Memoranda: This cathedral has the highest spire. Remember: Winchester, longest nave; Salisbury, highest spire.英文原著 · 《A Cathedral Courtship》
THE place found was in the upper part of a house backed on a canal. We had two rooms, the second entering from the first; each had a chimney built out into the floor in the Dutch manner; and being alongside, each had the same prospect from the window of the top of a tree below us in a little court, of a piece of the canal, and of houses in the Hollands architecture and a church spire upon the further side. A full set of bells hung in that spire and made delightful music; and when there was any sun at all, it shone direct in our two chambers. From a tavern hard by we had good meals sent in.英文原著 · 《Catriona》
-- St. and up goes the spire: Giotto's plan included a spire of 100 feet, but the project was abandoned by Taddeo Gaddi, who carried on the work after the death of Giotto in 1336.英文原著 · 《Introduction to Robert Browning》
We fell another half mile or so. A spire was sticking up into the sky directly beneath us, like a spear, to impale us. By a supreme effort I twisted out of the way of that spire, only to strike squarely on top of the roof of a greenhouse back of the parsonage, next door. We crashed through it with a perfectly terrific clatter of breaking glass and landed in a bed of white flowers, all soft and downy, like feathers.英文原著 · 《Speaking of Operations》
From the valley ahead came the cry of a searching hound. All the devils were loose this morning. Every way was closed but one, and that led straight down the mountain to the cluster of houses. Conspicuous among them was a slender white wooden spire. The doe did not know that it was the spire of a Christian chapel. But perhaps she thought that human pity dwelt there, and would be more merciful than the teeth of the hounds.英文原著 · 《The Complete Writings-3》
These bright spires of pink bloom attract our attention no less than the countless eyes of flies, beetles, and bees, ever on the lookout for food to be eaten on the spot or stored up for future progeny. Pollen-feeding insects such as these, delight in the spireas, most of which secrete little or no nectar, but yield an abundance of pollen, which they can gather from the crowded panicles with little loss of time, transferring some of it to the pistils, of course, as they move over the tiny blossoms. But most spireas are also able to fertilize themselves, insects failing them.英文原著 · 《WILD FLOWERS》