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Belfry   /bˈɛlfri/   Listen
Belfry

noun
1.
A bell tower; usually stands alone unattached to a building.  Synonym: campanile.
2.
A room (often at the top of a tower) where bells are hung.






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"Belfry" Quotes from Famous Books



... outside and quite separate from the sacred edifice, like an ecclesiastical functionary whose own soul has never entered into the Holy of holies. No; the parish of Kulleby had its pride in a great new wooden sanctuary, with nothing about its exterior, from foundation to belfry, that might not be seen in any Protestant land whatever. Crowning the top of a green hill that rose in the midst of a wide stretch of rolling meadows stood the simple building. To it came on Sunday the rustics of the parish as regularly as they went to their week-day work. Only ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker

... the solid walls, the array of towers, the high belfry, the iron gates, and the ponderous drawbridges of the Chateau de Lomervo; and many are the dependent buildings, courts, and gardens, surrounded by the thick copse wood that covers its domain, which extends over three neighbouring hills. Under the principal facade ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... you of Ryswick, and soon come to the church of Fonthill Gifford. This church is perfectly unique in form, its architecture purely Italian; one would think it was designed by Palladio. There is a pretty portico supported by four tall Doric columns, and its belfry is a regular cupola. We at last gained the inn, and were shown into a lovely parlour that savoured of the refined taste that once reigned in this happy solitude. It is lofty, spacious, and surrounded by oak panels; it has a charming bow ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown

... ago, a soldier doing duty at the castle of Cape Town, kept a tame baboon for his amusement. One evening it broke its chains unknown to him. In the night, climbing up into the belfry, it began to play with, and ring the bell. Immediately the whole place was in an uproar; some great danger was apprehended. Many thought that the castle was on fire; others, that an enemy had entered the bay, and the soldiers began actually to turn out, when ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst

... new three-hundred-foot sky-line as Trinity steeple once lifted above lower Broadway. We aspire still. Nor is the old Judson tower on Washington Square yet dwarfed. How many red sunsets have I seen glow through its belfry windows, while the tower itself was a black silhouette against the sky, and down in the shadowy Square the night lamps began to come out, or the asphalt, drenched by a shower, shone as if molten copper had been rained upon it! In how many deep, starlit nights have I thrown open my window ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... Padres must have brought with them of Spain and the Moorish seal that is set upon it! Here we have evidence of it painfully wrought out by the hands of rude Indian artisans. The ancient bells have been carried away into unknown parts; the owl hoots in the belfry; the hills are shown of their conventual tenements; while the wind and the rain and a whole heartless company of iconoclasts have it ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... of trumpet blowing occurs at an eclipse of the moon; and, to draw the theory out to a thin thread, anyone who has lived in a small German Protestant town will remember the chorals which are so often played before sunrise by a band of trumpets, horns, and trombones from the belfry of some church tower. Almost up to the end of the last century trombones were intimately connected with the church service; and if we look back to Zoroaster we find the sacerdotal character of this species of ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... French nun in blue robes tugged at a rope depending from the belfry, and above us the bells rang out from two tiny towers. She looked curiously at me and my savage companion, her pale peasant's face hard, homely, unhealthy; then she kicked at a big dog who was trying to drink the holy water from the clam-shell ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... cleared off, and the moat is glistening in the moonlight, and the old trees are silvered over and blackened alternately by its beams; the church tower stands out massively against the sky. How dark the old belfry looks on such a night as this, contrasting with the white tombstones in the churchyard, and the slated roof shimmering above the aisle! There is a faint breeze sighing amongst the few remaining leaves, now rising into a pleading whisper, now dying away with a sad, unearthly ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... special commissary, "you may just as well keep Suzanne company: it is her last evening. Good-bye for the present, children. You can be sure that the two conspirators will be back when the belfry-clock ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... for the purpose of visiting by twilight that solitary Isle of St Clements, where Monks exchange the voluntary seclusion for penal dungeons, (l'un vaut bien l'autre!) the sky glowing with its last light, lingered over its tall belfry and few old trees, and a sea as smooth as a crystal pavement slept at the base of its grim walls, all in vain; Campanile, Convent, Grove, and that pyramidal Powder Magazine, looked obdurately sullen enough to tell their own uses, had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... moment the painted—glass windows trembled under the stroke of a large clock from some neighboring belfry. This suddenly turned ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience

... curious punishment was inflicted upon the priest who proved false to his own vows of chastity, and there is a most amusing old ballad—by no means cleanly in its language—purporting to be the lament of a priest suspended in the iron cage, appointed for the purpose, from the belfry of the Campanile San Marco, and enduring the jeers and insults of the mob below. We may suppose that with advancing corruption (if corruption has indeed advanced from remote to later times) this punishment was disused for want of ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... white rose full-blown, Yet rich in sacred dust, in storied stone, Precious past all the wealth of Indian isles— From olive-hoary Fiesole to feed On Brunelleschi's dome my hungry eye, And see against the lotus-colored sky, Spring the slim belfry graceful as a reed. To kneel upon the ground where Dante trod, To breathe the air of immortality From Angelo and Raphael—TO BE— Each sense new-quickened by a demi-god. To hear the liquid Tuscan speech at whiles, From citizen and peasant, to behold The heaven of Leonardo washed ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... advanced to the front now open to it. Later in the day in reconnoitring I found a church off to the south of the road, which looked to me as if the belfry would command the ground back of the garita San Cosme. I got an officer of the voltigeurs, with a mountain howitzer and men to work it, to go with me. The road being in possession of the enemy, we had to take the field to the south to reach the church. This took ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... at the foot of the western tower, an ascent of two hundred and seventy-nine steps offers a most enchanting view of mountain, river, street and harbour, with such a wilderness of dome, steeple and belfry, that the exclamation involuntarily arises—this is truly a ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway

... and the nurse, she made her way through the streets, above which the shells were still crashing, and glanced with horror at all the destruction about her. The Hotel de Ville was practically destroyed, though at that time the famous belfry still stood erect above the ruined town, chiming out the hours ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... even than this old hall is perhaps the bit of wall now built into the belfry of the parish church, and said to be a remnant of the original chapel dedicated to St. Ogg, the patron saint of this ancient town, of whose history I possess several manuscript versions. I incline to the briefest, since, if it should not be wholly true, it is at least likely ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... tower rocked and reeled, as that peal rang out, now merry, now scornful, now plaintive, from whose narrow belfry windows, into the bosom of the soft south-west wind, which was playing round the old grey tower of Englebourn church. And the wind caught the peal and played with it, and bore it away over Rectory and village street, and many a homestead, and gently waving field of ripening corn, and rich ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... the church-hatch, entered the churchyard, and looking up at the tower, there they seed a little small white face at the belfry-winder, and a little small hand waving. ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... held a red horizon rim around its dusky surface. Some half-distinct swallows were swarming into the church belfry, as silent as bats; but people swarming on the ground below made a cheerful noise, like a fair. The St. John bonfire was not a religious ceremony, but its character lifted it above the ordinary burning of brushwood ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round; And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various

... sleet, which glistened on the clothes without wetting them, kept faithfully the tradition of Christmases white with snow. Raised there aloft, the chateau appeared like the goal of all things, with its enormous mass of towers and gables, the belfry of its chapel mounting into the blue-black sky, and a crowd of small lights that winked, went and came, twinkled at all the windows, and seemed, on the sombre background of the building, like sparks running through the cinders of burnt ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... the darkness of night. One o'clock strikes from the belfry. Two lawyers, called Kozyavkin and Laev, both in the best of spirits and a little unsteady on their legs, come out of the wood and ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... village of Newington, which possesses one of the quaintest little churches in Kent. Among other things it boasts some seventeen brasses—some dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries—an ancient dial, on oaken shaft fast mouldering away—and a picturesque wooden belfry surmounted by a vigorously modelled gilt weathercock in ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... sugar-bowl, two by two, Bats in the belfry, two by two, Rats in the sugar-bowl, two by two, Skip ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... value beyond all measurements. The crash of the battle had been heard by Union troops, too, and Reynolds, one of the ablest Union generals, was leading a great column at the utmost speed to the relief of the general who had held his ground so well. A signalman stationed in the belfry of the seminary reported to Buford the advance of Reynolds, and the officer, eager to verify it, rushed ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler

... placed in the window ready to light on Christmas Eve, in the hope that it might be a sign of love and welcome. And we were on the watch all day, and every night Bertha would go out and sit upon the wall, looking out towards the road to the town, until the light was no more seen in the belfry of the church, and the clock chimed supper-time. I told not our dear mistress of this, for was it not for Franz and the dear master that the child kept watch?—but I went not myself to that outlook, though my heart stood still every time Bertha returned, with ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer

... covert attack of those hostile to the faith it has stood for down the ages. The quaintly shaped spires of St. Mary's Church with its three aisles, its glorious organ the largest in all Bohemia, stand out in bold relief amidst the terraced garden and orchards tended with fond care. The belfry is silent, its bells were sacrificed to the cause of the Habsburgs in the Great War; you may see plaster casts of them in the library. Here you may feast your eye on gloriously illuminated manuscripts and wonder at the ingenious inventions of one or other good brother ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... Cousin Emily Elizabeth is, as I have told you, a High Church woman and an Episcopalian. We haven't got any meeting-house of that denomination in our neighborhood, and I don't exactly know what high and low church means, without it is that one set hold to meeting-houses with a belfry, and the others stand up for a high steeple—a thing that I told Cousin E. E. we common people didn't aspire to; at which she laughed again, as if I had said ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... longer, for we change our names whenever we can, to the great detriment of all historical association), you would pause on the brow of Symonds's Hill to enjoy a view singularly soothing and placid. In front of you lay the town, tufted with elms, lindens, and horse-chestnuts.... Over it rose the noisy belfry of the college, the square brown tower of the church, and the slim yellow spire of the parish meeting-house, by no means ungraceful, and then an invariable characteristic of New England religious architecture. On your right the Charles slipped smoothly through green ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... thousand others, saw the same. As even the most learned were in admiration at this wonder, a clever lawyer, who came to the spot, having observed the thing attentively, sensibly made them remark that what they saw was not an angel, but the figure of an angel, in stone, placed on the top of the belfry of St. Gothard, which being imprinted in a thick cloud by means of a sunbeam which fell upon it, was reflected to the eyes of those who possessed the most piercing vision. If this fact had not been cleared up on the spot by a man exempt from all prejudice, it would have ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... an establishment as the School shop. The shop, indeed, occupied only a small apartment on the ground floor, which had previously been used as a porter's lodge, the remainder of the structure, including the disused belfry and watch-turret, being abandoned to the owls and ghosts and ivy, which accorded best with the ancient traditions ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... lovelight of the West reposes On this green valley's cheery solitude, On the trim cottage with its screen of roses, On the gray belfry with its ivy hood, And murmuring mill-race, and the wheel that flings Its bubbling freshness—while the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... The belfry was decorated with various bones of legs of mutton and of joints of beef, hung up to commemorate notable weddings of prominent parishioners—perhaps, too, as a hint to future aspirants to the state of matrimony—when the ringers had enjoyed a substantial ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... whole. She sat in the churchyard of the ancient parish church of Ruthven; and when she lifted up her eyes, there she saw, in the half-ruined belfry, the old bell, all but hidden with ivy, which the passing wind had roused to utter one sleepy tone; and there, beside her, stood the fool with the bell on his arm; and to him and to her the wow o' Rivven said, 'Come hame, come hame!' ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... College Chapel, Cambridge, and many other of our finest edifices have been constructed. The tower has below an entrance doorway, finished with rich mouldings and tracery; on each side are the arms of his Majesty and the City of London. Above is a clock with three dials, and a belfry to admit the fine set of bells[2] from the old church, the sound of which will doubtless receive effect through the four large upper windows which are the main features of the tower. Above these windows, the tower, hitherto square, becomes gradually octagonal, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various

... of the week's turmoil, From halls of mirth and iron gates of toil; Come forth, come forth, and let your joy increase Till one loud paean hails the day of peace. Sing trembling age, ye youths and maidens sing; Ring ye sweet chimes, from every belfry ring; Pour the grand anthem till it soars and swells And heaven seems full of great celestial bells! Behold the Morn from orient chambers glide, With shining footsteps, like a radiant bride; The gladdened brooks proclaim ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... England. Its architectural superiority over the meeting-houses is probably due to the fact that Smith had a "revelation" which gave him the exact measurements and proportions. The size upon the ground is eighty feet by sixty, and the eastern gable runs up into a square tower, surmounted by a domed belfry, to the height of one hundred and twenty-five feet. Two lofty stories above a low basement are covered by a shingled roof pierced with dormer windows. Large Gothic windows of the Henry VIII. shape are filled with seven-by-nine glass, and afford relief to the solid walls of stone ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... those signal-men were mighty nervy fellows. They were a beautiful mark for the rebel batteries, which were evidently doing their best to knock them out. The steeple was a plain, old-fashioned affair, having an open belfry, which seemed to be supported by four upright posts or timbers. I saw one of those uprights knocked out by a rebel shell. A couple more equally good shots and our signal-fellows would come ignominiously—no, gloriously—down, for there could be no ignominy ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... mountain. Add to this instinct the frequent necessity of points of elevation for watch-towers, or of points of offense, as in towers built on the ramparts of cities, and, finally, the need of elevations for the transmission of sound, as in the Turkish minaret and Christian belfry, and you have, I think, a sufficient explanation of the tower-building of the world in general. Look through your Bibles only, and collect the various expressions with reference to tower-building there, ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... built on a semicircular plan which followed the outline of the Bay of Macouba, a little port where many canoes and fishing boats were built. The church was a long wooden edifice from the center of which four beams arose, surmounted by a little belfry in which was hung a bell; the church overlooked the village, and was in turn overshadowed by immense cliffs, covered by rich vegetation, which made an amphitheatre ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... speedily answered by the sudden clanging of a gong inside the fire house, followed by the sound of running footsteps and, an instant later, the wild alarm of the shrill-tongued bell in the little belfry. ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... largely affect the countenance of the whale. For as in landscape gardening, a spire, cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed almost indispensable to the completion of the scene; so no face can be physiognomically in keeping without the elevated open-work belfry of the nose. Dash the nose from Phidias's marble Jove, and what a sorry remainder! Nevertheless, Leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude, all his proportions are so stately, that the same deficiency which in the sculptured Jove were hideous, in him is no blemish at all. Nay, it is an added ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... immune from the visits of ghosts, but the accident in The Man in the Bell (1821) is one which might happen to anyone. The maddening clangour of sound, the frightful images that crowd into the reeling brain of the man suspended in the belfry, are described with an unflinching realism that reminds us of The Pit and the Pendulum. To the same class belongs the skilfully constructed Iron Shroud (1830), by William Mudford, an author who, as Scott remarks in his journal, "loves to play at cherry-pit ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... completed to that point in 1527 and another inscription in the old choir, torn down in 1877, stated that the building was finished in 1540. It is probable that the original plans called for an even loftier building. One of the towers first projected was begun, but it was never concluded and the belfry is still a temporary one. Of late years there have been attempts to provide for the completion of this tower by popular subscription. The building has been damaged repeatedly by earthquakes and the repairs made have changed its original outer appearance ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... make my meaning clear to you,' replied the doctor. 'Look there at the sky—behind the belfry first, where it is so light, and then up and up, turning your chin back, right to the top of the dome, where it is already as blue as at noon. Is not that a beautiful colour? Does it not please the heart? We have seen it all our lives, until it has grown in with our ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... childhood, however, was passed almost wholly at Malaval, a tiny hamlet in the parish of Lavaysse, whose belfry was visible at quite a short distance; but to reach it one had to travel nearly twenty-five rough, mountainous miles, through a whole green countryside; green, but bare, and lacking ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... of human dwellings by that name, stands on a little plain evidently won by degrees from the sea for the successive beaches can be traced. The mission premises, the old house, the new house, and the church with its little belfry, are one continuous building facing the bay southward, and exactly one hundred feet in length. Behind are the store buildings, and the low turf huts of the natives stretch westward along the strand. They are so like grassy mounds, that from any distance one would ask, ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe

... and your guides. The Abbe Turquier accompanied me thither. The great beauties of St. Maclou are its tower and its porch. Of the tower, little more than the lantern remains. This is about 160 English feet in height. Above it was a belfry or steeple, another 110 feet in height, constructed of wood and lead—but which has been nearly destroyed for the sake of the lead,—for the purpose of slaughter or resistance during the late revolution.[57] The exteriors of the porches ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... be given up to the flames. Certainly, if I could have gotten it without assistance, it would have been my duty to give it over entire into the hands of the brotherhood. But if you help me, I will divide it with you. It lies in the tower of the cathedral, close by the belfry." ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... for having signed an order for the transport of gunpowder;[1408] the multitude, in pursuit of him, attach a rope to the nearest street-lamp, ransack the Hotel-de-Ville, force every door, mount into the belfry, and seek for the traitor even under the carpet of the bureau and between the legs of the electors, and are only stayed in their course by the arrival of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the southern one opposite shows the facade of the Dominican convent; and the town circles between, possibly a mile from spur to spur. Here and there long broken lines of the ancient wall, black with age, stride the hillside. A round Gothic tower, built as if for warfare, a square belfry, a ruined gateway, stand out among the humble roofs. Gardens of orange and lemon trees gleam like oblong parks, principally on the upper edge toward the great rock. If you will climb, as I have done, the craggy plateau close by, which overhangs the theatre and obstructs ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... both of man and women (who had hurried forth upon my track), as they met me, seemed to wander from a distant muffling cloud. Only the thought of Lorna's death, like a heavy knell, was tolling in the belfry of my brain. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... Count and his companions rose the white glistening walls of the Hotel Dieu, and farther off the tall tower of the newly-restored Cathedral, the belfry of the Recollets, and the roofs of the ancient College of the Jesuits. An avenue of old oaks and maples shaded the walk, and in the branches of the trees a swarm of birds fluttered and sang, as if ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... height often of fifty or sixty feet. During the war times they make use of these fires as signals from band to band, and each fire has a conventional meaning. Like the phares that flashed the alarm from hill-top to hill-top or the tocsin that sang from belfry to belfry in the Basse Bretagne, in the days of the rising of the Vendee, so those beacons would communicate as swiftly the tidings that one band or tribe had to convey to another. Again, speaking of the danger of fire-making, I will give an example of ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney

... Eastlake, were rude and unsatisfactory, but interesting to modern students, as "preserving representations of buildings, or portions of buildings, no longer in existence; as, for instance, the campanile, or detached belfry of Salisbury, since removed, and the spire of Lincoln, destroyed ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... the hearse was making its way had also changed in aspect. The tumbledown building had become a more worthy house of worship, unelaborate, but renewed. Its belfry stood upright and on the Sabbath spoke out in the music of its chimes. Graves where once the headstones had teetered in neglect lay now in rows of ordered care, and those who slept in them no longer slept among the ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... lowered in height by the graves on the outside, which ascended half way up the low Saxon windows, that it might itself have appeared only a funeral vault, or mausoleum of larger size. Its little square tower, with the ancient belfry, alone distinguished it from such a monument. But when the grey-headed beadle turned the keys with his shaking hand, the antiquary was admitted into an ancient building, which, from the style of its architecture, and some monuments of the Mowbrays of St. Ronan's, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... the royal comrades stand beside the gigantic monument in the centre of the Great Market, and above the shouting of the multitude the music of the old belfry floats unheard. Ghent and Antwerp have put on their glad raiment, and in their crooked streets and crowded squares joy flows like a river surging as it goes. Into Brussels I see this man and woman ride through a welcome that rises ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... to the principles of thought and action he had laid down for himself and that he had followed since he knelt, four years before, at a rough-boarded altar in a little church in the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf," whose belfry had been calling, ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan

... ere I ride Off to God's countryside, Where in the treetops hide Belfry and bell; Tongues of the steeple towers, Telling the slow-paced hours— Hail, thou still town of ours— ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... the peasants brought him the ikon and offered him bread and salt. Chekhov was much embarrassed in responding to their gratitude, but his face and his shining eyes showed that he was pleased. Besides the schools he built a fire-station for the village and a belfry for the church, and ordered a cross made of looking-glass for the cupola, the flash of which in the sun or moonlight was visible more than eight ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... others in the use of their tongues, and strive to avoid them in your own. A heart and head united in being right will do almost everything in making the tongue right. When the interior of a watch is in order, it will generally indicate the right time: when a man in the belfry wisely pulls the rope attached to a bell, it will give a proper sound: when a musician is perfect in his art, and his instrument in tune, the music he plays will agree thereto. So, reader, is it with the tongue, when the "man of the head ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... time a patron remarkable, says Dr. M'Crie, "for great respectability of character," Erskine of Dun. Born in 1508, about 1530 he slew a priest named Thomas Froster, in a curiously selected place, the belfry tower of Montrose. Nobody seems to have thought anything of it, nor should we know the fact, if the record of the blood-price paid by Mr. Erskine to the priest's father did not testify to the fervent ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... increased the excitement. More students came in, and so great was the tumult and confusion that the legate was in terror for his life, and he fled and concealed himself in the belfry of the abbey. After lying in this place of concealment for some time, until the tumult was in some measure appeased, he crept out secretly, fled across the Thames, and then, mounting a horse, made the best of his way ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... without trees, and surrounded on three sides by an amphitheatre of mountains, which slant off to the distance of fifteen or twenty miles. The Mission stands a little back of the town, and is a large building, or rather collection of buildings, in the centre of which is a high tower, with a belfry of five bells. The whole, being plastered, makes quite a show at a distance, and is the mark by which vessels come to anchor. The town lies a little nearer to the beach,— about half a mile from it,— and is composed of one-story houses built of ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... the lady of the feathers, the bells seemed magical and strange to-night, thin and dreamy and remote. They rang outside the circle of the flames, yet they, too, had an eerie meaning. Nor did their music come, he thought, from any church tower, from any belfry, summoned by the tugging hands of men. Very softly they rang. Their sound was deadened by the ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... faculty. Too much wine—though it must have required an inordinate quantity in certain mendacious periods—was regarded as provocative of truth; and too many books as clearly put bats in a man's belfry. The explanation is of course simple enough. If one overweights the head the whole structure is apt to become unbalanced. This is the reason why we hold scholars in such light esteem. They are an unbalanced lot. And after all, ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... between them was rapidly diminishing. The noise of the flood, at first low, like the muttering of distant thunder, was gradually growing louder. The palms still appeared to glide past like spectres, but as yet the belfry of the hacienda had not come in sight. Neither as yet was visible the threatening mass of ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... picturesque and quaint than half the innocent places which tourists, following their leader like sheep, have made impostors of. To say nothing of its houses with grave courtyards, its queer by-corners, and its many- windowed streets white and quiet in the sunlight, there is an ancient belfry in it that would have been in all the Annuals and Albums, going and gone, these hundred years if it had but been more expensive to get at. Happily it has escaped so well, being only in our French watering-place, that you may like it of ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... gateway is the granary. The church stands apart from the building; it is within the square, but unconnected. The west door is decorated with the most elaborated carvings of flowers, images of angels, and figures of the apostles; the interior is plain. To the right is a handsome tower and belfry, and above the altar a large stone cupola. Behind the church is a long range of rooms for the missionaries, with a corridor of nine arches in front. The Texan troops were long quartered here, and, although always intoxicated, strange to say, the stone ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... upon whose crowded shore now stands the great city of New York; the same fair river above whose banks now towers the noble front of the massive State Capitol at Albany. And that lofty edifice stands not far from the very spot where, beneath the pyramidal belfry of the old Dutch church, the boy patroon sat nodding through Dominie Westerlo's sermon, one drowsy July Sunday ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... gable might have been seen by Tam O'Shanter blazing with devilish light as he approached it along the road from Ayr, and there is a small square one on the side next the road; there is also an odd kind of belfry, almost the smallest ever made, with a little bell in it,—and this is all. But no grand and storied cathedral pile in all Europe is better known, and to no shrine of famous minster do more pilgrims journey than to this wee kirk immortalized by the ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... an explanation, when the wedding-bells began to clang out from the belfry, merry and roughly rejoicing. "Tom-boy bells," Hadria called them. They seemed to tumble over one another and pick themselves up again, and give chase, and roll over in a heap, and then peal firmly out once more, laughing at their romping digression, joyous and thoughtless and simple-hearted. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... me what had happened in the village, how a cow had escaped from the cowhouse and had been found the next morning in front of Prosper Malet's mill, looking at the sails turning, or about a hen's egg, which had been found in the church belfry without anyone being able to understand what creature had been there to lay it, or the story of Jean-Jean Pila's dog, who had been ten leagues to bring back his master's breeches, which a tramp had stolen while they were hanging up to dry out of doors, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... wide-spreading sounding-board, were likewise early importations from Holland; as also the communion-table, of massive form and curious fabric. The same might be said of a weather-cock perched on top of the belfry, and which was considered orthodox in all windy matters, until a small pragmatical rival was set up on the other end of the church above the chancel. This latter bore, and still bears, the initials ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... and Devereaux pointed to a dark figure extended at full length beside the belfry. "Mind him not. We must hasten. Here is the rope. Descend, and loose not thine hold of it until thy feet have touched ground as thou lovest life. Remember the ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison

... conversation, and sharing their family life, but himself unseen and unheard, felt only by the spiritual influence he could exercise over them. It had been a blissful dream, such as had never visited him in his exile; and as the familiar chiming of the bells, high up in the belfry not far from his attic, fell upon his ear, the dream for a brief moment gathered ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... at the square, in the centre of which is a fountain, and on one side of which stands a church of rustic style, showing its bell in an open belfry, she recalled the little bouquet of violets that he had given to her one night on the bridge near Notre Dame. They had loved each other that day—perhaps more than usual. Her heart softened at that reminiscence. But the little bouquet remained alone, a poor ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... accounted for the town that grew up around the water tank; the little row of so-called "pool parlors," cheap restaurants, saloons and gambling houses, the post-office, a drug store, a tiny school-house with a belfry and no bell and the little row of cottages west of the main-line tracks where all the good people lived— which conglomerate mass of inchoate architecture is all that saved San Pasqual from the ignominy of being ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... forward to look at the presbytery, which I supposed this house to be. It was a low, large building of two stories, with eaves projecting two or three feet over the upper one. At the end of it rose the belfry of the church—an open belfry, with one bell hanging underneath a little square roof of tiles. The church itself was quite hidden by the surrounding walls and roofs. All was dark, except a feeble glimmering in four upper casements, which seemed to belong to one large room. The church-clock ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... after such usage as he had received from Lord Trowbridge? So meditating,—but grieving that he should be driven at such a moment to have his mind forcibly filled with such matters,—still hearing the chapel bell, which in his ears drowned the sound from his own modest belfry, and altogether doubtful as to what step he would take, he entered his own church. It was manifest to him that of the poorer part of his usual audience, and of the smaller farmers, one half were in ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... the bells. About two days afterward he called him up at midnight to go into the church-tower to toll the bell. "You shall soon learn what shivering means," thought the sexton, and getting up he went out too. As soon as the boy reached the belfry, and turned himself round to seize the rope, he saw upon the stairs, near the sounding-hole, a white figure. "Who's there?" he called out; but the figure gave no answer, and neither stirred nor spoke. "Answer," ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... the other players. Presently the cock crew. Midnight must have come; and in a moment the lights were extinguished, and the players, with their table and benches, vanished. Hans groped about in the dark church for some time before he could find the door which led to the belfry. ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... tipping the golden grain into its funnel, while the rattling hopper below poured out its soft stream of flour. Beyond the mill, the ground sank to a valley; the roofs clustered round a great church tower, the belfry windows blinking solemnly. Hard by the ancient Hall peeped out from its avenue of elms. That was a picture as sweet as anything I have ever seen abroad, as perfect a piece of art as could be framed, and more ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... of old-world customs, for she was allowed, by special favour, to go into the belfry and help for one brief minute to pull a bell. And after service on Christmas morning she stood in the church porch and watched the distribution of the "roth shillings", which, in accordance with the terms of an old charity, were handed over to "twelve worthy widows resident within the bounds ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... interrupt the recital of his pater-nosters with such orders as the emergency might demand, or his inclination prompt: "Seize such a man! Hang that one to a tree! Run that fellow through at once with your pikes, or shoot him down before my eyes! Cut the knaves to pieces that have undertaken to hold that belfry against the king! Burn that village! Fire everything to the distance of a quarter of a league!" So terrible a reputation did his devotions consequently acquire, that it was a current saying: ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... the Belfry, the great tower from whence the bell summoned the inhabitants when danger threatened, lay plenty of cloth for new doublets. Nor was there any lack of gold or silver in the treasury of the guild-hall, the strong boxes of the merchants, the chests of the citizens. The silver table-utensils, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... shrank into a corner, but slightly comforted by the honours his image was receiving at the hands of the good people of Epinal. As time wore on he became pensive and restless, and nothing pleased him so well as to ascend to the belfry on moonlight nights, scribbling disparagement on the bells of Eulogius and Eucherius, which had ceased to be rung, and patting and caressing his own, which now did duty for all three. With alarm he noticed one night an incipient ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... possibly have any other basis (if I may be permitted to continue my professional similitudes) than the fallen remnants and goodly stones, not one now left on another, but still forming an unremovable cumulus of ruin, and eternal Birs Nimroud, as it were, on the site of the old belfry of Christian morality, whose top looked once so like ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... privileges until it became a bishopric, there having been fifteen bishops prior to the Norman Conquest. The double title of Bishop of Bath and Wells was first assumed in the days of King Stephen. In looking at the town from a distance two buildings rise conspicuously—the belfry of St. Cuthbert's Church and the group of triple towers crowning the cathedral. There are few aggregations of ecclesiastical buildings in England that surpass those of Wells, with the attractive gateways and antique houses of the close, the grand facade of the cathedral, and the episcopal palace ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... the firm allegiance of their ancestors had obtained grants to their city of valuable charters and immunities, and advises them to continue in the same course. The dozeners then deposit their flags under the belfry in the adjacent church of St. Mary's. This ceremony still continues, with the exception of the armed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various

... case in which typical phallic symbols, in a phobia of bells and towers, had acquired their emotional meanings, not through sexual analogies, as Freudians would suppose, but through actual contiguity-experience with church bells and belfry, quite apart from sexual matters.[18] Similarly, snakes, sticks, circles do not necessarily carry the sexual meanings assumed by psycho-analysts, who are over-influenced ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... the square, and half-hidden in ivy, was a Noah's Ark church, topped by a quaint belfry holding a bell that had not rung for years, and faced by a clock-dial all weather-stains and cracks, around which travelled a single rusty hand. In its shadow to the right lay the home of the Archdeacon, a stately mansion with Corinthian columns reaching to the roof and surrounded by a spacious ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... I came to a fortified gate in a long wall. Between me and the wall was an open space of grass, with other grey avenues radiating from it. Behind the wall were tall slate roofs mossed with silver, a chapel belfry, the top of a keep. A moat filled with wild shrubs and brambles surrounded the place; the drawbridge had been replaced by a stone arch, and the portcullis by an iron gate. I stood for a long time on the hither side of the moat, gazing about me, and letting the influence of the place sink in. ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... which a lot of Heinze's men had broken their way from the rear. They were firing up at the men in the towers of the cathedral. My position was not a pleasant one, for every time I raised my head the soldiers in the belfry would cut loose at me; and, though they failed to hit me, I did not dare to get up and run. Already the trough was leaking like a sieve. There was no officer with the men in the cafe, so they were taking the word from one of their ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... doubter. "Did 'e say it? Lumme! 'E said it twice, and then he buried 'is mug in its loverly fragrant surface, and pricked his nose on Ginger's bayonet. 'E's mad, boys; 'e's as mad as a plurry 'atter; 'e's got bats in 'is belfry." ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... from the altar cij feet. The height of the dome of the new building contains from the altar lxxxviij feet. The whole pile of the church contains in height cl. feet with the cross. The height of the stone fabric of the belfry of the same church contains, from the level ground, cclx feet. The height of the wooden fabric of the same belfry contains cclxxiiij feet. But altogether it does not exceed five hundred and xx^{ty} feet. Also the ball of the same belfry is capable of containing, ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous

... low, white farmhouse stands on a green hill at the head of the Romsdal. A flourishing crop of grass and flowers grows on the stable-roof, and there is a little belfry with a big bell to call the labourers home from the fields. In the corner of the living-room of the old house there is a broad fireplace built across the angle. Curious cupboards are tucked away everywhere. The long table in the dining-room groans thrice a day ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... seem'd a dwelling for a queen, No belfry for the swinging of great bells. No bolt or stone had ever crush'd the green Shafts, amber and rose walls, no soot ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris

... embarkation, on Friday, July 21/31 1620, was at Leyden, doubtless upon the Dutch canal-boats which undoubtedly brought them from a point closely adjacent to Pastor Robinson's house in the Klock-Steeg (Bell, Belfry, Alley), in the garden of which were the ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... Mr. Ombos,' I thought as I looked at his shrivelled fearsome figure, 'has turned your head. There are certainly a few bats in your belfry. You will find your way into an asylum before many ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... Minerva's owl and the vulture that preyed upon the liver of Prometheus. There was likewise the sacred ibis of Egypt, and one of the Stymphalides which Hercules shot in his sixth labor. Shelley's skylark, Bryant's water-fowl, and a pigeon from the belfry of the Old South Church, preserved by N. P. Willis, were placed on the same perch. I could not but shudder on beholding Coleridge's albatross, transfixed with the Ancient Mariner's crossbow ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... convened, that he might point out her associates in forming the charm, when he pitched upon a woman called Isobel Insh, or Taylor, who resolutely denied having ever seen him before. She was imprisoned, however, in the belfry of the church. An addition to the evidence against the poor old woman Insh was then procured from her own daughter, Margaret Tailzeour, a child of eight years old, who lived as servant with Margaret Barclay, the person principally accused. This child, who ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... replied the hag, "I am rather surprised that she should go to Notre-Dame de l'Egrignolles seeing that there are no handsome priests there. She might very well stop for a short time beneath the shadow the belfry of Marmoustiers; she would soon be fertile, those good fathers ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... Florentines,—receiving, resisting, and reigning over all: pillaging the Saracens of their marbles—binding the French bishops in silver chains;—shattering the towers of German tyranny into small pieces,—building with strange jewellery the belfry tower for newly- conceived Christianity;—and, in sacred picture, and sacred song, reaching the height, among nations, most ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... long story that they would tell, all about the ages; and it would vary wonderfully little, much less perhaps than we think; and the repetitions rambling on and on in the evening, as the old belfry spoke and the cottages gathered below it, might sound so soothing after the boom of shells that perhaps you would nearly sleep. And then with one's memory tired out by the war one might never remember the long story they told, when the belfry and the brown-roofed houses all murmured ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany

... these all to assure me that, after a year of melancholy and eventful absence, I looked again upon the precincts of home. A little farther on rose the gray wall and tower of the library and belfry, half concealed by its heavy coating of ivy, glossy and dark, and shutting away all other view of the mansion. Beyond these last was the pavilion my father had built for the playhouse of his children, through the open lattice-door of which ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... at its height, lightning struck the belfry of the Baptist chapel, two doors from our house. The meeting-house was soon in flames, and the high wind hurled great pieces of burning timbers over our house, and for a while there seemed great danger of its taking fire too. Mother was quite uneasy, but God made us to know ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole

... Behalf parto. Behave konduti. Behaviour konduto. Behead senkapigi. Behind (prep.) post. Behind (adv.) poste. Behold rigardi. Beholder rigardanto. Behoof profito. Being estajxo. Belabour bategi. Belch rukti. Belfry sonorilejo. Belgian Belgo. Belgium Belgujo. Belie kalumnii. Belief kredo. Believe kredi. Bell sonorilo. Bell (door, etc.) sonorileto. Bell (ornament) tintilo. Bell ringer sonorigisto. Belladonna beladono. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... London, was pulled down, the bells sold, and the sacred edifice rebuilt without a belfry. The children of the neighbouring parishes soon afterwards jeered at ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green

... belfry," commented Ralph Addington. Because of his constant globe-trotting, Addington's slang was often ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... its senses. The sun has begun to twinkle on the gilt cross of the Catholic chapel and make itself known to the doves in the stone belfry of the South Church. The patches of cobweb that here and there cling tremulously to the coarse grass of the inundated meadows have turned into silver nets, and the mill-pond—it will be steel-blue later—is as smooth and white as if it had been paved ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... before her now, for in her sinewy little hands were a paper bag, a first reader, and a spelling-book, and she was on her way to school. Beneath her the white turnpike wound around the hill and down into a little hollow, and on the crest of the next low hill was a little frame house with a belfry on top. Even while she sat there with parted lips, her face in a tense dream and her eyes dark with dread and indecision, the bell from the little school-house clanged through the still air with a sudden, sharp summons that was so peremptory and personal ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... little, for they had been closed. The moon was shining even more brightly than on the previous night, but the rays did not fall as they fell on the loggia at the inn; the roofs of the low houses opposite were partly illuminated, and the belfry of San Stefano, and of the little church of Santa Marta and the Minerva much farther away; but that side of the irregularly built Altieri palace and the street below were almost in darkness. Looking down between the shutters, Ortensia and Stradella could only see deeper shadows within the shade, ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... Thus it is 30 feet from the ground to the spring of the lowest five-light windows, 30 feet again to the spring of the single-light windows, 27 feet more to the spring of the grouped windows above, and another 30 to the spring of the belfry windows. Thence it is 15 feet to the cornice below the battlements. The remainder is divided into a series of 20 feet heights, two twenties from cornice to top of parapet of octagon, 20 in each of the two decorated stages of the spire, 20 to centre of the upper spire-lights, three ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse

... student deeply read in Elizabethan politics do these mean to-day what must have been patent to the inner circle at Elizabeth's court. Those symbols of Mr. Yeats that we may understand intuitively, as we may "The white owl in the belfry sits," other generations also may understand, but hardly those that have meanings known only to a coterie. But we may read Spenser with enjoyment even if all the inner allegories are missed, and so, too, many read Mr. Yeats to-day, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... followed by her mother. I leaned forward, perfectly hidden, and listened to the singsong voices of the priests, the musical note of the responses, heard the Kyrie Eleison, the clanging of the belfry bell as the host was raised by the trembling bishop. The silence which followed the mournful voluntary played by the organ ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... statue, surrounded by flowers, presides. She is extremely popular in Brittany, and once a year, on the last Sunday of June, pilgrims arrive at Le Faouet to celebrate her festival. Each, as he passes the belfry which stands beside the path, pulls the bell-rope, and the young men make the tour of a small neighbouring chapel, dedicated to St Michel, Lord of Heights. Then they drink of a little fountain near at hand and ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... like Death on horseback, swathed in a black mantle, but for the dangling gaitered legs, which spoilt the solemn effect. A very curious figure did he cut upon his shaggy, ambling steed. On the top of the hill was a village, in the midst of which stood a little old Gothic church with a gable-belfry, and hard by was a half-timber house, its porch aglow with ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... horrors that were about to be perpetrated in his name, privately gave orders to anticipate the hour. Instead of waiting until the matin bell should ring out from the old clock tower of the Palace of Justice, she directed the signal to be given from the nearer belfry of St. Germain l'Auxerrois. As the harsh sound rang through the air of that warm summer night, it was caught up and echoed from tower to tower, rousing all Paris from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... of violence and wrong. As I approached the quiet village, whose pleasant-faced houses, great and small, looked like a congregation of old and young sitting reverently around the parish church and listening to the preaching of the belfry, I saw where these stones came from. There, on that green, ridgy slope, where the lambs lay in the sun by the river, these stones, and a million more scattered hither and thither, once stood in walls high, hideous and wrathful, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... Violet, and heaven, and tribulation,' murmured Betty a little incoherently; and then she started as the church clock in the belfry began to ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre

... told in the proper place. It is enough for the present to say that Domenico Ghirlandajo, who repainted it, availed himself greatly of the invention put into it by Orcagna, who also painted in fresco in the same church the Chapel of the Strozzi, which is near to the door of the sacristy and of the belfry, in company with Bernardo, his brother. In this chapel, to which one ascends by a staircase of stone, he painted on one wall the glory of Paradise, with all the Saints and with various costumes and head-dresses of those times. On the other wall ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari

... the golden August weather, and in his ears a sentence running, chiming, striking upon the word "gold"— "Ding-a-ding-a-dong! 'Taty-patch a gold mine—'taty-patch a gold mine!" The prosaic Mr Latter had set the chime ringing, as a dull sacristan might unloose the music of a belfry; but like a chime of faery it rippled and trilled, closing ever upon the deep note "gold," and echoed back as from a veritable ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... houses, white as four doves, hidden in a grove of chestnut and walnut trees—four houses that can only be seen at a distance when the autumn has removed the leaves from the trees. There I spent the first fifteen years of my life. In the bottom of the valley there is a church whose belfry pierces the arch of foliage and rises majestic above the ash and walnut trees, as if to signify that the voice of God rises above Nature; and in that church two masses were said on Sunday—one at sunrise and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... into the village, crowded into a narrow paved street by the white and cream-colored houses with green or grey shutters and pale, red-tiled roofs. At the end, stained golden with lichen, the mauve-grey tower of the church held up its bells against the sky in a belfry of broad pointed arches. In front of the church Andrews turned down a little lane towards the river again, to come out in a moment on a quay shaded by skinny acacia trees. On the corner house, a ramshackle house with roofs ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... miles from Irkutsk and 7500 miles from the capital of the Empire. When, after more than a year, the unfortunate druggist reached the last outpost of Russian power in North-Eastern Asia, and was set at liberty, he made his way to the little log church, entered the belfry, and proceeded to jangle the church bells in a sort of wild, erratic chime. When the people of the town ran to the belfry in alarm and inquired what was the matter, Schiller replied, with dignity, that he wished the whole population to know that 'by the Grace of God, Herman Schiller, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... after the wedding, leaving my lord of Hereford gownless and fuming in the organ-loft of the little church at Plympton. His guard was variously disposed about the sacred edifice: two of the bowmen being locked up in the tiny crypt; three in the belfry, "to ring us a wedding peal," as Robin said, and the others in the vestry or under the choir seats in the chancel. The old baron had been forced to climb a high tree, and had been left in the branches of it ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... the heart to break the spell. For, after all, admittin' the state of his belfry, I don't know that many of us has so much ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... State—-Knightstown and Charlottesville, remained to her as remained to Bobaday and Corinne. The Indiana village did not differ greatly from the Ohio village situated on the 'pike. There were always the church with a bonny little belfry, and the schoolhouse more or less mutilated as to its weather boarding. The 'pike was the principal street, and such houses as sat at right angles to it, looked lonesome, and the dirt roads weedy ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... Slowly his arms sank, the thin hands strove to fold themselves—fell apart, and, sighing rapturously, Friar Martin sank back upon his pillows like one that is weary, and, with the sigh, was dead. And lo! in that same moment, from tower and belfry near and far, rose a sudden wild and gladsome clamour of bells ringing out peal on peal of rapturous joy, insomuch that those who knelt beside that couch of death lifted bowed heads—eye questioning eye in ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... the thoughts of the fated king. He had turned his face from the field, and his eyes were fixed upon the tower of the church behind. And while he so gazed, the knoll from the belfry began solemnly to chime. It was now near the hour of the Sabbath prayers, and amidst horror and carnage, still the holy custom was ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... "leazing bell" to start the gleaners to the fields, and every night he tolled the curfew, by which the villagers set their clocks. He it was who, when the sermon was ended, strode with dignity from his box on the "lower deck" down the aisle to the belfry, and pulled the "dishing-up bell" to let home-keeping mothers know that hungry husbands and sons were set free. Folks in those days were less easily fatigued than they are now. Services were longer, the preacher's "leanings to mercy" ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... I was six hours on my way instead of three, as before, and they were hours full of light and sunny bliss. My little city lay as sweetly pensive in the bright glow of sunlight as a drifting isle of the blessed. The round, leafy, blue-gray crowns of the trees with the little belfry peaking out above them, appeared as if tranquilly floating above the sparkling silvery sheet ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... Spaniards, and in many churches in their country it is considered a fine thing to go up into the belfry of a church or cathedral, and, when the regular bell-ringers are tired, to jump on the great bells and swing away as hard as they can make them go. No matter about any particular peal ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... order of the classes rather differently, we should separate the best towers (viz. those that have two or more windows side by side on the W. front) into two main divisions, according as (I.) perpendicular, (II.) horizontal lines predominate. The first division (I.) has the windows of the belfry stage (three or two in number) prolonged as panels into the stage below. The group is a small one, but includes, perhaps, the finest towers in the county (Batcombe, Evercreech, Wrington, St Cuthbert's, Wells). The second ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... CATHCART WASON) has announced that he will not ring the great bell of St. Paul's. The DEAN and Chapter, while regretting that Sir WILLIAM DUNN should be deprived of a health-giving exercise, had, as a point of fact, declined to countenance his contemplated invasion of their belfry. ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various

... yo the church so anshunt in history, Read yo the Latin words high in the steeple, Hear yo the sounds that arose from the belfry, It seem'd to be shaating along wi' the ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... green by the church have an inscription to the effect that they were founded by Richard Earl of Warwick (the kingmaker), in the year 1457. They were practically rebuilt about seventy years ago; but remnants of beautiful Gothic architecture still remain in the old stone belfry, and here and there a piece of tracery has been preserved. In all parts of the town one suddenly alights upon beautiful bits of carved stone—an Early English gateway in one street, and lancet doorways to many a cottage in another. Oriel windows are also plentiful. Behind the almshouses ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... whispered to them slyly, it flashed about their waists, it flickered on the ground and made it rosy for their feet, it bloomed upon the ceiling that its glow might set off their bright faces, and it kindled up a general illumination in Mrs. Craggs's little belfry. ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... place, His very breathing stilled, The friar held his robe before his face, And heard the angels singing! 'Twas but a moment—then, upon the spell Of this sweet Presence, lo! a something broke: A something, trembling, in the belfry woke, A shower of metal music flinging O'er wold and moat, o'er park and lake and fell, And, through the open windows of the cell, In ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... my work to get no leather to-day, Mester. Soon as I've putt in these here four nails, I'm gooing over to belfry." ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... a ghostly light, revealing the catafalque in the center. The doors were closed and fastened, and the windows had iron bars on them. Suddenly he reascended the stairway to the place where the candle was burning and then climbed up into the third floor of the belfry. After untying the ropes from the bell-clappers he again descended. He was pale and his eyes glistened, but not ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... over the blue Mediterranean! within an hour, perhaps, or two, it will rest on the square church tower of Antibes—but not for long. Soon it will take to its adventurous flight again, and soar over valley and mountain peak, from church belfry to church belfry until it finds its resting-place upon the ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... works: the completion of the central spire, the conversion of the north end of the north transept into a perpendicular work, the construction of a new library, the construction of the present cloisters, and finally the erection of the great detached belfry, called 'Raymond's, or Redemond's, or Riman's Tower,' was in progress in 1411, 1428, and 1436. All this work was carried on partly by the influence at Chichester of churchmen of the school of William of Wykeham, whose followers were ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette

... and he too must have been old. The lime-trees soon came to an end and I came to a white house with a terrace and a mezzanine, and suddenly a vista opened upon a farmyard with a pond and a bathing-shed, and a row of green willows, with a village beyond, and above it stood a tall, slender belfry, on which glowed a cross catching the light of the setting sun. For a moment I was possessed with a sense of enchantment, intimate, particular, as though I had seen the scene before ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... to commemorate the Fauconbridge and Belasyse families, and for its being the scene of Sterne's curacy. A small barrel organ now graces its gallery, which responded to the morning and evening service in Yorick's day. On prying about the belfry we discovered an old helmet, with the gilding on it still discernible, which we at first supposed to be intended as a decoration to some tomb; but its weight and size precluded that supposition. In the church ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various

... cottages surrounded the manor-house on all sides, and a park adjoined it, small but with fine fruit-trees, pellucid apples and seedless pears; for ten versts round about stretched out the flat, black-loam steppe. There was no lofty object for the eye: neither a tree nor a belfry; only here and there a windmill reared itself aloft with holes in its wings; it was a regular Sukhodol! (Dry Valley). Inside the house the rooms were filled with ordinary, plain furniture; rather unusual was a verst-post which stood on a window-sill ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev



Words linked to "Belfry" :   campanile, bell tower, Leaning Tower, Leaning Tower of Pisa, room



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