Rock

“ Before us lay a wide expanse of smooth stone, the top of a great rock that had its base in the woods below. Behind us rose a high wall of rock, and beyond that was the sun, now sinking towards the western horizon. ”

“ I am right in calling this mass of rock, which is a spur of the mountain's slope, a wall; for I look down from its top to the next inclosure far below, now overgrown and wild. What is natural and what was made by man has become so blended together, or has always been so, that I can choose to look at it as my mood may be, and feel the repose of nature or enjoy the disposing choice of art. ”

“ The broken and overhanging rocks—the loose fragments at their feet—the cascade itself, the finest in the country—the brook fretting and foaming down the rugged glen—the stunted trees, and matted foliage, which protrude from the fissures of this natural wall—the huge erect pillar of stone, which rears its detached mass above the adjoining rock—and one of the loveliest females I ever saw, attired in flowing white drapery, which, with the ribbons, fluttered and played upon the wind—could you find a subject equal to this for interest, one equal to it for sublimity and beauty? ”

“ Bold, steep, fantastic masses of naked rock, they rise suddenly from the green and flowery valleys in amazing and endless contrast; they mirror themselves in the tiny mountain lakes like pictures in a dream. ”

“ I daresay she knew him as well as she knew the old rock. Very old rock. The rock of ages—and the aged man—landmarks of her youth. Then the mules started walking smartly forward, with the three peasants striding alongside of them, and vanished between the trees. ”

“ Others again are nothing but rock and granite from base to summit, from earth almost to heaven, and down their sides there are marked deep slides, where the rock and limestone has crumbled into an avalanche of stone and dust. The changes on their unchanging surfaces are the most beautiful. Like human nature, hard on the surface, they have hidden soft and susceptible moods. The pine-clad mountains are sunnier and more pleasing, but it is those of adamantine rock that fascinate you. ”

“ Everywhere the eye ranged over a black expanse of brown rock, rising precipitously in places to fantastically-shaped pinnacles whose outlines were sharply defined in the glare of the tropical sunlight. ”

“ Here in the very heart of the rock, cut and worn into weird and fantastic shapes, are halls, passages, and declivities, twistings and windings, amongst which the imagination runs riot and calls up the visions of strange, elfish, unearthly forms to people the uncanny surroundings. ”

“ Above our heads gigantic masses of rock towered upward, dark and menacing in their rugged strength, from whose crevices burst forth some withered-looking trees, which wreathed their distorted limbs into fantastic shapes around the huge blocks of stone to which they clung ”

“ My favorite one is a huge projecting rock, protected by large upright ones nearly as immense, and shooting out over tier upon tier of rocks, down a hundred feet below, to where the river runs like life—now in sunshine, now in shadow. ”

“ The rock was called 'The Place of Heaven;' there the gods first abode on earth, living many years in great rest and content, as in a happy and delicious land, though the world still lay in obscurity and darkness. ”

“ Sometimes clinging with iron grasp to pinnacles of rock, he swung himself along the side of some terrific precipice, where the slightest misstep meant a rush into eternity upon the rocks a thousand feet below. ”

“ As you round a sand dune you come suddenly upon a gigantic round, flat-topped rock, like a titanic pink tree-stump—scarcely a reward for all those miles and miles of dreariness and intense heat, even though its flat-chopped top is a thousand feet clear above the surrounding plain. ”

“ So our divine Rock, once covering us, always covers us. The same yesterday, to-day and for ever! always good, always kind, always sympathetic! You often hold a sunshade over your head passing along the road or a street; but after a while your arm gets tired, and the very effort to create the shadow makes you weary. But the rock in the mountains, with fingers of everlasting stone, holds its own shadow. ”

“ All the face of the rock between the streams of falling water is covered with clinging plants and flowering shrubs, and one rock, shaped like a cross, which projected from the center out into the falling spray, was enwreathed with flowers like an artificial garland, as if they had been hung there by some dear woman's hand, to mark the last resting place of the loved and lost. ”

“ The land is one of unearthly grandeur where natural rocks take the shapes of towers, temples, palaces and fortresses of mountainous height blazing scarlet in color. In one part a wave of rock like a sea breaker one hundred fifty feet high and one hundred miles in length curls overhanging as though the rushing gray waters had been suddenly struck into ice. ”

“ You are to remember that we lay on the bare top of a rock, like scones upon a girdle; the sun beat upon us cruelly; the rock grew so heated, a man could scarce endure the touch of it; and the little patch of earth and fern, which kept cooler, was only large enough for one at a time. ”

“ Just fancy an immense rock, or, rather, a mountain, fifteen hundred feet high, rising suddenly and bluffly from the midst of the waves, and based on a tract of ground so flat and level that you can scarcely perceive it. ”

“ In the spring the gardeners begin again, and the little gnomes hold their sides with still laughter to watch the work go on.
“Rocks?” my friends say. “Do you mind the rocks? But they are a special beauty! Why, I have a rock in my garden that I have treated—”
“Very well,” I interrupt rudely. “A rock is all very well. If I had a rock in my garden I could treat it, too. But how about a garden that is all rocks?” ”

“ As if to mock us, the huge rock had fallen in such a way, that its sides were jammed against protruding masses of stone either way, and a wide gap opened from below on the outer side, large enough to admit of a big man’s head and shoulders. ”

“ An enormous rock barred our path. One of the men stooped and seemed to push on something when, without a sound, the huge mass of rock turned on itself and disclosed a small tunnel-like opening leading into the mountain-side. ”

“ The rugged mountains, rising in some places almost perpendicular to the road, the stupendous rocks above jutting out from their bases, seeming to threaten destruction to all below, and the mountain streams pouring over rock and crag, with ceaseless noise, added to the grandeur of the entire scene. ”

“ We see in one place the primary rock, with its veins of granite and quartz,—its dizzy precipices of gneiss, and its huge masses of hornblende; we find the secondary rock in another, with its bed of sandstone and shale,—its spars, its clays, and its nodular limestones. ”

“ You hear miners and quarrymen talk very truly of the live rock. That stone, they say, was cut out of the live rock, meaning the rock as it is under ground, sound and hard—as it would be, for aught we know, to the end of time, unless it was taken out of the ground, out of the place where God’s Spirit meant it to be, and brought up to the open air and the rain, in which it is not its nature to be. ”

“ (For Nature speaks in symbols and in signs,
And through her pictures human fate divines) ,
That rock, wherefrom we saw the billows sink
In murmuring rout, uprising clear and tall
In the white light of heaven, the type of one
Who, momently by Error's host assailed,
Stands strong as Truth, in greaves of granite mailed; ”

“ The cliffs above our beaches are rock; the sand upon our seashore is rock; the clay used in brick-making is rock; the limestone of the quarry is rock; the marble of which our mantel-pieces are made is rock. The soft sandstone of South Devon, and the hard granite of the [pg 4] north of Scotland, are alike rock. The pebbles in the road are rock; the very mould in our gardens is largely composed of crumbled rock. So the word in its geological sense is a word of wide meaning.
Now the business of the geologist is to read the history of the past in these rocks of which the earth's crust is made. ”

“ The rock is perpendicular, its ruggedness being softened only by the ferns and mosses that have attached themselves to the clefts and crevices, and the shrubs and trees that grow out from the gaping stones. ”

“ If for a moment you are inclined to regard these taluses as mere draggled, chaotic dumps, climb to the top of one of them, and run down without any haggling, puttering hesitation, boldly jumping from boulder to boulder with even speed. You will then find your feet playing a tune, and quickly discover the music and poetry of these magnificent rock piles—a fine lesson; ”

“ The rock upon rock of vast thickness, by which the earth's crust, through countless ages, has been formed, unquestionably constitutes a most extraordinary phenomenon of physical creation, but hardly so marvellous and incomprehensible as the beginning, progress, and end of the divers orders of marine and terrestrial beings that filled each world of life. It is to geologists, to PLAYFAIR, HUTTON, LYELL, BUCKLAND, SEDGWICK, OWEN, and other great names, native and foreign, to whom we are indebted for this singular revelation of Nature's works. ”

“ This rock is soft and friable, and, under the influence of the heavy winter rains, it has been, without doubt, from a period long before human history, as it is now, cut ever into new shapes, and especially into pillars or columns, which sometimes bear a resemblance to the human form. ”

“ Every glade of grass burned like the golden floor of heaven, opening in sudden gleams as the foliage broke, and closed above it, as sheet-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the motionless masses of dark rock, dark though flushed with scarlet lichen, casting their quiet shadows across its restless radiance, the fountain underneath them filling its marble hollow with blue mist and fitful sound ”

“ The underlying rock, especially if massive, hard, and of a fine grain, has often been ground down to a smooth surface and rubbed to a polish as perfect as that seen on the rock beside an Alpine glacier where the ice has recently melted back. ”

“ The old rock stands for the mountains of the Old World, like the Welsh mountains, or the Mendip Hills. The slates stand for the new rocks, which have been piled up against these, one over the other. But, you see, each slate is lower than the one before it, and slopes more; till the last slate which you are putting on is the lowest of all, though it overlies all. ”

“ The whole surface of the earth,--I speak broadly, and leave out minor qualifications,--is made up of such layers of mud, so hard, the majority of them, that we call them rock whether limestone or sandstone, or other varieties of rock. ”

“ Later, the shrinking and warping earth-crust lifted the rock far above the level of the sea, and it may now be found at the top of the mountain. The one bit of rock tells its story to one who inquires into its causes. ”

“ In winter, however, they possess their greatest charm. Then nature is busily at work. The rock gives out bounteous streams of water, which leap down their mossy sides, singing as they go joyful anthems and imparting to every kind of vegetation the moisture which [Pg 87] gives them renewed life. ”

“ The Rock itself, though somewhat dwarfed by the parent mountain when viewed from a distance, is a grand object from below, when one stands right under the great walls which form its northern buttress. ”

“ The rock which is the most stable of material things, and forms the foundation for land and water, corresponds to the immutability of the Divine purposes and methods of accomplishing them. For this reason the Lord is often called a rock. ”

“ He bent the enormous ribs slowly:
A circle of darkness! Then fixed
The sinew in its rest; then the Rock,
Poisonous source, plac’d with art, lifting difficult
Its weighty bulk; silent the rock lay,
8. ”

“ Little is to be seen except dark rock: wood only fringes the lower parts and the waters’ edge: perhaps the spots and streaks of snow, contrasting with the general blackness of the scene, highten the appearance of desolation. ”

“ They are still ‘founded as the rock,’ though not so broad and general as the casing air, for the only thing that limits them is the solidity of another right, no better than my own, and, like stones in a building, or a mosaic pavement, each remains not the less firmly riveted to its place, though it cannot encroach upon the next to it. ”

“ “‘Close by, a rock of less enormous height Breaks the wild waves, and forms a dangerous strait; Full on its crown a fig’s green branches rise, And shoot a leafy forest to the skies; ”

“ Much earth remained upon the rock, in irregular masses, but the woods had been felled, and the water had free access to the surface, and to the crevices which sun and frost had already produced in the rock, and, of course, to the slimy stratum beneath. ”

“ Where Ever this water drops it does not weare ye Rock in hollow as some other such subterranian Caves does but it hardens and does Encrease ye stone and that in a Roundness as if it Candy’d as it fell, wch I am of opinion it does; so it makes ye Rocks grow and meete Each other in some places. ”

“ To climb this mountain, which almost reached the skies, was impossible for it was formed of smooth granite, mixed with rocks of the finest crystal, which hung over us, and seemed every instant ready to fall upon our heads. ”

“ Even the wind and bare mountains, wrapped in cold and silvery light, preserved their disdainful and hopeless aspect, the aspect of rocks that have seen the ages without ever a blade of grass or a flower. ”