"Willowy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The instant Joel Mazarine and his wife stepped out of the train, he knew they were what they were to each other. That was a real achievement in knowledge, because Mazarine was certainly sixty-five if he was a day, and his wife was a slim, willowy slip of a girl, not more than nineteen years of age, with the most wonderful Irish blue eyes and long dark lashes. There was nothing of the wife or woman about her, save something in the eyes, which seemed to belong to ages past and gone, something so solemnly ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Oriental grace about Marsa, with her willowy figure, flexible as a Hindoo convolvulus, and her dark Arabian eyes fringed with their heavy lashes. Michel Menko took in all the details of her beauty, and evidently suffered, suffered cruelly, his eyes invincibly ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... up the hill together, the great man and the untutored girl. He still carried himself with the lightness of the spare, wiry man who has never felt his age. As for her, she moved as one on springs, her slender, willowy ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... tall and slender woman, in black, bending toward her, with a willowy appealing grace, and eyes that beseeched. Diana Mallory stood before her. There was a pause. Then Lady Lucy rose slowly, laid down her spectacles, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shores of green. Hark! from the murmuring clods I hear Glad voices of the coming year; The song of him who binds the grain, The shout of those that load the wain, And from the distant grange there comes The clatter of the thresher's flail, And steadily the millstone hums Down in the willowy vale. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... pliant knees bent in a low curtsey. Dulcie "bridled," as she prattled, to perfection. She had light brown hair, of the tint of a squirrel's fur, and the smoothness of a mouse's coat, though it was twisted and twirled into a kind of soft willowy curls when she was in high dress. Ah! no wonder that Kit Cowper, the cloth-worker, groaned to see that bright face pass from his ninepin alley; but it was the way of the world, or rather the will of Providence to the cloth-worker, that the child should fulfil her ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... which could be perceived when the sun kissed her cheek. Her eyes were an opaque blue, like those of Dutch porcelain figures. She had a tiny mole on her left nostril and another on the right of her chin. She was tall, well developed, with willowy figure. Her clear voice sounded at times a little too sharp, but her frank, sincere laugh spread joy around her. Often, with a familiar gesture, she would raise her hands to her temples as ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... form of an angel"; that "her eyes had a velvety softness that drew you like an enchanted lake"; that these same eyes were "starry in their lustrous beauty"; that she had "the complexion of a creole, or rather the healthy pallor of the high-born aristocracy of England"; that "her figure was willowy and swayed like a reed in the wind"; and all the other curious jargon of the novelette—the deadly enemy of simplicity and innocence. Then Alice grew proud and vain, and her vanity culminated on the night of our concert ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... tear down the chimneys and demolish boats and light woodwork. Still they worked on, making from half a mile to a mile an hour. The enemy, notwithstanding what had been done at Yazoo Pass, were taken by surprise, not having believed that even gunboats would try to penetrate by those marshy, willowy ditches. On the night of the 17th, Colonel Ferguson, commanding the district, first received word at his headquarters on Deer Creek, forty miles above Rolling Fork, that the gunboats had entered the creek. He at once hurried a battalion of sharpshooters and some artillery on board ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... into the long hall with the windows and the mirrors, yellow evening was dropping over the waters and the willowy banks; and a bittern sounded in the distance like an elf upon his dwarfish drum. The same singular sentiment of some sad and evil fairyland crossed the priest's mind again like a little grey cloud. "I wish Flambeau were back," ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... was, like her father, of a romantic turn. Also she was rather tall and willowy, as Mr. DeVere had been before he had taken on flesh with the passing of the years; and she was cast for parts that suited her type. She was deliberate in her actions, and ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... rather willowy creature, whose style of dress artistically accentuated her figure, caught a pencil that was slipping from a book, and thrust it into the mass of light hair that was like a crown ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... cot beside the hill; A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear; A willowy brook that turns a mill With many a ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... with a thick rope of yellow silk knotted careless at one side with the tassels danglin' below her knee, while around her head is a band of tinsel decoration that might have been pinched off from a Christmas tree. She's a tall, willowy young woman, who waves her bare arms around vivacious when she talks and has lots of sparkle to ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... more assured, more at home. She has a kindly face, a lovely face, he decides, and what a deliciously rich, smooth voice! She is rather after the willowy order in her slender person, and when she begins to sing "Rejoice greatly," he looks at her astonished, doubting whether the sound can really have proceeded from her slender throat. He is again reminded of Marion, but by nothing he hears or sees: poor Marion has her not small reputation as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... Claire Putnam, was a fragile, willowy creature, over-thin, perhaps, yet wonderfully attractive and pretty, and there was much of good in her face, and a tinge of pathos, too, for ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... unhallowed runs; the gods forsook Long since her trembling rushes; from her plains Disconsolate, long since adventure fled; And now although the inviting river flows, And every poplared cape, and every bend Or willowy islet, win upon thy soul And to thy hopeful shallop whisper speed; Yet hope not thou at all; hope is no more; And O, long since the golden groves are dead The faery ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of ships through the night they faded away, And Calais pier was upon us. Dreamlike it was indeed As we sat in the train together, and toward the end made speed. But a dull sleep came upon me, and through the sleep a dream Of the Frenchman who once was my master by the side of the willowy stream; And he talked and told me tales of the war unwaged as yet, And the victory never won, and bade me never forget, While I walked on, still unhappy, by the home of the dark-striped perch. Till at last, with a flash of light and a rattle and ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... brook, where nod The flowing rushes, dew-besprent, with breast Ruddy, and emerald wing, the kingfisher 80 Steals through the dripping sedge away. What shape Of terrors scares the woodland habitants, Marring the music of the dawn? Look round; See, where he creeps, beneath the willowy stump, Cowering and low, step silent after step, The booted fowler: keen his look, and fixed Upon the adverse bank, while, with firm hand, He grasps the deadly tube; his dog, with ears Hung back, and still and steady eye ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... no means least, with her eyes devouring every expression that flitted across the new arrival's face, there beamed out beside Miss Ann, a tail, willowy young person, whom Fred, in answer to an inquiring lifting of Oliver's eyebrows, designated as the belle of the house. This engaging young woman really lived with her mother, in the next street, but flitted in and out, dining, or breakfasting, or spending a week at a time with her aunts, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... before them, strangely different from the slim, willowy maiden I had seen her. She looked ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... her the most successful way of "keeping up an appearance." Though everybody who knew her knew also that Charley Gracey neglected her shamefully, she spent twelve hours of the twenty-four pretending that she was perfectly happy. At nineteen she had been a belle and beauty of the willowy sort; but at thirty she had relapsed into one of the women whom men admire in theory and despise in reality. She had started with a natural tendency to clinging sweetness; as the years went on the sweetness, instead of growing fainter, had become almost cloying, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... hid beneath the bank By the willowy river-side, Where Narcissus gently sank, Where unmarried Echo died, Unto thy serene ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... my dearest Friend, 'tis mine to rove Through bare grey dell, high wood, and pastoral cove; Where Derwent rests, and listens to the roar That stuns the tremulous cliffs of high Lodore; [1] Where peace to Grasmere's lonely island leads, 5 To willowy hedge-rows, and to emerald meads; Leads to her bridge, rude church, and cottaged grounds, Her rocky sheepwalks, and her woodland bounds; Where, undisturbed by winds, Winander [C] sleeps [2] 'Mid clustering isles, and holly-sprinkled ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... Sultana. Their manners caress without emboldening; the grace of their languid movements is intoxicating; they allure by a flexibility of form, which knows no restraint, save that of perfect modesty, and which etiquette has never succeeded in robbing of its willowy grace. They win upon us by those intonations of voice which touch the heart, and fill the eye with tender tears; by those sudden and graceful impulses which recall the spontaneity and beautiful timidity of the gazelle. Intelligent, cultivated, comprehending every thing with rapidity, skillful ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... at this moment, ready for her ride. Her slim willowy figure looked to great advantage in the plain tight-fitting cloth habit; and the little felt hat with its bright scarlet feather gave a coquettish expression to her face. She tapped her husband lightly on the ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... are black, the hills are white, And, glittering in the sheen, The lake expands—a sheet of light— Its willowy banks between; From the dark sedge that skirts its edge, The startled wild-duck springs, While, echoing far up copse and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... domestic life. I sat there, meditating on the uncertainty of human affairs: it would do you more good than a little to know what thoughts passed through my mind, but there is no time to go into that. Suddenly two forms came in sight. One was of manly dignity, the other of willowy grace. His frame towered like the noble oak on the hilltop, while hers—but we have had the oak and the vine before, and worked them for all they are worth. Perhaps I ought to have given you a more particular account of the appearance of these two young ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... be ascended without difficulty. We ventured to scale it; and we were fully repaid for our labor by the prospect which we gained. The Seine, full of green willowy islands, flows beneath the rock in large lazy windings: the peninsula below is flat, fertile, and well wooded: on the opposite shores, the fantastic chalky cliffs rise boldly, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... ring of her voice—offered a rare fillip to his jaded appetite. The dusky, long-lashed eyes which always give a woman an effect of beauty, the splendid fling of head, and the piquant, finely cut features, with their unconscious tale of Brahmin caste, the long lines of the supple body, willowy and yet plump as a partridge—they went to his head like strong wine. Here was an adventure from the gods—a stubborn will to bend, the pride of a haughty young beauty to trail in the dust, her untamed heart to break if need ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... slight, willowy creature with black eyes, profuse dark hair, and sallow complexion. Her dress was costly, though simple, and she was followed at a more sober pace by a lady-like but ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... joyous and imperious Princess Dewbell. She was pale as a lily's cup, and drooping as its stem. She never raised her head from her bosom, and her eyes, once sparkling like fountains of light, were hidden beneath their willowy lids. Next comes the "red-haired prince," as the lady Dewbell had scornfully denominated him, (his head was a little inclined to flame, dear reader, between you and me,) respectfully conducting the ever sweet and placid Queen Woodbine; ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... name, desired to have an urgent interview with the Starets, and on going to the waiting-room, wherein so many of the fair sex sat daily in patience for the Father to receive them, I found a tall, willowy, dark-haired and exceedingly handsome girl, who, after inquiring if I were Feodor Rajevski, told me that her name was Tsourikoff and that she had been ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... heat, and in places actually charred. Had it been built like our civilized boats, Good said that the planks would certainly have warped and let in enough water to sink us; but fortunately it was dug out of the soft, willowy wood of a single great tree, and had sides nearly three inches and a bottom four inches thick. What that awful flame was we never discovered, but I suppose that there was at this spot a crack or hole in the bed of the river through which a vast volume of ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... said. "Not a lawful child! Some Eurasian legacy—a relic of the old days of the Pagoda Tree! Why, the old commissioner always was a woman hater, and absolutely hostile to all social influences!" The Captain was now stealing longing glances at the willowy figure of the beautiful woman whose glistening dark brown eyes were turned to him with a languid glance, as Alan Hawke leaned forward. To prolong the sight of that bewitching half profile, with the fair, low brows, the velvet cheeks, a Provencale flush tinting them, the parted lips a dainty challenge ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... standing by the tea-table, thin and willowy, a tea-caddy in one hand, and a spoon in the other, ladling tea into the deep-bodied pot—a spoonful for each person and one ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... and rich men, that the Greek shafted work, and the carving of the Lombards was drawn nearer and nearer to us and blocked us out a little from the sight of the blue Euganean hills or the Northern mountains. Nay, to come nearer home, much as I know I should have loved the willowy meadows between the network of the streams of Thames and Cherwell; yet I should not have been ill content as Oxford crept northward from its early home of Oseney, and Rewley, and the Castle, as townsman's house, and scholar's hall, and the great College and the noble church ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... am willowy boughs For coolness; I am gold-finch wings For darkness; I am a little grape Thinking of September, I am a very ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling
... a merry voice interrupted. "Still fighting as usual, I see! What kind of knights are you, anyway, to rescue us poor damsels in distress, and then never even know that we're alive?" A tall, willowy brunette had seen the two physicists as she entered the saloon, and came over to their table, a hand outstretched to ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... the usual guard of eunuchs, but that they walked in a painful, hesitating, and impeded manner. This walk was not the conventional, short, shuffling step that peculiarity of dress and shoe-wear imposes on the Japanese beauty, nor the willowy, swaying gait produced in the Chinese beauty by the lack of a sufficiency of foot; neither could it be ascribed to the presence of the ancient jingling chain of bells which induced the mincing steps of the virgins of Judea,—an invention which confined the lower limbs ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... door before he reached it. She was as willowy and alive as he remembered her, and a great deal more vital and beautiful. She put up her face to be kissed as soon as he was inside and his arms went around her soft angora sweater and he wondered a little at what he had so cavalierly ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... glorious!" said her brother, his eyes sweeping the picture below. "And you too, Sybil," he said, turning his eyes upon her. "This country has done you well. By jove, what a transformation from the white-faced, willowy—" ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... back that her pose resembled a letter u set sidewise, the gap from her crossed knee to her face being closed by a slender forearm and hand that held a lorgnette, through which she was gazing at the children with an apparently absorbed interest. This impression of willowy flexibility was somehow heightened by large, pear-shaped pendants hanging from her ears, by a certain filminess in her black costume and hat. Flung across the table beside her was a long coat of grey ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... felt both of the willowy arms about his own neck, and she returned his caresses with a ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... Dobson, George Eliot and Philip Gilbert Hamerton—strange names to the elder generation—our scheme of life was still essentially grave and plain for all Josephine's Japanese sunshade and tendency to make the most of her willowy figure. Little did we dream of the later development which, like a huge wave, was to sweep over the land of the free and the home of the brave, overwhelming its native simplicity with the virtues, tastes, and vices of the other nations against which our forefathers barred the ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... her at the home of Mrs. Storrs, I thought her one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen—of the Andalusian type—dark hair and lustrous starry eyes, beautiful features, perfect teeth, a slender, willowy figure, and a voice so musical that it would lure a bird from the bough. She had a way all her own of "telling" you a poem. She was perfectly natural about it, a recitative semi-tone yet full of expression and dramatic breadth, at times almost a chant. With those dark and ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... river would press after, until at last the Pointe was quite swallowed up, and the great river glided by in a majestic curve, and asked no more; the bank stood fast, the "caving" became a forgotten misfortune, and the diminished grant was a long, sweeping, willowy bend, rustling with miles ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... self-abnegation, for, somehow or other, though he comes to see her he stays to look at Ruth Harvey, shy, silent, and beautiful, and soon, as though by common consent, that corner of the big parlor is given up to those two, the tall, stalwart trooper and the slender, willowy girl. And one evening he comes earlier than usual in manifest discomposure, and soon it transpires that important orders have reached him. Fanny turns pale. "Are you—all—ordered back?" she cries, and is for an instant ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... pine-clad heights behind and above them. From these tops a fine, keen cold fell with the waning afternoon, which sharpened through the sunset till the dusk; but in the morning the change was from the chill to the glow, and they could sit in their pavilion, under the willowy droop of the eucalyptus-trees which have brought the Southern Pacific to the ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... Shawanoe, but Jack and Otto saw, from the looks and manner of the elder warrior, that he was subdued and could not be forced into a struggle with the lithe and willowy youth. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... a moment more to accommodate a willowy, red-haired girl in furs, whose jade eyes barely rested on Puma's magnificent black ones as he stepped aside to make way for her with an ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... the farm servant of a neighbor taught me masturbation. The mistress of the farm, a thin, willowy, dark woman, the mother of several children, treated me with such familiarity as once to urinate in my presence, so that I saw her very hirsute mons veneris. From that moment I conceived a great passion ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a cot beside the hill; A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear; A willowy brook, that turns a mill, With many ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... as they walked along, "I kind of like that; don't you? We make picturesque backgrounds, don't we? you and I, especially you, the soft, tender, lithe and willowy; and I, the frowning, rugged and adamantine, so to speak. I think the background business ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... out on the landin'. There's old man Bloom, a short, squatty, fish-eyed old pirate with a complexion like sour dough. He has one foot on the next flight, and seems to be retreatin' as he waves his pudgy hands and sputters. Followin' him up is a tall, willowy, black-eyed young woman in a giddy Longchamps creation direct from Canal-st. She's pleadin' earnest that Bloom mustn't forget he's talkin' to a lady. Behind her is a husky, red-haired young gent with his fingers bunched menacin'; while just below, hesitatin' whether ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... tall, lithe, willowy. In the rugged health that was normally hers, she seemed muscled almost like one of the opposite sex; yet she lost by it none of the charm of frank femininity that was hers. She was long-limbed, clean-limbed, quick of mind and of body.... ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... that the colonel and his wife were childless, and the slender willowy figure I had seen across the garden wall was that of Lilian Roseblade, their niece and adopted daughter. She came into the room shortly afterward, and I felt, as I went through the form of an introduction, that her sweet, fresh face, ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... in uniform. As the secretary read his title and first name, each self-conscious Indian stepped stiffly forth from the ranks, throwing a foot, heavy with the unaccustomed shoe, high in the air and pounding the earth in the new military style taught him by a willowy young native in civilian dress who leaned haughtily on his cane watching every movement, made a sharp-cornered journey about the sun-flooded yard and bringing up more or less in front of his dreaded chief, gave a half turn, raised the right leg ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... heading south-west for Alf's paddock, there was a strong, dry, and—as it seemed to me then—useless, north-west wind tearing through the tops of the trees. I thought it might lull before I left the shelter of the scrub, but it only increased. The willowy foliage of the scattered myalls on the plain stood out horizontally to leeward; and an endless supply of lightly-bounding roley-poleys were chasing each other across the level ground. I lashed my hat on with a handkerchief, one side of the brim being turned ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... interesting fashion, sometimes two and two, sometimes three and two, or four couple and four couple, and then all together, which vastly entertained the spectators. In the final melee I had lost my lady to Mr. De Lancey, who now carried her off, leaving me with a willowy maid, whose partner came ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... forms a short cut between Coventry Street and the Bandolero, and several admirers of feminine beauty who happened to be using the same route had almost dislocated their necks looking after her. She was a strikingly handsome girl. She was tall and willowy. Her eyes, shaded by her hat, were large and grey. Her nose was small and straight, her mouth, though somewhat hard, admirably shaped, and she carried herself magnificently. One cannot blame the policeman on duty in Leicester Square ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... the directions of my preceptor, I am aware that the effect produced by our efforts is somehow not the same as his. I observe him in a close embrace with a willowy young thing, dipping gracefully in the distance. They pause, sway, run a few steps, stop dead and suddenly sink to the floor—only to rise and repeat ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... the driver sat Blanch Lennox, looking a trifle pale the Captain thought, and Bessie Van Ashton, his cousin, a pretty blond with large violet eyes and small hands and feet that matched her slender, willowy figure. ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... down; the wet poncho was hot and she shifted it, throwing one end across her shoulder. In her uniform she appeared willowy and slim, built like a boy, and with nothing of that graceful awkwardness which almost inevitably betrays such masqueraders. For her limbs were straight at the knees and faultlessly coupled, and there seemed to be the adolescent's smooth lack of development ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... a willowy Miss Staines and a blond Miss Anan, and a very young Mr. Anan—a brother—and a grave and gaunt Mr. Gatewood and a stout Mr. Ellison, and a number of ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... of her lover Serves well her modest blush to cover; Her willowy arms about him twine As closely as the greenwood vine Doth hang upon the towering oak, That holds it safe from every stroke And proudly shelters the delicate form From all the buffets of the storm. The moon and every heavenly gem Now seem to ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... had charm. She came, I think, from Baltimore, with a strain in her, they said, of old Southern French blood. Tall and what is known as willowy, with dark chestnut hair, very broad, dark eyebrows, very soft, quick eyes, and a pretty mouth,—when she did not accentuate it with lip-salve,—she had more sheer quiet vitality than any girl I ever saw. It was ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... creamy shade, her eyes were large and light blue, the lashes and eyebrows being only a shade or two darker than her long, straight rather dull-looking, yellow hair. She always wore her hair straight down her back; she was very willowy and pliant in figure, and had something of the grace ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... when he fell in love with a handsome German girl. Upon his return to the works, he went to Mr. Carnegie and announced that as he wanted to get married he would like a little further time off. Mr. Carnegie appeared much interested. "Tell me about her," he said. "Is she short or is she tall, slender, willowy?" ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... swung him slowly around Creede let out a big loop and began to swing it about his head, his teeth showing in a tense grin as he fixed his eyes upon the mark. At each turn his wrist flexed and his back swayed with a willowy suppleness but except for that he was like a herculean statue ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... cloth or linsey woolsey, made by the local tailor. Sometimes Maulevrier ordered her a gown or a coat from his own man in Conduit Street, and then she felt herself smart and fashionable. And even the local tailor contrived to make her gowns prettily, having a great appreciation of her straight willowy figure, and deeming it a privilege to work for her, so that hitherto Mary had felt very well content with her cloth and linsey. But now that John Hammond so obviously admired Lesbia's delicate raiment, poor Mary began to think her ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Her wonderful beauty actually startled him. Four years had transformed the child into an exquisitely and lovely young girl. Her delicate features, her golden hair, her lustrous dark eyes, her vermillion lips, her musical yet penetrating voice, her willowy figure and her beautifully shaped hands aroused Philip's intense admiration. A pure and noble love had filled his heart during his absence, and had exerted a powerful and restraining influence over his actions, his thoughts, ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... as on clouds of flame, a girl was dancing. She was black, and lithe, and tall, and willowy. Her garments twined and flew around the delicate moulding of her dark, young, half-naked limbs. A heavy mass of hair clung motionless to her wide forehead. Her arms twirled and flickered, and body and ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... stood with the slanting rays of the sun full in her eyes, her arms stretched over her head. The artist noted every graceful line of her willowy figure. ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... the lengthening wold, Across the willowy flats and thickets brown, Magdalen's tall tower tipped with tremulous gold Marks the long High Street of the little town, And warns me to return; I must not wait, Hark ! 't is the curfew booming from the ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... her—the slim willowy creature, with her distinguished head and her beautiful eyes—revived in him the memory of some of his happiest and most sacred hours. It was her mother who had produced upon his own early maturity one of those critical impressions, for good or evil, which men so sensitive and finely strung ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... round-bosomed and willowy, in her starched muslin and flapping Leghorn, as he had seen her under the orange-trees in the Mission garden. And as he had seen her that day, so she had remained; never quite at the same height, yet never far below it: generous, faithful, unwearied; ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... But the Devil, you know, always finds mischief for idle hands to do. One day a youngster—a subaltern in the battalion that was stationed there—returned from a leave spent in England. He brought back with him a young English girl whom he had married while he was at home. A slender, willowy thing she was, with great masses of coppery-red hair and the loveliest pink-and-white complexion. She quickly adapted herself to the disagreeable features of life in the tropics—with one exception. The exception was that she could never overcome her inherent and unreasoning fear of snakes. ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... to descend the Rhine in a boat from Strasbourg to Rotterdam, whence we might take shipping for London. During this voyage we passed many willowy islands and saw several beautiful towns. We stayed a day at Mannheim, and on the fifth from our departure from Strasbourg, arrived at Mainz. The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high, ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... say, I can exactly illustrate the position and attitude of the two of them from a recollection of my childhood. I remember that in one of my nursery books of forty years ago there was a picture entitled "The Lady in Love With A Swine." A willowy lady in a shimmering gown leaned over the rail of a tessellated pig-sty, in which an impossibly clean hog stood in an attitude of ill-mannered immobility. With the picture was the ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... circumstances of scene; and the difference between those careless masques of heathen gods, or unbelieved though mightily conceived visions of fairy, witch, or risen spirit, and the earnest faith of Dante's vision of Paradise, is the true measure of the difference in influence between the willowy banks of Avon, and the purple hills ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... the river becomes exceedingly pretty. It is crooked, a charm in itself, has many willowy islands, and here and there a grey venerable town is seated in the opening of the high hills which contract the view, with crumbling towers, and walls that did good service in the times of the old English and French wars. There were fewer seats than might have ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of years called old, Those other eyes look back to catch a trace Of what was once their own unshadowed grace. But here in our dear poet both are blended— Ripe age begun, yet golden youth not ended;— Even as his song the willowy scent of spring Doth blend with autumn's tender mellowing, And mixes praise with satire, tears with fun, In strains that ever delicately run; So musical and wise, page after page, The sage a minstrel grows, the bard a sage. The dew of youth fills yet his late-sprung flowers, And day-break glory ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... and the Englishman which I have long recognized in the two elms as compared to each other. It may be fanciful, but I have thought that the compactness and robustness about the English elm, which are replaced by the long, tapering limbs and willowy grace and far-spreading reach of our own, might find a certain parallelism in the people, especially the ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... longer looked big, and the famous lashes had been worn down by many tears; for there were six little graves in the Ortega corner of the Mission church-yard, and she had loved her children devotedly. She carried her two hundred pounds as unconsciously as she had once carried her willowy inches, and she wore soft black cashmere in winter and lawn in summer, fastened at the throat with a miniature of the husband of her youth. She was only thirty-nine, but there was not a vestige of youth about her anywhere, and her whole being expressed a life lived, ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... Mrs. Vostrand, in a sort of willowy concession, as if the character before her were not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... they lay in their luxurious ease, Playing with grapes and rose-leaves, slim And willowy slave-girls, in the hope to please, Twisted and danced before them, to the dim Uncertain music in the shadows played; Some came with supple limb, With Mystery's aid And snake-like creep, Others with riotous leap And made festivity to Bacchus wed; Others with stiff Egyptian tread, ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West
... that befitted the 'Cavalier' lineage. His hands were delicate and white, by no means thin, and the fingers tapering. His gestures were not many, but swift, graceful, and expressive; the tone of his voice was low; his figure was willowy and lithe; and in stature he seemed tall, but in reality he was a little below six feet — withal there was a native knightly grace which marked his every movement."* If to this be added the words of Dr. Gilman as to the impression he produced on people, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... lived to see May once more smile Upon the earth; wherefore, as men who know How fast the bad days and the good days go, They gathered at the feast: the fair abode Wherein they sat, o'erlooked, across the road Unhedged green meads, which willowy streams passed through, And on that morn, before the fresh May dew Had dried upon the sunniest spot of grass, From bush to bush did youths and maidens pass In raiment meet for May apparelled, Gathering the milk-white blossoms and the red; And now, with noon long ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... the nobleman from Picardy to whom reference has already been made. She was about twenty-four, dark, and very beautiful, with masses of black hair crowning a well-set head, finely-cut features, and a figure which, even as she sat on the low window-seat, showed tall and willowy. Her beauty would have been flawless but for one defect—her chin was a shade too prominent, giving her face an expression of determination, which, while destroying its symmetry, told of a strong will, and a ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... harm in Dolly, though it is man's proud right to question it in exchange for his bitters. She was tall and willowy, and stretched her neck like a swan, and returned you your change with disdainful languor; to call such a haughty beauty Dolly was one of the minor triumphs for man, and Dolly they all called her, except the only ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie |
