Wall

“ Its light is like unto a stone most precious, and the materials of its structure are most costly; the building of the wall is of jasper, the city and the street of pure gold, and the foundations of the wall adorned with all manner of precious stones,574 while the several gates are each of a single pearl,—the mingled symbols of brilliancy, glory, costliness, and beauty. ”

“ The words are the ancientest language of trees—
They tell of how earth and air and light
Are wrought anew to beauty and to fruitfulness.
I feel the glad stirrings under her rough bark;
Her living sap mounts up to bring forth leaves;
Her great limbs thrill beneath the wand of spring.
This wall was builded in our fathers days—
Valorous days when life was lusty and the land was new.
Resemble the walls the builders, buffeted, stern, and worn. ”

“ There is an embattled wall, which makes a terrace walk, above the fair lawns and jewelled flower beds, and from the top as you walk, the hills girdling the old city go waving in gradations of blue to an opal horizon. ”

“ The wall to me has freshness like a scent, And takes half animate the air, Making one life with its green moss and stain; And life with all things seems too perfect blent For anything of life to be aware. ”

“ The wall runs down in crumbling cadence
Beside the brook which plays
Through the land like a silver harp.
A wind of ancient romance blows across the field,
A sweet disturbance thrills the air;
The silken skirts of Spring go rustling by,
And the earth is astir with joy.
Up the hill, romping and shaking their golden heads,
Come the little children of the wood.
From ecstasy to ecstasy the year mounts upward. ”

“ And it is a noble thing for men to do this with their cut stone or moulded clay, and to make the face of a wall look infinite, and its edge against the sky like an horizon: or even if less than this be reached, it is still delightful to mark the play of passing light on its broad surface, and to see by how many artifices and gradations of tinting and shadow, time and storm will set their wild signatures upon it ”

“ One wall is smooth as polished granite, red and white veins zigzagging across it like mysterious characters in the handwriting of God. In another place the whole face is rusty brown, as if of solid iron. ”

“ Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." ”

“ And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits; the measure of a man, that is, of an angel. And the wall of it was of jasper; hut the city itself was pure gold, like unto pure glass ”

“ there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. ”

“ "I cannot think why this wall is here, nor what it is made of."
"Rest your brains and do not worry about the wall," replied the Woodman. "When we have climbed over it, we shall know what is on the other side." ”

“ After all, this wall which rises beyond my desk, the wall against which my glass case of instruments rests, symbolizes the boundary of knowledge—seemingly an opaque barrier. I am called a man of science, a man with a passion for accuracies. I seek to define a part of the limitless and undefined mysteries of the body. But what is behind the wall? Are we sensitive to it? You smile. Give your attention then to a narrative of facts. ”

“ The wall seems woven like a web,198 wrought like brocade, netted like lace, and veined like a leaf; one cannot look at it closely nor fix its design in one's mind: it would be like trying to count the ants in an anthill: one must be content to look at the walls with a wandering glance, then to rest and look again later, and then to think of something else and talk. ”

“ The wall is an Iliad of granite: it chants to me
Of pilgrims of the perilous deep,
Of fearless journeyings and old forgotten things.
The blood of grim ancestors warms the fingers
That trace the letters of their story;
My pulses beat in unison with pulses that are stilled;
The fire of their zeal inspires me
In my struggle with darkness and pain.
These embossed books, unobliterated by the tears and laughter
of Time,
Are signed with the vital hands of undaunted men. ”

“ Another minute or two, and our shadows are thrown sharply on a glowing wall, towers and domes come distinctly into view, housetops innumerable range themselves in close array at our feet, and we, who but a few minutes ago, seemed to be standing as it were alone upon the top of a high mountain, are suddenly and closely beleaguered. ”

“ A wall of sand shall be as effectual as a wall of brass to check the flowing waves, when God is pleased to make it so; nay, that is chosen rather, to teach us that a soft answer, like the soft sand, turns away wrath, and quiets a foaming rage, when grievous words, like hard rocks, do but exasperate, and make the waters cast forth so much the more mire and dirt. ”

“ On the extreme peak of the height a wall has been built around the edge, the descent on one side being so vertical that a false step might hurl one to instant destruction. At this wall we dismounted and lingered long, unwilling to leave the beautiful view before sunset. ”

“ Not a wall that is not stripped of its plaster, which hangs in great layers, like veils torn off by the storm. Not a straight line in all those buildings, which lean against one another and seem on the point of crumbling together. ”

“ A wall is the safeguard of simplicity. It lays a long level line among the indefinite chances of the landscape. But never more majestic than in face of the wild sea, the wall, steadying its slanting foot upon the rock, builds in the serried ilex-wood and builds out the wave. The sea-wall is the wall at its best. ”

“ The ancient wall is a feature in the garden, for on two sides it towers like a cliff, forming a charming background to the scene. It has weathered beautifully with the ages, and is an immense stretch of canvas for the display of masses of colour. ”

“ The unbroken line of this wall makes a solid base for the whole building, which gets lighter and lighter as it ascends to the top, where numerous feathery pinnacles impart softness and richness to the extremity that meets the sky. ”

“ A cyclopean wall rises from earth to heaven. The gate of rock by which you entered seems to have closed its ponderous jaws behind you, and shut you in,—there to remain till some supernatural power rend the mountains and give you egress. ”

“ Have you ever noticed the sweet-scented wall flowers growing on an old stone wall? They have scarcely any earth for their roots, only a little bit between the stones, yet they make the old wall beautiful, and no flower smells sweeter. They teach us to be contented. ”

“ "There is a steep and lofty wall,
Where my warders trembling stand,
He who at speed shall ride round its height,
For him shall be my hand." ”

“ I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand lest a least hole should be left in this name; and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being. ”

“ You have seen that the wall has its physiology, a life of its own. Perhaps you will no longer find it so strange that Master Quince introduces not only a pale moonshine and a rough lion, but also a "sweet and lovely wall" as a living and talking person. ”

“ Finally an ancient stone wall with tiled roof threw a protective semicircle close about all this at the rear, beyond which the rather thin pine forest, gnarled and bent with age, climbed the hill-slopes across which only disrespectful mortals ever pass. ”

“ You admire this tower of granite, weathering the hurts of so many ages. Yet a little waving hand built this huge wall, and that which builds is better than that which is built. The hand that built can topple it down much faster. ”

“ From the yard the wall ran up to a good height—to the children it seemed immense, as high as the tower of Babel, though were they to go back now and look at it I dare say they would find it quite insignificant, for walls have a curious way of decreasing an inch or two with every year one grows older. ”

“ Let this north wall be one of the mountains, and the south wall be taken for another of the mountains, and let all the aisles and the pews be the valley between, for there are thousands here to-day without one pulsation of spiritual life. ”

“ Ah! well-a-day! O wall adieu!
The wall is wold, my grief is new.
But now when winter’s raïn do vall,
An’ wind do beat ageän the hall,
The while upon the wat’ry wall
In spots o’ grey the moss do grow ”

“ It was noticed in our account of the divisions of a wall, that there are something in those divisions like the beginning, the several courses, and the close of a human life. And as, in all well-conducted lives, the hard work, and roughing, and gaining of strength come first, the honor or decoration in certain intervals during their course, but most of all in their close, so, in general, the base of the wall, which is its beginning of labor, will bear least decoration, its body more, especially those epochs of rest called its string courses; but its crown or cornice most of all. ”

“ There is the old wall which you see, and on the rock one can follow the lines of the walls of houses, built square and with many rooms, and from the rocks which have fallen they must have been tall houses. ”

“ Wall′-spring, a spring of water running between stratified rocks; Wall′-tow′er, a tower built into and forming part of a line of fortification or a fortified city-wall; Wall′-tree, a tree trained against a wall; Wall′-wort, the European dwarf elder; Hang′ing-wall, that wall of the vein which is over the miner's head while working, the opposite wall being called the Foot′-wall.—Wall a rope, to make a wall-knot on the end of a rope.—Drive to the wall, to push to extremities; Go to the wall, to be hard pressed: to be pushed to extremes; Hang by the wall, to hang up neglected: to remain unused ”

“ The earth cried out for labor, and they gave it.
But ever as they saw the budding spring,
Ever as they cleared the stubborn field,
Ever as they piled the heavy stones,
In mystic vision they saw, the eternal spring;
They raised their hardened hands above the earth,
And beheld the walls that are not built of stone,
The portals opened by angels whose garments are of light ”

“ Some man or other must present Wall; and let him have some plaster, or some loam, or some rough-cast about him, to signify wall; and let him. hold his fingers thus, and through that cranny shall Pyramus and Thisby whisper. ”

“ Only a wall divided him from those happy young contemporaries of his with whom he shared a common mental life; men who had nothing to do from morning till night but to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. Only a wall—but what a wall! ”

“ On the declivity of a steep hill, the bottom and sides of which were fenced so as to be impassable, a wall was constructed nearly level with the surface on the outside, yet so high within that without wings it was impossible to escape in the opposite direction. ”

“ Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so;
And, being done, thus Wall away doth go. ”

“ Below, running back into the mountain, are the Crystal Cities, fenced in with corrugated sparkling walls coped with shell-formation. A little beyond is another wall of a similar kind, also gracefully curved in obedience to natural [Pg 149] laws, for Nature loves curves and wages perpetual war against straight lines. ”

“ As they do not lay claim to regard so much on account of their height as for their extent and elaborate ornamentation, the wall of the first rises before you while you are yet unaware of its vicinity. ”

“ Great slabs of marble, squared fragments of wall and triangular pieces of roofing, are scattered about, half-buried in the earth. I have often, continued the young man, ‘passed hours at a time in examining the combats and the games, the dances and the processions, the beautiful and ludicrous figures which are sculptured there. ”

“ For the characters are combined by their exposition of one thing in a common world including ourselves, that one thing which I call the ‘wall.’ Our perception is not confined to universal characters; we do not perceive disembodied colour or disembodied extensiveness: we perceive the wall’s colour and extensiveness. The experienced fact is ‘colour away on the wall for us.’ Thus the colour and the spatial perspective are abstract elements, characterizing the concrete way in which the wall enters into our experience. ”

“ Who knows how many archæologists will concentrate their painstaking research upon the identification of a doorway or portion of a wall discovered in the courtyard of some modern building—how many poets will break forth into verse over a few heaps of stones scattered along the shore? ”

“ Over the wall, on the right side, is the men’s section. We hear them chopping down trees and sawing through planks, dashing heavy weights to the ground, and singing part songs. Yes, they take it far more seriously. ”