dynamic
toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

strata
in a sentence

show 148 more with this conextual meaning
  • The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews; but cut into it, and you find that three distinct strata compose it:—upper, middle, and lower.   (source)
  • Mom and Lori could paint, and Dad and Brian and I could climb the cliffs and study the canyon's geological strata.†   (source)
  • HE TROLLEYED ALONG PALM and knuckle into the workshop, careful now to stay below the strata of smoke, holding his breath as long as he could until it burst out of him.†   (source)
  • The initial goals were twofold: one, to proselytize the Trisolaran religion; and two, to allow the tentacles of the ETO to spread from the highly educated intelligentsia to the lower social strata, and recruit younger ETO members from the middle and lower classes.†   (source)
  • I use Roman numerals to codify pelagic strata.†   (source)
  • Mikey too was still trying to climb higher, and he actually made it some of the way, into a rock strata above where I was standing.†   (source)
  • A few feet in the other direction, Phillip works the crowd, collecting a final round of hugs and high fives from all strata of Ballou's society.†   (source)
  • IN POUGHKEEPSIE, WE are raided, and for once the social strata are bridged: working men, performers, and bosses alike weep and snizzle as all that scotch, all that wine, all that fine Canadian whiskey, all that beer, all that gin, and even moonshine is poured onto the gravel by straight-armed, sour-faced men.†   (source)
  • But strata blue yes.†   (source)
  • In the gloomy air of daytime Lima—the sun filtering down through thin fog from the Pacific, then through the perpetual ground-level strata of dust and hydrocarbons—I stood outside Socios headquarters and looked up toward Carabayllo's hills and realized that the lights I'd seen the night before were mounted on highway-style pylons, towering over one —and two-room shacks.†   (source)
  • In quarries I could see its strata, the dragon's veins and muscles; the minerals, its teeth and bones.†   (source)
  • During the long, hot ride across the sprawling city, we were transfixed by the gridlock, the cages of barking puppies for sale at roadside, and the human strata that the Southeast Asian metropolis offers.†   (source)
  • She lay on her back, feet up against the wall, bruised legs out straight, examining the strata of colors—cream, tan, pink, peach—in the solid rock overhead.†   (source)
  • I would like to be killed...in the whitest most boneless valley of the moon, where the blessed sap congeals like alabaster and flows in dough-like strata.†   (source)
  • For one thing, although my Union sample is somewhat more representative of the class spectrum of the army as a whole than the Confederate sample, it is still skewed toward officers and upper-strata occupations.†   (source)
  • Ashe was typical of that strata of mankind which conducts its human relationships according to a principle of challenge and response.†   (source)
  • A few remnants of fossilized jawbone, some broken teeth in strata of limestone, would be the only mark man would have left of his existence in the world.†   (source)
  • The Chief went on standing looking out, head almost hidden in the bluegray strata of smoke.†   (source)
  • Brother and sister were products of the highest strata of humanity's evolution.†   (source)
  • The series of osmotic injections begins with the topmost strata of cortical synapses and slowly works down, switching off every circuit, extinguishing every memory, destroying every particle of the pattern that has been built up since birth.†   (source)
  • She set down a bowl of tortilla chips and a casserole dish filled with elaborate dip in multicolored strata, like sedimentary rock.   (source)
  • He imagined it now—sealed off in strata of porous rock by the leathery half-plant, half-animal little makers—and the thin rupture that was pouring a cool stream of clearest, pure, liquid, soothing water into ….   (source)
  • It is a picturesque expanse, framed in lofty crags in large strata, encrusted with white salt—a superb sheet of water, which was formerly of larger extent than now, its shores having encroached with the lapse of time, and thus at once reduced its breadth and increased its depth.   (source)
  • Likewise, by way of preliminary, I desire to remind the reader, that while in the earlier geological strata there are found the fossils of monsters now almost completely extinct; the subsequent relics discovered in what are called the Tertiary formations seem the connecting, or at any rate intercepted links, between the antichronical creatures, and those whose remote posterity are said to have entered the Ark; all the Fossil Whales hitherto discovered belong to the Tertiary period,…   (source)
  • A roar radiated outward as successive strata of the crowd learned that the key had been pressed.†   (source)
  • When he could no longer endure the heat and cramped quarters, he clambered down the staggered cliff of bales through strata of cooling air, his legs trembling for fear of making noise and from being broiled so long.†   (source)
  • He seemed a druggist in name only; he more closely fit the prevailing ideal of the self-made man who through hard work and invention pulled himself rung by rung into the upper strata of society.†   (source)
  • As facts grew into evidence, a creature emerged to explain these leathery scraps — a sandswimmer that blocked off water into fertile pockets within the porous lower strata below the 280° (absolute) line.†   (source)
  • As the glacier inched over humps and dips in the Cum's underlying strata, it fractured into countless vertical fissures-crevasses.†   (source)
  • Donald is a busybody and gadabout, priding himself on knowing more people from more strata of society than an "old money" neighbor would meet in three lifetimes.†   (source)
  • The base of the cairn rose steeply, strata upon strata of terraced iron-rock rising sheer from the desert floor; and the bottom belt of strata was moss-coated and glistening damp, with lacy maidenhair and filigree spider-fern trailing from every crevice.†   (source)
  • He told how, although the swift was so fine a flyer that he could sleep on the wing all night, and although the Wart himself had claimed to admire the way in which rooks enjoyed their flights, the real aeronaut of the lower strata—which cut out the swift—was the plover.†   (source)
  • From the costly simplicity of her attire, I deduced at once that she belonged to the upper strata of society.†   (source)
  • The levels correspond to the profundities sounded by the hero in his world-fathoming adventure; they number the spiritual strata known to the mind introverted in meditation.†   (source)
  • The mass was composed of inclined and sometimes vertical strata.†   (source)
  • Their tails churned the normally peaceful strata into actual billows.†   (source)
  • A few morning gleams infiltrated the liquid strata.†   (source)
  • It seemed upset, contorted, and convulsed by a violent upheaval of the lower strata.†   (source)
  • The play of the electric light produced singular effects upon the upper strata of cloud.†   (source)
  • I felt—or at least I thought I did—the submersible sinking toward the sea's lower strata.†   (source)
  • Torch in hand, he tried to gather some idea of our situation from the observation of the strata.†   (source)
  • No. The upper strata were too violently agitated.†   (source)
  • Through the open window we stared at the lower strata of this southernmost ocean.†   (source)
  • They're thermometric sounding lines that report water temperatures in the different strata.†   (source)
  • Was it reentering the motionless strata deep in the sea?†   (source)
  • Covered with heavy clouds, the stormy sky gave only the faintest light to the ocean's upper strata.†   (source)
  • But what I saw was simply a reflection produced by the crystal waters of these strata.†   (source)
  • She spoke at great length about her papa, the lawyer, and her cousin, the doctor—apparently to cast herself in a favorable light and to indicate that she came from the educated strata of society.†   (source)
  • All these memories, following one after another, were condensed into a single substance, but had not so far coalesced that I could not discern between the three strata, between my oldest, my instinctive memories, those others, inspired more recently by a taste or 'perfume,' and those which were actually the memories of another, from whom I had acquired them at second hand—no fissures, indeed, no geological faults, but at least those veins, those streaks of colour which in certain rocks, in certain marbles, point to differences of origin, age, and formation.†   (source)
  • Because it takes incalculable strength just to live in those deep strata and withstand their pressure.†   (source)
  • The Curator brought out a huge book of photos and showed him that very place, perched on its crag, overlooking the gigantic valley of many-hued strata.†   (source)
  • It is necessary rather to know the composition of the substances in question—the geological strata, the atmospheric actions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters, the density of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not.†   (source)
  • In the Bruhl Terrace in Dresden, between two and four o'clock—the most fashionable time for walking—you may meet a man about fifty, quite grey, and looking as though he suffered from gout, but still handsome, elegantly dressed, and with that special stamp, which is only gained by moving a long time in the higher strata of society.†   (source)
  • The Corsican vendetta has penetrated to certain lower strata and has become the law there; it is so simple that it does not astonish souls which are but half turned towards good; and those hearts are so constituted that a criminal, who is in the path of repentance, may be scrupulous in the matter of theft and unscrupulous in the matter of vengeance.†   (source)
  • The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.†   (source)
  • The water filtered into certain subjacent strata, which were particularly friable; the foot-way, which was of flag-stones, as in the ancient sewers, or of cement on concrete, as in the new galleries, having no longer an underpinning, gave way.†   (source)
  • This fluidity exceeds even the inconsistency of the sands of the Quartier Saint-Georges, which could only be conquered by a stone construction on a concrete foundation, and the clayey strata, infected with gas, of the Quartier des Martyrs, which are so liquid that the only way in which a passage was effected under the gallery des Martyrs was by means of a cast-iron pipe.†   (source)
  • No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc. The lower strata of the middle class—the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by the new methods of production.†   (source)
  • The beds of coal were separated by strata of sandstone or compact clays, and appeared crushed under the weight of overlying strata.†   (source)
  • In many places depressions or elevations gave witness to some tremendous power effecting the dislocation of strata.†   (source)
  • There within three square miles were accumulated the materials for a complete history of the animal life of ages, a history scarcely outlined in the too recent strata of the inhabited world.†   (source)
  • But if you ask me how he came there, how those strata on which he lay slipped down into this enormous hollow in the globe, I confess I cannot answer that question.†   (source)
  • [1]The name given by Sir Roderick Murchison to a vast series of fossiliferous strata, which lies between the non-fossiliferous slaty schists below and the old red sandstone above†   (source)
  • In that place the fiord was at least three English miles wide; the waves rolled with a rushing din upon the sharp-pointed rocks; this inlet was confined between walls of rock, precipices crowned by sharp peaks 2,000 feet high, and remarkable for the brown strata which separated the beds of reddish tuff.†   (source)
  • However, from Lord-knows-what whim, one day it did a diagonal dive by means of its slanting fins, reaching strata located 2,000 meters underwater.†   (source)
  • The Nautilus, driven downward by its propeller and slanting fins, descended to the lowest strata of this sea.†   (source)
  • The panels in the lounge opened, and maneuvers began for reaching those strata so prodigiously far removed.†   (source)
  • The Nautilus had drifted into the midst of some phosphorescent strata, which, in this darkness, came off as positively dazzling.†   (source)
  • During this phase of our voyage, Captain Nemo conducted interesting experiments on the different temperatures in various strata of the sea.†   (source)
  • In these deep strata would I meet up with more of Captain Nemo's companions, friends he was about to visit who led lives as strange as his own?†   (source)
  • Sliding under our hull, this block then raised us with irresistible power, lifting us into less congested strata where we now lie on our side.†   (source)
  • While we were walking, I thought the lights of our Ruhmkorff devices would automatically attract some inhabitants of these dark strata.†   (source)
  • How many other marvelous new specimens I still could have observed if, little by little, the Nautilus hadn't settled to the lower strata!†   (source)
  • In going toward the ocean's lower strata, we know that vegetable life disappears more quickly than animal life.†   (source)
  • Soon, from certain rolling and pitching movements, I sensed that the Nautilus had left the lower strata and was back on the surface of the water.†   (source)
  • The liquid strata farthest from the trench, not warmed by the movements of workmen and tools, were showing a tendency to solidify.†   (source)
  • Where had nature learned the secret of their vegetating existence, and for how many centuries had they lived in the ocean's lower strata?†   (source)
  • As for the temperature in these lower strata, the thermometer always and invariably indicated 4° centigrade.†   (source)
  • Coral sells for as much as ₣500 per kilogram, and in this locality the liquid strata hid enough to make the fortunes of a whole host of coral fishermen.†   (source)
  • Who could portray the effects of this light through these translucent sheets of water, the subtlety of its progressive shadings into the ocean's upper and lower strata?†   (source)
  • After Ned was dressed, I reentered the lounge, whose windows had been uncovered; stationed next to Conseil, I examined the strata surrounding and supporting the Nautilus.†   (source)
  • "Note well, my fine Canadian," I went on, "if such an animal exists, if it lives deep in the ocean, if it frequents the liquid strata located miles beneath the surface of the water, it needs to have a constitution so solid, it defies all comparison."†   (source)
  • However, even though electricity doesn't supply me with breathable air, it at least operates the powerful pumps that store it under pressure in special tanks; which, if need be, allows me to extend my stay in the lower strata for as long as I want.†   (source)
  • I observed that green-colored plants kept closer to the surface of the sea, while reds occupied a medium depth, which left blacks and browns in charge of designing gardens and flowerbeds in the ocean's lower strata.†   (source)
  • These polyps grow exclusively in the agitated strata at the surface of the sea, and so it's in the upper reaches that they begin these substructures, which sink little by little together with the secreted rubble binding them.†   (source)
  • How could I relinquish this ocean—"my own Atlantic," as I liked to call it—without observing its lower strata, without wresting from it the kinds of secrets that had been revealed to me by the seas of the East Indies and the Pacific!†   (source)
  • In the second place, because oxygen is the basis of life, and we know that the amount of oxygen dissolved in salt water increases rather than decreases with depth, that the pressure in these lower strata helps to concentrate their oxygen content.†   (source)
  • Volcanoes were quite numerous in the world's early days, but they're going extinct one by one; the heat inside the earth is growing weaker, the temperature in the globe's lower strata is cooling appreciably every century, and to our globe's detriment, because its heat is its life.†   (source)
  • If the Nautilus was submerged during these losses of balance, we heard the resulting noises spread under the waters with frightful intensity, and the collapse of these masses created daunting eddies down to the ocean's lower strata.†   (source)
  • When I wanted to determine what increase in weight the Nautilus needed to be given in order to submerge, I had only to take note of the proportionate reduction in volume that salt water experiences in deeper and deeper strata.†   (source)
  • Even though the surface of the sea has solidified into ice, its lower strata are still open, thanks to that divine justice that puts the maximum density of salt water one degree above its freezing point.†   (source)
  • But this return to the upper strata wasn't so sudden that decompression took place too quickly, which could have led to serious organic disorders and given us those internal injuries so fatal to divers.†   (source)
  • So, in our swift cruise through these deep strata, how many vessels I saw lying on the seafloor, some already caked with coral, others clad only in a layer of rust, plus anchors, cannons, shells, iron fittings, propeller blades, parts of engines, cracked cylinders, staved-in boilers, then hulls floating in midwater, here upright, there overturned.†   (source)
  • If we do not know every one of them, if nature still keeps ichthyological secrets from us, nothing is more admissible than to accept the existence of fish or cetaceans of new species or even new genera, animals with a basically 'cast-iron' constitution that inhabit strata beyond the reach of our soundings, and which some development or other, an urge or a whim if you prefer, can bring to the upper level of the ocean for long intervals.†   (source)
  • One sperm whale exterminated, it ran at another, tacked on the spot so as not to miss its prey, went ahead or astern, obeyed its rudder, dived when the cetacean sank to deeper strata, rose with it when it returned to the surface, struck it head-on or slantwise, hacked at it or tore it, and from every direction and at any speed, skewered it with its dreadful spur.†   (source)
  • The bottom was slippery, made doubly treacherous by a stratum of coins thrown for good luck.   (source)
    stratum = layer
    editor's notes: Strata, the plural form of this word is used much more commonly than the singular form. Many Latin words that end in "um" are made plural by changing the "um" to "a"--such as stratum to strata, bacterium to bacteria, and millennium to millennia. In modern writing, changing the "um" to "ums" is also accepted for many Latin words ending in um, but not for any of those listed above.
  • What he was proposing, in effect, was a stratum of artificial bedrock that would also serve as the floor of the basement.   (source)
  • His tales "The Masque of the Red Death" (1842) and "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) both deal with a stratum of society most of us only get to read about: the nobility.   (source)
    stratum = social class
  • They are members of a social stratum which includes welfare mothers, housing project residents, immigrant families, the homeless and unemployed.   (source)
    stratum = class
  • The entire operation was not unlike the digging of a trench in one's yard. The woman on the bed was no more than a hard stratum of marble they had reached.   (source)
    stratum = layer
  • (most of the cliffs that riddle the region are composed of Navajo sandstone, a crumbly stratum that erodes into smooth, bulging precipices)   (source)
    stratum = layer of rock
  • Just beneath the crust lay a twenty-foot stratum of the same quicksand Chicago builders always confronted, only now it was ice cold and a torment to workers.   (source)
    stratum = layer
  • Without even the safety valve of dreaming, he focused his prescient awareness, seeing it as a computation of most probable futures, but with something more, an edge of mystery—as though his mind dipped into some timeless stratum and sampled the winds of the future.   (source)
  • Awareness flowed into that timeless stratum where he could view time, sensing the available paths, the winds of the future …. the winds of the past: the one-eyed vision of the past, the one-eyed vision of the present and the one-eyed vision of the future—all combined in a trinocular vision that permitted him to see time-become-space.   (source)
  • Late in the day on their summit push, the two Americans climbed a stratum of steep, crumbly rock-the infamous Yellow Band.   (source)
  • But this was concrete evidence; it was a fragment of the abolished past, like a fossil bone which turns up in the wrong stratum and destroys a geological theory.   (source)
  • But he had read about Chicago in those days, about the great feudal families of Armour, Palmer, Field, Crane, Warren, Swift, and McCormick and many others, and since that time not a few patients had come to him from that stratum of Chicago and New York.   (source)
    stratum = social class
  • I don't mean that he had traded on his phantom millions, but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same stratum as herself — that he was fully able to take care of her.   (source)
    stratum = class of society
  • Then came a few guests belonging to a lower stratum of society—people who, like the Epanchins themselves, moved only occasionally in this exalted sphere.   (source)
    stratum = social class
  • In the view of a certain stratum of society, Carrie was comfortably established-in eyes of the traveling, beaten by every wind and gusty sheet of rain, she was safe in a halcyon harbor.   (source)
  • The Epanchins liked to draft among their more elevated guests a few picked representatives of this lower stratum, and Lizabetha Prokofievna received much praise for this practice, which proved, her friends said, that she was a woman of tact.   (source)
  • I came here today with anxious curiosity; I wished to see for myself and form my own convictions as to whether it were true that the whole of this upper stratum of Russian society is WORTHLESS, has outlived its time, has existed too long, and is only fit to die—and yet is dying with petty, spiteful warring against that which is destined to supersede it and take its place—hindering the Coming Men, and knowing not that itself is in a dying condition.   (source)
  • The vast arch of cloud above was strangely low, and formed as it were the roof of a large dark cavern, gradually sinking in upon its floor; for the instinctive thought was that the snow lining the heavens and that encrusting the earth would soon unite into one mass without any intervening stratum of air at all.   (source)
    stratum = layer
  • A heated breeze from the south slowly fanned the summits of lofty objects, and in the sky dashes of buoyant cloud were sailing in a course at right angles to that of another stratum, neither of them in the direction of the breeze below.   (source)
  • Deep and heavy explosions are heard from time to time, when the enormous jet, possessed with more furious violence, shakes its plumy crest, and springs with a bound till it reaches the lowest stratum of the clouds.   (source)
  • He says this, a censor of morals, a very pelican in his piety, who did not scruple, oblivious of the ties of nature, to attempt illicit intercourse with a female domestic drawn from the lowest strata of society!   (source)
    strata = social classes
  • Densities, growth, facades,
    Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees,
    Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave,
    Eidolons everlasting.   (source)
    strata = layers
  • He said he was sorry he did not have the energy to return Barney to his original stratum in South Dakota.†   (source)
  • September 4 13:25 I have dropped into a calmer stratum of air so I can hover over the island and observe them.†   (source)
  • While this laver of nativeness was not vast in proportion to the rest, it had vast importance, for society had been shaped in reaction to it, and unspeakable violence had occurred in relation to it, and yet it endured, fertile, a stratum of soil that perhaps made possible all future transplanted soils, and to which Saeed in particular was attracted, since at a place of worship where he had gone one Friday the communal prayer was led by a man who came from this tradition and spoke of this tradition, and Saeed had found, in the weeks he and Nadia had been in Marin, this man's words to be full of soul-soothing wisdom.†   (source)
  • Nobody quite knew how they made a living, but they did, and they would have created a new social stratum in Maycomb had the rest of the town acknowledged their existence.†   (source)
  • He has drawn volunteers and admirers from every stratum of Pakistan's society and from all the warring sects of Islam.†   (source)
  • Every stratum of the Brown society is represented here-from godlike tenured don to midlevel administrators, assistant and associate profs, grad students and lowly undergraduates.†   (source)
  • On the lowest stratum of this world appear the two original elements, Te Tumu and Te Papa.†   (source)
  • No, I was sitting in a blue light in a round room and a rare atmosphere, in a stratum of reality that had become rarefied in the extreme.†   (source)
  • The first detail of this illustration was a little circle containing two elements, Te Tumu, "The Foundation" (a male), and Te Papa, "The Stratum Rock" (a female).23 FIGURE 59.†   (source)
  • The mythology documented in these texts reveals an earlier, peasant stratum (associated with the thunderer, Thor), a later, aristocratic stratum (that of Wotan-Othin), and a third, distinctly phallic complex (Nyorth, Freya, and Frey).†   (source)
  • Such men as these were of the lowest stratum welcomed at the resort.†   (source)
  • The heather and peat stratum overhung the brow of the pit in mats, hiding the actual verge.†   (source)
  • The sapling which had rooted down to a poisonous stratum on the spot of its sowing had been transplanted to a deeper soil.†   (source)
  • Whilst all the landscape was in neutral shade his companion's face, which was the focus of his eyes, rising above the mist stratum, seemed to have a sort of phosphorescence upon it.†   (source)
  • The place took its name from a stone pillar which stood there, a strange rude monolith, from a stratum unknown in any local quarry, on which was roughly carved a human hand.†   (source)
  • This belief was confirmed by his experience of women, which, having latterly been extended from the cultivated middle-class into the rural community, had taught him how much less was the intrinsic difference between the good and wise woman of one social stratum and the good and wise woman of another social stratum, than between the good and bad, the wise and the foolish, of the same stratum or class.†   (source)
  • This exclamation of distress, far from exciting compassion, only added amusement to the good Parisian populace who surrounded the ladder, and who, it must be confessed, taken in the mass and as a multitude, was then no less cruel and brutal than that horrible tribe of robbers among whom we have already conducted the reader, and which was simply the lower stratum of the populace.†   (source)
  • When you invert your head, it looks like a thread of finest gossamer stretched across the valley, and gleaming against the distant pine woods, separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another.†   (source)
  • The height was much greater than was required for the ordinary purposes of experiment, but this was evidently the effect of chance, as the roof of the cavern was a natural stratum of rock that projected many feet beyond the base of the pile.†   (source)
  • The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.†   (source)
  • In Henry VIII, I think I see plainly the cropping out of the original rock on which his own finer stratum was laid.†   (source)
  • Such was the state of things when the current affairs of Casterbridge were interrupted by an event of such magnitude that its influence reached to the lowest social stratum there, stirring the depths of its society simultaneously with the preparations for the skimmington.†   (source)
  • One would need to be learned in the fashions of those times to know how far in the rear of them Mrs. Glegg's slate-colored silk gown must have been; but from certain constellations of small yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy odor about it suggestive of a damp clothes-chest, it was probable that it belonged to a stratum of garments just old enough to have come recently into wear.†   (source)
  • Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a rainbow's arch, which filled the lower stratum of the atmosphere, tinging the grass and leaves around, and dazzling me as if I looked through colored crystal.†   (source)
  • The open hills were airy and clear, and the remote atmosphere appeared, as it often appears on a fine winter day, in distinct planes of illumination independently toned, the rays which lit the nearer tracts of landscape streaming visibly across those further off; a stratum of ensaffroned light was imposed on a stratum of deep blue, and behind these lay still remoter scenes wrapped in frigid grey.†   (source)
  • The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.†   (source)
  • Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel'd with
    doctors and calculated close,
    I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.†   (source)
  • For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
    The long slow strata piled to rest it on,
    Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
    Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it
    with care.†   (source)
  • through the hatch'd eggs,
    The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the
    colt from the mare,
    Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves,
    Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in
    the dooryards,
    The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata
    of sour dead.†   (source)
  • Yes, if you will allow me to say so,
    I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see her,
    The same undying soul of earth's, activity's, beauty's, heroism's
    expression,
    Out from her evolutions hither come, ended the strata of her former themes,
    Hidden and cover'd by to-day's, foundation of to-day's,
    Ended, deceas'd through time, her voice by Castaly's fountain,
    Silent the broken-lipp'd Sphynx in Egypt, silent all those century-
    baffling tombs,
    Ended for aye the epics of Asia's, Europe's helmeted warriors, ended
    the primitive call of the muses,†   (source)
  • The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset, the river between,
    Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of
    white or brown two miles off,
    The schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide, the little
    boat slack-tow'd astern,
    The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,
    The strata of color'd clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint away
    solitary by itself, the spread of purity it lies motionless in,
    The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh
    and shore mud,
    These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who
    now goes, and will always go forth every day.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)