Sapphire

“ It is “a most magnificent and rare brilliant of a deep sapphire-blue, of the greatest purity and most beautifully cut: it is of true proportions, not too thick nor too wide-spread. This matchless gem combines the beautiful color of the sapphire with the prismatic fire and brilliancy of the diamond; and on account of its extraordinary color, great size, and other fine qualities, it certainly may be called unique, as we may presume that there exists no cabinet nor any collection of crown jewels in the world which can boast of the possession of so curious and fine a gem.” ”

“ The deep sapphire of the sea rippling under the brisk evening breeze, the turquoise heaven that swept down to the horizon softly shifting against the sapphire contrast to a mystery of fragile green, the field of battle boiling and eddying in the mellow orange glow of the long rays of the setting sun and bursting into masses of iridescent spray made a noble setting worthy of the cause, and in it eighty tons of mother-love and devotion measuring itself in horse-power and foot-tons was slowly drooping under the hail from a slim, glittering, iridescent arc. ”

“ These stones may be of various colors,—blue, red, or gray,—yet the rays of the star are always white or faintly tinged, and stream forth in beautiful contrast to a ground of delicate blue or decided red. The stars appear the most distinctly to view when the polished gem is exposed to direct sunlight or a small bright flame. This mysterious play is seen in but few of the gems, and the sapphire exhibits it in its greatest perfection. ”

“ Her blue, coloured after the sapphire-floor on which stands the throne of him who is the Resurrection and the Life, is dashed and glorified with the pure white of sailing clouds, and at morning and evening prayer, puts on colours in which the human heart drowns itself with delight—green and gold and purple and rose. ”

“ Where the sapphire sea and the sky have met,
Or where the glittering sun will set,
Beyond the curves of the silver bays.
Ah! brightly they sparkle, the burnished waves,
And softly the breeze in the pine-trees plays,
And much is forgotten ”

“ For the blue of the precious sapphire is thick to it, the turquoise dull, these hard surfaces are no more to be compared to it than sand and gravel. They are but stones, hard, cold, pitiful, that which gives them their lustre is the light. Through delicate porcelain sometimes the light comes, and it is not the porcelain, it is the light that is lovely. ”

“ Sometimes so many of these white, towering heights can be seen, and in so different quarters, that one may almost fancy the sky itself to be a vast dome of sapphire supported by gigantic pillars of marble. ”

“ Light, marvellously soft yet penetrating, everywhere diffused, everywhere reflected without radiance, poured from the moon high above our heads in a sky tinted through all shades and modulations of blue, from turquoise on the horizon to opaque sapphire at the zenith—dolce color. ”

“ Broad patches of ruby, amethyst, emerald, topaz, and sapphire lie upon the pillars and flags, and above the light seems to strike through irridescent flashes of jewels. How fresh and full imagination must have been in those grand ages of art to have devised such permanent triumphs of colours, such witchery of hue upon such majesty of form, the greatness of the one tempered by the delightful loveliness of the other. ”

“ Above us, around us, behind us, before us lies a luminous azure atmosphere, which produces the effect of a gigantic molten sapphire, whose secret blue fires we have actually tracked to their lurking-place in the very heart of the gem. ”

“ Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire.
Like the bodied heaven in his clearness
Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work,
When they ate and drank and saw God also!
XVII
What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know.180
Only this is sure—the sight were other,
Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence,
Dying now impoverished here in London.
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,185
One to show a woman when he loves her!
XVIII
This I say of me, but think of you, Love! ”

“ In the twelfth century, the Bishop of Rennes lavishes encomiums upon this beautiful stone. It is quite natural that this writer should lay especial stress upon the use of the sapphire for the adornment of rings, for it was in his time that it was beginning to be regarded as the stone most appropriate for ecclesiastical rings. The sapphire was like the pure sky, and mighty Nature had endowed it with so great a power that it might be called sacred and the gem of gems. ”

“ Against the all-pervading shimmering light our own forms stand out distinct of an intense and velvety blackness, yet the blades of the oars that cleave the melted sapphire of the water, the tips of our fingers that dabble in the celestial liquid, appear as if coated with tiny globules of silver. ”

“ Our sapphire is a bluish transparent variety of native crystalline aluminum oxide, the same corundum that when it is red we call a ruby. The sapphire may be sky blue or cornflower blue, and shade through the lighter hues to an almost colorless stone, called white or water sapphire. ”

“ At every word of the Highest, creation sprung. Darkness, borne back by the mighty torrent of effulgent light, would have passed annihilated from the face of the new-born world, but, shielded by angelic ministers, it lingered, in its new-appointed sphere, to do its destined bidding. A firmament of sapphire, stretched between the waters and the waters, veiling the glory of the spiritual heavens from the grosser earth. Land rose from the liquid deep. ”

“ It was on a dais of its own, a giant statue of a squatting Buddha, wrought in hammered brass, with an enormous sapphire in the middle of its great forehead. The sapphire alone must have been worth an immense sum, just as a jewel. ”

“ The coppery bronze, which in one light shews its rich gloss, is, by the least motion of the bird, changed in a moment to brilliant and deep azure, and again, in the next light, becomes refulgent sapphire or emerald-green. ”

“ On earth, and to itself most draws the soul,
Would seem a cloud that, rent asunder, thunders,
Compared unto the sounding of that lyre
Wherewith was crowned the sapphire beautiful,
Which gives the clearest heaven its sapphire hue.
"I am Angelic Love, that circle round
The joy sublime which breathes from out the womb
That was the hostelry of our Desire ”

“ No crucible yet constructed can hold a native sapphire, and all the alchemy of man directed to this point has failed to extort from carbon the secret of its diamond—the little crystal that earth with all her chemistry has made so few of, since first heat and water, Nature's gem-smiths, joined their forces to produce the glittering stones. ”

“ The yellow variety of sapphire is quite common, and exhibits many of the finest shades of yellow; but they are generally very faint in tint and often like the lemon in hue. They are exceedingly liable to imperfections, and especially to that opalescence which so often disfigures the red sapphire. Fine specimens, therefore, possessing transparency and beauty of color, are rare gems. But when it does occur in perfection, it forms a magnificent gem, which is only surpassed by the yellow diamond and zircon. ”

“ Here we see that the sapphire shared with the emerald the power of strengthening the sight, and one authority asserts that if anyone looked long and intently at a sapphire, his eyes would be protected 158from all injury, and nothing harmful could befall them. ”

“ Its color seems to well from endless depths, with a rich luminescence.
One of the rarest gems, the fine star sapphire, was held in repute among Egyptian astrologers, who called it the stone of the stars. Wearing a sapphire spun the stars into a favorable conjunction. In more than one section of the world of glamour today, movie “stars” carry on this tradition; sapphire jewelry, especially with a star sapphire, is their most potent talisman. In “the profession” a sapphire is an antidote for stage-fright. It builds confidence, brings success, and at the same time deflects the shafts of envy. ”

“ The blue varieties are the true sapphires, as they alone possess both quality and color. They bear to both the oriental amethyst and ruby the same relation that the true white diamond bears to stones off color.
Gentola—Pardon me if I am interrupting you. Here is a gem—that one resting on the white cushion—that is so large, so radiantly beautiful, that one can imagine it of Celestial origin. Is it not a true sapphire? Yes? Ah, I thought so; it possesses such a living radiance. Since I have learned that gems are both Spirit and matter, I shall admire them all the more. ”

“ As the red sapphire is one of the rarest as well as the most beautiful of all gems, its value is in keeping with its attributes. As it overpowers all other gems with its gorgeous red, which is a pure prismatic hue, so it transcends all others in price. There are but very few gems with which it can be confounded in color. But no matter what the material may be, provided it displays the royal tint. ”

“ The star sapphire is that variety of sapphire in which, when the stone is cut and rounded off horizontal with the dome of the crystal, the light is condensed across the three lines of crystalline interference. Three cross lines produce a star which moves as a source of light, or as it is moved from the source of light. Star sapphires very rarely possess the deep blue color of the fine blue sapphire ”

“ Another for health, protection from poison, poisonous airs, and tyranny was the Bearded Head of a man or a ram engraved on a sapphire, constructed when the well-aspected moon was passing through 8th, 9th, 25th and 26th degrees of Aquarius. Dreaming of sapphires is said to denote protection, social success, and favour generally. ”

“ The colored varieties of sapphire were probably known to primitive man, and were gathered in their rough state to serve as rude ornaments long before the diamond, with its less attractive natural appearance, was recognized as a treasure or a gem. The mountain torrents, laying bare the superficial strata of the gem beds, early exposed to view the sapphires of bright and attractive colors, which readily caught the close, observing eye of the savage ”

“ The greenish Sapphire is from Bohemia.
The Oriental Sapphire will lose its Colour in the Fire, without any Loss of its Splendor or Transparency; and is sometimes made by this means to counterfeit the Diamond; as the natural colourless Sapphire is also often made to do: but tho' these are both very beautiful Stones, they want much of the Hardness and Brilliancy of that Gem, and may always be easily discovered by a skilful Eye.
↑ The Emerald is a most beautiful Gem, transparent, and of a lively grass green, without the least Admixture of any other Colour. ”

“ In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white;
Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,
70 Buckled below fair knighthood’s bending knee:
Fairies use flowers for their charactery. ”

“ Commentators are not agreed whether that which we call the genuine sapphire, a transparent stone of a beautiful sky-blue colour, in hardness and value next to the diamond, is meant by ‏סַפִּיר‎; or the sapphire of the ancients, which, according to Pliny, (Hist. Nat. xxxvii. 39; Theophrast. De Lapid. 231,) is a stone of a pure blue colour, and has frequently pebble spots of a golden yellow hue, which were formerly thought to be really gold, and is evidently our lapis lazuli, lazure-stone. ”

“ Man's restless search, which rummages everything through, is compared to the unrestrainable ravaging fire.
Job 28:6 also consists of two grammatically independent assertions: the place (bed) of the sapphire is its rock. Must we refer לו to ספּיר, and translate: “and it contains fine dust of gold” (Hirz., Umbr., Stick., Nasse) ? It is possible, for Theophrastus (p. 692, ed. Schneider) says of the sapphire it is ὥσπερ χρυσόπαστος, as it were covered with gold dust or grains of gold ”

“ Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.” ”

“ Therefore a fine ruby or sapphire may be decidedly thin in form, and yet be a gem of great beauty and value. It is very rare we obtain the full perfection of brilliancy and color in the colored gems; for generally the depth of the finest hues prevents a display of the refractive powers of the stone. ”

“ Ain't these all stones and all different?' Yes, and why the devil don't you add pearls, too, among Page 69 the jewels, ain't they fish bones?" Thus he classes the stones together, adding that the balas, though light in colour, is a ruby, and the topaz a sapphire. "It is of the same hardness, and though of a different colour, must be classified with the sapphire: what better classification do you want? hasn't the air got its sun?" ”

“ No one having it in his hand can tell any lie until he has Page 81 put it from him; no race or army could bring it into a house where there is one that has made way with his father. At the hour of matins it gives out sweet music that there is not the like of under heaven."
Bartholomew, the mediæval scientist, tells narratives of the magical action of the sapphire. "The sapphire is a precious stone," he says, "and is blue in colour, most like to heaven in fair weather and clear, and is best among precious stones, and most apt and able to fingers of kings. ”

“ A very large per cent. of the light that falls upon the surface of a diamond at any low angle is reflected, hence the keenness of its luster. If a diamond and some other white stone, say a white sapphire, are held so as to reflect at the same time images of an incandescent light into the eye of the observer, such a direct comparison will serve to show that much more light comes to the eye from the diamond surface than from the sapphire surface. ”

“ When the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies,
All its vapourous sapphire, violet glow and silver gleam
With their magic flood me through the gateway of the eyes;
I am one with the twilight's dream. ”