung silver in the sky. The stars, far brighter than they ever appear in England, twinkled in the blue firmament, behind the mighty peak of Etna. It was not really dark, and it was quite possible to see the main outlines of most of the features of the landscape. Everard walked along cheerily. So far he had met with no hindrance. ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... I might hold in my hand the baton of heaven's choir. Then would I lead those celestial musicians through such a grand plain chant as time has never dreamt of, nor has eternity yet heard it; so that rank on rank of angels and saints should take up the song, until the arches of the outer firmament rang again, and the stars chimed together; and all the untold hierarchy of archangelic voice and heavenly instrument should cry, as with one soul, the confession of this heart of ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... not a breath. The smoke mounted straight, straight and slowly up the pale steps of the firmament. ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... hermit souls that live withdrawn In the peace of their self-content; There are souls, like stars, that dwell apart In a fellowless firmament; There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths Where highways never ran— But let me live by the side of the road And ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... Alpine scenery and the charm of the lovely queen of the Swiss valleys burst on their view. Mont Blanc, already seen from the north, seemed to lift its snowy drapery higher into the blue sky, and stood out more majestic in its crystallized peaks when seen from the bridges of the Rhone. Another firmament was seen through the clear azure water of the beautiful lake; and although the air was cold and fresh in the icy chill of the mountains, and nature stripped of her green, yet our young heroines were charmed with their first view of the city, and rejoiced ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... ruined and brought to poverty by the minister's hens." This cry grated upon the ears of the manse housekeeper, who by and by thought it her duty to go out and reason with the elder. "It's no' the minister's hens ava that's to blame, it's the craws o' the firmament." "It's the hens." "No, the craws." "Hens I declare!" "You're a deceitful impostor!" said the housekeeper. Now, no self-respecting elder could stand that. Boiling with wrath as he was, he remembered his ecclesiastical status, merely remarking that there was work for ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... was at the side of Boone, and the other three men were posted as before described. The hounds had been sent back to their lair in the stable. Not a motion, animate or inanimate, save the occasional shooting of the stars in the begemmed firmament, ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... in view was on the earth, and there it is described as fallen. A star is a symbol either of a civil ruler or of a religious teacher, the symbols in connection deciding whether it is set in the political or the ecclesiastical firmament. But this was not such a star as He who walketh in the midst of the golden candle-sticks holdeth in his right hand, but it was a fallen star, indicating that it was the propagator of a ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... affirm that their institution is of Divine ordination, that its bases are laid in the nature of man. Is anything, then, of God's contriving endangered by inquiry? Was it the system of the universe, or the monks, that trembled at the telescope of Galileo? Did the circulation of the firmament stop in terror because Newton laid his daring finger on its pulse? But it is idle to discuss a proposition so monstrous. There is no right of sanctuary for a crime against humanity, and they who drag ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... enough to praise God that thou hadst the luck to fall; for hadst thou not fallen, be sure that, no sooner wert thou asleep, than thou hadst been knocked on the head, and lost not only thy money but thy life. But what boots it now to bewail thee? Thou mightest as soon pluck a star from the firmament as recover a single denier; nay, 'tis as much as thy life is worth if he do but hear that thou breathest ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... weak spots of light outside to mark the watchmen on their rounds. We did not use the telescope,[3] but there was scarcely an hour when one or the other of the men was not sitting on a cross-piece up in the dome of the little instrument room, casting tense searching gaze into the black, starry firmament. A ship might appear at any time now—a rescue ship from Earth, or the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... dream. Remembering that this was Gosnold House, the focal point of America's most self-sufficient summer colony, and that all these subdued and inarticulate masqueraders were personages daily exploited by the press as the brightest stars in the social firmament, the incongruity of this dumb gathering seemed as glaring, as bizarre as anything her ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... replied Bearwarden, "he is the right sort. When he gave that promise I knew his men would be there." They soon perceived that they had reached the void of space, for, though the sun blazed with a splendour they had never before seen, the firmament was intensely black, and the stars shone as at midnight. Here they began to change their course to a curve beginning with a spiral, by charging the Callisto apergetically, and directing the current towards the moon, to act as an aid to the lunar attraction, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... still gazed upward into the deep arch of the firmament and had lifted his hands to pray, a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith and hid the brightening stars. The blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in the air, as if ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... spread thy tent, Silence, build up thy co-eternal wall. Death, who art silent and dark, this firmament Is thine, these withered worlds—Oh, take them all! Pearls dead and lustreless, float back to Death,— You from the sun-dust born and starry spray, Life set you free and warmed you with his breath A day, and Night hath fallen on that day. Float back to Death, pearls dead and lustreless, ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... encompass what was out there. This was a spaceship! A small globular thing of white metal. He could see a rim of it, like a flat ring some ten feet beneath him. A spaceship, and obviously it had left the Earth! There was a black firmament—dead-black monstrous abyss with white blazing points of stars. And then, down below and to one side there was just an edge of a great globe visible. The Earth, with the sunlight edging its sweeping crescent limb—the Earth, down there with a familiar coastline ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... to this act of duty by the laudatory terms in which the volume has been hailed by certain contemporary journalists. Had Mr Patmore's injudicious friends not thought proper to announce him to the world as the brightest rising star in the poetical firmament of Young England, we would probably have allowed his effusions to die of their own utter insignificance. But since they have acted as they have done, we too must be permitted to express our opinion of their merits; and our deliberate judgment is, that the weakest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... telephone call—upon his slender capital. A too prolonged and unaccounted-for absence from home, and old Jason, in his anxious, blundering solicitude, would have the fat in the fire at that end—and the city, and the social firmament thereof, would be humming with the startling news of the disappearance of a well-known millionaire. The complications that would then ensue, with himself powerless to lift a finger, Jimmie Dale did not care to think about—such a contretemps must at ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... stars glistened faintly. I dipped under the fan of water and took my stand in the hollow behind it. There was no moon, but my telescope was inclined, as it were, at a generous angle, and a section of the firmament was open before me. My heart beat fast as I looked through ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... eternal restless change Self-fed and self-consumed. If this fail, The pillared firmament ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... we worship the heaven-realm's Warder, The Maker's might and his mind's thought, The glory-father's work as he every wonder, Lord everlasting, of old established. He first fashioned the firmament for mortals, Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator. Then the midearth mankind's Warder, Lord everlasting, afterwards wrought, For men a garden, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... captain swore, raising his eyes to heaven, and a gruff voice answered him from the place he swore at, and certain machinery, also in the firmament, began to clack, and the glittering, steel-shod nose of that trunk burrowed into the wheat, and the wheat quivered and sunk upon the instant as water sinks when the siphon sucks, because the steel buckets within the trunk were flying ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... fame. He has absolutely "no fellow in the firmament" of literature. He is the only fabulist, of any age or any nation, that, on the score simply of his fables, is admitted to be poet as well as fabulist. There is perhaps no other literary name whatever among the French, by long proof more secure, than is La Fontaine's, of universal and of immortal ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... All heaven seem'd sweeping down to swell the main; And the swol'n main, ascending to invade Celestial regions, soak'd with floods each sail: And ocean's briny waters mix'd with rain. No light the firmament possess'd, and night Frown'd blacker through the tempest. Lightning oft Reft the thick gloom, and gave a brilliant blaze; And while the lightnings ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... it would be this. Yet, of all men, astronomers apparently have had the most wedded attachment to earth. Galileo, Newton, La Place, Herschel,—these are the royal names, the fixed stars, set, as it were, in that very firmament which for so many years they searched with telescopic eye. And yet neither of them lived less than seventy-eight years. As for the men of natural science, it looks as though they were spared by some Providential provision, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... was far distant, perhaps four or five miles away, and yet the wild heavens were aglow with strange flashing fires, the reflections of the bombs and star-shells which paled the ineffectual lights of the firmament. Battle! Schloss Szolnok, too, should see battle—his own with Goritz! But Renwick would ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... well, that not he and his only, but the very barbarous nations of the Poictevins, Bretons, Manceaux, and those that dwell beyond the isles of the Canaries, and that of Isabella, have thought it as easy to pull down the firmament, and to set up the depths above the clouds, as to make a breach in your alliance; and have been so afraid of it in their enterprises that they have never dared to provoke, incense, or endamage the one for fear of the other. Nay, which is more, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of the morning was succeeded, later in the day, by a sharp breathing from Russian wastes: the cold zone sighed over the temperate zone, and froze it fast. A heavy firmament, dull, and thick with snow, sailed up from the north, and settled over expectant Europe. Towards afternoon began the descent. I feared no carriage would come, the white tempest raged so dense and wild. But trust my godmother! Once having asked, she would have ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... proved that the soul is not immortal. And as in time past we felt no ill, when the Phoenicians were pouring in to battle on every front, when the world rocked with the shock and tumult of war and shivered from centre to firmament, when all mankind on sea and land must fall under the victor's empire and victory was in doubt—so, when we have ceased to be, when body and soul, whose union is our being, have been parted, then nothing can touch us—we shall not be—and nothing can make us ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... is matter; "Bohu" [Hebrew: Bohu Bo hu] signifies that through which matter gains existence, hence form. "Water" (Heb. Mayim) is also a general word for any of the various forms, whereas "light" (Heb. Or) stands for the pure subsistent form. By "firmament" (Heb. Rakia') is meant the second kind of form which unites with the pure matter in a permanent and unchangeable manner. "Let there be a firmanent in the midst of the waters" (Gen. 1, 6) indicates ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... would never come back. He gazed wistfully at the world beneath him, and acknowledged to himself that it was a far happier kind of life to be a shepherd at the foot of a mountain, than to stand on its dizzy summit, and bear up the firmament with his might and main. For, of course, as you will easily understand, Hercules had an immense responsibility on his mind, as well as a weight on his head and shoulders. Why, if he did not stand perfectly still, and keep the sky immovable, the sun would perhaps be put ajar! Or, after nightfall, ...
— The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... flower. But such flushes of color were as false notes of the earth, as harmonies of summer thrust into the wrong places and become discords. The time for them was not yet. The hour called for hardy adventurous things, awakened out of their cold sleep on the rocks. The blue of the firmament was not dark summer blue but seemed the sky's first pale response to the sun. The sun was not rich summer gold but flashed silver rays. The ground scattered no odors; all was the budding youth ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... when a perfect Babel of voices stuns us, and on every side are pretenders to the throne which they fancy vacant, let us joyfully welcome all change, and hopefully anticipate the future. Lifting our eyes from the world, let us fix them on the likeness of a throne above the firmament that is above the cherubs, and rejoice since there we behold 'the likeness as the appearance of a man upon it.' 'Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... opened his eyes, which had remained closed in prayerful meditation during his rapid descent, he found himself in a vast vault, bespangled overhead with luminous points like the starred firmament. It was also lighted by a yellow glow that seemed to proceed from a mighty sea or lake that occupied the centre of the chamber. Around this subterranean sea dusky figures flitted, bearing ladles filled with the yellow fluid, which they had replenished ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... infancy of astronomy the moon and all the planets of our solar system were supposed to be gliding along over the smooth blue firmament like a boat upon smooth water or a sleigh upon ice. The blue vault was a solid substance; hence the word firmament. In this vault were set the "fixed" stars, and of course the moon or any planet passing across it might run straight into the constellation Leo or some other dreadful beast; and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... afraid, you have sometimes misused. TIME, this is TOBY, M.P., a humble but faithful member of my terrestrial suite. I am showing the young fellow round, TOBY, and we looked in on you, hearing that you had a Parliament that should serve as a model for the firmament." ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... with a smile, That I may venge my noble brother's death; And in the midst of stately Troinouant, I'll build a temple to thy deity Of perfect marble and of Iacinthe stones, That it shall pass the high Pyramids, Which with their top surmount the firmament. ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... paused for a moment to admire a gem of architecture wrenched bodily from its Cinque Cento setting by Brunelleschi, and transplanted to this new land to serve the opulent need of a vendor of precious stones and metals. In the strip of dark blue firmament visible above the admirably proportioned cornice he caught sight of two planets flaming high in the west, and in close juxtaposition. Necessity had made him somewhat of an astronomer, and he had studied Chinese astrology as a ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... success of your statement, which I have read with very great interest. John Brown was like a star and still shines in the firmament. We could not have done ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... low in the obscure east, Weak and morose the moon hung, sickly gray; Around its disc the storm mists, cracked and creased, Wove an enormous web, wherein it lay Like some white spider hungry for its prey. Vindictive looked the scowling firmament, In which each star, that flashed a dagger ray, Seemed filled with malice of ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... is the purpose of these lectures to show. For while the laws of the spirit are ever the same in essence, the character of their manifestation varies with time and place, just as in Nature the same force appears in the firmament as gravitation when it binds star unto star, as attraction when it binds in the molecule atom unto atom, and in man as love when it binds heart unto heart. The phenomena therefore, natural to all literature, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... has not thought at all, he is a fool indeed. In either case the 'future' and the 'eternal' seem so far removed that they seem to be an 'eternal futurity.' Such parties look at that distant future much as children at the stars; it is a point, an invisible speck, in the firmament. A sixpence held near the eye appears larger; and brought sufficiently close shuts out the universe altogether. But let us also forget the future, and have a ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... and when Heidi wandered homewards, one twinkling star after another appeared in the sky. Heidi stood still every few minutes, looking up to the firmament in wonder. When she arrived home, her grandfather also was looking up to the stars, murmuring to himself: "What a wonderful month!—one day clearer than the other. The herbs will be fine and strong ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... my Lord in the manger of the ass: I strengthened Moses through the water of Jordan; I have been in the firmament with Mary Magdalene; I have obtained the muse from the cauldron of Caridwen; I have been bard of the harp to Lleon of Lochlin. I have been on the White Hill, in the court of Cynvelyn, For a day and a year in stocks and fetters, I have suffered hunger for the Son of the Virgin, I have been fostered ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... Paris, Jean Beaupere, rector in 1412; Thomas Fiefve, rector in 1427; Guillaume Erart, Nicolas Midi,[2167] and that young doctor, abounding in knowledge and in modesty, the brightest star in the Christian firmament of the day, Thomas de Courcelles.[2168] The Lord Bishop is bent upon turning the tribunal, which is to try Jeanne, into a veritable synod; it is indeed a provincial council, before which she is cited. Moreover, in effect, it is not only Jeanne the Maid, but Charles of Valois, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... charms, it is certainly the gem of the woods. What an individuality it has! No two clusters alike; all shades and sizes.... A solitary blue-purple one, fully expanded and rising over the brown leaves or the green moss, its cluster of minute anthers showing like a group of pale stars on its little firmament, is enough to arrest and hold the dullest eye. Then,...there are individual hepaticas, or individual families among them, that are sweet scented. The gift seems as capricious as the gift of genius in families. You cannot tell which the fragrant ones are ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... one important sense permanent fixtures in the church. According to chapter 1:20, stars are sometimes used to represent Christian ministers, the analogy as light-givers being obvious. "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... to describe the personal attraction of Tennyson as it is difficult to describe that of any one of his great contemporaries, we do not find the same relations existing between him and them as regards his place in the firmament of English poetry. In a country with a composite language such as ours, it may be affirmed with special emphasis, that there are two kinds of poetry; one appealing to the uncultivated masses, whose vocabulary is of the narrowest; the other appealing to the few who, ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the State took part in it; but the most remarkable feature of the celebration was the roofing of the Merceria, all the way from St. Mark's to Rialto, with fine blue cloth, studded with golden stars to represent the firmament, as the shopkeepers imagined it. The pictures of the famous painters of that day, Titian, Tintoretto, Palma, and the rest, were exposed under this canopy, at the end near Rialto. Later, the Venetian victories over the Turks at ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Gods iudgements, heere shine they in their glory. Chast Heraclide thy bloud is laid vp in heauens treasurie, not one drop of it was lost, but lent out to vsurie: water powred forth sinkes downe quietly into the earth, but bloud spilt on the ground sprinkles vp to the firmament. Murder is wide-mouthd, and will not let God rest till he grant reuenge. Not onely the bloud of the slaughtred innocent but the soule ascendeth to his throne, and there cries out & exclaimes for iustice and recompence. ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... whose name is, perhaps, new to some of our readers, so far does it lie from the surface of literature and history. We have seen, too, that she was only one among a crowd—one in a firmament of feminine stars which, when once the biographical telescope is turned upon them, appear scarcely less remarkable and interesting. Now, if the reader recollects what was the position and average intellectual character of women in the high society ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... assailants. There was a fierce action for a few moments, the shouts of the combatants, the heavy discharge of cannon, the rattle of musketry; the tramp of heavy-aimed foot soldiers, the rush of cavalry, being distinctly heard. The firmament trembled with the shock of the contending hosts, and was lurid with the rapid discharges of their artillery. After a short, fierce engagement, the north-western army was beaten back in disorder, but rallied again, after a breathing-time, formed again into solid column, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in the woods on a lovely morning at sunrise. The brilliant sun, rising in a flood of light, pierces through the thin haze of morning, converting the countless myriads of dewdrops that hang on tree and bush into sparkling diamonds, and burnishing the motionless flood of water, till a new and mighty firmament is reflected in the wave; as if Nature, rising early from her couch, paused to gaze with admiration on her resplendent image reflected in the depths of her own matchless mirror. The profound stillness, too, broken only by ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... whereon the firmament Seemed to repose as props, so fair in show Are lovely gardens, and of such extent, As even would be hard to have below. Clustering 'twixt lucid tower or battlement, Green odoriferous shrubs are seen to grow, Which through the summer and the winter shoot, And teem with beauteous ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Wherewith she, for her foolish fear, Says trembling, 'Do you love me. Dear?' And I reply, 'Sweetest, I vow I never loved but half till now.' She turns her face to the wall at this, And says, 'Go, Love, 'tis too much bliss.' And then a sudden pulse is sent About the sounding firmament In smitings as of silver bars; The bright disorder of the stars Is solved by music; far and near, Through infinite distinctions clear, Their twofold voices' deeper tone Utters the Name which all things own, And each ecstatic treble dwells On one whereof none other ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... and the decades drifted by, and the spectacle of the marvelous child's meteor flight across the war firmament of France and its extinction in the smoke-clouds of the stake receded deeper and deeper into the past and grew ever more strange, and wonderful, and divine, and pathetic, I came to comprehend and recognize her at last for what she was—the most noble life that was ever born into ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is in a state of agitation as when the solid earth trembles. It is also evident that the sun, moon, and stars bear the same analagous relationship to the earth that kings, rulers, and princes do to the body politic; while the firmament of heaven is analagous to the entire fabric of civil government, the symbolic heaven in which the symbolic orbs are ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... and scriptures, with many others of like nature, were in those days made to spangle in mine eyes; so that I have cause to say, Praise ye the Lord. Praise God in His sanctuary, praise Him in the firmament of His power; praise Him for His mighty acts: praise Him according to His excellent greatness. Psalm ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... her betwixt us and then suddenly with a soft, murmurous cry, she lifted her arms to the glory of the wide firmament above us and with shuddering sigh let them slowly fall, and with this sigh the strange, wild soul of her sped away back to the ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... fixed star in the firmament of fictional characters as surely as David Harum or Col. Sellers. He is a source of infinite delight, while this story of Mr. Roster's is one of the finest examples of ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... who seek them. Here, amongst the waters,—that is, in the mirror of similitude, in those works where shines the brightness of divine goodness and splendour, which works are symbolized by the waters superior and inferior, which are above and below the firmament, he sees the most beautiful bust and face—that is, external power and operation, which it is possible to see, by the habit and act of contemplation and the application of mortal or divine mind, of man or ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... hear with mine own ears, this adoration of the Christ, at which my teachers scoff. But I was caught up in a mighty wave of organ-music that surged from this low earth heavenwards to break against the footstool of God in the crystal firmament. And suddenly I knew what my soul was pining for. I knew the meaning of that restless craving that has always devoured me, though I spake not thereof, those strange hauntings, those dim perceptions—in a flash I ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... with their heads buried in the ant-hills, they could not communicate with each other even by signs. At last they fell into a state of stupor and lost all recollection. But an Almighty Providence watched over them, and during their state of insensibility the clouds again rose and covered the firmament, and this time they did not rise in mockery; for, before the day was closed, torrents descended from them ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... never sharp, No discord in his harp, He made such sweetness I was discontent; He knew not the desire To rise from warmth to fire, And with his magic rend the firmament. ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... blank verse, which Tasso began under the roof of his friend at Naples. This work is now very little known, but it is worthy of being read, if only for the lofty dignity of its style, and the beauty of some of its descriptive parts, particularly the creation of light on the first day, and of the firmament on the second, and the episode of the Phoenix on the fifth. Its association with Milton's far grander work, as literary twins laid for a while in the same cradle, will always invest it with deep ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
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