"Dryad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wisdom cropping up through fervid religious sentiments and quaint humor. Alice must have interested him more than he was fully aware of; for his eyes followed her, as she came and went, with a curious criticism of her half-savage costume and her springy, Dryad-like suppleness, which reminded him of the shyest and gracefulest wild birds; and yet a touch of refinement, the subtlest and best, showed in all her ways. He studied her, as he would have studied a strange, showy ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... revelations of men in connection with the lovely out of doors, or lonely shrines, or derived from inspired crusading humanity moving in masses, can now be fitly retold. Also the fairy wand can do its work, the little dryad can come from the tree. And the spirits that guard the Republic can be seen walking on the clouds ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... and sky shall you find it? The more solitary the recluse and the more confirmed and grounded his seclusion, the wider and more familiar becomes the circle of his social environment, until at length, like a very dryad of old, the birds build and sing in his branches and the "wee wild beasties" nest in his pockets. If he fails to be aware of the fact, more's the pity. His desolation is within, not without, in spite of, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... morning light at any rate was perfect, and deprecated any interference with the lime-trees. And then they took a stroll out among the trim parterres, and Mr. Arabin explained to Mrs. Bold the difference between a naiad and a dryad, and dilated on vases and the shapes of urns. Miss Thorne busied herself among her pansies, and her brother, finding it quite impracticable to give anything of a peculiarly Sunday tone to the conversation, abandoned the attempt and ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the old man, "called her a Dryad; but that we do not understand. The people who live in the New Booths [*] have a much better name for her; they call her 'old Granny'—and she it is to whom you are to pay attention. Now listen, and look ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... they emerged on a tiny clearing—a grassy ledge on the slope. Through the starlight he could see the hillside break away steeply into a vaporous gorge, while above him the mountain raised a black dome amid the serried points of the sky-line. The dryad-like creature beckoned him forward with her scarf, until suddenly she stopped with the decisive pause of one who has reached her goal. Coming up with her, he saw her unlock the door of a small cabin, which had hitherto not detached itself ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... broods like an air over those mighty arches; but Memory can find no reminiscence worthy of the spot. The amphitheatre was not built until history had become a record of the vice and debasement of the human race. The Faun and the Dryad had deserted the earth, no sweet superstition, the faith of the grotto and the green hill, could stamp with a delicate and undying spell the labours of man. Nor could the ruder but august virtues of the heroic age give to the tradition ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... could I picture thee, a dusky sprite, With Dryad hoofs on Thracian ledges drumming, When day is slipping from the arms of night And all the hushed leaves whisper, "Pan is coming!" And thou before him, leaping with delight, Stirring all birds to song, all bees to humming And buds to blossoming—but lo! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... Dryad's green alcove, Half-islanded by hill-brook's seaward rush, My lovers still bower, where none may come but I! Where in clear morning prime and high noon hush With only some old poet's book I lie! Sometimes a lonely dove Calleth her mate, or droning honey thieves Weigh down the bluebell's nodding ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... thee within with dainty satin sides, Where all the long day through the sleeping dryad dreams, But when the moon bends low and taps thee thrice she glides, Knowing the fairy knock, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... rag is their instrument. They draw it once or twice across the shoe to set the key and then they go into a swift and pattering melody. If there is an unusual genius in the bootblack—some remnant of ancient Greece—he plays such a lively tune that one's shoulders jig to it. If there were a dryad or other such nimble creature on the street, she would come leaping as though Orpheus strummed a tune, but the dance is too fast for our ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not with envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... distinctly material; yet the young man confronting her white grace, the strange look in her blue eyes, had a dreamlike feeling, almost as though he had met a dryad or an Undine between two of the prosaic, substantial doors of Ipswich House. And as in a dream the most extraordinary things seem familiar and expected, so the apparition of the Undine and her confidence in him seemed familiar, in fact just ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... children and "Aunt" Diana's children. They knew all the spots their mother had loved so well in her girlhood at old Green Gables—the long Lover's Lane, that was pink-hedged in wild-rose time, the always neat yard, with its willows and poplars, the Dryad's Bubble, lucent and lovely as of yore, the Lake of Shining Waters, and Willowmere. The twins had their mother's old porch-gable room, and Aunt Marilla used to come in at night, when she thought they were asleep, to gloat over them. But they all knew she loved ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... vaguely known as the Renaissance and the Revolution have both contributed to this result. Men who were weary of conventionality and of the weight of custom 'heavy as frost and deep almost as life,' have longed for the vision of 'Oread or Dryad glancing through the shade,' or to 'hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.' Meanwhile, that in which the Greeks most resembled us, 'the human heart by which we live,' for the very reason that it lies so near to us, is too apt to be lost from our conception ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... how altered was its sprightlier tone, When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue, Her bow across her shoulder flung, Her buskins gemmed with morning dew, Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung!— The hunter's call to Faun and Dryad known! The oak-crowned Sisters and their chaste-eyed Queen, Satyrs and Sylvan Boys, were seen, Peeping from forth their alleys green: Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear; And Sport leaped up, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the wettest dryad that ever was. She stumbled forward, groping. Jim Dyckman bent, slipped his hands under her arms, and hoisted her to land. He felt ludicrous, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... O! how alter'd was its sprightlier tone, When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue, 70 Her bow across her shoulder flung, Her buskins gemm'd with morning dew, Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung, The hunter's call, to Faun and Dryad known! The oak-crown'd Sisters, and their chaste-eyed Queen, 75 Satyrs and Sylvan Boys, were seen, Peeping from forth their alleys green: Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear; And Sport leapt up, and seized his beechen spear. Last came Joy's ecstatic trial: 80 He, with viny crown advancing, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... fairest imperfection. Perhaps there will be a whole line of distinct trees, and then you will see as it were a cliff-side of verdure in which, beneath the billowy curves of lit foliage, there open caverns and cool deeps of shadow fit for a Dryad's rest. ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... were the accounts of the previous night's expenses to settle; during the day, programmes, essays, enrolments, payments. M. Colbert had amassed four millions of francs, and dispersed them with sleepless economy. He was horrified at the expenses which mythology involved; not a wood nymph, nor a dryad, that cost less than a hundred francs a day! The dress alone amounted to three hundred francs. The expense of powder and sulphur for fireworks amounted, every night, to a hundred thousand francs. In addition to these, the illuminations on the borders of the sheet of water cost thirty thousand francs ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the water, all my thoughts were given to the service. We soon fell in with the North Sea squadron, and the day afterwards the Circe was directed to go on shore in company with the Dryad, and watch the flotillas of gun-boats which had been collecting in the various rivers and ports; to sink, burn, and destroy to the utmost of our power. This was an active and dangerous service, as ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... papyrus containing a missing page of Holy Writ, which will ascribe the reason of the first bloodshed to a love affair. Perhaps there were wood nymphs in those days, as we are assured there were giants, and some dainty Dryad might have driven the first pair of human brothers to desperation by her charms! What ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... there,"—the dryad who led him gestured to a sun-lit shallows above a tiny falls—"but I always cross here." She poised herself for a moment on the green bank, then dove like a silver arrow into the pool. Dan followed; the water stung his ...
— Pygmalion's Spectacles • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... many peals of thunder. The schoolmaster and the apothecary vied with each other in making speeches over their liquor; and there were occasional glees and musical performances by the village band, that must have frightened every faun and dryad from the park. Even old Christy, who had got on a new dress from top to toe, and shone in all the splendour of bright leather breeches and an enormous wedding favour in his cap, forgot his usual crustiness, became inspired by wine and wassel, and absolutely danced a hornpipe ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... her face in the crystal waters of a branch that flowed into the lagoon from under the live-oaks. She looked very pretty doing it, like a naiad or dryad scrubbing away ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... sanctuary had fallen in, but the altar-stone—a block of granite—remained in its place. This chapel belonged to a priory. Little is left of the adjoining monastery except some subterranean vaults and the gaping oven of the ruined bakery; all ferny, mossy, given up to the faun and the dryad. The upper masonry was carried away years ago to build a chapel upon the hill. A bit of green slope, where the sunbeams wantoned with yellow mulleins, wild carrot, and bracken, was the cemetery, as a few stone crosses almost buried in the soil plainly told. These crosses doubtless ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Elder Tree Mother," said the little girl in the tree, "others the Dryad, but my real name is Remembrance. It is I who sit in the tree that grows on and on, and I can think back and tell stories. Let me see if you still have ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... brow, opened her eyes, smiled slowly, and more and more merrily, then sprang up, and as the lights made her costume appear to be of the gold and russet red of autumn, she burst into a wild woodland dance such as a veritable Dryad might have performed. The music was rich, triumphant, and the whole atmosphere was filled with the glory of the crown of the year. By a clever contrivance, autumn leaves came fluttering down and Patty's bare feet nestled in them with childish enjoyment. Her smile was ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... extreme elegance. They wore gems that flashed a fortune as they passed. The rarest was of a pale rose color, translucent as the clearest water, and of a brilliancy exceeding the finest diamond. Their voices, in song, could only be equaled by a celestial choir. No dryad queen ever floated through the leafy aisles of her forest with more grace than they displayed in every movement. And all this was for feminine eyes alone—and they of the most ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... Dryad cult With leaf-like locks she'll haunt the trees, Securing this superb result ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... a crown of them the other day, and put them on the head of the little bronze boy, and I took a picture which I am sending. Somehow the boy of the fountain has always seemed to me to be alive, and to have in him some human quality, like a faun or a dryad. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... flame-berried ash, troop the hoofed Centaurs at morn! Nowhere greens a copse but the eye-beams of Artemis pierce it. Breathes no laurel her balm but Phoebus' fingers caress. Springs no bed of wild blossom but limbs of dryad have pressed it. Sparkle the nymphs, and the brooks chime with ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... meadow by the river Halys, 5 Where some wood-god hath the world in keeping, On a burning summer noon they found her, Lovely as a Dryad, and more tender. ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... not here," he thought. His footfall was nothing on the soft mold. Portly trunks of the hemlocks began to bar his way. The thick shade entreated secrecy; he stood still, and saw his dryad, a green apparition, kneeling at the foot of a beech tree, and looking down. In the stillness, which absorbed all but the beating of his heart, he heard the dry tick, tick of a beech leaf falling. Those that still clung to the sleek ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... as if the glassy brook Should image still its willows fair, Though years ago the woodman's stroke Laid low in dust their Dryad-hair. ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... nest everywhere in the eastern part of the country," said the Doctor; "but they are very silent and shy except in the autumn and winter. In fact, this Nuthatch keeps his nest a secret from everybody but his wife and the Dryad of the tree in which he places it; he will not even trust the little branches with his precious home, but makes it in the wood of the tree itself. You say, Rap, that you found one of these nests—won't you tell us ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... shyly into the room, on bare feet. Billy's face was wide and grinning, but there was a great solemnity of being good in his round blue eyes. Dora, peeping from the floss of her fair hair, hung back like some tiny Dryad, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... open'd. First The journey's cause narrating; fond desire Of Procne; and the promis'd quick return Of Philomela, should the sire comply. Lo! Philomela enters, splendid robes Attire her; still more splendid shine her charms: Such they describe within the forests rove Dryad, and Naiaed nymphs; such would they seem Their shape like hers adorn'd, like hers attir'd. Instant was Tereus at the sight inflam'd; So instant would the hoary harvest burn, The torch apply'd: so burn the wither'd ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... avenue. Her arms were full of holly-boughs; her face was rosy from a victorious tramp through the snow, rosier at the hoped-for, unexpected, chance meeting with her brother's guest; a sprig of mistletoe was stuck daringly in her hood, guarded by her mischievous, laughing eyes. She looked like a dryad fresh from the winter woods. For years after that Livingstone had never thought of Christmas without being conscious of a certain radiance that vision shed upon ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... Greek!" said Hugh. "Tempe, or some such place. If a dryad, now, were to come out from ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... instantly forgot that he was tired, and sprang to his feet. "This must be a Dryad-tree!" he exclaimed. "If it ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... Graceful dryad pines knelt by the wayside, stretching out their arms to the sea, where charming little bays shone behind enlacing branches, blue as the eyes of a wood-nymph gleaming shyly through the brown tangle of her hair. Pine balsam mingled with the bitter-sweet ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... perhaps be found the muses who inspired Herodotus, Homer, Aeschylus, and Pindar. He could go nowhere without finding some spot over which hung the charm of romantic or tender association. Within every brook was hidden a Naiad; by the side of every tree lurked a Dryad; if you listen, you may hear the Oreads calling among the mountains; if you come cautiously around that bending hill, you may catch a glimpse of the great Pan himself. When the moonlight showers filled the forests with a magical light, one might see the untouched Artemis gliding rapidly among the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... topmost branches of the poplars, rounded as are the sun and moon in Michelangelo's 'Creation.' But, forced for so many years now, by a sort of grafting process, to share the life of feminine humanity, they called to my mind the figure of the dryad, the fair worldling, swiftly walking, brightly coloured, whom they sheltered with their branches as she passed beneath them, and obliged to acknowledge, as they themselves acknowledged, the power of the season; they recalled to me the happy ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... softly, though I blushed from my toes to my top curl at the necessity that had called out the prayer the last time. It's awful on a woman to feel herself growing up stiff and sturdy by a man's side and then to get sight of a gourd-vine tangling itself up between them. I'm the dryad out of one of my own twin oaks down by the gate, and I want the ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... she would lead him into a ravine by imitating a squirrel or a wild-turkey, and, as he crept noiselessly along with bated breath and eyes peering eagerly through the tree-tops or the underbrush, she would step like a dryad from behind some tree at his side, with a ringing laugh at his discomfiture. Again, she might startle him by running lightly along the fallen trunk of a tree that lay across a torrent, or, in a freak of wilfulness, would let herself down the bare face of some ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... like a collie after a dipping swallow. They raced down the banks where the golden king-cups grew in spendthrift patches and disappeared among the colonies of reeds. Between some hanging willow branches further down they were visible a moment, like dryad figures peering and flitting through the cataract of waving green. They searched as though their lives depended on success. It was absurd that Stumper had ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... marriage is celebrated by marking them with vermilion, and they are sacrificed. The villagers then accompany the Pahan or Baiga, the village priest, to the sarna or sacred grove, a remnant of the old sal forest in which is located Sarna Burhi or 'The old women of the grove.' "To this dryad," writes Colonel Dalton, "who is supposed to have great influence over the rain (a superstition not improbably founded on the importance of trees as cloud-compellers), the party offer five fowls, which are afterwards eaten, and the remainder of the day is spent in feasting. They return laden ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... lulled into a deep repose by the sound of a brook running at its foot, we are sure that wherever we can find a shady stream, we can enjoy the same pleasure again; so that when we imagine these objects, we can easily form a mystic personification of the friendly power that inhabits them, Dryad or Naiad, offering its cool fountain or its tempting shade. Hence the origin of the Grecian mythology. All objects of the same kind being the same, not only in their appearance, but in their practical uses, we habitually confound them together under ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... me still laughs among her rocks The Naiad; and the Dryad's locks Drop perfume on ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... the charmed light of a world of ideal grace a pantheon of fair and concrete personalities. Nature has become a company of spirits; every cave and fountain is haunted by a nymph; in the ocean dwell the Nereids, in the mountain the Oread, the Dryad in the wood; and everywhere, in groves and marshes, on the pastures or the rocky heights, floating in the current of the streams or traversing untrodden snows, in the day at the chase and as evening closes in solitude fingering his flute, seen and heard ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson |
