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Primrose   Listen
adjective
Primrose  adj.  Of or pertaining to the primrose; of the color of a primrose; hence, flowery; gay. "The primrose path of dalliance."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Primrose" Quotes from Famous Books



... battle of Culloden in 1746. She enabled the prince to escape to Skye. For this she was arrested and thrown into the Tower of London. On receiving her liberty, in 1747, she stayed for a time in the house of Lady Primrose, where she was visited by many persons of distinction. Before leaving London she was presented with L1500. On her return to Scotland she was entertained at Monkstadt in Skye, at a banquet, to which the principal ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... flavour which was quite unknown to me. I was much interested in his vivid account of the personality of that great man, whom I admired then, while he was yet with us, and whom, as a knight of the Primrose League, I now revere; but our climb of the morning, and the scrambling departure of the afternoon, were beginning to tell on me, and I became irresistibly drowsy. Gradually, and in spite of myself, my eyes closed. I could still hear my companion's voice mingling with ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... lingerer in the twilight's glory: Gay are the hills with song: earth's faery children leave More dim abodes to roam the primrose-hearted eve, Opening their glimmering lips to breathe some wondrous story. Hush, not a whisper! Let your heart alone go dreaming. Dream unto dream may pass: deep in the heart alone Murmurs the Mighty One his solemn undertone. Canst thou not see adown the silver cloudland streaming Rivers ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell

... spoken to. I understand the English language; and"—her voice rising into a liquid crescendo of delight—"I can wear my gray sergedusoy sack made over my carnation taffeta bodice and cashmere petticoat, all pranked out with bows of black velvet, most genteel, and my hat of quilled primrose sarcenet, grandfather. I'd take them in a bundle, for if we should have rain I would rather be in my old red hood and blue serge riding-coat on the ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... still wore their liveries of Spring. The sun shone down with a tender fervor, as if wooing the sleeping buds and flowers to wake from a slumber of which he had grown weary, and start with him again through primrose paths on the pilgrimage of blossoming ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... Tall Stepchild Wedlock Ghostly Haggard Bridal Pioneer Pluck Noon Neighbor Jimson weed Courteous Wanton Rosemary Cynical Street Plausible Grocer Husband Allow Worship Gipsy Insane Encourage Clerk Disease Astonish Clergyman Boulevard Realize Hectoring Canary Bombast Primrose Diamond Benedict Walnut Abominate Piazza Holiday Barbarous Disgust Heavy Kind Virtu Nightmare Devil Gospel Comfort Whist Mermaid Pearl Onion Enthusiasm Domino Book Fanatic Grotesque Cheat Auction Economy Illegible Quell Cheap ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... have found the wild tulip, the primrose, the lupine, the eardrop, the larkspur, and creeping hollyhock, and a beautiful flower resembling the bloom of the beech tree, but in bunches as large as a small sugarloaf, and of every variety of shade, to ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough

... looked out of her window and saw Gretchen and her lover pacing up and down the primrose path in the moonlight, a horrible laugh would break from the great lady's ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey

... volcano of color and lava; of rose and gold, amber, salmon, primrose, sapphire, marigold; and in a stream these poured over Fuji's sides and down along the ridge-line of the lesser hills until they too were covered with a layer of molten glory a ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger

... Reineck to dinner, and Grafinn Laura will condescend to look kindly upon a gentleman who has millions of dollars. Here comes a pair of New Yorkers. Behold their elegant curling beards, their velvet coats, their delicate primrose gloves and cambric handkerchiefs, and the aristocratic beauty of their boots. Why, if you had sixteen quarterings, you could not have smaller feet than those; and if you were descended from a line of kings you could not ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... estimate the greatness of what is above us.' Fortunately his diffidence did not keep Wordsworth silent on sacred themes; his later poems include an unequivocal as well as beautiful confession of Christian faith; and one of them, 'The Primrose of the Rock,' is as distinctly Wordsworthian in its inspiration as it is Christian in its doctrine. Wordsworth was a 'high churchman,' and also, in his prose mind, strongly anti-Roman Catholic, partly on political ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... called it. Indeed, it was a pretty sight to see those little creatures, playing about like so many fairies in that lovely green place. You should have seen the little flower-spirits start up to look at them, as they frisked about among the trees. Little Primrose threw kisses to them, and Violet offered them a dew-drop in her deepest purple cup; but the merry mice thought nothing of the flower spirits and neither saw nor ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards

... is older, life is greyer, than the weather-beaten mouldings. But life, too, is fresh and young; the stern thought in the stone becomes more cold and grim as the centuries pass away. In the crevices at the foot of another cross wallflowers blossomed, and plants of evening primrose, not yet in flower, were growing. Under a great yew lay the last decaying beam of the stocks. A little yew tree grew on the top of the church tower, its highest branch just above the parapet. A thrush perhaps planted ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... particularly when you have worked yourself up to the "top of the tree." I could tell you many anecdotes of this railway, on which I lived for many years; but we must not forget the "Wild Irishman" has run through Camden Town, and is even now in the Primrose Hill tunnel. ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... the news in Suffolk's ear; The tattling zephyrs brought it here; As Mab was indolently laid Under a poppy's spreading shade. The jealous queen started in rage; She kick'd her crown, and beat her page: "Bring me my magic wand," she cries; "Under that primrose, there it lies; I'll change the silly, saucy chit, Into a flea, a louse, a nit, A worm, a grasshopper, a rat, An owl, a monkey, hedgehog, bat. But hold, why not by fairy art Transform the wretch into— Ixion once a cloud embraced, By Jove and jealousy ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... should have been quite out in the cold without my three new frocks from Worth. The little Princess bonnets I wear are the rage. Worth recommended me to adopt special flowers and colours; so I have worn nothing but primroses since I have been here, and my little primrose bonnets are to be seen everywhere, sometimes on hideous old women. Lady Kirkbank hopes you will be able to go to London directly after Easter. She says I must be presented at the May drawing-room—that ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... hard-working Brabant peasant girl; up whilst the birds twittered in the dark; to bed when the red sun sank beyond the far blue line of the plains; she hoed, and dug, and watered, and planted her little plot; she kept her cabin as clean as a fresh-blossomed primrose; she milked her goat and swept her floor; she sat, all the warm days, in the town, selling her flowers, and in the winter time, when her garden yielded her nothing, she strained her sight over lace-making in the city to get the small bit of food that stood ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... anticipated it as taking this particular line. There is one peculiarly fascinating machine in which a mechanical pestle, moving in an eccentric orbit, twists the flat leaf into the familiar narrow crescents that we infuse daily. The tea-plant is a pretty little shrub, with its pale-primrose, cistus-like flowers, but in appearance it cannot compete with the coffee tree, with its beautiful dark glossy foliage, its waxy white flowers, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... met an infant group, Never was a happier troop; Dancing o'er the primrose plain. "Joyous infancy!" said Jane; "Free from care as winds and waves." —"No, my ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... from these notes on social history that the Loyalists had no primrose path. But after the first grumblings and discontents, poured into the ears of Governor Haldimand and Governor Parr, they seem to have settled down contentedly to their lot; and their life appears to have been on the whole happy. Especially in the winter, when they had some ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... Good-morrow to this primrose too; Good-morrow to each maid That will with flowers the tomb bestrew Wherein my love ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... attire he had worn the night before. For the first time since he had been born his splendid normal strength had failed him and he was heavy with unnatural fatigue. He sate looking out until the pale tint had deepened to primrose and the primrose into sunrise gold; birds wakened in the trees' broad branches and twittered and flew forth; the sward and flowers were drenched with summer dews, and as the sun changed the drops to diamonds he gazed upon the lovely peace and breathed in the fresh fragrance of the early morn ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... changeful year, Did Nature lead him as before; A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... humanity, or the Wordsworthian joy in the "common tears and mirth" of "every village." The quiet routine existence of uneventful lives hardly touched him more than the placid quiescence of animal and vegetable existence; the commonplace of humanity excited in him no mystic rapture; the human "primrose by the river's brim," merely as one among a throng, was for him pretty much what it was to Peter Bell. There was no doubt a strain of pantheistic thought in Browning which logically involved a treatment of the commonplace as profoundly reverent as Wordsworth's own. But his ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... and on drier slopes; 3. the rocks; 4. the bleak table-lands and stony soils; 5. the moor-like uplands, naked and exposed, where many species and genera appear at 5000 to 6000 feet, which are not found on the outer ranges of Sikkim under 10,000.* [As Thalictrum, Anemone, primrose, cowslip, Tofieldia, Yew, Pine, Saxifrage, Delphinium, Pedicularis.] In fact, strange as it may appear, owing to this last cause, the temperate flora descends fully 4000 feet lower in the latitude of Khasia (25 degrees N.) than in that of Sikkim (27 degrees N.), though the former is two ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... body, representing justice Godfrey, in a decent black habit, carried before a jesuit, in black, on horse-back, in like manner as he was carried by the assassins to Primrose Hill. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... swallowing therefore without pause or choice The total grist unsifted, husks and all. But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer, And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs, And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root, Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth, Not shy as in the world, and to be won By slow solicitation, seize at once The roving thought, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... author of "The Deserted Village." The exquisite style, the delicate choice of words, the amiability of sentiment, so peculiarly his own, and so well suited to express the simple beauty of his thoughts, give a charm to the work which familiarity can only endear. Dr. Primrose, preserving his simplicity, his modesty, and his nobility of character alike when surrounded by the pleasures of his early and prosperous home, when struggling with the hardships of his ruined fortune, and when rewarded at last by the surfeit of good-fortune ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... find time to study national questions, to organize "Primrose" and "Liberal Leagues," and to vote on municipal affairs. Miss Helen Taylor and other cultivated women have been elected members of the London school board, and aided ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... accursed of men? Yes; I have loved something—her mother. Not wisely but too well. I loved her beyond anything in heaven or on earth—to idolatry. God is a jealous God, and He turned upon me relentlessly. I had consecrated my life to His Work; and I took the primrose path." ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... beyond human strength, and along the dark and dangerous path leading through conflict, privation, and ceaseless labor to no repose but death. On the contrary, his foot was hardly on the first step of that difficult ascent which was to rise before him all his lifetime. He was still among the primrose paths. He was rich, powerful, of sovereign rank. He had only the germs within him of what was thereafter to expand into moral and intellectual greatness. He had small sympathy for the religious reformation, of which he was to be one of the most distinguished champions. He was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... We walk very much and see such sights as the town affords. To-day I have bought a little terrier to keep me company. You will think this is from my reading of Wordsworth: but if that were my cue, I should go no further than keeping a primrose in a pot for society. Farewell, dear Allen. I am astonished to find myself writing a very long letter once a week to you: but it is next to talking to you: and after having seen you so much this summer, I cannot ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... absent. The iron had obviously entered into her hair (or into every seventh wave, at least, of her hair), and her dresses fitted her as a flower its sheath. She was natural, but not in the least wild; no primrose by a river's brim, nor an artificial bloom, but rather a hothouse flower just plucked and very carefully wired. Hence she was at once the despair of the portrait painters, who had never as yet been able to help making her look on canvas like a bad ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson

... went by along the wintry sea, and the short afternoon faded quickly into a twilight that was cold in its beauty like a pale primrose in frost. They were descending slowly towards the little town that lay ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens

... puft and rechlesse libertine, Himselfe the primrose path of dalliance treads, And reakes ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various

... truth and grief, That little C—'s an arrant thief, Before the urchin well could go, She stole the whiteness of the snow. And more—that whiteness to adorn, She snatch'd the blushes of the morn; Stole all the softness aether pours On primrose buds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various

... discs of the scuttles in the walls of the pilot-house gradually underwent a subtle change of colour—from deepest black, through an infinite variety of shades of grey, to a pure, rich blue which, in its turn, merged into a delicate primrose hue, while the incandescent lamp in the dome-like roof of the structure as gradually lost its radiance until it became a mere white-hot thread in the growing flood of cold morning light. Meanwhile the moment arrived for a further alteration in the ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... Egerton, Lord Keeper, Baron Ellesmere, and then Viscount Brackley. These three sisters are celebrated by him in a gallery of the noble ladies of the Court,[6:6] under poetical names—"Phyllis, the flower of rare perfection," "Charillis, the pride and primrose of the rest," and "Sweet Amaryllis, the youngest but the highest in degree." Alice, Lady Strange, Lady Derby, Lady Ellesmere and Brackley, and then again Dowager Lady Derby, the "Sweet Amaryllis" of the poet, had the rare fortune to be a personal link between Spenser and Milton. She was ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... 12th of August 1553, there sailed from Portsmouth two goodly ships, the Primrose and the Lion, with a pinnace called the Moon, all well furnished with 140 able bodied men, and with ordnance and victuals fitting for the voyage. They were commanded by two captains; one of whom was a foreigner named Antonio ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... like this room, Edna? I had it fixed up for myself, and everything in it is mine." She looked complacently up at the hangings of primrose silk that hid the fifteenth century frescoes ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... it is seldom more than a convenient water-tank, or, at most, as affording some sport to boys in fishing. To its picturesque beauties his eyes are blind, and to him the brook is, like Peter Bell's primrose, a ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various

... why didst thou leave the beds Where roses and where lilies vie, To seek a primrose, whose pale shades Must sicken when ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... Wincing* she was as is a jolly colt, *skittish Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt. A brooch she bare upon her low collere, As broad as is the boss of a bucklere. Her shoon were laced on her legges high; She was a primerole,* a piggesnie , *primrose For any lord t' have ligging* in his bed, *lying Or yet for any good yeoman ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... And it was about primrose-time that her time come, and we had kept it quiet, and nobody knew but us and Mrs. Jarvis, that lived in the cottage next to ours, and was Ellen's godmother, and loved her like her own daughter; and when the baby come, Ellen says, 'Is it a boy or a girl?' ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit

... apt to array themselves, from top to toe, in the patchwork manner I have mentioned. I shall not omit to speak of one genius, in drab breeches and gaiters, and an Arcadian hat, who had a violent propensity to the pastoral, but whose rural wanderings had been confined to the classic haunts of Primrose Hill, and the solitudes of the Regent's Park. He had decked himself in wreaths and ribbons from all the old pastoral poets, and, hanging his head on one side, went about with a fantastical, lackadaisical ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... it for a subtle memory Of those sweet tremulous days of rain and sun, When April laughed between her tears to see The early primrose with shy footsteps run From the gnarled oak-tree roots till all the wold, Spite of its brown and trampled leaves, ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde

... sea-beasts and sea-weeds. But there is one remarkable exception, where the pools worn in a hard limestone are filled with what seem at first sight beds of china-asters, of all loveliest colours—primrose, sea-green, dove, purple, crimson, pink, ash-grey. They are all prickly sea-eggs (presumably the Echinus lividus, which is found in similar places in the west of Ireland), each buried for life in a cup-shaped hole which he has excavated in ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, The periwinkle trail'd its wreathes; And 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... should not other species of Puccinia be related in like manner to other AEcidia? This is the conclusion to which many have arrived, and, taking advantage of certain presumptions, have, we fear, rashly associated many such forms together without substantial evidence. On the leaves of the primrose we have commonly a species of AEcidium, Puccinia, and Uromyces nearly at the same time; we may imagine that all these belong to one cycle, but it has not yet been proved. Again, Uromyces cacaliae, ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... her, and a beautifully-carved holy water stoup of French design which he declares to be "as old as the Conqueror." There is a medal of the Worshipful Company of Cutlers which carries with it the freedom of the City of London. Another order shows the Doctor to be a Knight of the Primrose League; and, fished from under a side of bacon, is a print of "my great-grandfather who discovered a cure for scurvy." A missionary's box of toys for some Christmas tree in Far North fastnesses is opened, and here a native stops work to lead along ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... garden, which was shifted to that corner by the influence of Joseph's complaints. I was comfortably revelling in the spring fragrance around, and the beautiful soft blue overhead, when my young lady, who had run down near the gate to procure some primrose roots for a border, returned only half laden, and informed us that Mr. Heathcliff was coming in. 'And he spoke to me,' she added, with a ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... the cause, and the next day the conspirators made a trip to the florist's shop. They were dismayed but not discouraged by the exorbitant price of flowers; they scornfully dismissed the florist's suggestion of a "neat" little primrose plant—they were equally disdainful of carnations. Patricia favored roses, and when the florist offered them a bargain in some rather wilted Lady Ursulas, she wanted to buy them and put them in salt and water overnight, to revive them. Finally they decided upon a bunch of ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... effect of this good lesson keep As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; Whilst, like the puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... order for his trial and execution; which came on upon the 7th of Jan. 1678. On the third of the month Sir George Lockhart and Mr. John Ellis were appointed to plead for the pannel; but Sharp would have his life, and Lauderdale gave way to it. Sir Archibald Primrose, lately turned out of the register's place, took a copy of the council's act anent Mr. Mitchel, and sent it to this council; and a day or two before the trial, went to Lauderdale, who, together with lord Rothes, lord ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... placed after the noun, the article generally retains its place before the noun, and is not repeated before the adjective: as, "A man ignorant of astronomy;"—"The primrose pale." In Greek, when an adjective is placed after its noun, if the article is applied to the noun, it is repeated before the adjective; as, "[Greek: Hae polis hae megalae,]"—"The city the great;" i.e., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... Ordinary, where one had been exposing Lord Beaconsfield's nonsense about the "Three Profits" of agricultural land, to a turbulent meeting in a chapel or a barn (for the use of the schoolroom was denied to the Liberal candidate). As we drove through the primrose-studded lanes, or past the village green, the bell was ringing from the grey tower of the Parish Church, and summoning the villagers to the daily Evensong of Holy Week. The contrast was too violent to be ignored; and yet, for a citizen who took ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... the dusty street, And daisies spring about her feet; Or, touched to life beneath her tread, An English cowslip lifts its head; And, as to do her grace, rise up The primrose and the buttercup! I roam with her through fields of cane, And seem to stroll an English lane, Which, white with blossoms of the May, Spreads its green carpet in her way! As fancy wills, the path beneath Is golden gorse, or purple heath: And now we hear in woodlands dim Their unarticulated ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... familiarised to rustic scenes from his earliest infancy, he could see no beauty in the various objects that each instant delighted the little Londoners' eyes and ears; for, like the hero of Wordsworth's verse, "the primrose by the river's brim" was but a primrose and ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... in every buttercup and every primrose, and every little daisy, and in every dewdrop, and heard something of the song of the angels in the notes of the nightingale and the skylark. Oh! Jesus was there, and they felt Him, and they saw ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith

... relegated to the limbo of discarded hypotheses.... The present refutation has been undertaken in the interest of biological progress in this country. It is now high time, so far as the so-called mutation hypothesis, based on the conduct of the evening primrose in cultures, is concerned, that the younger generation of biologists should take heed lest the primrose path of dalliance lead them imperceptibly into the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire."—Prof. Edw. C. Jeffrey (Harvard), in ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price

... son drowned and staring; and a little further on, just under the Dean, three or four bodies cast up on the shore, one of them a small drummer-boy, side-drum and all; and nearby part of a ship's gig, with 'H.M.S. Primrose' cut on the sternboard. From this point on the shore was littered thick with wreckage and dead bodies—the most of them marines in uniform—and in Godrevy Cove, in particular, a heap of furniture from the captain's cabin, and among it a water-tight box, not much damaged, and full of papers, by which, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... she looked anxiously at his dress. He had on bright yellow kid gloves, primrose he would have called them, but, if there be such things as yellow gloves, they were yellow; and she wished that she had the courage to ask him to take them off. This was beyond her, and there he sat, with his gloves almost as conspicuous ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

... tables were bowls full of clear-coloured spring flowers—early primrose, jonquil, and narcissus. A wood-fire burned upon the blue-and-white tiled hearth. And on the sofa, drawn up at right angles to it, Katherine sat, wrapped in a gray, silk dressing-gown bordered with soft, white fur. She flushed slightly as her brother came ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... itself lit up by a reflected glow of the sinking sun. The meadows through which the little path ran were dotted all over with golden spots of lotus, and near the water the pale, pure yellow of the evening primrose shone against the darkening willows. The voices of unseen peasants, labouring somewhere in the fields so long as the daylight lasted, were carried up the valley by the breeze, just loosened from its leash; but the sound was only a little ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... the truth, Mr. Narkom, I came within an ace of doing the very thing you speak of," replied Cleek. "It's full moon, for one thing, and it's primrose time for another. Happily for your desire to catch me, however, I—er—got interested in the evening paper, and ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... single man is studious and quiet, people say He is grouchy, he is old before his time; If he's frivolous and flippant, if he treads the primrose way, Then they mark him for a wild ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams

... ... And do I now enjoy My walks along the primrose way so? Is civil life the life? Oh, ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams

... madrigal. Then the irrepressible chatter burst out afresh. Cool and fragrant all the maidens looked, in their dresses of clear sprigged muslin, each tied at waist, wrists, and throat with ribbons of a different colour: lilac, lavender, primrose, cherry, emerald, and blue. The garden roses might droop in the hot garden outside, but the roses on the girls' cheeks, instead of fading, flushed and deepened with growing excitement. They all seemed full of suppressed eagerness, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... the three ranks: the man who perceives rightly, because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose, because he does not love it. Then, secondly, the man who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to whom the primrose is anything else than a primrose: a star, or ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... slept in white array. Robert could have kissed the earliest knot of red and blue hepaticas which bloomed at the base of a log-heap. But he looked in vain for that eldest child of an English spring, 'the wee modest crimson-tipped' daisy, or for the meek nestling primrose among the moss. And from the heaven's blue lift no music of larks poured down; no twitter of the chaffinch or whistle of the thrush echoed from the greening woods. Robert thought the blue-bird's voice a poor ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... Primrose springs. Surveying run. Sent Muller to the north to a distant range, and Strong to the north-east to look for springs. Towards evening both returned without being successful. They passed over plenty of good feeding country, ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... not burnt, there must have been worse still in those which had perished. It showed that the scheme of Dover was still pursued, was still a danger. At that moment the magistrate who sent the warning disappeared. After some days his dead body was found at the foot of Green Berry Hill, now Primrose Hill; and one of the most extraordinary coincidences, so interesting in the study of historical criticism, is the fact that the men hanged for the murder were named Green, Berry, and Hill. It was of course suspected that Godfrey ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... Europe with his Paintings and a Table d'Hote Vocabulary, he and Brother-in-Law began to compare Mortgages. By consulting the Road-Map they discovered that the Primrose Path would lead them over a high Precipice into a Stone Quarry, so they decided to take a Short Cut at Right Angles and ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... some land to which we shall never go again, come and let me breathe from the far country of your adolescence the scent of those flowers of spring among which I also used to wander, many years ago. Come with the primrose, with the canon's beard, with the gold-cup; come with the stone-crop, whereof are posies made, pledges of love, in the Balzacian flora, come with that flower of the Resurrection morning, the Easter daisy, come with the snowballs of the guelder-rose, which begin ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... primrose woods at home, and birds singing, and apple-blossom against blue sky, and the park with its flower-beds newly planted, and the fresh-watered streets, and women ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... philosophers has his prejudices, perhaps against competitive sports or against efficiency as a chief test of good citizenship; and after childhood the most wayward of artists has some general principles to guide him along his primrose path. The actions of all men are the resultant of these two forces of feeling and reason. Since in most cases where we are arguing we have an eye to influencing action, we must keep both the forces in mind as possible means ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... it yesterday I saw you, cool and sweet in your soft primrose gown? or was it long ago before the shadows fell? Ah, love—your eyes! your hair! And always in the darkness the sound of your voice—the touch of ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... drab or life is gay, Thorny path or primrose way; All is common, all is strange; "Down the ringing grooves of change" ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor

... surprise. I fancy, however, the new moon always comes as a surprise even to those who are familiar with her time-tables. And it is the same with the coming in of spring and the waves of the flowers. We are not the less delighted to find an early primrose because we are sufficiently learned in the services of the year to look for it in March or April rather than in October. We know, again, that the blossom precedes and not succeeds the fruit of the apple-tree, but this does not lessen our amazement at the beautiful ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... to chain a young man's fancy, when the road of life runs enticingly before him, dappled with laurel and carpeted with primrose. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... school-boy, wandering through the wood To pull the primrose gay, Starts, the new voice of Spring to hear, ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... oak I stood That veiled the hollow channel of the flood: Along whose shelving bank the violet blue And primrose pale in lovely mixture grew. High overarched the bloomy woodbine hung, The gaudy goldfinch from the maple sung; The little warbling minstrel of the shade To the gay morn her due devotion paid Next, the soft linnet echoing to the ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... The primrose sky gave promise of a beautiful day. The blue grey vault overhead was already filling with shimmering golden light, the drooping willows and the dew-wet grass were stirring in the breeze of dawn, the voice of the water sang in ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... winds are gone, See how brightly shines the sun; The violet sweet and primrose pale, Now adorn the ...
— The Keepsake - or, Poems and Pictures for Childhood and Youth • Anonymous

... the water's edge. A band of red, white, and blue electric lights formed the balustrade of the upper deck, with a row of brilliant scarlet geraniums on the railing. The house-boat next to ours was called "The Primrose," and when they saw our American emblem they sent over a polite note asking where we got it, and at once ordered a St. George and the Dragon in electric lights, which never came until the Friday following, ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... poor, so dependent, so well aware that the drudgeries of such honest work as is within their reach are likely enough to lead them eventually to lung disease, premature death, and domestic desertion or brutality, that they would still see reason to prefer the primrose path to the strait path of virtue, since both, vice at worst and virtue at best, lead to the same end in poverty and overwork. It is true that the Board School mistress will tell you that only girls of a certain kind will reason in this way. But alas! that certain ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... bathed and dressed me in my best suit of pale-lilac silk, with flapped waistcoat of primrose stiff with gold, and Cato was powdering my hair; when Sir Lupus waddled in, magnificent in scarlet and white, and smelling to heaven of French ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... the primrose, cowslip and daffodilly, The hare-bell blue, the crimson cullumbine, Sage, lettis, parsley, and the milke-white lilly, The rose and speckled flowre cald sops-in-wine, Fine pretie king-cups, and the yellow bootes, That growes by rivers and ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield

... the meadows! I'll show you where Primrose and violet blow, And the hawthorn spreads its blossoms fair, White as the driven snow. I'll show you where the daisies dot With silver stars the lea, The orchis, and forget-me-not, The ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie

... eyes in the shadow of a momentary gravity were the eyes of a woman and not of a child. She raised them to look out at the evening sky, indigo blue against the lamplit interior, or faintly primrose in the west, and wondered for the thousandth time why it was still such an effort to Val to refer to his brief military experience. Soft country noises came in, peaceful and soothing: the short shrill shriek of a ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... candle, is not all that it might be at the moment. Every time I do it I swear sulkily that I will never, never do it again. It is obvious to me that no one but an utter fool would ever climb anything higher than Primrose Hill, and only a sullen determination not to be bested by my own self makes me get out of bed and downstairs at all. I am only a human being by the time the sleepy waiter has given me my coffee. After drinking it and taking a roll and some butter I went ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweets— With the sky above my head And the grass beneath my feet; For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel Before I knew the woes of want, And the walk that costs ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... satisfactory wedding breakfast, if any one should ever make inquiries of you. By the time Uncle Henry had the ends out of half the champagne bottles I guess everyone there was glad he had decided to drag Aunt Mollie back from the primrose path. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... relieved, then enthusiastic. What a spring display they were to have! On the third day hundreds of primrose-yellow envelopes, inscribed in green ink to the studio's clients, poured into the letter-chute. Within them an announcement printed in flowing green script read, under Felicity's letterhead, "I offer twenty-one ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... air. By the ruined, moss-clothed barn the owl will build her nest, and the twilight will tread a measure with the night. And the rustic maidens will gather the shell-pink honeysuckle with their lovers, and the amorous clouds will slumber above the exquisite plough-boy with his primrose locks, as he wanders, whistling, on his way. Nature, inartistic, monotonous Nature, will renew the sap of her youth, and the dewy freshness of her first pale springtime, but the sap of your youth will have run dry for ever, and the voice of your springtime will be mute and toneless. Ah, Jimmy, ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... Primrose, first-born child of Ver, Merry spring-time's harbinger, With her bells dim; Oxlips in their cradles growing, Marigolds ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... side of the field there was a deep, dry ditch under great curtains of blackberry bushes, which in autumn bore luscious fruit. And by Katie's door, if she would sit in the sun, was a primrose bank, about which the hens stalked and clucked with their long-legged chickens or much prettier ducklings. Katie did not want for playmates. She had none of her own kind, but was sociable to the fowl ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet! With the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet! For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want, And the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... They were sitting, one at either end, on that seat on the stony summit of Primrose Hill which looks towards Regent's Park. It was night. The paths on the slope below were dotted out by yellow lamps; the Albert-road was a line of faintly luminous pale green—the tint of gaslight seen among trees; beyond, the park lay black and mysterious, and still further, a yellow mist beneath ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... their lives seemed very sweet indeed to those of their friends whose eyes were not holden. Nelson Haley and Janice Day were at the beginning of that path which, if sometimes rugged and steep to the travelers thereon, is primrose strewn. ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long

... violet made haste to appear, To be her bosom guest, With first primrose that grew this year I purchas'd from her breast; To me, Gave she, Her golden lock for mine; My ring of jet For her bracelet, I ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... he did, for the House held few more popular human beings, but no one took him very seriously as a politician. This particular view of his certainly made no breach between him and his inseparable associate, Mr. Neil Primrose, who, as time went on, took as strong a line against Ulster's claims as Agar-Robartes did for them.—Sunt lacrimae rerum. I remember vividly in August 1914 the sudden apparition of this pair, side ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... the most part, little else than a narrow strip of untilled field, separated by blackberry hedges from the better-cared-for meadows on each side of it: growing more weeds, therefore, than they, and perhaps in spring a primrose or two—white archangel—daisies plenty, and purple thistles in autumn. A slender rivulet, boasting little of its brightness, for there are no springs at Dulwich, yet fed purely enough by the rain and morning dew, here trickled—there loitered—through the long grass beneath the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... and mother, and of the dear deanery among its meadows, floating fragments of the poetry her father had loved, of the prayers her mother had taught her in childhood, hovered in her mind. She seemed to see the primrose woods where she had wandered, and to hear the sound of brooks and birds in Spring. A vague smile was on her lips. She thought of Sir Hugh as of a radiance lighting all. She was the happiest ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... shadows in a deep wood, was coiled in a twisted heap to fit the crown of her mannish sombrero. It came down lightly over the tips of her ears in pretty disorder, due to the excitement of the morning, and she was fair as a camelia blossom and fresh as an evening primrose of her ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... fleece;— Where painted carpets o'er the meads are hurled, And Bacchus' vineyards overspread the world; Where woods and forests go in goodly green;— I'll be Adonis, thou shalt be Love's Queen;— The meads, the orchards, and the primrose-lanes, Instead of sedge and reed, bear sugar-canes: Thou in those groves, by Dis above, Shalt live with me and ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... not remember a more whimsical surprise than having been once detected—by a familiar damsel—reclined at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera), reading—Pamela. There was nothing in the book to make a man seriously ashamed at the exposure; but as she seated herself down by me, and seemed determined to read in company, I could have wished it had been—any other book. We read on very sociably ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... face betrays no gloom, And the primrose pants in its heedless push, Though the myrtle asks if it's worth the fight This year with frost and rime To venture one more time On delicate leaves and buttons of white From the selfsame bough as at last year's prime, And never to ruminate on or remember What happened ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy

... you, sweet? A posy prankt with every April hue: The cloud-white daisy, violet sky-blue, Shot with the primrose sunshine ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill

... inclination for controversy. He set himself to publish facts, which by their accumulation tended to clench his arguments. Soon after the "Origin of Species" he had in course of publication several important botanical papers, on the two forms of flower in the Primrose genus (1862), and in the genus Linum (flax), 1863, on the forms of Loosestrife, 1864, all published in the Linnean ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... the arbour; let us go and look at the house,' said Stella; but Vava and Eva had opened the back-door, which led into the garden, and their voices were heard exclaiming in delight as they found primrose and violet plants and an early snowdrop, and fruit-trees which might be apples ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin

... beauty, and shook the incense from its waving flowers into the bosom of summer. The bearded moss clustered like a thousand little brown pin-cushions upon the old thatch, and older stones; and sometimes the polyanthus and primrose, planted beside it by some child who loved to look at flowers, would close their eyes and lay their dewy checks upon the ...
— Jemmy Stubbins, or The Nailer Boy - Illustrations Of The Law Of Kindness • Unknown Author

... uses very little else but animal matter in the composition of his dishes, which it must be confessed are somewhat unwholesome in consequence: whilst the late Mr. Wordsworth, on the contrary, confined himself almost exclusively to the confection of primrose pudding, and flint soup, flavoured with the lesser-celandine; and only now and then a beggar-boy boiled down in it to give it a colour. The robins and drowned lambs which he was wont to use, when an additional piquancy was needed, were employed so sparingly ...
— Every Man His Own Poet - Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book • Newdigate Prizeman

... the primrose and the dew are, Soon were sped the fairies all: Only now the green turf ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare

... peasant girls around he had always a laugh and a joke. And for the young girls from school he had always a soft spot in his heart somehow, appreciating them as one appreciates the first primrose or a puppy dog playing on the lawn or the lark in the clear air. There came such a current of beauty and freshness from them.... New from the hand of the Maker.... They were pausing now, as the wind pauses on the tide.... And in a little while the world, the damned ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... which spread above and before us like a great blot of ghostly grey against the starlit sky, began perceptibly to pale and brighten until it stood out clear and distinct, bathed in richest primrose light, with the shadow of the mast drawn across it in ebony-black. Striking the top of the sail first, the light swept gradually down; and in less than a minute the whole of the boat, with the crew and ourselves, were completely ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... the closest cling to earth, And they first feel the sun; so violets blue, So the soft star-like primrose drenched in dew, The happiest of spring's happy fragrant birth, To gentlest touches, sweetest tones reply; So humbleness, with her low-breathed voice, Can steal o'er man's proud heart, and ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... hollow—not too many to spoil the grass—and they were red-tipped daisies. There was besides, in the very heart of it, one plant of the finest pimpernels I have ever seen, and this was my introduction to the flower. Nor were these all the treasures of the spot. A late primrose, a tiny child, born out of due time, opened its timid petals in the same hollow. Here then we regathered red-tipped daisies, large pimpernels, and one tiny primrose. I lay and looked at them in delight—not at all inclined to pull ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... the trees, he often stopped to listen to the singing birds, or to look at the wild flowers that grew on every side. Now and then he stooped to pluck a violet, or a primrose, or a yellow but-ter-cup. Soon his hands ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin

... the line are eight in number, their total length being 7336 yards. The first high ground encountered was Primrose Hill, where the stiff London clay was passed through for a distance of about 1164 yards. The clay was close, compact, and dry, more difficult to work than stone itself. It was entirely free from water; but ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... together. Just now she is all given up to another; but when he no longer calls upon her daily thoughts and cares, I warn you not to be surprised, if this bud of friendship open like the evening primrose, with a sound as of a sudden stolen kiss, and lo! the flower of full-blown love ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... I now judge, to the constant cuppings and bleedings whereby "the faculty" of those days combated teething fits, and (perhaps with Malthusian proclivities) killed off young children. I remember, too, that the broad meadows, since developed into Regent's Park and Primrose Hill, then "truly rural," and even up to Chalk Farm, then notorious for duels, were my nursery ramblings in search of cowslips and new milk. Also, that once at least in those infantile days, my father took me to see Winsor's Patent Gaslights ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... the theatre and the dance; Primrose the path I would be wending; For me the roses of ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams

... him in some outward, ceremonial expression of that sentiment, if he can suggest one that shall not be ridiculously inadequate. What about kneeling through the C Minor Symphony? That seems to me about as near as we can get. Or I will go with him to Primrose Hill some fine morning (like the Persian Ambassador fabled by Charles Lamb) and worship the Sun, chanting to him ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... and scenes! this Proserpine of fire and earthquake! this Katterfelto of wonders! exceeded expectation, went beyond belief, and soared above all the natural powers of description! she was nature itself! she was the most exquisite work of art! she was the very daisy, primrose, tube rose, sweet-briar, furze blossom, gilliflower, wall-flower, cauliflower and rosemary! in short she was a bouquet of Parnassus. Where expectation was raised so high, it was thought she would be injured by her appearance; but it was the audience who were injured—several of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... hearts on the hilltop looking over inexplicable shimmering plains of mist hemmed by mountains jagged like coals that as they looked began to smoulder with dawn. The light all about was lemon yellow. The walls of the village behind them were fervid primrose color splotched with shadows of sheer cobalt. Above the houses uncurled ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... her eyes fell on a little flower just under them. It stared up in her face like the living thing it was, and she could not take her eyes off its face. It was like a primrose trying to express doubt instead of confidence. It seemed to put her half in mind of something, and she felt as if shame were coming. She put out her hand to pluck it; but the moment her fingers touched it, the flower withered up, and hung as dead on ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald

... know a wood-nymph, who her dwelling hath Among the leaves, and far beyond the path, With myrtle and with jasmin roofed across, Enlaced with vine, and carpeted with moss, Whose only threshold is a plaited brook, Whereby the primrose at herself may look; While birds of song melodious make the air— But oh! I must ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore

... faint sign of dawn appeared she arose again, and opened the window to obtain a full breathing of the new morning air, the panes being now wet with trembling tears left by the night rain, each one rounded with a pale lustre caught from primrose-hued slashes through a cloud low down in the awakening sky. From the trees came the sound of steady dripping upon the drifted leaves under them, and from the direction of the church she could hear another noise—peculiar, and not intermittent ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... worlds to hail the morning Ray? 'Tis time to bid the faded shadowy Pleasures move On shadowy Memory's wings across the Soul of Love; And thine o'er Winter's icy plains to fling Each flower, that binds the breathing Locks of Spring, 10 When blushing, like a bride, from primrose Bower She starts, awaken'd by the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... tiles; three windows from the ceiling down to the ground, opening on a balcony, and flanked by the perpendicular folds of the dark hangings. The stateliness of ancient days lingered between the four high, smooth walls, tinted a delicate primrose-colour; and Mrs. Gould, with her little head and shining coils of hair, sitting in a cloud of muslin and lace before a slender mahogany table, resembled a fairy posed lightly before dainty philtres dispensed out of vessels of silver ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... the good Doctor Primrose, whom we all of us know.(173) Swift was yet alive, when the little Oliver was born at Pallas, or Pallasmore, in the county of Longford, in Ireland. In 1730, two years after the child's birth, Charles Goldsmith removed ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... says he. 'The yellow primrose on the river's brim is getting to look to us Reubs like a holiday edition de luxe of the Language of Flowers ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry

... squareness of outline, and impossibility of perspective, they are not unlike the woodcuts in old books; but they were oil-paintings, and the artist, like the painter of the Primrose family, had not been sparing of his colours. In one, a lady was having a toe amputated—an operation which a saintly personage had sailed into the room, upon a couch, to superintend. In another, a lady was ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... medio luteus. Primrose Peerles, or the common white Daffodil. Ger. Herb. p. 110. ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... the Hound's Pool was finest, for here Dean Burn had scooped a hole among the roots of forest trees and lay snug from the scythe of the east wind, so that the first white violet was always to be found upon the bank and the earliest primrose also. In winter time, when the boughs above were naked, the sun would glint upon the water; and sometimes all would be so still that you could hear a vole swimming; and then again, after a Dartmoor freshet, the stream would come down in spate, cherry-red, and roll big waters ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... "bachelor's buttons," which was credited with possessing some magical effect upon the fortunes of lovers. Hence its blossoms were carried in the pocket, success in love being indicated in proportion as they lost or retained their freshness. Browne alludes to the primrose, which "maidens as a true-love in their bosoms place;" and in the North of England the kemps or spikes of the ribwort plantain are used as love-charms. The mode of procedure as practised in Northamptonshire ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... under way he loses no time in going to the theatre to see whether the instructions he has appended to the stage directions in the MS. are being properly carried out. Some morning, when the vast stage of the opera is humming with activity, the well-known primrose-coloured automobile will drive up to the entrance and the Emperor, accompanied only by a single adjutant, will emerge. In three minutes William II will be seated at a big, business-like table placed in the stalls, before him a pile of paper and an array of pencils. When he is in the house ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... the gold in the sky, and the primrose-tinted depths beyond. He was thankful for his delightful home; he felt a good impulse in him, urging that he must do his duty in this his day and generation; he seemed to respond to it, hoped the new church ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... five years' wife, and not yet fair? Blame let the man, not Nature, bear! For, as the sun, warming a bank Where last year's grass droops gray and dank, Evokes the violet, bids disclose In yellow crowds the fresh primrose, And foxglove hang her flushing head, So vernal love, where all seems dead, Makes beauty abound. Then was that nought, That trance of joy beyond all thought, The vision, in one, of womanhood? Nay, for all women ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... Whaur the bee swings ower the white clovery sod, And the butterfly flits like a stray thoucht o' God; Whaur, like arrow shot frae life's unseen bow, The dragon-fly burns the sunlicht throu'! Oh! the bonny, bonny dell, whaur I sang to see The rose and the primrose, the draigon and bee! ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... at lawn tennis; but they were delighted to learn, for Uncle Redgie proved to be a very fine-looking retired General, and there was a lad besides, grown to manly height; and one boy, at home for Easter, who, caring not for croquet, went with Primrose to exhibit to Thekla the tame menagerie, where a mungoose, called of course Raki raki, was the last acquisition. She was also shown the kittens of the beloved Begum, and presented with Phoebus, a tabby with a wise face and a head marked like ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... a clear warm morning. The wind blew deliciously over the Mountainside. Here and there she saw a late primrose but she did not stop to call upon them. The sky ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald

... And in the wood, where often you and I, Vpon faint Primrose beds, were wont to lye, Emptying our bosomes, of their counsell sweld: There my Lysander, and my selfe shall meete, And thence from Athens turne away our eyes To seeke new friends and strange companions, Farwell sweet play-fellow, pray thou for vs, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... dewy fingers, Brings a waft of violet, Sweet arbutus, dainty primrose, On their lowly graves we set. Soft they slumber, We their ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... thwart and, with his left arm flung round the splintered stump to steady himself, proceeded to wave his coat energetically. Luckily for the pair in distress, they were to the westward of the approaching ship, with the evening sky, in which still lingered a pale primrose glow, behind them, and against this background their figures and that of the boat stood out black as silhouettes cut in ebony. It is possible that, even with this advantage, they might have escaped notice, had not Phil thought of waving his coat; but the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... of luxuriant ferns, which hung Narcissus-like over their own graceful quivering images. Profound quiet brooded in the warm, hazy air, burdened with balsamic odors; but once a pine burr full of rich nutty mast crashed down through dead twigs, bruising the satin petals of a primrose; and ever and anon the oboe notes of that shy, deep throated hermit of ravines—the russet, speckled-breasted lark—thrilled through the woods, like antiphonal echoes in ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... and crawl in grim rows, I want to go and wander free; I deviate to pluck a primrose, I stay behind to watch a bee; Nor have the heart to keep the men in line, When some have lingered where the squirrels leap, And some are busy by the eglantine, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various

... taking it in her lap combed it with a silver comb, and then placed it upon a primrose bank. Then up came a second and a third head, saying the same as the former. So she did the same for them, and then, pulling out her provisions, sat down to ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... her own confession to me, her education had been obtained, while it lasted, in schools as good as any in the land, if, indeed, all were as excellent as Mrs. Pardee's Young Ladies' Seminary in Albany, or the school kept by the Misses Primrose. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... far away at Christmas-time. Judith had never had such enchanting presents—a string of beautiful amber beads from Daddy; the daintiest of shell-pink crepe kimonos with satin slippers and cap to match from mother; a pretty camisole from Nancy; a woolen skating-set of palest primrose from Uncle Tom; and—joy of joys! a new white and silver evening frock ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett

... Captain John Hannam, Captain Richard Stanton. Captain Martin Frobisher, Vice-Admiral, a man of great experience in seafaring actions, who had carried the chief charge of many ships himself, in sundry voyages before, being now shipped in the Primrose; Captain Francis Knolles, Rear-Admiral in the galleon Leicester; Master Thomas Venner, captain in the Elizabeth Bonadventure, under the General; Master Edward Winter, captain in the Aid; Master Christopher ...
— Drake's Great Armada • Walter Biggs

... settle the affair before dinner, but by the time she was gowned and primped, the first premature guest had arrived like the rashest primrose, shy, surprised, and surprising. Sir Joseph had gone below already. Lady Webling was hull down on ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... and weird and wan, and ever in camp o' nights We would watch and watch the silver dance of the mystic Northern Lights. And soft they danced from the Polar sky and swept in primrose haze; And swift they pranced with their silver feet, and pierced with a blinding blaze. They danced a cotillion in the sky; they were rose and silver shod; It was not good for the eyes of man—'twas a sight for the eyes of God. It made us mad ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... their double range Embrace the vale of Tempe: from each side Ascending steep to heaven, a rocky mound 320 Cover'd with ivy and the laurel boughs That crown'd young Phoebus for the Python slain. Fair Tempe! on whose primrose banks the morn Awoke most fragrant, and the noon reposed In pomp of lights and shadows most sublime: Whose lawns, whose glades, ere human footsteps yet Had traced an entrance, were the hallow'd haunt ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... coming out of her door at ten in the morning to do her marketing, meets, face to face, her next neighbour standing at her door, a jug in her hand, waiting for some late milkman to pass—a slovenly dame in a dressing-gown with half the buttons off, primrose-coloured hair loose on her back, and a porcelain complexion hastily dabbed on a yellow dissipated face. The Maryleboners (or -bonites) being a Happy Family, in the menagerie sense, do not vex their souls about this condition of things; the well-fed ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... fairest flowers While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack The flower that's like thy face—pale primrose, nor The azured harebell—like thy veins; no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, Outsweetened not thy breath. The ruddock would With charitable bill bring thee all this; Yea, and furred moss besides, when flowers are ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... poet was instantaneous. His poem sold well. Compliments fell upon him like a sun shower. He wrote another poem of like value, and it sold "prodigiously." He thought indeed he was a great poet, and had started out on Shakespeare's primrose way to fame and glory. Alas! how many under like circumstances have been deceived. He lived to call his ballads "wretched stuff." How many who thought they were poets have lived to take the same ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth

... stars as they passed slowly across the central opening, and listened to the flight of the birds as they travelled northward at the coming of spring. And I have watched the birth of many a day, from the first quivering primrose hue to the full flush and glow of rosy colour, and then the stirring breeze, the waking leaves, and the call of the ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher

... Richard Stanton. Captaine Martine Frobusher Viceadmirall, a man of great experience in sea faring actions, & had caried chiefe charge of many shippes himselfe, in sundry voyages before, being novv shipped in the Primrose. Captaine Francis Knollis, Rieradmirall in the Gallion Leicester. Maister Thomas Venner Captaine in the Elizabeth Bonaduenture vnder the Generall. Maister Edvvard Winter Captaine in the Aide. Maister Christopher Carleill the Lieftenant generall, Captaine in the Tygar. Henry White Captaine of ...
— A Svmmarie and Trve Discovrse of Sir Frances Drakes VVest Indian Voyage • Richard Field

... "Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, The periwinkle trailed its leaves; And 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... the scientist calmly, "like the man in the poem a 'primrose by the river's brim, a yellow primrose is to you, ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner

... of Ryse, Of Primrose and of Flower-de-Lyse, Of all flowers in my devyce, The flower of Jesse beareth the prize, For most of all To help our souls ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... plovers wheel, and give their note of joy. It was a day that sent into the heart A summer feeling. Even the insect swarms, From their dark nooks and coverts, issued forth To sport through one day of existence more. The solitary primrose on the bank Seemed now as though it had no cause to mourn Its brief Autumnal birth. The rocks and shores, The forest and the everlasting hills, Smiled in that joyful sunshine; they ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions, that go the primrose way ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... for in a moment there grew upon the glass plate standing between the two tubes a pillar of color, vivid yellow, tipped with primrose. ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... As for the primrose ring—reach across it to Bridget and let her give you back again the heart of a child which you may have lost somewhere ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... the visits of insects. Have you not observed that different flowers open and close at different times? The daisy receives its name "day's eye" because it opens at sunrise and closes at sunset, while the evening primrose spreads out its flowers just as the ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... put some sheets of writing-paper in the fire, all of them and Tangle-wood itself would turn into cinders and vanish in smoke up the chimney—even the present chronicler saw the point; though, at the same time, he somehow could not help believing in the reality of Primrose, Buttercup, Dandelion, Squash-blossom, and the rest. Thus early did he begin to grasp the philosophy of the ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne



Words linked to "Primrose" :   common evening primrose, Primula elatior, genus Primula, primrose family, primrose path, primula, Primula polyantha, Missouri primrose, herbaceous plant, oxlip, Primula vulgaris, polyanthus, Primula sinensis, paigle, Cape primrose, evening primrose, herb, English primrose, Primula veris, Chinese primrose



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