Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Spire
To point to the starry heavens with a tapering top.
Ovid.—Meta., Book X. Fable III. (Riley’s Transl.)
Cloud-kissing turrets—spires that seem to kiss the clouds.
Heywood.—Four London Apprentices.
Yon tower-capp’d Acropolis,
Which seems the very clouds to kiss.
Byron.—Siege of Corinth, Div. I. last two Lines.
Yon towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds.
Shakespeare.—Troilus and Cressida, Act IV. Scene 5.
Under a starry-pointing pyramid.
Milton.—Epitaph on Shakespeare.
Pyramid pointing to the stars.
Wordsworth.—Vol. V. Page 80, Line 14.
These pointed spires, that wound the ambient sky.
Prior.—Solomon, a poem, Book III. Line 770.
The tapering pyramid——
Whose spiky top has wounded the thick cloud.
Blair.—The Grave, Line 190.
Magnific walls, and heaven-assaulting spires.
Smart.—Power of the Supreme Being.
The village church, among the trees,
Where first our marriage-vows were given,
With merry peals shall swell the breeze,
And point with taper spire to heaven.
Rogers.—A Wish, a poem, Verse 4.
An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches in flat countries with spire-steeples; which, as they cannot be referred to any other object, point as with silent finger to the sky and stars.
S. T. Coleridge.—The Friend, No. 14, Page 223.
Ye swelling hills and spacious plains!
Besprent from shore to shore with steeple tow’rs,
And “spires whose silent finger points to heav’n.”
Wordsworth.—The Excursion, Verse 17.
Who taught the heaven-directed spire to rise?
Pope.—Moral Essays, Epi. III. Line 261. (To Bathurst.)
Nought but the heaven-directed spire.
Wordsworth.—Vol. V. Page 84, Line 8.
Rushing from the woods, the spires
Seem from hence ascending fires!
Dyer.—Grongar Hill, Line 51.
How the tall temples, as to meet their God,
Ascend the skies!
Dr. Young.—Night VI. Line 781.
Where’er a spire points up to heaven,
Through storm and summer air,
Telling that all around have striven,
Man’s heart, and hope, and prayer.
Mrs. Hemans.—Themes of Song, Page 534.
View not this spire by measure given,
To buildings raised by common hands;
That fabric rises high as heaven,
Whose basis on devotion stands.
Prior.—On a Column in Halstead Church.