"Vernal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tops of the roots dug out of the ground, with the tufts of the leaves remaining thereon, and blanched by being covered in the earth as they grow, if gathered in the spring, are justly esteemed as an excellent vernal salad. It was with this homely fare the good wise Hecate entertained Theseus, as we read in Evelyn's Acetaria. Bergius says he has seen intractable cases of liver congestion cured, after many other remedies had failed, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the seasons, the death of nature, and the birth of spring. The Adoniac or Syrian cults were similar, Adonis being killed, but revived to point to life through death. In the Cabirie Mysteries on the island of Samothrace, Atys the Sun was killed by his brothers the Seasons, and at the vernal equinox was restored to life. So, also, the Druids, as far north as England, taught of one God the tragedy of winter and summer, and conducted the initiate through the valley of ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... seaweed upon his head, or a brown-brimmed hat adorned with eagle or heron plumes. As personification of the summer, he was invoked to still the raging storms which desolated the coasts during the winter months. He was also implored to hasten the vernal warmth and thereby extinguish ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... that she did anything obvious to forfeit this knowledge. Her behavior was if anything too exemplary; it might be thought to form a reproach to others. Perhaps it was the unseasonable band of violets around her hat-brim; perhaps it was the vernal gaiety of her dress; perhaps it was the uncertainty of her anxious eyes, which presumed while they implored. A mother-bird must not hover too confidently, too appealingly, near coveys whose preoccupations she does not share. It might have been her looking and dressing younger than nature ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... Gandharvas, the Yakshas, and the Kimpurushas, attired in celestial robes and possessing handsome features, decked with jewelled earrings and wearing a beautiful garland and crown, entered the Asoka woods, like an embodiment of the vernal season. And dressed with care, Ravana looked like the Kalpa tree in Indra's garden. But though adorned with every embellishment, that inspired her only with awe, like a beautified banian in the midst of a cemetery. And that night wanderer, having approached the presence of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the lead of it in its annual excess, and its superabundant waters are disgorged and disposed of long before the breaking up of the icy barriers of the north; otherwise, did all these mighty streams rise simultaneously, and discharge their vernal floods into the Mississippi, an inundation would be the consequence, that would submerge and devastate all ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... in-doors a great deal. She became quite a student, reading more than she had done since her marriage But her seclusion was always broken for the periodical visit to Winterborne's grave with Marty, which was kept up with pious strictness, for the purpose of putting snow-drops, primroses, and other vernal flowers thereon ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... opinion gain the applause of reviewers, who will call him a thinker, and of indolent men and women who will pronounce him "so clever ;" but triumphs of this kind are like oratorical triumphs after dinner. Every autumn the earth is strewed with the dead leaves of such vernal successes. ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... difficult for those who live by manual labour, is a union of peace with innocent and laudable animation. Not by bread alone is the life of Man sustained; not by raiment alone is he warmed;—but by the genial and vernal inmate of the breast, which at once pushes forth and cherishes; by self-support and self-sufficing endeavours; by anticipations, apprehensions, and active remembrances; by elasticity under insult, and firm resistance to injury; by joy, and by love; by pride which his ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... compliment to the brides, were celebrated after the Persian fashion, and during the vernal equinox. For at no other period, by the ancient laws of Persia, could nuptials be legally celebrated. Such an institution is redolent of the poetry and freshness of the new world, and of an attention to the voice of nature, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... the Mexicans were cruciform, it was perhaps with reference to a resurrection and a future life as portrayed under this symbol, indicating that the buried body would rise by the action of the four spirits of the world, as the buried seed takes on a new existence when watered by the vernal showers. It frequently recurs in the ancient Egyptian writings, where it is interpreted life; doubtless, could we trace the hieroglyph to its source, it would likewise prove to be derived from the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine. 1612 MILTON: Par. Lost, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... calendar, but the wind was blowing out of the gates of April. A platoon commander, feeling that mild wind blowing, forgot his map and began to whistle a tune that suddenly came to him out of the past with the wind. Out of the past it blew and out of the South, a merry vernal tune of a Southern people. Perhaps only one of those that noticed the tune had ever heard it before. An officer sitting near had heard it sung; it reminded him of a holiday long ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... poem written in the 14th century the delights of the vernal season are thus described: "On every bush roses were blowing; on every branch the nightingale was plaintively warbling. The tall cypress was dancing in the garden; and the poplar never ceased clapping its hands with joy. With a loud voice from the top of every ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... blotchy features, from an angular filly devoid of grace and charm, had by a stroke of the wand become metamorphosed into a remarkably attractive young woman. It was startling: but it was also undeniable. It was not the vernal frock, of that Cleopatra was convinced; although Mrs. Delarayne had concentrated chiefly upon this feature in her transports of joy over her younger daughter's dramatic and spontaneous assumption of womanly beauty. Had it been only the frock Cleopatra was intelligent ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... the world about them, too: the brightest suavest autumn weather; all the still air aromatic with that vernal perfume of peach: yet not so utterly still, but if I passed close to the lee of any floating thing, the spicy stirrings of morning or evening wafted me faint puffs of the odour of ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... Vernal Grass.—Small growth; yield of hay light. For pastures it is very early, and grows quickly after being cropped, and is excellent for milch-cows; grows well on almost any soil, but most naturally on high, well-drained meadows. It grows in ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... "is twenty miles in length and fifteen in width, and is enclosed by the Mt. Holyoke and Mt. Tom ranges, and the abrupt cones of Toby and Sugar Loaf, while the Green Mountains lie to the north, whence the rich soils have been brought by thousands of vernal floods. Grove-like masses of elms mark well the townships of Northampton, Easthampton, Southampton and Westhampton, Hatfield, Williamsburg and Whately, Hadley, Amherst, Leverett ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... from himself? For see the universal Race endowed With the same upright form. The sun is fixed And the infinite magnificence of heaven Fixed, within reach of every human eye; The sleepless ocean murmurs for all years; The vernal field infuses fresh delight Into all hearts. Throughout the world of sense, Even as an object is sublime or fair, That object is laid open to the view Without reserve or veil; and as a power Is salutary, or an influence sweet, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... is this, taken together with the fact that he is the first English poet to read whom is to enjoy him, and that he garnished not only our language but our literature with blossoms still adorning them in vernal freshness,—which makes Chaucer's figure so unique a one in the gallery of our great English writers, and gives to his works an interest so inexhaustible for the historical as well as for the ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... She looked calmly back at him and nodded once. From then on they traveled together—the thin gray woman and the big gray tom-cat. Bat learned to know the inside of more stellar bars than even most spacers visit in their lifetimes. He developed a liking for Vernal juice, drank it neat and quick, right out of a glass. And he was always at home on any table where Steena ...
— All Cats Are Gray • Andre Alice Norton
... sister had! too cruel Death! How sad Remembrance bids my bosom heave! Tranquil her soul, as sleeping Infant's breath; Meek were her manners as a vernal Eve. Knowledge, that frequent lifts the bloated mind, 5 Gave her the treasure of a lowly breast, And Wit to venom'd Malice oft assign'd, Dwelt in her bosom in a Turtle's nest. Cease, busy Memory! cease to urge the dart; Nor on my soul her love to me impress! 10 For oh I mourn in anguish—and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... morning flowers in spring; the hair along his temples, as if chiselled with a knife; his eyebrows, as if pencilled with ink; his nose like a suspended gallbladder (a well-cut and shapely nose); his eyes like vernal waves; his angry look even resembled a smile; his glance, even when stern, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... fling out their happy clangor in glad tidings of great joy. The streets are flooded once more with eager multitudes, gay as in wedding garments. Christ has arisen! The heathen myth of the awakening of nature blends the old tradition with the new gospel. The vernal breezes sweep the skies clean and blue. Birds are pairing in the budding trees. The streams leap down from the melting snow of the hills. The brown turf takes a tint of verdure. Through the vast frame ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... is her velvet cheek; her wasted bosom Loses its fulness; e'en her slender waist Grows more attenuate; her face is wan, Her shoulders droop;—as when the vernal blasts Sear the young blossoms of the Madhavi, Blighting their bloom; so mournful is the change, Yet in its sadness, fascinating still, Inflicted by the mighty lord of love On the fair ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... so pleasantly adorns the sides of narrow lanes and avenues, or so neatly accommodates itself to limited inclosures. Its foliage is dense and of the liveliest green, tremulous, and making delicate music to the light fingers of every breeze; its terebinthine odors scent the soft vernal wind that enters your open windows with the morning sunshine; its branches, always tending upward, closely gathered together, and slenderly formed, afford a harbor to the singing-birds, who revel among them as a favorite resort; and its long tapering spire, that points ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... clinched upon it in her pocket. Delia sat hard by with a needle in her fingers, certain morsels of silk and ribbon in her lap, several pins in her mouth, and her attention turning constantly from her work to her sister's face. The weather was now so completely vernal that Mr. Dosson was able to haunt the court, and he had lately resumed this practice, in which he was presumably at the present moment absorbed. Delia had lowered her needle and was making sure if her companion were awake—she had been ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and a sullennes against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... most frequently in spring and autumn; that is, 'after the equinoxes, but at intervals varying from thirty to fifty days;' the cause being, that the equatorial calms, at the time of the vernal equinox, extend to four degrees on either side the equator; and as the rainy season then prevails between those limits, no dust can consequently be taken up in those latitudes. But the same period is the dry season in the valley of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... the joyous hours remain, Let on this head unfading flowers reside, There bloom the vernal rose's earliest pride; And when, our flames commissioned to destroy, Age step 'twixt Love and me, and intercept the joy; When my changed these locks no more shall know, And all its petty honors turn to snow; Then let me rightly spell ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... sweet" and the "foules song," of "May with all her floures and her greene," of the new leaves in the wood, and the meadows new powdered with the daisy, the mystic Marguerite of his Legend of Good Women. A fresh vernal air blows through all ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... main highway of the central Andes, never seems to have troubled writers who regarded Sacsahuaman essentially as a fortress. It may be that Sacsahuaman was once used as a place where the votaries of the sun gathered at the end of the rainy season to celebrate the vernal equinox, and at the summer solstice to pray for the sun's return from his "farthest north." In any case I believe that the enormous cost of its construction shows that it was probably intended for religious rather than military purposes. It is more likely to have ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... leaves. The light in the woodlands becomes more subdued and the carpet of ferns and flowers grows richer and more beautiful. The vireos, the cardinal and the tanager add to the brilliancy and the ovenbird and veery to the melody. As good old John Milton once wrote: "In these vernal seasons of the year, when the air is clear and pleasant, it were an injury and a sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake of her rejoicing with heaven ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... The historical orator follows here the opinion of M. Dupuis, who, in his learned memoirs concerning the Origin of the Constellations and Origin of all Worship, has assigned many plausible reasons to prove that Libra was formerly the sign of the vernal, and Aries of the autumnal equinox; that is, that since the origin of the actual astronomical system, the precession of the equinoxes has carried forward by seven signs the primitive order of the zodiac. Now estimating the precession ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... laid, What time, where lucid Avon stray'd, 85 To him the mighty mother did unveil Her awful face: the dauntless child Stretch'd forth his little arms and smil'd. "This pencil take (she said), whose colours clear Richly paint the vernal year: 90 Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy! This can unlock the gates of joy; Of horror that, and thrilling fears, Or ope the sacred source of ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... they are not artificial. The doubling is chiefly observed at the vernal equinox, our month of May, and is perhaps due to spring floods, or vegetation in valleys of the like trend, as we find in Siberia. The massing of clouds or mists will account for the peculiar whiteness at ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... light of her dark eyes in the rippling darkness of the streams; the lilies recalled the faintly tinted paleness of her cheeks; the silene roses, scattered throughout the hedges, called forth the remembrance of the young maiden's rosy lips, and the vernal odor of the leaves appeared to him like an emanation of ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... a long evening walk through the vernal Hof Gardens and by the Rhine, and thought of the beauty and splendor of the divine Julia; and sighed, and remembered that he was Mr. Nobody of Nowhere, pictor ignotus, with only one eye he could see with, and possessed of a fortune which invested in the 3 per cents ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... continue, and soon nurture must deal with notes written by foolish maidens and the first glamour of the great passion, "sicklied o'er" with callowness and sentimentality. There is no more perplexing problem in Adolescence than how to handle wisely this vernal manifestation ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... real Adonis, with the hymeneal Fresh vernal buds half sunk between His youthful curls. [Footnote: ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... the efficient cause, the tendency to suicide should be as great at the time of the fall equinox as it is at the time of the spring equinox; but this is not the case. Two hundred and seventy-two suicides out of every thousand occur in the vernal equinoctial period and only two hundred and fifteen in the autumnal equinoctial period, and this proportion holds good throughout the whole northern hemisphere. Light, therefore, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... sepulchral caves, OBLIVION dwells amid unlabell'd graves; The storied tomb, the laurell'd bust o'erturns, And shakes their ashes from the mould'ring urns.— No vernal zephyr breathes, no sunbeams cheer, Nor song, nor simper, ever enters here; O'er the green floor, and round the dew-damp wall, The slimy snail, and bloated lizard crawl; 120 While on white heaps of intermingled ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... so particularly lovely, to render her sweet and wholesome. It was at the Rialto that the first stone of this fair town was laid, upon the twenty-fifth of March, as I am told here, with ideal reference to the vernal equinox, the moment when philosophers have supposed that the sun first shone upon our earth, and when Christians believe that the redemption of it was first announced to her within whose womb ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the far end, first caught sight of him. To Dominic, it must be admitted, babies, song-birds, burgeoning buds and blossoms, alike presented themselves as but elements in the setting of the outward scene—a scene sweet enough had one leisure to contemplate it, touched by the genial vernal influence, witness to nature's undying youth. But his appreciation of that sweetness was just now cursory and indirect. His thought was absorbed and eager, penetrated by apprehension of matters lying above and beyond the range of ordinary human speech. For ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... panorama of Ireland's portfolio, unmatched, despite their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted prize regions, for very beauty, of bosky grove and undulating plain and luscious pastureland of vernal green, steeped in the transcendent translucent glow of our mild ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... in wonder that these great prairies on which their forefathers had been wont fearlessly to alight had been changed into a disgusting expanse of farms. If geese are favored with the long lives in which fable bids us believe, some of these venerable honkers must have seen every vernal and autumnal phase of the transformation from boundless prairie to boundless corn-land. I sometimes seem to hear in the bewildering trumpetings of wild geese a cry of surprise and protest at the ruin of their former paradise. Colonel Woodruff's hired man, Pete, had no such foolish ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... year, about the approach of the vernal equinox or the seedsman's catalogue, we wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning. This is an immediate warning and apprisement that something is adrift. Three hundred and sixty-four days in the year we wake, ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. They no longer soar, and they attain only to a Shanghai and Cochin-China grandeur. Those gra-a-ate thoughts, those gra-a-ate men ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... variations are much more rapid in progress. (b) Annual variations—These were first discovered in 1780 by Cassini. They represent a cycle of annual change of small extent, from 15' to 18' only. In Paris and London the annual variation is greatest about the vernal equinox, or March 21st, and diminishes for the next three months, and slowly increases again during the nine following months. It varies during different epochs. (c) Diurnal variations were discovered in 1722 by Graham. A long needle has to be ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... vernal breezes fann'd the myrtle shade, Soft odour breath'd, and beams unclouded play'd. No tyrant winter e'er despoil'd the grove, 10 Bid feather'd warblers end the note of love, Or bound the murm'ring rill in icy chains. ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... Beginning with the Vernal Equinox, it must be remembered; and (howsoever the old Solar Year is practically superseded by the clumsy Lunar Year that dates from the Mohammedan Hijra) still commemorated by a Festival that is said to have been appointed by the very Jamshyd whom Omar so often talks of, and whose ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... a fond adieu to thee, O muse of rhyme— I do remand thee to the shades until that happier time When fields are green, and posies gay are budding everywhere, And there's a smell of clover bloom upon the vernal air; When by the pond out yonder the redwing blackbird calls, And distant hills are wed to Spring in veils of water-falls; When from his aqueous element the famished pickerel springs Two hundred feet into the air for butterflies and things— Then come again, O ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... the sun was! And yet this was only the day of the vernal equinox; it was most extraordinary. Everywhere the gutters ran streaming with water, the snow melting under the unexampled heat of the solar rays like wax in a candle flame. The trees growing in the square were leafless, and the tropic sun's rays blazed mercilessly through their ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... venerei periodus. The venereal orgasm of birds and quadrupeds commences or returns about the vernal or autumnal equinoxes, and thence seems in respect to their great periods to be governed by solar influence. But if this orgasm be disappointed of its object, it is said to recur at about monthly periods, as observed in mares and bitches in this respect resembling the female catamenia. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... preside, For all is safe and blest where ye abide! Return O Jove! the age of gold restore— Why chose to dwell where storms and thunders roar? At least, thou, Phoebus! moderate thy speed, Let not the vernal hours too swift proceed, Command rough Winter back, nor yield the pole Too soon to Night's ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... resulting from the bondage in which girls are kept. Let us give back to youth the indulgence of those passions, those coquetries, love and its terrors, love and its delights, and that fascinating company which followed the coming of the Franks. At this vernal season of life no fault is irreparable, and Hymen will come forth from the bosom of experiences, armed with confidence, stripped of hatred, and love in marriage will be justified, because it will have had ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... observed so well as Milton those secret Overflowings of Gladness which diffuse themselves thro' the Mind of the Beholder, upon surveying the gay Scenes of Nature: he has touched upon it twice or thrice in his Paradise Lost, and describes it very beautifully under the Name of Vernal Delight, in that Passage where he represents the Devil himself ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... a happy, glorious morning. The air is fresh and cool. The sky lovingly smiles on the earth and her children. The deep woods are crowned in bright vernal leafage; the water of the Mkuti, rushing under the emerald shade afforded by the bearded banks, seems to challenge us for the race to Ujiji, with its ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Twilight, from her shadowy hill, Discolours Nature's vernal bloom, And sheds on grove, and field, and rill, One ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... vernal weather; but treacherous, sudden! For one thing, we hear it whispered, 'the Intendants of Provinces 'have all got order to be at their posts on a certain day.' Still more singular, what incessant Printing is this that goes on at the King's Chateau, under lock and key? Sentries occupy all gates ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Ned, and Things on Earth, and Things under the Earth. The old Story, whereof you have alreadie seen many Parcels; but, you know, my Vein ne'er flows so happily as from the autumnal to the vernal Equinox. Howbeit, there is Something in the Quality of this Air would arouse the old Man of ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... might be questioned. I am rather inclined to believe in 'the impulse from a vernal wood,' though of course the artistic value of such an impulse depends entirely on the kind of temperament that receives it, so that the return to Nature would come to mean simply the advance to a great personality. You would agree with that, I fancy. However, proceed ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... the gloom and tempest from the sky; The air at once grew calm and all serene; And where rude thorns had clothed the mountain high, Was spread a plain, all flowers and vernal green. Repentance ceased her scourge. Still standing nigh, With placid looks, in her but rarely seen, She said: 'Beware how yet the prize you lose; The key of fortune few can ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... to earth, and from her lips the ear of reason catches deep-toned words of assurance that death is not the end of life. The hue of the butterfly's wing, "the flower of the grass," the beauty of the vernal year, these all, all teach the sublime truth that "all great endings are but great beginnings." The voice of God from the unrolled page of plainer if not diviner truth, says: "These are not dead, but sleeping—they ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... crocus is said to blow "before the shrine at vernal dawn of St. Valentine." And we may note here how county traditions affirm that in some mysterious way the vegetable world is affected by leap-year influences. A piece of agricultural folk-lore current throughout the country tells us how all the peas and beans grow the ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... heard you sing that burden In my vernal days and bowers, Other praises disregarding, I but hearkened that of yours, Only saying In heart-playing, "Blessed eyes mine eyes have been, If ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... party, the party which is to Woodbridge what the Mardi Gras is to New Orleans, the Carnival to Rome, and what the Feast of the Ygquato Bloom was to the ancient Aztecs. It is always held on the twenty-first of March, Sunday of course excepted, and it is known as the Vernal. Not to be seen at it is too bad. Not to be invited—unlike the lupercals before mentioned it requires invitations—is a blight mercifully spared all but the most painfully outre. Of these the Coogans, who ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... odoratum. SWEET-SCENTED VERNAL-GRASS.—This is found frequently in all our best meadows, to which it is of great benefit. It is an early, though not the most productive grass, and is much relished by all kinds of cattle. It is highly odoriferous; if bruised it communicates its agreeable scent to the fingers, and ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... the sign Aries and passing through one eighth of it, determines the vernal equinox. On reaching the tail of Taurus and the constellation of the Pleiades, from which the front half of Taurus projects, he advances into a space greater than half the firmament, moving toward the north. From Taurus he enters Gemini ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... she sought for lore and art, But hither came for vernal joy: Nor was this all: she smote the heart And woke ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... their thin forms, there comes the great worldwide army of the birds, whose bright eyes peer at us from tree, thicket, and field, whose brilliant feathers and sweet songs bring summer with a leap—the height of the grand symphony, of which the vernal peeping of the frogs and the squirrels' chatter were only the ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... Mayflowers, mayflowers, Scent of the North in spring! Out in the vernal distance, Heart of ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... orthography and pointing; having, as the summer came on, not been shewn any for a considerable while, and desiring the reason thereof, was answered, that his vein never happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal, and that whatever he attempted at other times, was never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much; so that in all the years he was about his poem, he may be said to have spent but half his time therein.'[3] Mr. Toland imagines that Mr. Philips must be mistaken in regard ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... his doing first-rate artistic work—indeed, there are certain persons who seem to have required the stimulus of necessity to make them break through an initial indolence of nature. When Johnson found fault with Gray for having times of the year when he wrote more easily, from the vernal to the autumnal equinox, he added that a man could write at any time if he set himself doggedly to it. True, no doubt! But to write doggedly is not to court favourable conditions for artistic work. It may be a finer sight for a moralist ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... April, 1836, when they started in carriages with a commissary and a few guards; in every town and village through which they passed, crowds surrounded them with gratulations; the inns where they stopped were besieged with well-wishers; Nature, too, seemed to hail their release with vernal beauty; and so they journeyed on, to be received as honored guests rather than prisoners-of-state at the Castle of Gradisca. Their sojourn here was as recreative as was consistent with that degree of supervision necessary to prevent escape; they were at liberty to walk about, to make ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... heart of Nature, beating still With throbs her vernal passion taught her,— Even here, as on the vine-clad hill, Or by the Arethusan water! New forms may fold the speech, new lands Arise within these ocean-portals, But Music waves eternal wands,— Enchantress ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... secession. Peaceable secession is an utter impossibility. Is the great Constitution under which we live, covering this whole country, is it to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun, disappear almost unobserved, and run off? No, sir! No, sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption of the Union; but, sir, I see as plainly as I can see the sun in heaven what that disruption itself must produce; I see that it must produce war, and such ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... change; Hence fowls the air, and fish the ocean range. Of heat and cold, this just successive reign, Which does the balance of the year maintain, The gard'ner's hopes, and farmer's patience props, Gives vernal ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... blooming Boy in robe of green; On his fair brow a flowery crown was seen, Where the pale Primrose with the Cowslip vied, And fragrant Violets shone in purple pride. Upon a Bull he rode, whose horns were gay With many a golden flower and budding spray. Around him every vernal Songster fled, While the Lark soar'd and whistled o'er his head. And now he smil'd with joy, and now, apace, The crystal tears bedew'd his alter'd face. Like the young Fondling on his Mother's breast, Who cries for absent joys, and thinks them best: 'Mid smiles, ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... wooer, if thou wouldst be wise: "Time is in flight, and never backward flies. "How swiftly fades the bloom, the vernal green! "How swift yon poplar dims its silver sheen! "Spurning the goal th' Olympian courser flies, "Then yields to Time his strength, his victories; "And oft I see sad, fading youth deplore "Each hour it lost, each pleasure ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... Straight gliding to his prey, his belly tinged With various spots unnumbered, more than those Which paint the Theban (24) marble; horned snakes With spines contorted: like to torrid sand Ammodytes, of hue invisible: Sole of all serpents Scytale to shed In vernal frosts his slough; and thirsty Dipsas; Dread Amphisbaena with his double head Tapering; and Natrix who in bubbling fount Fuses his venom. Greedy Prester swells His foaming jaws; Pareas, head erect Furrows with tail alone his sandy path; ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... Indian falsetto, ringing with triumph, vernal and bursting, slapping his thighs and stamping his feet to the accent, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... from that great State, and proud of it and its condition, may join in congratulating you, gentlemen, on the establishment of this "Southern Society of New York." After the long season of strife and discontent this is one of the many signs which mark the vernal equinox, and foretell the coming summer. I believe, notwithstanding the infinite disasters of the war, the overthrow of slavery, and with it all the industrial system of the South, and the needless loss and the humiliations of reconstruction—I believe that there is to-day a kinder ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... capacities will languish for lack of either stimulus or field, and no weariness will come over you, as if you were a stranger from your home. For if Christ be near us, all things go well with us. If we live for Him, the power of that motive will make all our nature blossom like the vernal woods, and dry branches break into leafage. If we dwell in Him, we shall be at home wherever we are, like the patriarch who pitched his tent in many lands, but always had the same tent wherever he went. So ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... year's sunset pale the set of day. O Youth unprescient, were it only so With trees you plant, and in whose shade reclined, Thinking their drifting blooms Fate's coldest snow, You carve dear names upon the faithful rind, Nor in that vernal stem the cross foreknow That Age may bear, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... opens others for poisonous secretions, blood impurities and waste products to escape. It not only makes the blood purer and richer, but it strengthens the organ (the heart) that pumps it everywhere throughout the system. It not only builds up and rejuvenates the general system, but it brings vernal strength and power to ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... period, therefore, Nature suspends her functions, by putting them into a deep, and, for aught we know to the contrary, a pleasant sleep. It is only when the snow melts, under the vernal sun, and the green blades of grass and the spring flowers array themselves on the surface of the earth, that the little marmots make their appearance again. Then the warm air, penetrating into their subterranean abodes, admonishes ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... wintry night of a dark sorrow, did the good mother plant a living seed of truth, that afterwards sprang up into a vernal flowery Eden, that bloomed in the boy's ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... enemy craft career above, Unchallenged (till they've had their fling); Or Little Willie's vernal shove Anticipates the dawn of Spring; When Neutrals want an open door Kept wide for their commercial dealings, And we must risk to lose the War Rather ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... speedwell's sapphire blue: Was there anything more true To the vernal season still? Here it decks the bank alone, Where the milkmaid throws a stone At noon, to cross the rapid, ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... Bell's Life in London puts it, at Reigate, took water near Guildford, and ran into Farnborough station "after a most pleasant journey through one of the prettiest countries in England, which, illumined by a glorious sun, and shooting forth in vernal beauty, must have inspired all with intense gratification." Thus Bell's eloquent reporter. Thirty-seven rounds were fought, in most of which Sayers was knocked down; his right arm was bruised and useless; Heenan could only see out of one eye. They were stopped at last, and in a few minutes ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... the girls had chosen for their picnic was ideal. It was a patch of short fine grass near the edge of the cliff, with a bank for a seat. The ground was blue with the beautiful little flowers of the vernal squill, and clumps of sea-pinks, white bladder campion, and golden lady's fingers bloomed in such profusion that the place was like a wild garden. The air was soft and warm, for it was one of those beautiful ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the Beyond of Nature, was built up in the ancient religion of the Veda, and peopled with Devas, and Asuras, and Vasus, and Adityas, all names for the bright solar, celestial, diurnal, and vernal powers of nature, without altogether excluding, however, even the dark and unfriendly powers, those of the night, of the dark clouds, or of winter, capable of mischief, but always destined in the end to succumb to the valor and ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... sequestered tower, Who with her love-lorn melody So bewitched thee in the vernal hour: When she ceased to love, she ceased ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... employed our foremost captivator, the dandy of two countries, the international Lothario, the Viscount-baron Gratian von Linden-hohen-Linden-cum de Terremonde. Luckily, too, he had been at the same period as myself, smitten with your vernal charms, and he entered upon his amorous mission with gusto. You believed him very wealthy, but let me tell you that the cash he really had under hand was our petty expense fund. Judge by that what a capital we control!" ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... gentle stay; Ah! gild with glory's light, his fame, And glad his life with pleasure's ray! While, like th' affrighted dove, thy form Still shrinks, and fears some latent storm, His cares shall sooth thy panting soul to rest, And spread thy vernal couch on Albion's breast. ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... the star of peace upon those days When Virtue watch'd my childhood's quiet ways, Whence a warm spark of Nature's holy flame Gave the farm-yard an honourable name, But left one theme unsung: then, who had seen In herds that feast upon the vernal green, Or dreamt that in the blood of kine there ran Blessings beyond the sustenance of man? We tread the meadow, and we scent the thorn, We hail the day-spring of a summer's morn Nor mead at dawning day, nor thymy heath, Transcends the fragrance of ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... allures reluctant souls, Gives the warm life to what the Limner draws,— Plato but thought what godlike Cato was.* Recall the Wars of England's giant-born, Is Elyot's voice, is Hampden's death in vain? Have all the meteors of the vernal morn But wasted light upon a frozen main? Where is that child of Carnage, Freedom, flown? The Sybarite lolls upon the martyr's throne. Lewd, ribald jests succeed to solemn zeal; And things of silk to Cromwell's men of steel. ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ages lowly bend, But the young unpolluted heart His gusts should fertilize, amend, As vernal storms the fields athwart. Youth freshens beneath Passion's showers, Develops and matures its powers, And thus in season the rich field Gay flowers and luscious fruit doth yield. But at a later, sterile age, The solstice of our earthly years, Mournful ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... Phineus, prophets old: Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of nature's works to me expung'd ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... being clear and fine, full of Milton's "vernal delight and joy," I determined on a saunter; the inclemency of the weather having, for more than a week, kept me a prisoner at home. Although now advanced into the heart of February, a great fall of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... lip were poised thousands of concave disks, vernal green, enormous. They were like a border of gigantic, upthrust shields; and within each, emblazoned like a shield's device, was a blinding flower of flame—the reflected, dilated face of the sun. Below this diadem hung, pendent, ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... the Rose Eternal That spreads, and multiplies, and breathes an odor Of praise unto the ever-vernal Sun, As one who silent is and fain would speak, Me Beatrice drew on, and said: 'Behold Of the white stoles how vast the convent is! Behold how vast the circuit of our city! Behold our seats so filled to overflowing, That here henceforward are few ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... pious care, Beneath the vernal turf we laid; Remembrance loves to linger there, And weep ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... therefore, timely warned, himself supplies Her want of care, screening and keeping warm The plenteous bloom, that no rough blast may sweep His garlands from the boughs. Again, as oft As the sun peeps and vernal airs breathe mild, The fence withdrawn, he gives them ev'ry beam, And spreads his hopes before ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... morning. A fitful, gusty south wind was blowing, though the sky was clear. But the sunlight was not the same. There was an interfusion of a new element. Not ten days before there had been a day just as bright,—even brighter and warmer,—a clear, crystalline day of February, with nothing vernal in it; but this day was opaline; there was a film, a sentiment in it, a nearer approach to life. Then there was that fresh, indescribable odor, a breath from the Gulf, or from Florida and the Carolinas,—a subtle, persuasive ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the old fort fhere was plenty of the yellow oxalis and the creeping white houstonia; and from a crevice in the wall, out of reach, leaned a stalk of goldenrod in full bloom. The reader may smile, if he will, but this last flower was a surprise and a stumbling-block. A vernal goldenrod! Dr. Chapman's Flora made no mention of such an anomaly. Sow thistles, too, looked strangely anachronistic. I had never thought of them as harbingers of springtime. The truth did not break upon me till a week or so afterward. Then, on ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... by, however; as summer and winter ran their appointed courses and again the primrose pranked the lea unaccompanied by any signs of vernal activity on the part of the Paymaster-in-Chief, these visions of mine became less insistent. I was at length obliged to confess that another youthful illusion was fading; prize-money began to take its place in my mind along with the sea-serpent and similar figures of marine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... have seen, such point is the summit of a very wide cone described in one day by the solar rays. At the equinox this cone is converted into a plane, which, in a vertical plane, intersects the straight line A B. Between the vernal and autumnal equinoxes the sun is situated above this plane, and, consequently, the shadow of P describes the lower curves at A B. During winter, on the contrary, it is the upper curves that are described. It is easily seen that the curves traced ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid .. winter night in the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer. At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were needed no longer. The stout sail-boat that had accompanied us began ranging alongside. It was curious and not unpleasing, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... kind-hearted friend, Jemmy Burke, was a good specimen of what an Irish farmer's residence ought to be. It was distant from Burke's somewhat better than two miles, and stood almost, immediately inside the highway, upon a sloping green that was vernal through the year. It was in the cottage style, in the form of a cross, with a roof ornamentally thatched, and was flanked at a little distance by the office-houses. The grass was always so close on this green, as to have rather the appearance of a well kept lawn. The thorn-trees stood in front of ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... "To deck the wall or weave the bow'r, "The Woodbines mix in am'rous play, "And breathe their fragrant lives away. "There rising Myrtles form a shade; "There Roses blush, and scent the glade; "The Orange, with a vernal face, "Wears ev'ry rich autumnal grace; "While the young blossoms here unfold, "There shines the fruit like pendant gold; "Citrons their balmy sweets exhale, "And triumph in the ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 7 - or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... went floating under vernal arches, where a murmurous rustle seemed to whisper, "Stay!" along shadowless sweeps, where the blue turned to gold and dazzled with its unsteady shimmer; passed islands so full of birds they seemed green cages floating in the sun, or doubled capes that opened ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... of his most famous and familiar songs, and for his life could not recall the first line of it;—he told his mishap to the audience, and they screamed it at him in a chorus of a thousand voices. Milton could not write to suit himself, except from the autumnal to the vernal equinox. One in the clothing-business, who, there is reason to suspect, may have inherited, by descent, the great poet's impressible temperament, let a customer slip through his fingers one day without fitting ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... a thousand hues. Ye valleys low where the milde whispers use, Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart Star sparely looks, Throw hither all your quaint enameld eyes, That on the green terf suck the honied showres, And purple all the ground with vernal flowres. Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken dies. The tufted Crow-toe, and pale Gessamine, The white Pink, and the Pansie freakt with jeat, The glowing Violet. The Musk-rose, and the well attir'd Woodbine. With Cowslips wan that hang the pensive hed, And every flower that ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... the white, sunlit landscape spread before me that compelled my glance. To some it might compare but ill with the luxuriant splendour that is of the vernal season; but to me there was a wondrously impressive charm about that solemn, silent, virginal expanse of snow, expressionless as the Sphinx, and imposing and majestic by virtue of that very lack of expression. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... satisfy the breast, The sons of Italy were surely blest. Whatever fruits in different climes were found, That proudly rise, or humbly court the ground; Whatever blooms in torrid tracts appear, 115 Whose bright succession decks the varied year; Whatever sweets salute the northern sky With vernal lives that blossom but to die; These here disporting own the kindred soil, Nor ask luxuriance from the planter's toil; 120 While sea-born gales their gelid wings expand To winnow fragrance round the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom or Summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks, Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes, That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well-attired ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... stem;— Then mark the poet; though to him unknown The quaint-mouthed titles, such as scholars own, See how his eye in ecstasy pursues The steps of Nature tracked in radiant hues; Nay, in thyself, whate'er may be thy fate, Pallid with toil or surfeited with state, Mark how thy fancies, with the vernal rose, Awake, all sweetness, from their long repose; Then turn to ponder o'er the classic page, Traced with the idyls of a greener age, And learn the instinct which arose to warm Art's earliest essay and her ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... along the ground. To visit the prickly thicket when the Wasp goes foraging, you must wear boots that come to mid-leg or else resign yourself to a smarting in the calves. As long as the ground retains a few remnants of the vernal rains, this rude vegetation does not lack a certain charm, when the pyramids of the oyster-plant and the slender branches of the cotton-thistle rise above the wide carpet formed by the yellow-flowered centaury's saffron heads; but let the droughts of summer come ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... of the drifts. The thorny shrubs and bushes, and spiny herbs like astragalus and cousinia, are green-stemmed but leafless, and the birds that flutter among them are still in the first rapture of vernal bliss, the gay music that follows mating and precedes nesting. Big dove-coloured partridges, beautifully marked with black and red, are running among the rocks. We are at the turn of the year, the ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... walked down the street to our new home in Charlesbridge, through a storm of snow and rain so finely blent by the influences of this fortunate climate, that no flake knew itself from its sister drop, or could be better identified by the people against whom they beat in unison. A vernal gale from the east fanned our cheeks and pierced our marrow and chilled our blood, while the raw, cold green of the adventurous grass on the borders of the sopping sidewalks gave, as it peered through its veil of melting snow and freezing rain, a peculiar cheerfulness to the landscape. ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... p. 32.) But the gradations in the manner of moulting, which are known to occur with various birds, shew us how species, or whole groups, might have originally acquired their double annual moult, or having once gained the habit, have again lost it. With certain bustards and plovers the vernal moult is far from complete, some feathers being renewed, and some changed in colour. There is also reason to believe that with certain bustards and rail-like birds, which properly undergo a double moult, some of the older males retain their nuptial plumage throughout the year. A few highly modified ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Behind them was the unbroken forest of tall green pines, with an occasional oak draperied with festoons of gray moss or the druidical mistletoe. A wide expanse of varied beauty was before them; an ample and lofty plain around them; and, though spring had not yet garnished the scene with her vernal glories, sprinkling the woods with gay wild-flowers and charming creepers, and making the atmosphere balmy with the bay, the jessamine, and the magnolia, yet, even in winter, were there sufficient charms in the spot ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... from Paris is situated the pretty vernal hamlet of Maisons Lafitte. It hangs around the Chateau Lafitte—a princely residence, formerly the property and dwelling of the well-known banker of that name, but for many years past in other hands. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... pioneer in the investigation of the working of the human organism, brought together (in a chapter on "The Periodic Movements in the Reproductive Organs of Woman," in his Nervous Diseases of Women, 1840, pp. 61-70) much interesting evidence to show that the system undergoes changes about the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, and that these changes are ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... she is in books, she is an economist of pleasure, and tears herself away from them, to enjoy the vernal breezes, or the landscape of autumn, in a twilight ramble. Here she communes with bounteous nature, or lifts her soul in devotion to her God, to whose benignity she resigns herself as she used to do to the fond arms of that parent ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... The Vernal Fall abates her pleasant speed And hesitates to take the final plunge, For rumors reach her that another greed Awaits her in ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... pretty considerable in time; and in threescore and twelve years the difference is found to be of one degree, that is to say, the three hundred and sixtieth part of the circumference of the whole heaven. Thus after seventy-two years the colure of the vernal equinox which passed through a fixed star, corresponds with another fixed star. Hence it is that the sun, instead of being in that part of the heavens in which the Ram was situated in the time of Hipparchus, is found to correspond with that part of the heavens in which the Bull was situated; and ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... Saviour! plant within each bosom The seeds of holiness, and bid them blossom In fragrance and in beauty bright and vernal, And spring eternal. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... any place which was not under water. Hannibal himself, riding on the only remaining elephant, to be the higher from the water, contracted a disorder in his eyes, at first from the unwholesomeness of the vernal air, which is attended with transitions from heat to cold; and at length from watching, nocturnal damps, the marshy atmosphere disordering his head, and because he had neither opportunity nor leisure for remedies, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... takes a soft tint of orange, or rose, or lilac, according to the stain of the sky, and there is no light in the rocky South that so tenderly touches the soul as this. Here the spurge drinks of the wine of heaven with golden lips wide open; but the hellebore, which has already lost all its vernal greenness, and is parched by the drought, ripens its drooping seeds sullenly on the shadowy side of the jutting crag, and seems to hate the sun. Higher and yet far below the plateau is a little field ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... thus be seen that from the autumnal to the vernal equinox the North Pole is in darkness and has a night of six months' duration, during which time the sun is not seen. Therefore, any point near the pole is, during any given twenty-four hours, longer in ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... cooling herb Or medicinal liquor can asswage, Nor breath of vernal air from snowy Alp. Sleep hath forsook and given me o'er To death's benumming opium as my only cure, Thence faintings, swoonings of despair, And sense of ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... sometimes descending the narrow trail toward Glacier Point. By and by Hall Dome, one of the great granite mountains, began to dominate the world; but though the cascades were in his kingdom they could not be governed by him, because spirits are not ruled by earthly kings. There was Vernal Fall, gentle in majesty; and Nevada, a wild and untamed water spirit; and retrospect ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... to decide the healthiness of climates in every latitude. Sudden changes from heat to cold are every where dangerous; but, in countries where little caution is used in dress, they must often prove fatal. The winds in Carolina are changeable and erratic, and, about the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, commonly boisterous. In summer, they are sultry and suffocating; in winter, cold and dry. Beyond doubt, the flat maritime part is a most unhealthy situation, and the first settlers could scarcely have been cast ashore in any quarter ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... I found one I liked better. Watts, he hain't no help to a body, he hain't no aggucation to speak of, an' don't never read none, an' would as soon I'd name his children John, like his ma done him. As I was sayin' there hit wus in the almanac the name 'twould of fitten the baby to a T. Vernal Esquimaux, hit said, March 21, 5:26 A.M. The baby was borned March the 21st, 'tween five an' six in the mornin'. Nex' time I wus to town I hunted up preacher Christie, but he said he couldn't onbabitize her, an' he reckoned Chatenoogy Tennessee wus as ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... glowed, his pulses bounded. He gathered up the beauties of the world around him in great sheaves of delicious and thrilling sensations. Long-forgotten odors came sweeping across the fields, rich with the verdure of the vernal season, and brought with them precious accompaniments of the almost-forgotten past. The rich and varied colors of field and sky and forest fed his starved soul with one kind of beauty; and the sweet sounds of the outdoor world intoxicated him with another. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... misery that the imagination and the poets, who are its spokesmen, rescue us. The world goes to church, kneels to the eternal Purity, and then contrives to sneer at innocence and ignorance of evil by calling it green. Let every man thank God for what little there may be left in him of his vernal sweetness. Let him thank God if he have still the capacity for feeling an unmarketable enthusiasm, for that will make him worthy of the society of the noble dead, of the companionship of the poets. And let him love the poets for keeping youth young, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... amatory and venereal, to live in a "rustle of (imaginary) copulation." On the other hand the utterly artificial life of civilization, which debauches even the monkeys in "the Zoo," and which expands the period proper for the reproductory process from the vernal season into the whole twelvemonth, leaves to the many, whose lot is celibacy, no bodily want save one and that in a host of cases either unattainable or procurable only by difficulty and danger. Hence the prodigious amount of mental excitement ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... marks approximately the time of the vernal equinox, ten days before the full moon of the Hindoo month Phalgun. The day of the bonfire does not always fall on the 16th of March. It is not considered lucky to begin harvest till the Holi has been burnt. Mr. Crooke ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... tails, amongst the ornaments in rooms." That is the "feather-grass;" it is a very rare grass, and has been seldom found wild in this country. The long yellow tails are the awns, which resemble delicate feathers. Here is the sweet-scented vernal grass; taste and see how pleasant it is; it is the grass which, perhaps more than any other, gives that charming odour to the hayfields. "There is a clear pond in yonder corner of the field, let us go there and see what we can find," said Willy. All right. It is a ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... had, however, unsuspected reserves of vitality. He crept out into the sunshine again, basking in the vernal warmth with a sense of luxury, and entering into the gossip of the ditchers with an unwonted ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... pace, for, in truth, he was then silently rehearsing his part in the interview which was about to take place between him and his noble friend. The day, though calm, as we said, was nevertheless without sunshine, and, consequently, that joyous and exhilarating spirit of warmth and light which the vernal sun floods down upon all nature, rendering earth and air choral with music, was not felt so powerfully. On the contrary, the silence and gloom were somewhat unusual, considering the mildness which ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... with the title though—"Lichens." I have wondered the thing was never used before. Lichens, variegated, beautiful, though on the most arid foundations, half fungoid, half vernal—the very name for a booklet of modern verse. And that, of course, decided the key of the cover and disposed of three or four pages. A fly-leaf, a leaf with "Lichens" printed fair and beautiful a little to the left of the centre, then a title-page—"Lichens. By H.G. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... hard all my life, until an unexpected legacy from an admirable distant relation put me at the end of a longer tether. I still have to work, but less hard. I have always tried not to ossify, keeping in view a possible serene time to come, when I might put forth blossoms in this vernal fashion that tempts my middle-aged fancy. And where could I choose a sweeter spot for these late efforts to be young and green, than here in this perfect south ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the noxious weeds of passion, malice, envy, and strife? Are we picking away the cold, hard pebbles of [15] selfishness, uncovering the secrets of sin and burnishing anew the hidden gems of Love, that their pure perfection shall appear? Are we feeling the vernal freshness and ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... solitude, and this is a charming romantic place. The air is so pure; the Downs are so agreeable; the furz in full blossom; the ground enamelled with daisies, and primroses, and cowslips; all the trees bursting into leaves, and the hedges already clothed with their vernal livery; the mountains covered with flocks of sheep and tender bleating wanton lambkins playing, frisking, and skipping from side to side; the groves resound with the notes of blackbird, thrush, and linnet; and all night long sweet Philomel pours forth her ravishingly delightful song. Then, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... pleasant sights of leaf and flower: Ye pleasant sounds of bird and bee: Ye sports of deer in sylvan bower: Ye feasts beneath the greenwood tree: Ye baskings in the vernal sun: Ye slumbers in the summer dell: Ye trophies that this arm has won: And must ye ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... greater elevation of the sun at noon, but from the fact that in this sudden drop of six thousand feet we had passed through several zones of temperature. Snow, for example, may be covering the summits of the mountains in midwinter, while at the bottom of the Canon are summer warmth and vernal flowers. When, after two or three hours of continuous descent, we looked back at our starting-point, it seemed incredible that we had ever stood upon the pinnacles that towered so far above us, and were apparently piercing the slowly moving clouds. The effect was that ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... those points at which the Ecliptic and Equinoctial intersect, and when the sun occupies either of these two positions, the days and nights are of equal length. The Vernal Equinox is that one which the sun passes through or intersects in going from S to N declination, and the Autumnal Equinox that which it passes through or intersects in going from N to S declination. The Vernal Equinox (V in the ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... said the Griffin, "I never eat between the equinoxes. At the vernal and at the autumnal equinox I take a good meal, and that lasts me for half a year. I am extremely regular in my habits, and do not think it healthful to eat at odd times. But if you need food, go and get it, and ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... are like the vernal May, When ev'ning Phoebus shines serene, While birds rejoice on every spray; An' she has twa ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... vernal prime And widely known as "rathe," why bloom so late? Was it the lure of so-called "Summer-time," Extended well beyond the usual date? Our thanks for which reprieve Are SMILLIE'S, though they didn't ask ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... hard on him. What can a loon do when the springtime calls and the wind blows fresh and strong, when the new strong wine of life is coursing madly through his veins, and when his dreams are all of the vernal flight to the lonely northland, where the water is cold and the fish are good, and where there are such delightful nesting-places around the ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... the Spartan fife, And call in solemn sounds to life, The youths, whose locks divinely spreading, Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue, At once the breath of fear and virtue shedding, 5 Applauding Freedom loved of old to view? What new Alcaeus,[21] fancy-blest, Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest, At Wisdom's ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... remember roaming lonely by the mournful forest streams, The loveliness and melody of childhood's happy dreams; Pale flowers, the vermeil-tinted, lightly fanned by vernal breeze, Whose fitful breath went sighingly among the solemn trees; Sunny streamlets, gushing clearly in their fresh and tameless glee, Sparkling onward, ever onward, toward a golden summer sea. Fairy isles of green were sleeping on its softly-heaving ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... tribes intended to leave at night; their kindred in Succoth must be ready to go forth with them. There was great rejoicing among the Hebrews, who like those of their blood in the city of Rameses, had assembled in every house at a festive repast on the night of the new moon after the vernal equinox when the harvest festival usually began. The heads of the tribes had informed them that the day of liberation had arrived, and the Lord would lead them ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... paragraph of a short article on "Spring Flowers in the South of Europe," as a sample of Mr. Mill's popular manner, as well as for its own sake as a fine description of a matchless scene. He is describing the little mountain range of Albano, beloved of painters, and, after comparing its vernal flora with ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other |
