"Autumnal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But one autumnal evening, when the winds lay still in heaven, Morella called me to her bedside. There was a dim mist over all the earth, and a warm glow upon the waters, and amid the rich October leaves of the forest, a rainbow from the firmament ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays; Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know, That life protracted is protracted woe. Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy; In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour, The fruit autumnal, and the vernal flow'r; With listless eyes the dotard views the store, He views, and wonders that they please no more; Now pall the tasteless meats, and joyless wines, And luxury with sighs her slave resigns. Approach, ye minstrels, try the soothing strain, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... the first impulse of desperate first love, the letter which Crabbe had read with Pauline, and he strove to regain that clerical calm and judicial bearing that had suffered so violent a shock. But when six weeks of this repressed existence had sped and autumnal winds were sweeping down from the glacial north of Terrebonne, bringing cold rains and occasional snow flurries with them, he felt that he must at least call at the manor to inquire after Henry Clairville. ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... gets it. So I am tolerably used up, and shall be almost glad to send away the tempter to-morrow, though I dare say I shall miss it. I wish you could look out of my window this minute, and see how beautiful the autumnal foliage is already beginning to look. But my poor old head, what shall I do with it! You ask about my health; I am as well as I can be without sleep. I have had only one really good night since the baby came, to say nothing of those ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... kissed her amorously, and gave her a look that would have overcome any scruples. The Regent, by means of time, which respects not queens, was, as everyone knows, in her middle age. In this critical and autumnal season, women formally virtuous and loveless desire now here, now there, to enjoy, unknown to the world, certain hours of love, in order that they may not arrive in the other world with hands and heart alike empty, through having left the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... representative of the sun, walked solemnly round the walls of a temple in order to ensure that the sun should perform his daily journey round the sky without the interruption of an eclipse or other mishap. And after the autumnal equinox the ancient Egyptians held a festival called "the nativity of the sun's walking-stick," because, as the luminary declined daily in the sky, and his light and heat diminished, he was supposed to ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the sounding shore, The lone enthusiast oft would take his way, Listening, with pleasing dread, to the deep roar Of the wide-weltering waves. In black array, When sulphurous clouds roll'd on the autumnal day, Even then he hasten'd from the haunt of man, Along the trembling wilderness to stray, What time the lightning's fierce career began, And o'er heaven's rending arch the ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... The point where the sun crosses the equator, going north. It is opposite the place of the autumnal equinox. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... waving branch, or the twittering of a startled bird, alone broke the stillness of reposing nature. Absorbed by the sublime sensibility which renders the consciousness of existence felicity, Maria was happy, till an autumnal scent, wafted by the breeze of morn from the fallen leaves of the adjacent wood, made her recollect that the season had changed since her confinement; yet life afforded no variety to solace an afflicted heart. She returned dispirited to her couch, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... apples on one; but a day or two later, found some of the foliage we had thrown away, turned to most delicious browns; so she painted the leaves in those shades, only—and the effect is richly and gravely autumnal. I ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... it was still raining—a cold, steady, autumnal downpour. A huddled figure slowly climbed upon a low fence running about the house-yard of the little farm where the boy lived who got thrashed for losing a milkpail. On the wet top rail, precariously perching, the figure slipped and sprawled forward in the miry yard. It got up, painfully ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... in the time when the celebrated Convent of St. Thomas over Andernach existed in its pristine magnificence, that late on an autumnal night the ferryman from that city to the Devil's House on the other side of the river, who lived on the edge of the bank below the ruins of the ancient palace of the kings of Austrasia, was accosted by a stranger, who desired ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... than man's. And if the moonlight streamed on untroubled, and though Fate was deaf, yet beauty of those fresh strains going starward from under his fingers touched at least the heart of Rodriguez and gilded his dreams and gave to his thoughts a mournful autumnal glory, until he sang all newly as he never had sung before, with limpid voice along the edge of tears, a love-song old as the woods of his father's valleys at whose edge he had heard it once drift through ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... that is warm and kind sinks behind the golden trees, rich with autumnal tints, as Philip and Eleanor drive up to "Lyndhurst," on ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... this autumnal sweetness and charm fails to attract me. I have so much faith in all your theories that I can't help thinking, in spite of everything, of this dreadful problem. Which of those people yonder is threatened? Death has already selected its victim. Who is it? ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling, Give me autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard, Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows, Give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd grape, Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching content, Give me nights perfectly ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... that she abounds in sufficient profusion to become a common type instead of an infrequent one. This woman is waging that battle against the mounting birthdays which nobody ever yet won. Her hair has been dyed in those rich autumnal tints which are so becoming to a tree in its Indian summer, but so unbecoming to a woman in hers. Richard K. Fox might have designed her jewelry; she glistens with diamonds until she makes you think of the ice coming out of the Hudson River in ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... of a delirious and distempered dream, which passes away at the cold clear light of morning. Its surpassing excellence and exquisite perfections have no more reality than the color of an autumnal sunset." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the very soul of Balzac and kindled an enthusiasm which made her appear to him greater than she really was; she literally dazzled and subjugated him. Her gaiety and animation in relating incidents of the Imperial court, and her autumnal sunshine, its rays still glowing with warmth as well as brightness, compelled Balzac to perceive for the second time in his life the insatiability of the woman who has passed her first youth—the woman of thirty, or the tender woman of forty. The fact is, however, not that Balzac created ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... into the branches that were colouring toward autumnal hues she discovered here and there a small, fungus-like growth and leaves that were dying unnaturally, as though through the agency of some blight that diseased ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... bivouac by the ships. All the images were the same, except that, for the sea, we had the endless meadows of Champagne, and, for the ships, the remote tents of the enemy. We had the fire, the exulting troops, the carouse, the picketed horses, the shouts and songs, the lustre of the autumnal sky, and the bold longings for victory and the dawn. Even in Pope's feeble translation, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... Alexandrinus thinks that it was the twenty-eighth year after the battle of Actium; that is, the 41st year of Augustus; but Joseph Scaliger places it in his forty-second year; and, after a most laborious investigation, shows that Christ was born about the autumnal equinox, the latter end of September, or beginning of October. SCALIG. Animad. ad Chron. Euseb. p. 174, et seq.—It was not till the fourth century that this great event was believed to have occurred on the twenty-fifth of December. They have not failed to assign ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of gray plovers (p. 101) in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the AEolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... was near the close of summer, and the gorgeous autumnal season was at hand. I designed to attempt something which would create a change in my wife's nature,—her acquired nature, to substitute some healthful exuberance for the weary listlessness which had become habitual to her. The physical is the foundation ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... spot, where nature kind, With double blessings crowns the farmer's hopes; Where flowers autumnal spring, and the rank mead Affords the wandering hares a rich repast; Throw off thy ready pack. See, where they spread And range around, and dash the glittering dew. If some staunch hound, with his authentic voice, Avow the recent trail, the justling tribe Attend his ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... spring and autumn. When the Sun, on his journey northward, reaches the equator, we have the vernal equinox, and at this period of the year the days and nights are of equal length all over the globe. In a similar manner, when, on his return journey, the Sun is again on the equator, the autumnal equinox occurs. In summer the North Pole is inclined towards the Sun, consequently his rays fall more direct and impart much more heat to the northern hemisphere than in winter, when the Pole is turned away from the Sun. This difference in the incidence of the solar rays upon ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... "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 I will ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... before them lay, And moving nations on the margin stray, Thick swarming, venturous; sail and oar they ply, Climb on the surge and o'er the billows fly. As when autumnal storms awake their force. The storks foreboding tempt their southern course; From all the fields collecting throngs arise, Mount on the wing and crowd along the skies: Thus, to his eye, from bleak Tartaria's shore, Thro isles and seas, the gathering ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... seat with us at the supper-table," says Whittier in one of his prose sketches, "and when we were all gathered around the hearth that cold autumnal evening, he told us, partly by words and partly by gestures, the story of his life and misfortunes, amused us with descriptions of the grape-gatherings and festivals of his sunny clime, edified my mother with a recipe ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... then.—Jacqueline turned, caught his hand, and pressed it to her lips. He strained her in his arms and kissed her, and they entered the chaise which was to carry them to Richmond. Before them lay a hundred miles of sunny road, three days' companionship in the blue, autumnal weather. A few moments, and the house, the pines, and the hurrying stream were lost to view. "A long good-bye!" said Rand. "In the spring ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... in the voice, and well there might be, for it was a voice from the grave. Floating on the damp autumnal air, and echoing round the forest of tombs, it died away over the moors, on the edge of which the ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... died. Though the assassin stabbed again, he only stabbed a corpse. Lagardere, who was brooming his foes before him as a gardener brooms autumnal leaves from grass, had been arrested in his course by the first cry of the wounded Nevers. While he paused, his antagonists, rallying a little and heartened by their numbers, made ready for a fresh attack. Then, swiftly, came Nevers's ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... vanquished, and the sensation when the muzzle of the carbine touched his forehead—all these were brought before him in vivid and frightful reality. Like the streams which the heat of the summer has dried up, and which after the autumnal storms gradually begin oozing drop by drop, so did the count feel his heart gradually fill with the bitterness which formerly nearly overwhelmed Edmond Dantes. Clear sky, swift-flitting boats, and brilliant sunshine disappeared; the heavens were hung with black, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... but the rest had disappeared, and those which remained had suffered grievous damage, here to a nose, there to a hand or foot, and often a fracture of the body, very imperfectly mended. There was a pleasant sunshine in the garden, and a springlike, or rather a genial, autumnal atmosphere, though elsewhere it was a day of poisonous ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gorgeously bright and autumnal in Churchton, whatever it may have been along the middle reaches of the Illinois river; and at about four o'clock Randolph found himself in front of Medora Phillips' house. Medora and her young ladies were out strolling, as was inevitable on such a day; but in her library he ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... station, I drove one sunny morning in October through the graceful, hilly landscape of Kent, which, with the checkered foliage of its woods, with its stretches of purple heath, yellow broom, and evergreen oaks, was arrayed in the fairest autumnal dress. As the carriage drew up in front of Darwin's pleasant country-house, clad in a vesture of ivy and embowered in elms, there stepped out to meet me from the shady porch, overgrown with creeping plants, the great naturalist himself, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... hat a little and thanked the soldiers with a smile which penetrated like a warm sunbeam into all hearts. He waved his right hand, commanding them to be silent, and then his powerful, sonorous voice resounded through the stillness of the autumnal morning. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... sorely wailing drew To the curs'd strand, that every man must pass Who fears not God. Charon, demoniac form, With eyes of burning coal, collects them all, Beck'ning, and each, that lingers, with his oar Strikes. As fall off the light autumnal leaves, One still another following, till the bough Strews all its honours on the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... afforded me one of the most impressive sights I ever witnessed. It had recently been painted in the Byzantine style, and the fresco paintings were as varied and beautiful as the traceries of the frost upon our autumnal woods. You can scarcely conceive the effect it had upon me, just emerged from the ever busy ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... Cora Douglass faded, and when the autumnal days were come, and the distant hills were bathed in the hazy October light, she died. But not in the noisy city, for she had asked to be taken home, and in the pleasant room where we had often sat together, she bade me her last good-by. They buried her on the Sabbath, and Walter's voice ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... 20th, rose in unusual splendor, and cast its rays and shadows in sparkling brilliancy over the mountains and plains of North Georgia. The leaves of the trees and shrubbery, in their golden garb of yellow, shown out bright and beautiful in their early autumnal dress—quite in contrast with the bloody scenes to be enacted before the close of day. My older brother, a private in my company, spoke warmly of the beautiful Indian summer morning and the sublime scenery round about, and wondered if all of us would ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... dusk, after a salute from two field-pieces, the smoke lay long and heavily on the ground, without much spreading beyond the original space over which it had gushed from the guns. It was about the height of a man. The evening clear, but with an autumnal chill. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... summer day, with a tinge of autumnal coolness toward nightfall, ending in what Aunt Jane called a "quince-jelly sunset." Kate and Emilia sat upon the Blue ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... often carried heavy loads of meal and timber from Norway, and many a one of these half-decked yawls no doubt foundered, like Flosi's unseaworthy ship, under the weight of her heavy burden of beams and planks, when overtaken by the autumnal gales on that wild sea. The passages were often very long, more than one hundred days is sometimes mentioned as the time spent on a ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... clear, with the autumnal sparkle that a north wind brings to the hills in early summer, and the night had been so still that the dew hung on everything, not as a lingering moisture, but in separate beads that glittered like diamonds on the ferns and grasses. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... to bless the centuries of pilgrims; past the entrance of the narrow defile, filled from end to end with orchards of peaches and figs, through which the river Gyndes foamed down to meet him; over the broad rice-fields, where the autumnal vapors spread their deathly mists; following along the course of the river, under tremulous shadows of poplar and tamarind, among the lower hills; and out upon the flat plain, where the road ran ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire; A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire. He spreads his canvas; with his pole he steers; The freights of flitting ghosts in his thin bottom bears. He look'd in years; yet in his years were seen A youthful vigor and autumnal green. An airy crowd came rushing where he stood, Which fill'd the margin of the fatal flood: Husbands and wives, boys and unmarried maids, And mighty heroes' more majestic shades, And youths, intomb'd before their fathers' eyes, With hollow ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... they were up, they came to search out the stones, and if any one of them was found to be missing, they had a notion that the person who threw it would die before he saw another Hallowe'en.[614] A writer on Wales at the beginning of the nineteenth century says that "the autumnal fire is still kindled in North Wales, being on the eve of the first day of November, and is attended by many ceremonies; such as running through the fire and smoke, each casting a stone into the fire, and all running off at the conclusion to escape from the black short-tailed sow; then ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... upon the assembled family at the homestead as if he were returning from an hour's absence instead of a western sojourn of ten years. Guided by the sound of voices on the still, pungent autumnal air, he went around to the door of the dining room which opened directly on the poppy ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... That, too, had been hurriedly abandoned. Cadwalader could find nobody to attack or to attack him. The stupefied people only knew that their villages had been suddenly evacuated. In short, the enemy's whole line had been swept away like dead leaves before an autumnal gale, under that ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... more subtle, weighted with thought, tinged with autumnal melancholy. He was a most fertile composer, and, like all the men of his time and group, produced too much. Yet his patriotic verse was so admirable in feeling and is still so inspiring to his readers that one cannot wish it less in quantity; and ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... and, as he had often fancied, carried this subjection even to the human beings who had created it, lived in it, but which it seemed to have in some dull, senile way dozed over and forgotten. He vividly recalled the previous sunshine of an autumnal house party within its walls, where some descendants of its old castellans, encountered in long galleries or at the very door of their bedrooms, looked as alien to the ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... have been cold that August evening. Beyond the wooden bed a small, rectangular window with sash removed showed a square of warm sky and a few stars twinkling dully in the autumnal haze. An occasional impatient tinkle of the cow-bell down in the corral indicated midges, only present on bland days and nights when there is in the air no hint of frost to stiffen the thin ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "Here Jasmines spread the silver flow'r, "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 Botanical Magazine Vol. 7 - or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... He however discriminated in numerous places the inscriptions: The Board of Lustful Love; the Board of contracted grudges; The Board of Matutinal sobs; the Board of nocturnal tears; the Board of vernal affections; and the Board of autumnal anguish. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... cheap. He asked the way to the Cemetery, and soon reached it. The gate was locked, but the keeper let him in, declaring, however, that there was nobody within the precincts. Although it was not late, the autumnal darkness had now become intense; and he found some difficulty in keeping to the serpentine path which led to the quarter where, as the man had told him, the one or two interments for the day had taken place. He stepped ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... been difficult indeed to conceive a view more sublime, than that which lay before the eyes of the young patrician, as he paused for a moment on the highest terrace of the hill, to inhale the breath of the pure autumnal morning. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... late in mild October, and the long autumnal rain Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with grass again; The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the woodlands gay With the hues of summer's rainbow, or ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... Cape Ann in September in large numbers in most years, the fishing lasting about two weeks, when the school moves slowly inward toward the head, and the last catches usually are taken off Minot Light, Boston. The mackerel, after leaving the coast of Maine in their autumnal migrations, pass by Cape Ann and enter Massachusetts Bay during October and November, where they are taken in great number by purse seiners, netters, and pound nets, of which latter there are many in Cape Cod Bay, and which take many mackerel and ...
— Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine • Walter H. Rich
... and full of brine; after that enforced period of inactivity, inside the evil-smelling, squalid inn, Marguerite would have enjoyed the sweet scent of this autumnal night, and the distant melancholy rumble of the autumnal night, and the distant melancholy rumble of the waves; she would have revelled in the calm and stillness of this lonely spot, a calm, broken only at intervals by the strident and mournful cry of some distant gull, and by the creaking ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... is not on this street," she said to herself, "I am going to see those lovely woods;" and she walked swiftly up the hill, with her eyes fixed on the glowing dome of scarlet and yellow leaves which crowned it. The trees were in their full autumnal splendor: maples, crimson, scarlet, and yellow; chestnuts, pale green and yellow; beeches, shining golden brown; and sumacs in fiery spikes, brighter than all the rest. There were also tall pines here and there in the grove, and their green furnished a fine dark background ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... floes had been the product of the last winter only, having probably been formed in some of the interstices left between the larger bodies; and, from what we saw of them, there could be little doubt of their being all dissolved before the next autumnal frost. We halted at seven A.M., having, by our reckoning, accomplished six miles and a half in a N.N.W. direction, the distance traversed being ten miles and a half. It may therefore be imagined how great was our mortification in finding that our latitude, by observation at noon, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... same palette is used to produce an autumnal scene on a blue day, when the colors are vivid and the outline on objects is hard and the form pronounced, as on an overcast day with leaden clouds and much of the life and color gone from the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... own merits, dear [S']akoontala. What man in his senses would intercept with the skirt of his robe the bright rays of the autumnal moon, which alone can allay the ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... sculptured on the wall of rock, with hand uplifted as if to bless the centuries of pilgrims; past the entrance of the narrow defile, filled from end to end with orchards of peaches and figs, through which the river Gyndes foamed down to meet him; over the broad rice-fields, where the autumnal vapours spread their deathly mists; following along the course of the river, under tremulous shadows of poplar and tamarind, among the lower hills; and out upon the flat plain, where the road ran straight as an arrow through the stubble-fields ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... playing. As late as 1826 we have letters from her, inviting him to visit her in Gratz. But in 1817—he being then forty-seven years old—the acquaintance was so cordial that Schindler, who observed it, called it an "autumnal love," though the woman's son later asserted that it was only a kinship of "artistic sympathy,"—in fact, Beethoven called her "a true foster-mother to the creations of his brain." Thayer says, however, that Beethoven never met her till after she married. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... briny tide; E'en then not mindless of his last retreat, He seized the raft, and leap'd into his seat, Strong with the fear of death. In rolling flood, Now here, now there, impell'd the floating wood As when a heap of gather'd thorns is cast, Now to, now fro, before the autumnal blast; Together clung, it rolls around the field; So roll'd the float, and so its texture held: And now the south, and now the north, bear sway, And now the east the foamy floods obey, And now the west wind whirls it o'er the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... the forester's garden. I ascended to the dark arbour which had been called by my name, where an appointment had been made to meet me. Mina's mother came forwards toward me, gay, and free from care. Mina was seated there, pale and lovely, as the earliest snow when it kisses the last autumnal flower, and soon dissolves into bitter drops. The forest-master, with a written sheet in his hand, wandered in violent agitation from side to side, seemingly overcome with internal feelings, which painted his usually unvarying countenance ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... autumnal day, and the modest little lakeside village, which, in deference to its shy ways, we shall call Nestletown, did its best to show its appreciation of the weather. Its windows lighted up brilliantly in the ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... R.W. Emerson; Natural History of Massachusetts; A Walk to Wachusett; The Landlord; A Winter Walk; The Succession of Forest Trees; Walking; Autumnal Tints; Wild ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... intervening space and clutched my intruder by his arms before his softly-padded feet touched the floor of the cabin. My own breath was coming in gasps—but the response to my frenzy was quiet and cool as an autumnal afternoon. ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... the noble stream became visible, decked with islands, and winding here and there between green-clad banks, until it disappeared in the far distance. The sun touched all with gold; the wide meadows opposite were vivid green, while many of the trees crowning the bluffs had already taken on rich autumnal coloring. Nor was there anywhere in all that broad expanse, sign of war or death. It was a scene of peace, so silent, so beautiful, that I could not conceive this as a land of savage cruelty. Far away, well ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... them must belong to the earlier periods of his life, and been introduced into the volumes out of the crowd of unpublished poems every poet seems to possess. These, when we come across them among their middle-aged companions, make a strange impression, as if we found a white-thorn flowering in an autumnal woodland; and in previous chapters of this book I have often fetched them out of their places, and considered them where they ought to be—in the happier air and light in which they were born. I will not discuss them again, but in forming any judgment of the later poems ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... undertook the editorship of The Star, a bi-weekly newspaper; but he was led soon to renounce both these literary appointments. He now published the "Autumnal Excursion, and other Poems;" but finding, in spite of every effort, that he was unable to support himself by literature, he resumed, early in 1819, his humble situation in the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... now late in the season, and the autumnal gales had begun to blow. It was but a very short time after the vessels left the port before so severe a storm came on that the fleet was dispersed, and many of the vessels were driven upon the neighboring coasts and destroyed. The Crusaders that had been left ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Suddenly these autumnal half-tones give way to the flash of torches in the fragrant darkness of an Italian night. There is a scurry of feet along a dark alley, a scuffle at the end, and the genial rotundity of Brother Lippo ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... been more cordial than Lady Fareham's welcome to her sister, nor were it easy to imagine a life more delightful than that at Chilton Abbey in that autumnal season, when every stage of the decaying year clothed itself with a variety and brilliancy of colouring which made ruin beautiful, and disguised the approach of winter, as a court harridan might hide age and wrinkles under a yellow satin mask and flame-coloured ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... no attempt to escape; but, when replaced, they presently ran away fast, as if conscious that the first policy had failed, and that their mother had retreated. Such is the summer-life of these little things; but come again in the fall, when the wild autumnal winds go marching through the woods, and a dozen pairs of strong wings will thrill like thunder through the arches of the trees, as the full-grown brood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... task of interpreting this wonderful document. Few documents have been the subject of more extended commentaries. The four thousand words have been meticulously examined through intellectual microscopes in judicial opinions, textbooks, and other commentaries which are as "thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... of morning Illumed the mountain-height, And Earth lay, cold and shiv'ring, In the blanched, autumnal light, But a sunbeam struggled faintly Through the Miser's broken shed, And lit the pale, set features Of the ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... evening, shortly before sunset, Annabel and he walked on the short dry grass of the Down that rises to Beachy Head. There had been another day of supreme tranquillity, of blurred sunshine, of soothing autumnal warmth. And this was the crowning hour. The mist had drifted from the land and the sea; as the two continued their ascent, the view became lovelier. They regarded it, ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... wayside and in them Phoebe was especially interested. Goldenrod in such great profusion that it seemed the very sunshine of the skies was imprisoned in flower form, stag-horn sumac with its grape-like clusters of red adding brilliancy to the landscape—everywhere was manifest the dawn of autumnal glory, the splendor that foreruns decay, the beauty that is but the first step in nature's transition from blossom and harvest ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... autumn, there where the melancholy of the falling leaf could not spread its contagion to the sculptured foliage of Gothic art, the days were alike in their sentiment of tranquil oblivion and resignation which was as autumnal as any aspect of woods or fields could have been; in the winter they were alike in their dreariness and discomfort. As I remember, we spent by far the greater part of our time in going to the Piazza, and we were devoted Florianisti, as the Italians call those that lounge habitually at the Caffe ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... lounging upon some rosin-barrels near by, under the spell of the round autumnal moon. There was frost in the air, and fragrant odors, but not a sound, not a cry or call of beast or bird, until, suddenly, breaking through the silence with a jarring eery echo, was heard the hoot of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the leaves of the trees were all bright and golden with their autumnal tints, the children were visiting ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... indeed a distant connection of Hereward himself, having married, as did so many of the Celtic princes, the daughter of a Danish sea-rover, of Siward's blood. They told him also that the kinglet increased his wealth, not only by the sale of tin and of red cattle, but by a certain amount of autumnal piracy in company with his Danish brothers-in-law from Dublin and Waterford; and Hereward, who believed, with most Englishmen of the East Country, that Cornwall still produced a fair crop of giants, some of them with two and even three heads, had hopes that Alef might show him ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... conscience. Had the troublesome yelping cur powers efficient to prevent a mischief, he might be of use; out at the beginning of the business, his feeble efforts are, to the workings of passion, as the infant frosts of an autumnal morning to the unclouded fervour of the rising sun; and no sooner are the tumultuous doings of the wicked deed over, than amidst the bitter native consequences of folly in the very vortex of our horrors, up starts ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... thousand acorns forms Profusely scatter'd by autumnal storms; Ten thousand seeds each pregnant poppy sheds Profusely scatter'd from its waving heads; 350 The countless Aphides, prolific tribe, With greedy trunks the honey'd sap imbibe; Swarm on each leaf with eggs or embryons big, And pendent nations tenant every twig. ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... tiny fountain dripping faintly into a green and brown pool; the long, sad lines of the Archbishop's Palace, off which the brown paint is peeling; the whole sad charm, dainty melancholy, formal beauty, and autumnal air of it. It was in the Mirabell-Garten that ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... scene presented itself to their view when they regained the upper air! No metamorphosis conceived by Ovid or achieved by the magic lantern; no pantomimic transformation; no eccentricity of dreamland ever equalled it! When last seen, the valley was clothed in all the rich luxuriance of autumnal tints, and alive with the twitter and plaintive cry of bird-life. Now it was draped in the pure winding-sheet of winter, and silent in the repose of Arctic death. Nothing almost was visible but snow. Everything was whelmed in white. Only here and there a few of the sturdier ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... assiduity both night and day."[56] What hope of gain or advantage had they in those days? nay, or even now? for the hopes of parents are uncertain, and have to be long waited for. He who plants a vine in the spring equinox, gleans its vintage in the autumnal equinox; he who sows corn when the Pleiads set, reaps it when they rise; cattle and horses and birds have produce at once fit for use; whereas man's bringing up is toilsome, his growth slow; and as excellence flowers late, most fathers die before their ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... drovers used to boast that they could bring their beasts all the way from Wales without once going off turf or through a turnpike. Now, alas! crowded cattle-trucks on the railway are fast superseding the old-fashioned, wholesome way of travelling, and we seldom have the autumnal air filled with the lowing of the herds, the barking of the attendant dogs and the shouts of the drovers on their sturdy Welsh ponies. But to-day the Welsh Ride looks gay enough, for it is dotted with little knots of horsemen in black or red coats using it as a short cut ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... I would gaze Upon the wreck of thy departed powers Not in the dewy light of matin hours, Nor in the meridian pomp of summer blaze, But at the close of dim autumnal days, When the sun's parting glance, through slanting showers, Sheds o'er thy rock-throned battlements and towers Such awful gleams as brighten o'er decay's Prophetic cheek. At such a time, methinks, There ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... within a mile of the explosion were pushed away, as by a giant hand, from the point of detonation. The badly burned area extended for 3 miles in length. The hillsides up to a radius of 8,000 feet were scorched, giving them an autumnal appearance. ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... of the war. Hazy autumnal morning, clear and hot in the afternoon, with light northerly breeze. Thermometer at five P.M. ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... hope you do not call that death. That is an autumnal sunset. That is a crystalline river pouring into a crystal sea. That is the solo of human life overpowered by hallelujah chorus. That is a queen's coronation. That is heaven. That is the way my father stood at eighty-two, seeing my mother depart at seventy-nine. Perhaps so your father ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... not return to the school. Much of the time she was among the woods and rocks. The season was now beginning to wane, and the forest to put on its autumnal glory. The dreamy haze was beginning to soften the landscape, and the mast delicious days of the year were lending their attraction to the scenery of The Mountain. It was not very singular that Elsie should be lingering in her old haunts, from which the change of season must soon drive her. But ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... was older and feebler, I had almost said blinder, but that could not be, certainly shabbier than ever. The glitter of dirk and broadsword at his sides, and the many coloured ribbons adorning the old bagpipes under his arms, somehow enhanced the look of more than autumnal, of wintry desolation ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... untimely tomb 50 No human hands with pious reverence reared, But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:— A lovely youth,—no mourning maiden decked 55 With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath, The lone couch of his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... coming, on a wet autumnal afternoon, down the dark stairs from his attic and suddenly at the other end of the long passage there had been this sound, so sudden and so pitiful coming upon that dreary stillness that he had stopped with his hands clenched and ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... is the attitude of one beholding a Tristan en voyage for a garden of love and roses he can never reach. His attitude, the attitude of an old and understanding professor, shaking his head musingly as his tender pupils, unmellowed yet in the autumnal fragrances of life, giggle covertly over the pages of Balzac and Flaubert, over the nudes of Manet, over even the innocent yearnings ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... sight My Rama's glorious face shall beam, from the dark forest bursting bright. Happy that gaze on Rama's face with beauteous teeth and smile of love, Like the blue lotus in its grace, and like the starry king above. Like to the full autumnal moon, and like the lotus in its bloom, That youth who sees returning soon,—how blest shall be that mortal's doom." Dwelling in that sweet memory, on his last bed the monarch lay, And slowly, softly seemed to die, as fades the moon at dawn away. "Ah, Rama! ah, my son!" thus ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... or fern on hill pastures becomes red with the first frosty nights, and about that time the autumnal herbage is very rich, and productive of the good things in ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... relates how he absorbed into his inmost being the orange sky of evening, the curling mist, the last autumnal crocus, the "souls of lonely places," and the huge peak, which terrified him at nightfall by seeming to stride after him and which awoke ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... around, And grafts new life into the fruitful wound; Sometimes he shears his flock, and sometimes he Stores up the golden treasures of the bee. He sees his lowing herds walk o'er the plain, Whilst neighbouring hills low back to them again. And when the season, rich as well as gay, All her autumnal bounty does display, How is he pleas'd th' increasing use to see Of his well trusted labours bend the tree; Of which large shares, on the glad sacred days, He gives to friends, and to the gods repays. With how much ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... to go down hill through a pretty extensive tract of young beeches. I was soon in shadow myself, but the afternoon sun still colored the upmost boughs of the wood, and made a fire over my head in the autumnal foliage. A little faint vapor lay among the slim tree-stems in the bottom of the hollow; and from farther up I heard from time to time an outburst of gross laughter, as though clowns were making merry in the bush. There was something about the atmosphere ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... York on his way to Washington, stopping as was his habit at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, he asked me to walk with him to his room, fronting on Twenty-third Street, on the parlor floor; and he slowly, as if it were a task, unlocked the door. There was a sparkle of autumnal crispness in the air, and he had a fire, that glittered and threw shadows about fitfully. There was not much to say. It was plain at last that Mr. Blaine was fading, that he had within a few weeks failed fast. His ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... the fact seems well attested—that Milton's poetical vein flowed only from the autumnal equinox to the vernal[5], he cannot well have commenced "Paradise Lost" before the death of Cromwell, or have made very great progress with it ere his conception of his duty called him away to questions of ecclesiastical policy. The one point on which he had irreconcilably differed ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... object to variegated leaves, as conveying an idea of fickliness, that complaint cannot be urged against the foliage of the striped Lily, to which the borders of the flower-garden are indebted for one of their chief ornaments during the autumnal and winter months; early in September these begin to emerge, and towards spring another set rises up in their centre, of more upright growth, and which announce the rising of the ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... of the seeds in their native Californian home proceeds in a rather different manner, as we infer from an interesting letter from Mr. Rattan, sent to us by Prof. Asa Gray. The petioles protrude from the seeds soon after the autumnal rains, and penetrate the ground, generally in a vertical direction, to a depth of from 4 to even 6 inches. they were found in this state by Mr. Rattan during the Christmas vacation, with the plu- [page 83] mules still enclosed within the tubes; and he remarks that if the plumules had been ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... risen sun; the bright waters of the lakelet also, as, ruffled by the breeze, they broke gently about the prow of the pretty row-boat moored to the little wharf; the gardens were gay with bright-hued flowers, the trees gorgeous in their autumnal dress. ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... was autumnal too. Perhaps because, having become a workman, I saw our town life only from the seamy side, it was my lot almost every day to make discoveries which reduced me almost to despair. Those of my fellow-citizens, about ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Mrs. Shiffney hastily made her way to a chair just in front of the piano, sat down on it, and gazed at Rades, who turned and stared at her. Then, taking the cigarette from his mouth, he sang Le Moulin at her, leaning back, swaying and moving his thick eyebrows. It was a sad song, full of autumnal atmosphere, a delicate and sensual caress of sorrow. The handsome composer and the lusty musical critic listened to it, watched the singer with a sort of bland contempt. But when he threw away his cigarette and sang Le Retour ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... the future. The boy, too, was as lovely a child as the fondest parent was ever blessed with; and crowed with delight, and clapped his little hands, as his mother held him in her arms at the cottage-door to watch his father's ascent up the rough path that led to Ty Glas, one bright autumnal morning; and when the three entered the house together, it was difficult to say which was the happiest. Owen carried his boy, and tossed and played with him, while Nest sought out some little article ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell |
