White, gemlike flames burned at their sterns; turquoise enamelwork made flowing ideographs over their hulls, a language of delicious, tangled flower stems.

But however they tried, none could outdo the Green Carnation, and she ran out ahead of them, an incitement, a triumph, and a hard gemlike flame.

Burns with a hard blue gemlike flame.

You can't ask females to 'burn with a hard, gemlike flame' and still be obliging about waffles at midnight.

This use of fire could be an allusion to Walter Pater's "hard, gemlike flame," with which Toto, the nascent artist, burns as a child, but it seems more like dopey movie making.

"They want to cook their meals over Pater's hard gemlike flame and light their cigarettes at it."

Maybe take out "always" and change to: "burn, from time to time, with this friendly, gemlike flame"?

I'm thinking of the Augustans in the middle of the 18th century, the Romantic revolutionaries 50 years on, the patriarchal Victorian virtues, the "gemlike flame" of the esthetes in the 1890's.

Oh, for a Sliver of the Apron Talking about her early years as an unpublished writer, Cynthia Ozick tells us what it's like to burn with a hard, gemlike flame.

Neither opening seems to burn with that hard, gemlike flame.