"Sapless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knelt devoutly on the hard bare pavement of the chapel. Oliver de Worsthorn, the old seneschal, knelt at the foot of the bier; his white locks covered his thin features like a veil, hiding their intense and heart-withering expression. He felt without a stay or helper in his last hours—a sapless, worthless stem in this ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... at that time. A wide and careful survey of the subject was made by Frederick Law Olmsted, a New York farmer, who wrote what but for their gloomy subject would be among the best books of travel. He presents to us the picture of a prevailingly sullen, sapless, brutish life, but certainly not of acute misery or habitual oppression. A Southerner old enough to remember slavery would probably not question the accuracy of his details, but would insist, very likely with truth, that there was more ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... must be found the centre or the focus of every curve; and every angle must subtend a certain arc, to be easily found on reference to the tables of the text-books. "The melancholy days have come" for Art, when the meditative student finds his early footsteps loud among these dry, withered, and sapless leaves, instead of brushing away the dews by the fountains of perpetual youth. I am aware of no extant English work on Greek Lines which does not aim to reduce that magnificent old Hellenic poetry to the cold, hard limitations of Geometry. Modern Pharisees ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... touch; and he, When Thou draw'st blood is Thy rose-tree. Crosses make straight his crooked ways, And clouds but cool his dog-star days; Diseases too, when by Thee blest, Are both restoratives and rest. Flow'rs that in sunshines riot still, Die scorch'd and sapless; though storms kill, The fall is fair, e'en to desire, Where in their sweetness all expire. O come, pour on! what calms can be So fair as storms, that ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... the wood of the bin-gum is of pale straw colour with a faint pinkish tinge, and tough though light. Sapless age makes it tindery, and the decaying fibre descends in dust—glissades of dust which form moraines within the hollow of the base. Then the end is not ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... grain between two stones, and setting her snares for rabbits and opossums." He takes us where we can feel the exhilaration from "a wild heath, whistled over by October blasts meagerly adorned with the dry stalks of scented shrubs and the bald heads of the sapless mullein." ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... is never a time when there is not a flower of some kind out, in this or that warm southern nook. The sun never sets, nor do the flowers ever die. There is life always, even in the dry fir-cone that looks so brown and sapless. ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... a fact that could not be disputed—the limb upon which the robbers hung, after suffering double pollution from them and their master's touch, never budded again; it died from that hour; the poison gradually communicated to the remaining branches, till, from a flourishing tree, it became a sapless and blasted trunk, and so stood for years, at once an emblem and a ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... carried hack to that grand vision of the prophet who saw the bones lying, very many and very dry, sapless and disintegrated, a heap dead and ready to rot. The question comes to him: 'Son of man! Can these bones live?' The only possible answer, if he consult experience, is, 'O Lord God! Thou knowest.' Then follows the great invocation: 'Come from the four winds, O ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Knap. A sapless old Hen, you might as well have lain with a Paring-Shovel; but what think you of a young Woman, that's ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... embrace, like that of Death, Earth's pulseless heart reposes, mute and chill; Within her frozen breast, her frozen breath, In its forgotten fragrance, slumbereth still: Sapless her veins, and numb her withered arms, That still, outstretched, stand grim mementos drear Of her once gorgeous and full-leaved charms. Of flower and fruit, all increase of the year: Voiceless the river, in ice fretwork chained; Hushed the sweet cadences of bird and bee; Dumb the last echo to ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... November The fog forms and shifts; All the world comes out again When the fog lifts. Loosened from their sapless twigs Leaves drop with every gust; Drifting, rustling, out of sight In the ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... sapless Trunk he stripp'd, Like Culprits sentenc'd to be whipp'd, When lo! th' Initials rose to View, And prov'd the Fiend's Conjecture true. And all his Waist (detested Brand!) Was scribbled with the Dev'l's ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... the vigil of All Souls—the 'Day of the Dead.' No more pilgrims come to Roc-Amadour. A breeze would send the sapless walnut-leaves whirling through the air, but there is no breeze; Nature seems to hold her breath as she thinks of the dead whom she has gathered to her earthy breast. At sundown the people creep out of their houses silently and solemnly; they ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... in the fiercer strife Which winter brings to me amain, Sapless, I waste my life, And, murmuring at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... appeared in his view to dispose of the question of the former's incapacity. He seemed over-educated—had retained, not digested his learning; and beautiful flowers of literature were attached to him by filaments of memory, as lovely orchids to sapless sticks. Hence he failed to understand the force of language, and became the victim of his own metaphors, mistaking them for facts. He had the irritable vanity and weak nerves of a woman, and was bold to rashness in speculation, destitute as ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... mere amusement strikes me as a sort of dry-rot in certain portions of the fabric of civilized society, and tends to make it a sapless crumbling mass of appearances—the most ostentatious appearance of all, that of pleasure, being perhaps the hollowest ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Nestor-like aged in an age of care, Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer. These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent, Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent; Weak shoulders, overborne with burdening grief, And pithless arms, like to a wither'd vine That droops his sapless branches to the ground: Yet are these feet, whose strengthless stay is numb, Unable to support this lump of clay, Swift-winged with desire to get a grave, As witting I no other comfort have. But tell me, keeper, will my ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... sister of the day Awake! arise! and come away! To the wild woods and the plains, To the pools where winter rains Image all their roof of leaves, Where the pine its garland weaves Of sapless green, and ivy dun, Round stems that never kiss the sun. Where the lawns and pastures be And the sandhills of the sea, Where the melting hoar-frost wets The daisy star that never sets, And wind-flowers and violets Which yet ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... left his violin in its case; he never took it from that case again. The oxen had grown gaunt from lack of feed and drink; they wandered about the night camps nibbling disdainfully at what growth there was, low bitter sapless weeds. ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... bee, eager to sip, always seeks the juices of new growths, this is the fault of the sapless flowers, not of ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... there was nothing to contend for. From that time, he was battling only for himself. The people had no part nor interest in the contest. Without a common sympathy to bind them together, was it strange that they should fall off from him, like leaves in winter, and leave him exposed, a bare and sapless trunk, to the fury ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... from you, you could take her from him to-morrow, if you pleased. The greater your folly, because you do not. As for her, her foolishness is such that she would follow you to the ends of the earth—poor girl! she little knows what a pale, wretched, sapless thing you have in your breast for ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... recollections of a happy past, so had the Indian summer shone on Nature's tired heart, and mocked, and passed away. The last red roseleaf had fluttered silently down; the last purple sloe had fallen from its sapless stem. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... unrepealed, which may be compared to a stately oak in the last stage of decay, or a magnificent building in ruins. Respect and admiration are due to both; and we should deem it profaneness to cut down the one, or demolish the other. But are we, therefore, to be sent to the sapless tree for may-garlands, or reproached for not making the mouldering ruin our place of abode? Government is essentially a matter of expediency; they who perceive this, and whose knowledge keeps pace with the changes of society, lament that, when Time is gently carrying what is useless ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... so human life in its divine appointment moves by turns through sorrow and through joy. Each has its service for the soul, as for the earth has day and night each its ministry and message. Of pain come hardihood and strength and sympathy. What a sapless, fibreless thing is a man untrained by endurance and untaught by suffering! How flaccid in muscle, how narrow in intelligence, how ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... memory of the dream-drive honeymoon lingered. And the bit of bark, sapless, brown, curled up by the heat into almost a tube, and partially eaten by white ants—before the desecrating assault had been discovered and the termites' nest destroyed with boiling water—was still cherished as a ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... river was dumb and could not speak, For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun; A single crow on the tree-top bleak From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun; Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, As if her veins were sapless and old, And she rose up decrepitly For a last dim look at earth ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... tidal river. A few frosted persimmons hung yet to their warty branches; the hulls of last autumn's black walnuts were beneath the spreading boughs; old orchards of peach-trees where the tints of green and bud smouldered in pink contrast to the oft-blackened and sapless branches, set off the purple beads of the haw on the bushes along the lanes. Fish-hawks, flying across the sky, felt the shadow of the flocks of wild ducks flying higher; and rabbits crossed the road so boldly in the face ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... on their bent flags, Sang chilly to themselves; lone honey-bees Pursued the flowers that were not with dry bags; Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees, More sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled. Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world, Careless to lure or please. A nature of gaunt ribs, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... as more fickle than the leaf was she, When it in autumn doth more sapless grow, And the old wind doth strip it from the tree, And doth before it in its fury ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... not my strife askt him his life When it was but begun, Nor mine, I was a new-made wife And now I am none; Nor mine that many a sapless ghost Wails in sorrow-fare— But this does cost my pride the most, ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... low. In the days of his prosperity, he had many friends, so called. Adversity has shaken them all like dead leaves from sapless branches." ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... silent shiver as of pain, Goes quivering through each sapless vein; And there are moans, Whose undertones Are ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... sea; until at last some slightest involuntary movement of mine would put the whole host to flight, and greybeards, young warriors, camp followers and mothers with their children on their backs would spring precipitate from tree to tree, screaming and gibbering like Homer's sapless dead. Then, when the stars rushed out and the darkness came on apace, it was sweet to wander home along those paths so dear to primitive men in all countries, narrow paths and sinuous, smoothed by the footfalls of centuries, winding patiently round every obstacle and never breaking through ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... make each interpretation of a masterpiece—a living thing. It exists only for the moment, and cannot be explained. For instance, two pianists of equal technical ability may play the same composition. With one the playing is dull, lifeless and sapless, with the other there is something that is indescribably wonderful. His playing seems fairly to quiver with life. It commands interest and inspires the audience. What is this vital spark that brings life to mere notes? In one way it may be called the intense artistic ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... understanding." Here are two qualifications, whereof one is spiritual, and the other is natural. The plain English of both may be this, "that fools and malignants, such as (in some measure) know not the cause, and such as have no love at all to the cause, should be outcasts from this covenant." Such sapless and rotten stuff will but weaken, if not corrupt this ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... should have burst out from the dry and rotten stump of his own sinful nature, exclaims, 'I am like a green fir-tree.' That is another reason why he will have no more to do with idols. They could never have made his sapless nature break into leafage. But what of the fourth clause—'From Me is thy fruit found'? Can we understand that to mean that Ephraim still speaks, keeping up the image of the previous clause, and declaring that all the new fruitfulness which he finds in himself he recognises to be God's, both in the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... architecture, but much machinery. Here the pupils were building two Bleriot-type machines, and trying to build an eight-cylinder V motor. All these things had Bagby given for the good of the game, expecting no profit in return. He was one of the real martyrs of aviation, this sapless, oldish man, never knowing the joy of the air, yet devoting a lifetime of ability to helping man sprout wings ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... was killed, and its scanty flesh, cut into strips, was dried in the sun and smoke. This, the most repellant, sapless food to be found in the world, had been their diet for some time. Douglas was the first to die. The survivors were still strong enough to give him burial. In a few days Taylor followed him and was interred by his side. The blacks threatened them continually, ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... health was probably less sound than it seemed to be; one would have compared her, not to some piece of exuberant normal vegetation, but rather to a rank, evilly-fostered growth. The putrid soil of that nether world yields other forms besides the obviously blighted and sapless. ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... shoot of that ancient tree Was budding fair as fair might be; Its buds they crop Its branches lop Then leave the sapless stem ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... strain, blunt the edge of; dilute, impoverish; decimate; extenuate; reduce in strength, reduce the strength of; mettre de l'eau dans son vin[Fr]. Adj. weak, feeble, debile|; impotent &c. 158; relaxed, unnerved, &c. v.; sapless, strengthless[obs3], powerless; weakly, unstrung, flaccid, adynamic[obs3], asthenic[obs3]; nervous. soft, effeminate, feminate[obs3], womanly. frail, fragile, shattery[obs3]; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... by a zone of fire and steel. Her villas and homesteads flamed or smoked; her orchards flared heavenward in a torrent of sparks or stood black sapless trunks charred to their inmost pith; the promise of her harvests lay as grey ashes over the land. But her ramparts, though breached in places, were yet manned by her sons, and their assailants recoiled pierced by the shafts or stunned by the catapults of the defence. ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett |
