United States or Estonia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Black on a shimmering expanse of starry sky and pearly cloud-wreaths, the figures of the fettered, struggling slaves stood out in vain and vehement protest against a merciless doom. The man approached unsteadily along the water side, shouting an English street song. He was evidently a sailor returning from a carouse at some tavern. No one else was within sight.

Now these" he drew out some long, beautifully-rolled, mellow-coloured cigars "these are really something a little out of the common. Do try one." Robert lit the weed which was offered to him, and leaned back luxuriously amid his cushions, gazing through the blue balmy fragrant cloud-wreaths at the extraordinary man in the dirty pea-jacket who spoke of millions as another might of sovereigns.

Mountains rose up nearer to the sound of the surf; they saw Lebanon capped with cloud-wreaths, then snowy Hermon gleaming in the sun. They saw Mount Tabor with a grey head, and two mountains like spires which stood separate and apart.

Agostino stood subdued for the moment by the magnificent sights and sounds; for, as the sun went down, the distant mountains grew every moment more unearthly in their brilliancy, and as they lay in a long line, jewelled brightness mingling with the cloud-wreaths of the far horizon, one might have imagined that he in truth beheld the foundations of that celestial city of jasper, pearl, and translucent gold which the Apostle saw, and that the risings and fallings of choral sound which seemed to thrill and pulsate through the marble battlements were indeed that song like many waters sung by the Church Triumphant above.

To the west the ground rises again into hills crowded behind each other, sombre masses, for ages called the Mountains of Storms. Far beyond them, vague as blue cloud-wreaths in the blue, are the hills that guard our western ocean.

As for Hepzibah, she seemed not merely possessed with the east wind, but to be, in her very person, only another phase of this gray and sullen spell of weather; the East-Wind itself, grim and disconsolate, in a rusty black silk gown, and with a turban of cloud-wreaths on its head.

Then he took down from the rack the old and oily clay pipe, which was to him as a counsellor, and, having lit it, he leaned back in his chair, with the thick blue cloud-wreaths spinning up from him, and a look of infinite languor in his face. "Quite an interesting study, that maiden," he observed. "I found her more interesting than her little problem, which, by the way, is rather a trite one.

Secretly, behind this mask of convention, were they both thinking of him? A girl's thoughts are never far from her lover; and Julie was conscious, this afternoon, of a strange and mysterious preoccupation, whereof Warkworth was the centre. Gradually the great mountains at the head of the lake freed themselves from the last wandering cloud-wreaths.

Some fifteen miles farther away, in the same direction, appeared the loftier Dome of Taconic, looking blue and indistinct, and hardly so substantial as the vapory sea that almost rolled over it. The nearer hills, which bordered the valley, were half submerged, and were specked with little cloud-wreaths all the way to their tops.

You wake some morning to see the meadows which last night were gay with July flowers huddled up in snow a foot in depth. But fair weather does not tarry long to reappear. You put on your thickest boots and sally forth to find the great cups of the gentians full of snow, and to watch the rising of the cloud-wreaths under the hot sun.