"You see those marks?" she said. "We call them the Seven Sisters. Follow a little lower with your eye, and you will see a fold of the hill, the tops of some trees, and a tail of smoke out of the midst of them. That is Swanston cottage, where my brother and I are living."
—Stevenson: St. Ives.
(Copyright, 1897. Charles Scribner's Sons.)
Notice in the selection below that for objects near at hand details so small as the lizard's eye are given, but that these details are not given, when we are asked to observe things far away.
Slow though their march had been, by this time they had come to the end of the avenue, and were in the wide circular sweep before the castle. They stopped here and stood looking off over the garden, with its somber cypresses and bright beds of geranium, down upon the valley, dim and luminous in a mist of gold. Great, heavy, fantastic-shaped clouds, pearl-white with pearl-gray shadows, piled themselves up against the scintillant dark blue of the sky. In and out among the rose trees near at hand, where the sun was hottest, heavily flew, with a loud bourdonnement, the cockchafers promised by Annunziata,—big, blundering, clumsy, the scorn of their light-winged and businesslike competitors, the bees. Lizards lay immobile as lizards cast in bronze, only their little glittering, watchful pin heads of eyes giving sign of life. And of course the blackcaps never for a moment left off singing.
—Henry Habland: My Friend Prospero ("McClure's").
We round a corner of the valley, and beyond, far below us, looms the town of Sorata. From this distance the red tile roofs, the soft blue, green, and yellow of its stuccoed walls, look indescribably fresh and grateful. A closer inspection will probably dissipate this impression; it will be squalid and dirty, the river-stone paving of its street will be deep in the accumulation of filth, dirty Indian children will swarm in them with mangy dogs and bedraggled ducks, the gay frescoes of its walls will peel in ragged patches, revealing the 'dobe of their base, and the tile roofs will be cracked and broken. But from the heights at this distance and in the warm glow of the afternoon sun it looks like a dainty fairy village glistening in a magic splendor against the Titanic setting of the Andes.
—Charles Johnson Post: Across the Highlands of the World
("Harper's").
Come on, sir; here's the place. Stand still. How fearful
And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down
Hangs one that gathers sampire, dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.
The fishermen that walk upon the beach
Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark
Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge
That on the unnumber'd idle pebble chafes,
Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more,
Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.
—Shakespear: King Lear
+123. Implied Point of View.+—Often the point of view is not specifically stated, but the language of the description shows where the observer is located. Often such an implied point of view gives a delicate touch to a description that could not be obtained by direct statements.