Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 19, 2025
The fire-flies flew lightly over them, like little floating torches. Do the dancing maidens sleep, or are they dead? The scent of the flower says that they are corpses. The evening bell tolls their knell." "You make me quite sorrowful," said little Gerda; "your perfume is so strong, you make me think of the dead maidens. Ah! is little Kay really dead then?
Why were the times, so dark to others, instinct to him with a steady solar effluence, in comparison of which the boasted enlightenment of these latter days was but as the busy exhibition of squibs by impertinent boys, the uncertain trembling of fire-flies in a dusky twilight?
Their favourite melodies are mostly in a minor key, and they dislike noisy music; indeed, noise of any sort. Gesture and the dance are fine arts, and they can imitate almost any action without words. A favourite amusement is to gather in the dusk of the evening, crowned with flowers, or wearing fanciful dresses, and sing or dance together by the light of the fire-flies.
Later out on the narrow porch we would puff lazy smoke wreaths and watch the vast valley of lights below, from the distant twinkling arch of the Bridge to the sparkling towers of old Coney. Down there like swarms of fire-flies were countless darting skurrying lights, red and blue and green and white.
Still nearer rippled the sound of singing, . . and all at once a troop of girls came dancing noiselessly as fire-flies into the full, quivering pinkness of the jewel-like light that floated about them, . . girls as lovely, as delicate, as dainty as cyclamens that wave in the woods in the early days of an Italian spring.
When I was a child, I used to think that fire-flies were the crowns of the fairies, which shone despite their wearers' invisibility: this idea was recalled to me. Hark! booming from unthought-of depths, a roar rolls up in majestic waves of echoing thunder. At this resonant burst, I tremble, I think a prayer. "They are blasting below us," cries the Colonel, de profundis.
Yet innumerable fire-flies, bright as glow-lamps, and of every hue, were flashing like diamonds against the whispering foliage of the trees.
So Pete was set to collect dead wood for a fire, Cross descended with our kettle to fill it below, and before long we were partaking of a capital meat-tea by the light of the fire; while we strolled a little way from our camp to listen to the various sounds of the night, it seemed as if a fresh world of inhabitants had awakened, and for hours we listened to the strange notes of bird and insect, and watched with wonder the beauty of the fire-flies, which never seemed to grow common.
That bull amongst the Sinis, with those shafts looking like snakes, cut into fragments that dense shower of stones thrown by the mountaineers. The fragments of those stones, looking like a swarm of blazing fire-flies, slew many combatants there, whereupon, O sire, cries of oh and alas arose on the field.
A most wonderful effect also is produced by the millions of fire-flies, which find their way into the very tops of the trees, and sparkle between the foliage like so many brightly twinkling stars. I had been informed that the ascent of this mountain was attended with great difficulty.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking