"Plumy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the primeval pine forest having been preserved, the trees had attained gigantic height, thrusting their plumy heads heavenward, as their lower limbs died; and year after year the mellow brown carpet of reddish straw deepened, forming a soft safe nidus for the seeds that sprang up and now gratefully embroidered it with masses of golden rod, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... flow'r, or rose From the redundant petals, streaming back Unto the steadfast dwelling of their joy. Faces had they of flame, and wings of gold; The rest was whiter than the driven snow. And as they flitted down into the flower, From range to range, fanning their plumy loins, Whisper'd the peace and ardour, which they won From that soft winnowing. Shadow none, the vast Interposition of such numerous flight Cast, from above, upon the flower, or view Obstructed aught. For, through the universe, Wherever merited, celestial light Glides ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... the daughters were too much for Dame Betsy; the beautiful cat was allowed to remain on the hearth, and the remnant of the stew was set down there for her. But, to every one's amazement, she refused to touch it. She sat purring, with her little silvery paws folded, her plumy tail swept gracefully around her, and quite ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... seemed cheerful there in the flecked sunlight. The spotted wood-gnats gyrated merrily, chased by dragon-flies; the shy wood-birds hopped from branch to twig, peering at us in friendly inquiry; a lithe, gray squirrel, plumy tail undulating, rambled serenely around the cage, sniffing at the ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... his plumy tail began to wave. Into his sad eyes sprang a flicker of warm friendliness. Unbidden—oblivious of everyone else—he trotted across to where the Mistress sat. He put one tiny white paw in her lap and ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... strongly stirred By clink of plate or flight of bird, He has a plumy tail; At night he treads on stealthy pad As merry as Sir Galahad A-seeking of ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... he picked a large bunch of the wayside flowers as an offering to Phoebe—purple knapweed and betony, the plumy dead-pink heads of hemp-agrimony, and tufts of strong yellow fleabane, all squeezed together in his hot little hand. The air seemed alive with butterflies and moths, white and brown and red, and clouds of the "blue ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... sun Hath chas'd nights' shadows damp and dun; Forth from his turfy couch, the lark Hath sprung to meet glad day: and hark! A mingling and delicious song Breathes from the blithe-voiced plumy throng; While, to the green-wood hasten we Whose craft ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... of Instruction at the back of the Western Front set in a valley of green meadows bordered by files of plumy poplars and threaded through by a silver ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... no opening for any living thing to pass, unless it might be the soft and silent owl that turned its head almost to dislocation in watching us, ere it flitted vaguely away. Farther on, the deep, cool forest was luxurious with plumy ferns; we trod on moss-covered roots, finding the emerald steps so soft we scarcely knew that we were ascending; every breath was aromatic; there seemed infinite healing in every fragrant drop that fell upon our ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the air, and master of its fate, It seems, it seems, sailing in splendid state Athwart the stretches of the skyey blue. Yet what might be the fleet-winged wanderer's fate. Did either pinion fail? Its flight is true Only when level buoyed upon the plumy two. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... end—the end toward the entrance, which no unfamiliar eye can detect—a great plateau mountain called Tablas stretches across the view in lengthened bulk like the sky-line of some submarine upheaval. The waters are gayly colored, shadowed into exquisite greens by the plumy mountains above; and in a little valley lies the white town of Romblon with its squat municipal buildings, its gray old church, and a graceful campanile rising from a grassy plaza. They have dammed a mountain stream, so that the town is bountifully supplied with pure cold water, and with ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... it—almost seriously. I don't want to be so aloof, but—I don't like to touch other people. It is rather horrid of me I suppose to be like those silky, plumy, luxurious Angora cats who never are civil to you and who always jump out of your arms at the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... this cabinet-ministry for the first three years of her stay in Dalton would have driven her into a Presbyterian convent, had there been one at hand. Boy Number One caught the yellow cur out of bounds one day, and shaved his plumy tail to a bare stick, and Miss Lucinda fairly shed tears of grief and rage when Pink appeared at the door with the denuded appendage tucked between his little legs, and his funny yellow eyes casting sidelong looks of apprehension at his mistress. Boy Number One was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... in its old place; but it looked very beautiful in its Christmas dress. Beneath it lay a carpet of pure white. The snow was clustered in exquisite shapes upon its plumy branches; wrapping the tree top with its little cross shoots, as a white robe might wrap a figure with ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... could possibly tell you the life story of yon big tree, the warrior of the woods who had beaten down all competitors and enemies and wore his purple cones like the tasseled honor badges of a soldier, with pendulous moving, plumy arms: yet to the eye of the Forester, the life history was there, in the fluted grooved columnar bark, in the knot scars where branches had been discarded to send the main trunk towering above its fellows for light and ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... centre, ventilating the whole house, and affording a cool place, full of scent of flowers and sound of fountains for the burning afternoons; a belvedere tower also, on which to seek a breeze on stifling nights, when the very stars seem faint for heat, and the dim plumy heads of cypress and poplar are motionless against the misty blue sky. In front a broad terrace, whence to look down towards the beloved city, a vague fog of roofs in the distance; on the side and behind, elaborate garden walks walled ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... lilac bushes, her arms still uplifted and fingers outstretched as if beckoning to the plumy sprays above her Head. "Isn't it queer how such things will happen when if I'd been trying to make poetry in my dairy I couldn't have thought of those words for an hour? I guess it was the lilacs that did it. Oh, you are so beautiful! You'd make anything rhyme, wouldn't you? What ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... he? Whom thou deny'st to have once set foot by thine. Find ye no merit there? And once again When he met Hector singly, man to man, Not by your bidding, but the lottery's choice, His lot, that skulked not low adown i' the heap, A moist earth-clod, but sure to spring in air, And first to clear the plumy helmet's brim. Yes, Aias was the man, and I too there Kept rank, the 'barbarous mother's servile son.' I pity thee the blindness of that word. Who was thy father's father? A barbarian, Pelops, the Phrygian, if you trace him far! And what ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... of plumy fountains blowing Across the lanterns of a revelling night, The tiny leaves of April's earliest growing Powder the trees—so vaporously light, They seem to float, billows of emerald foam Blown by the South ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... with waving plumes in every variety of attitude and motion. (See Frontispiece.) The bird itself is nearly as large as a crow, and is of a rich coffee brown colour. The head and neck is of a pure straw yellow above and rich metallic green beneath. The long plumy tufts of golden orange feathers spring from the sides beneath each wing, and when the bird is in repose are partly concealed by them. At the time of its excitement, however, the wings are raised vertically over ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... horses were hitched to the mowing machine, and Peter drove out to the meadow. The plumy heads of the tall timothy swayed on their slender stalks as they bowed before the breeze that swept over the meadow, making it look in the sunshine like the rippling surface ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... voice calls father and brother, And one whose name her shy lips will not utter. But a chorus of leaves and grasses speaks her heart And tells his name: the birches flutter by the wall; The wild cherry-tree shakes its plumy head And whispers his name; the maple Opens its rosy lips and murmurs his name; The marsh-marigold sends the rumor Down the winding stream, and the blue flag Spread the gossip to the lilies in the lake: All Nature's eyes and tongues conspire In the unfolding of the tale That Adam and Eve ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... from her long, graceful head to her plumy tail, that Toni could not resist a second look; and the dog's master had a good view of the girl whom he guessed to be the young mistress of Greenriver, the house which he had often admired as he passed by in his boat during the ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... passes into the barbaric splendor of a souk hung with innumerable plumy bunches of floss silk—skeins of citron yellow, crimson, grasshopper green and pure purple. This is the silk-spinners' quarter, and next to it comes that of the dyers, with great seething vats into which the raw silk is plunged, and ropes overhead where ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... upon rank in glory lie the transverse, plumy bars; Tranquil beauty rules the union which disorder ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... seems to me that I remember something about Padua with a sort of romantic pleasure. There was a certain charm which I can dimly recall, in sauntering along the top of the old wall of the city, and looking down upon the plumy crests of the Indian-corn that nourished up so mightily from the dry bed of the moat. At such times I could not help figuring to myself the many sieges that the wall had known, with the fierce assault by day, the secret attack by night, the swarming foe ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... the valley from the north. The snow-horses went racing over the wrinkled ice, over the Don Flats, and over the marsh toward the lake, white, for they were driven snow, but on them, scattered dark, were riding plumy fragments of partridge ruffs—the famous rainbow ruffs. And they rode on the wind that night, away, away to the south, over the dark lake, as they rode in the gloom of his Mad Moon flight, riding and riding on till ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... road leading from Calebasse over long meadowed levels two thousand feet above the ocean, into the woods of La Couresse, where it begins to descend slowly, through deep green shadowing, by great zigzags. Then, at a turn, you find yourself unexpectedly looking down upon a planted valley, through plumy fronds of arborescent fern. The surface below seems almost like a lake of gold-green water,—especially when long breaths of mountain-wind set the miles of ripening cane a-ripple from verge to verge: the illusion is marred only by the road, fringed with young ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... a plumy curtaine she doth draw, A chrystall mirror sparkles in thy breast, In which her fresh aspect when as she saw, And then her foe ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... own imagination had painted it. Her deep, dreamy eyes passed over the landscape actually before them without catching one of its details: they were looking on a desolate stony plain, cracked and calcined by a fierce Indian sun—a few plumy palms in the background, and the rocky bed of a river half dried up—in the foreground a crowd of wild barbaric soldiery, with savage, swarthy features, bareheaded or white-turbaned; mingled with these were horsemen in the uniform of our light ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... been lying motionless there, for the best part of an hour. Now, stretching, he got to his feet in leisurely fashion, brushed perfunctorily at his rumpled clothes, and turned his steps toward the double line of plumy Australian pines which bordered the lane ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... seemed she could have floated in the sky, And with the angelic choir made symphony; But in her cheek's rich tinge, and in the dark Of darkest hair and eyes, she bore a mark Of kinship to her generous mother-earth, The fervid land that gives the plumy ...
— How Lisa Loved the King • George Eliot
... while the illuminated crocus [a vase] was splendid with dahlias and tiger-lilies beneath the Transfiguration. So the drawing-room looked lovelily, and a fine rose-odor was diffused. All the blinds were open and the shades up, and a glory of greenness refreshed the eyes outside on the plumy, bowery hill and lawn. In this charming apartment I received my General. The most beautiful light of life beamed from his face at my recognition of his ideas, and at any expression of mine which showed a unity with his; or rather with truth. His ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... petals, streaming back Unto the steadfast dwelling of their joy. Faces had they of flame, and wings of gold: The rest was whiter than the driven snow; And, as they flitted down into the flower, From range to range, fanning their plumy loins, Whispered the peace and ardor, which they won From that soft winnowing. Shadow none, the vast Interposition of such numerous flight Cast, from above, upon the flower, or view Obstructed aught. For, through the universe, Wherever merited, celestial ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... unmatched in beauty since that at Abbeville,—deep scarlet, and purest rose, on purple gray, in bars; and stationary, plumy, sweeping filaments above in upper sky, like 'using up the brush,' said Joanie; remaining in glory, every moment best, changing from one good into another, (but only in color or light—form steady,) for half an hour ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... the still west saith, with plumy flames bestrewn; Heaven's body sapphire-clear, at stirless height of noon; The cloud where lightnings pulse, beside the ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... not yet seen her and paused as if uncertain whether to advance. She stood in the open space beside the bench, just off the pathway leading from the gate to the house, along which he must advance should he decide to proceed farther. A pale, plumy spray of tamarisk intervened between them, otherwise he must have seen her. For some time he stood silent and motionless as if uncertain what to do, then he began to advance ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... used to be, In pride of plume, where plumy Death had trod, Trailing their gorgeous velvets wantonly, Most unmeet pall, over the holy sod; There, gentle stranger, thou may'st only see Two sombre Peacocks. Age, with sapient nod Marking the spot, still tarries to declare How they once lived, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... turtle's kiss, And gentler than a little miss; A jewel for a lady's ear, And Mr. Walpole's pretty dear. He laughs and cries with mirth or spleen; He does not speak, but thinks, 'tis plain. One knows his little Guai's as well As if he'd little words to tell. Coil'd in a heap, a plumy wreathe, He sleeps, you hardly hear him breathe. Then he's so nice, who ever saw A drop that sullied his sofa? His bended leg!-what's this but sense?- Points out his little exigence. He looks and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... the neighbouring isles, Bedarra, has less than a square mile of superficial area; the smallest but 4 or 5 acres. The smaller are made up of confused masses of granite, for the most part so overgrown with fig trees, plumy palms, milkwoods, umbrella-trees, quandongs, eugenias, hibiscus bushes, bananas and lawyer vines, as to be unexplorable without a scrub-knife; for the soil among the rocks is soft and spongy, the purest of vegetable mould, and encourages luxurious growth. The jungle ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... groans, curses, waving lights, and the hissing of escaping steam almost in his very ears. Then the anguish of thundering wheels, until his cracked brain reeled and he was mercifully unconscious. How long? His eyes opened on a clean white wall, flowers hung from the windows in plumy festoons, birds sang in the yellow dazzling sunlight. What could it mean? Was he at home? Surely there was nothing of war in these comfortable surroundings. His left arm was free, there was no one lying near to impede its movement. So it ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Hortense tied them on with a bit of pink silk which did not show. A cluster of tea-rose buds at the bosom, and a ruche, reconciled Meg to the display of her pretty, white shoulders, and a pair of high-heeled silk boots satisfied the last wish of her heart. A lace handkerchief, a plumy fan, and a bouquet in a shoulder holder finished her off, and Miss Belle surveyed her with the satisfaction of a little girl with a ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... its rivers, whereon now no sail glinted in the sunlight, no tug puffed vehemently with plumy jets of steam, no liner idled at anchor or nosed its slow course ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the silver sunset that was closing in, barred by plumy lines of purple cloud; he looked at the high tree-tops that caught the last light and at the birds going heavily homeward, just as if all these things were bits of written ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... Evangelist with a lion at his feet, which is lying down with a book, its hair curving in accordance with its position, which was a beautiful consideration, and difficult to execute; not to mention that the same lion has short wings on its shoulders, with feathers so soft and plumy, that it seems almost incredible that the hand of a craftsman could have been able to imitate nature so closely. Besides this, he painted there a building that curves in a circular form after the manner of a theatre, with some ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... Thyself a boy, assume a boy's dissembled face; That when, amidst the fervor of the feast, The Tyrian hugs and fonds thee on her breast, And with sweet kisses in her arms constrains, Thou may'st infuse thy venom in her veins." The God of Love obeys, and sets aside His bow and quiver, and his plumy pride; He walks Iulus in his mother's sight, And in the sweet ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... Hector, high above the rest, Shakes his huge spear, and nods his plumy crest: In throngs around his native bands repair, And groves of lances ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... sat, there came my cousin Dorothy to the porch to look for me, fanning her flushed face with a great, plumy fan, the warm odor of roses still clinging ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... woods in midwinter when it is laden with myriads of yellow flowers about the size of wheat grains, forming a noble illustration of Nature's immortal virility and vigor. The mature cones, about three-fourths of an inch long, born on the ends of the plumy branchlets, serve to enrich still more the surpassing ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... Mamie," came another loud hail from up the path toward the house and down came the General at top speed, with a plumy setter frisking in his wake. "Aunt Viney says for you to come there to her this minute. They is a-going to be the party and it's right by the Bible to have it, some for Mr. Mark, too. Tobe Poteet said 'shoo' when I told him he couldn't come, 'cause they wasn't a-going to be ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... she said, as she drew a long white glove over her elbow, her face shadowed by her plumy hat, "you remember you said it might be worse, and I insisted it couldn't be? You were ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... in repose. She was in a delightful green habit; she wore a plumy kind of hat; she rode an almost perfect little mare belonging to Lord Talgarth, and her big blue, steady eyes roved slowly round her as she went, seeing nothing. It was, in fact, the almost perfect little mare who first gave warning of the ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... do nicely!" Harriet, always happiest in the water, was sitting on the edge of the float, with her feet idly splashing. A glorious September sun blazed down upon the water, there was absolute silence up and down the curving shore. Above the plumy tops of the trees, rising abruptly from the beach with its weather-burned bath houses, the gables and porches of the new home showed here and there. There were other country mansions scattered up and down beside ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... smiling the drawn, white smile of a mother who is forcing herself to be cheerful in the face of danger, for the peace of those she loves. Laodice understood the tender deception and when a sharp turn of the street cut off the sight of the plumy trees of the garden, she covered ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... attacked her. Her hair had fallen out during the fever so that Papa thought it best to have it shaved close. Katy made a pretty silk-lined cap for her to wear, but the girls at school laughed at the cap, and that troubled Johnnie very much. Then, when the new hair grew, thick and soft as the plumy down on a bird's wing, a fresh affliction set in, for the hair came out in small round rings all over her head, which made her look like a baby. Elsie called her "Curly," and gradually the others adopted the name, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... forward, and he followed through the yellow sunshine, attendant always on her caprice, ready for any sudden whim. So when she wheeled to the left and lifted her mare over a snake-fence, he was ready to follow; and together they tore away across a pasture, up a hill all purple with plumy bunch-grass, and forward to the edge of a gravel-pit, where she whirled her mare about, drew bridle, and flung up a warning hand just in time. His escape was narrower; his horse's hind hoofs loosened a section of undermined sod; the animal stumbled, sank back, strained with every muscle, and dragged ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... things leave me, but that abides; other things change, but that remains the same. For me, its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun, the pulsing of its surfbeat is in my ears. I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud rack. I can hear the spirits of its woodland solitudes, I can hear the splash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of the ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... Jean, strolling leisurely through the orchard, saw ahead of them a funny sight: Billy, sitting meekly on a hummock, his hands on his black broadcloth knees, while Cricket stood behind him, bending over his head, all over the top of which bristled plumy bunches of white hair, ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... fire, lonely and faint, This lime-tree bower my prison! They, meantime, My Friends, whom I may never meet again, On springy heath, along the hill-top edge 5 Wander delighted, and look down, perchance, On that same rifted dell, where many an ash Twists its wild limbs beside the ferny rock Whose plumy[178:A] ferns forever nod and drip Spray'd by the waterfall. But chiefly thou 10 My gentle-hearted ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... schoolboy, going to the school I like best," he answered, waving a plumy spray of asters as if pointing out the lovely autumn world about them, full of gay hues, ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Gay birds' wings, plumy pampas grass, strings of wampum, and pretty work in beads, bark, and feathers, pleased the girls. Minerals, arrow-heads, and crude sketches interested the Professor; and when the box was empty, Dan gave Mr Laurie, as ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... evening when Phyllis came to the castle with a big bunch of plumy purple lilac. She was earlier than usual, and it was not quite dark, and—wonder of wonders—the door of the castle was open. Still more wonderful, Sir Christopher stood on ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... full on their ledge from a sky of misty blue, and she had thrown aside her hat, uncovering her thick waves of hair, blue-black in the hollows, with warm rusty edges where they took the light. Cicely dragged down a plumy spray of traveller's joy and wound it above her friend's forehead; and thus wreathed, with her bright pallour relieved against the dusky autumn tints, Justine looked like a wood-spirit who had absorbed into herself the last golden juices ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... sprung tiny bell-shaped flowers; a circle of wee pink toadstools, which indeed seemed fit for the elfin folk; a wild grapevine with a most delightfully arranged swing on which the two girls "teetered" away in great joy; shining pebbles, bits of rose-colored quartz, a forest of plumy ferns, and all such like things, over which the city child exclaimed ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... and plumy?" she asked, as she took the bunch he offered and laid the purple flowers against the white ones she held in her hand. "These are so much darker than Mrs. Mayberry's ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... he came a pace nearer and waved his plumy tail tentatively. For the dog she felt a glow of friendliness at once, but for the man she suddenly, and most unreasonably, of course, conceived one of her ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... with'ring to that silent grave Where all is blank and dreary! Yet once more The Spring eternal of the soul shall dawn, Unvisited by clouds, by storms, by change, Radiant and unexhausted! Then, ye buds, Ye plumy minstrels, and ye balmy gales, Adorn your little hour, and give your joys To bless the fond world-loving traveller, Who, smiling, measures the long flow'ry path That leads to death! For to such wanderers Life is a busy, pleasing, cheerful dream, And the last ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... have come back much later and put another pussy in from behind the portrait. I woke some time in the night, oh, hours after, because the moonlight was 'way across the room, and sitting in it, washing its face, was the prettiest little half-grown kitten. It was a perfect beauty, white with a plumy tail. I spoke to it very softly so as not to wake either of you, and it looked at me and purred but would not come. I watched it chase its tail for a little and then it jumped in a big chair and curled itself up ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... the highest boughs to the ground; the bamboo, shooting to the height of sixty feet and upward, with branches gracefully drooping; the generous, kind banana; fairy forests of ferns of a thousand forms; tall grasses, with their pale and plumy blossoms; the many-trunked and many-rooted banyan; the boh, sacred to Buddha,—all combine to form a garden that Adam might have dressed and kept, and ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Dagon are rising. There is a rustling tumult of women's dresses, a shaking out of handkerchiefs, light gusts of laughter, and fragments of conversation. The handsome women move about like birds, with a plumy, elastic motion, waving their fans, smelling their bouquets, and listening through them to tones that are very low. The Prince of the house is every where, smiling, sinuous, dark in ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... planned—makes a sudden clutch at the coveted prize. The object of her desire is really within her reach, Joan believes, and she shouts aloud in her delight. There is a flash of bead-like eyes, a waving of plumy tails, a scurry of flying feet, a chorus of queer, chattering cries, and, lo, the squirrels have disappeared, some up one tree, some up another—all except one, the very one which Darby desired to possess, and it scampered along the pathway, seeming too frightened to know where it was ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer to them, with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing softly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed among masses of laurel, and orange and plumy palm, that abate with their grey-green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of the ledges of porphyry sloping under lucent sand. Then let us pass farther towards the north, until we see the orient colors change ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Rushbrooke Grange under the guidance of Mrs. Honeybone, the old housekeeper; but Esther perversely insisted upon seeing the garden at any rate, giving as her excuse that the Rector would like them to pay the visit. By now it was a pink and green May dusk; the air was plumy with moths' wings, heavy with the ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... her shoulders. Her shining hair was gathered into a satiny brown coil at the back of her head and pinned with a silver arrow, while a few naturally curling locks lay lightly on her forehead. The dark, moss-grown rock was behind her; the softly waving plumy boughs of the pine tree above her, a carpet of ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the rocky hills and mountains We will next direct our journey, Which with heathy robes are mantled, And whose heads are ever wearing Caps of snow of many ages. These are in adorning climates, Where the seasons bring their changes, Where comes hoary-headed white frost, And the plumy flakes of white snow, Showered around in bounty's largess, Lend the plains a pure white carpet, And the hills a dazzling wrapper, Which they don in princely grandeur, Till the herald voice resoundeth O'er the mountains, hills, and valleys, From the orient regions coming: ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... suddenly he'd sit up as if he'd been waked out of a nice dream and say: 'Hello, old coffee mill! What do you want to wake me up for when I'm trying to get a nap?' Then he would laugh a big laugh and make another leap, and lie down and pretend again, with his fine plumy tail very ...
— How Mr. Rabbit Lost his Tail • Albert Bigelow Paine
... out again at the palm-trees beyond the tamarisks, above whose plumy heads the evening star now rode in the azure blue of the night sky, the singing was taken up again after a pause; she heard once more the angelic greeting which had before struck her soul as so comforting and full of promise when she read ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... drest, By the bright scimitar and sable vest, The proud vizier distinguish'd o'er the rest; Six slaves in gay attire his bridle hold, His bridle rich with gems, and stirrups gold; His snowy steed adorn'd with costly pride, Whole troops of soldiers mounted by his side, These top the plumy crest Arabian courtiers guide. With artful duty, all decline their eyes, No bellowing shouts of noisy crowds arise; Silence, in solemn state, the march attends, Till at the dread ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... seen my Amphitrite! She bore her plumy crown so grandly, you would have said she was indeed the queen of Actiniae. But, alas! she could not brook imprisonment, and, pining for the unwalled grottoes of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... night he lapped his new milk as usual at Uncle Roger's dairy door and then sat blandly on the flat stone before it, giving the world assurance of a cat, sleek sides glistening, plumy tail gracefully folded around his paws, brilliant eyes watching the stir and flicker of bare willow boughs in the twilight air above him. That was the last seen of him. In the ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... places," said the Princess; "flat miles on miles of slim pines melting into grayness, sunlight sifting through their plumy tops, with gray birds wheeling in flocks, or troops of red-headed woodpeckers, and underfoot nothing but needles and gray sand. Far ahead on every side the pines draw together, but where one walks they are wide apart, so that one seems always about to approach a forest ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... fair English girl in her white gown and Panama hat and the dusky Egyptian, whose dark skin and closely-swathed robes gave her the look of some Old Testament character, a look borne out by the surroundings of reed-fringed river and plumy, tufted palms. In the third photograph Iris was on horseback; but it was the fourth and last which brought the blood to Anstice's brow, made his heart beat quickly with an emotion in which delight, regret, wild happiness and over-mastering ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... understood thing that if Alex had no other engagement, she was to take supper at the Wilburs' on Fridays. She stood before Miss Virginia pulling off her long gloves, looking indeed unusually handsome in a gown of pale gray and a plumy black hat, which she had made herself with a sort of reluctant ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... sat on the fence, and, as they watched, a huge collie dog, with a beautiful plumy tail, ...
— Brother and Sister • Josephine Lawrence
... the field. Crowds to the castle mounted up the street, Battering the pavement with their coursers' feet: The greedy sight might there devour the gold Of glittering arms, too dazzling to behold: 450 And polish'd steel, that cast the view aside, And crested morions, with their plumy pride. Knights, with a long retinue of their squires, In gaudy liveries march, and quaint attires. One laced the helm, another held the lance: A third the shining buckler did advance. The courser paw'd the ground with restless feet, And snorting foam'd, and champ'd the golden ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... saw one sitting on the eggs while the mother walked out and took the air. Ostriches and Arabs do women's work with an admirable disregard of Mrs. Grundy. Ostriches have an irresistible way of waving their lovely plumy wings, and one old fellow twenty-five years old actually imitates the dervishes. The keeper says to him, "Dance," and although he is about ten feet tall, he sits down with his scaly legs spread out on each side of him, and, shutting his eyes, he throws his long, ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... or downy seed-vessels, mingling quaint brown punctuation, and dusty tremors of dancing grain, with the bloom of the nearer fields; and casting a gossamered grayness and softness of plumy mist along their surfaces far away; mysterious evermore, not only with dew in the morning, or mirage at noon, but with the shaking threads of fine arborescence, each a little belfry of ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... notice that, though the boughs spring irregularly and at various angles, there is a tendency in all to stoop less and less as they near the top of the tree. This structure, typified in the simplest possible terms at c, Fig. 17., is common to all trees, that I know of, and it gives them a certain plumy character, and aspect of unity in the hearts of their branches, which are essential to their beauty. The stem does not merely send off a wild branch here and there to take its own way, but all the branches share in one great fountain-like impulse; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... than usual; he was only a trifle slower and more fastidious in his speech. It was midnight when he left Clifford peacefully slumbering in somebody's arm-chair, with a long suede glove dangling in his hand and a plumy boa twisted about his neck to protect his throat from drafts. He walked through the hall and down the stairs, and found himself on the sidewalk in a quarter he did not know. Mechanically he looked up at the name of the street. The name was not familiar. He turned and ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... ye, mem!" said the maid and Mistress Blatherwick who was close at hand, came; to which Maggie humbly but confidently making her request had it as kindly granted, and followed her to the barn to fill her pock with the light plumy covering of the husk of the oats, the mistress of Stonecross helping her the while and talking to her as she did so—for the soutar and his daughter were favourites with her and her husband, and they had not seen either of them for ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... the larches they had stripped off the branches and cut away the plumy tops with their axes, and heaps of branches and tops lay about among the remaining trees. With axe and knife the scouts cut great armfuls of the tips and carried them to the framework. Here they laid them to overlap each other like the slates ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... pair started up Fifth Avenue. The day was a brave one; the sky was stuffed with plumy clouds and the rich colors of a reverberating sunset. The two healthy beings sniffed the crisp air, talked of themselves as only selfish young people can, and at Fifty-ninth street, Ellenora becoming tired, waited for a cross-town car—she expected some ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... person to whom he could not unburden himself would be wearisome. However, before he could put any inclination into effect, the young man saw from amid the trees a bright light shining, the rays from which radiated like needles through the sad plumy foliage of the yews. Its direction was from the ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... gift in her lap. A foreground rich with flowers, luxuriant in fruit, shade and sun, dry pastures, rushing rivers, and murmuring rills, were here. Great trees were variants of the view, and the high Sierras to the east overtopped the wondrous plumy forests of their pines with blocks of sculptured blue. Back of the house was a noble river of water from the hills, fouled and chained by sluice and dam, but still a noble stream whose earliest parent rill had gushed from grim ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... weight of her fur tippet, the pale face under the plumy hat took an unusual pink bloom; her eyes shone with a moist radiance. Rupert, glancing up at her, as, bent upon one knee, he sought for stray violets amid the thick green leaves, thought it was thus a maiden looked who waited to be won; and though all ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... way across the prairie, they saw her stop, and presently the dog came back with something in his mouth, which he laid down beside his master, and bolted off. It was only a rough wicker-basket which she had filled with damp plushy moss, and half-buried in it clusters of plumy fern, delicate brown and ashen lichens, masses of forest-leaves all shaded green with a few crimson tints. It had a clear woody smell, like far-off myrrh. The Doctor laughed as Holmes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... short suspense The plumy people streak their wings with oil, To throw the lucid moisture trickling off, And wait the approaching sign to strike at ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... leashes. All at once an impulse of yielding which was really freedom came to her. Why in the world should she not cross the little north yard, step over the low hedge, and go into that lily-garden? She knew that it would be beautiful there. She looked forth into the crystalline light and the soft plumy shade,—she would go over into the Ware garden. With all this, there was no ulterior motive. She had seen the man who lived in the house, and she admired him as one from afar, but she was a girl innocent not only in fact, but in dreams. Of course she had thought ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... she addressed, in the accents of wonder. "It is impossible!—I watched her green mantle —I watched her plumy bonnet as I saw her hurried from the field, and felt my own inability to follow to the rescue; nor did force or exertion altogether leave me till the waving of the robe and the dancing of the feathers ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... production of the soil; if he looked up, it was to see the sky paley blue through the groinery of countless date-bearers, very patriarchs of their kind, so numerous and old, and of such mighty girth, so tall, so serried, so wide of branch, each branch so perfect with fronds, plumy and waxlike and brilliant, they seemed enchanters enchanted. Here was the grass coloring the very atmosphere; there the lake, cool and clear, rippling but a few feet under the surface, and helping the trees to their long life in old age. Did the Grove of Daphne ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... in a flood made turgid by the rain, and the "rough bit of bog and boulder" was a sort of natural bridge across the torrent, formed by heaps of earth and rock, out of which masses of wet fern and plumy meadow-sweet sprang in tall tufts and garlands, which though beautiful to the eyes in day-time, were apt to entangle the feet in walking, especially when there was only the uncertain glimmer of the stars by which to grope one's way. Helmsley's age and over-wrought ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... a little pain at her heart, as she waited, following him with her eyes until the cavalcade was lost to view under the plumy shadows of the distant cypress-trees. Was it thus that kings should spend long summer days when there were rumors of discontent in the air—rumors definite enough to have reached the palace circle in mysterious undertones, quickly repressed when she turned to ask their meaning? ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... taken off when used.[3] At a short distance from the beech, inland, was a lake of some extent, nearly surrounded by lofty, densely-wooded hills. Some wild ducks were seen, and a gun being fired at them, the report raised numbers of the 'plumy tribe,' filling the air with their screams, alarmed at a noise to which they had been unaccustomed. Several native graves were observed, which were very neat; a stone was placed at the head and the grave neatly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... toothwort (dentaria laciniata) is sometimes known as the pepper-root, and every school boy and girl living near the woods is familiar with the taste of its tubers and the appearance of its cross-shaped flowers. The plumy dicentra, or Dutchman's breeches, seems so feminine as to be grossly misnamed until we remember that it was first discovered in the Rip Van Winkle country. The wild ginger with its two large leaves ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... emerald isles that sail a silver sea, Caverned by plumy groves of sunny palm, Broke on my startled vision suddenly; When as but quickly parted, sweet and calm, That long forgot yet ever haunting psalm Floated from lips that flew to greet me home. A meteor flamed; I woke in rude alarm; Above me orbed the temple's sullen dome; Around me ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... passionate things, If plumy or plumeless—without, or with wings, Beware, lest ye break, in some hazardous hour, Your vials of wrath, hot, ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... headstones, and every mound heaped with flowers that have been scattered to the tune of singing children's voices, while below the peaceful river floats out broadly; and far across its stream, over all the turfy terraces and above the plumy treetops that hide the arched and columned bases of its snowy splendor, the dome of the country's Capitol rises—a shining guardian of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... great plumy feather fan to and fro, Sibyl looked across it at her companion, and answered in ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... creek they bounded, Pearl and old Nap, and up the other hill where the silver willows grew so tall they were hidden in them. The goldenrod nodded its plumy head in the breeze, and the tall Gaillardia, brown and yellow, flickered unsteadily ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... beneath the leather casque that guards the Fireman's brow, A bolder, sterner glance shines out than plumy crest can show; And oft shall ply the Fireman's axe, though rude and rough it be, Where sabre, lance, and bayonet, right ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various |
