"Lilac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that extraordinary visage—the visage of a satyr-saint, a "ragamuffin angel," a tatterdemalion scholar, an inspired derelict, a scaramouch god,—and I recollect how, in its marble whiteness, the thing leered and peered at me with a look that seemed to have about it all the fragrance of all the lilac-blossoms in the world, mixed with all the piety of all our race's children and the wantonness of all old heathen dreams. It is like Socrates, that head; and like a gargoyle on the tower ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... southern suburb of Glasgow. Ulysses has come back to Ithaca, and is sitting by his fireside, waiting for the return of Penelope from the Neuk Hydropathic. There is a chill in the air, so a fire is burning in the grate, but the laden tea-table is bright with the first blooms of lilac. Dickson, in a new suit with a flower in his buttonhole, looks none the worse for his travels, save that there is still sticking-plaster on his deeply sunburnt brow. He waits impatiently with his eye on the black marble timepiece, and he fingers ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... Did you ever notice that cluster of lilac bushes outside our dining-room window? Maybe you used it in your own beau days. It is a lovely place to sit, very effective, for Dan's study overlooks it from the up-stairs, and their dining-room from down-stairs. So whenever ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... by taking the liquid into the mouth and bringing it into contact with the mucous membrane to tell that it is milk, and that it possesses the quality which we call sour? Or, once more, we get a whiff of air through the open window in the springtime and say, "There is a lilac bush in bloom on the lawn." Yet why, from inhaling air containing particles of lilac, should we be able to know that there is anything outside, much less that it is a flower and of a particular variety which we call lilac? Or, finally, we hold a heated flatiron up near ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... and curving heart-shaped leaves, and hooked thorns; the very oak- scrub is of species unknown to Britain. And what are these tall lilies, which fill every glade breast-high with their sword-like leaves, and spires of white flowers, lilac-pencilled? They are the classic flower, the Asphodel of Greece and Grecian song; the Asphodel through which the ghosts of Homer's heroes strode: as heroes' ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... for a civilian with such an old hat as I generally wear. In the evening I was, of course, on the islands, on a lively dark-brown horse, and drank tea there with a nice, old, white-haired Countess Stroganoff. The lilac, I must tell you, has flowered here as beautifully as in Frankfort, and the laburnum, too; and the nightingales warble so happily that it is hard to find a spot on the islands where one does not hear them. In the city, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... amusement ruled the entire court; it was the period when ladies would seriously interrogate their ruder companions as to their opinions upon a foot more or less captivating, according to whether it wore a pink or lilac silk stocking—for it was the period when Charles II. had declared that there was no hope of safety for a woman who wore green silk stockings, because Miss Lucy Stewart wore them of that color. While ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... holding this vacant ground with a view to a rise in the price of lots, while all he wanted was to keep a feature of his beloved landscape unchanged. Lofty elms drooped at the corners of the house; on the lawn billowed clumps of the lilac, which formed a thick hedge along the fence. There was a terrace part way down this lawn, and when a white-painted balustrade was set some fifteen years ago upon its brink, it seemed always to have ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of the hall, and facing the benches for visitors, the Shaker fraternity were ranged. The hats and straight straw bonnets hung decorously upon the wall over their heads: here and there a sky-blue shawl or one of faded lilac hung beneath the headgear. Across the wide apartment it was difficult to distinguish faces. I scanned closely the sisterhood—old, withered faces most of them, with here and there one young and blooming—but ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... sixteen and fourteen, in Highland costumes, were immediately before the Queen, who walked between Prince Arthur and Prince Leopold, children of eight and five years of age. Her Majesty's train was of lilac velvet, petticoat of lilac and silver moire—antique, with a flounce of Honiton lace; corsage ornamented with diamonds, the Koh-i- noor as a brooch; head-dress, a magnificent diadem of diamonds and pearls. The three younger princesses—Alice, Helena, and Louise, girls of fifteen, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... floor were polished to steel. Ellen sat a while listening to the soothing chirrup of the cricket and the pleasant crackling of the flames. It was a fine cold winter's day. The two little windows at the far end of the kitchen looked out upon an expanse of snow; and the large lilac bush that grew close by the wall, moved lightly by the wind, drew its icy fingers over the panes of glass. Wintry it was without; but that made the warmth and comfort within seem all the more. Ellen would have enjoyed ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... received him out of doors, on the shaded east side of the house, where the heat had driven her to await a cooling breeze from the river. One of the dingy rugs had been spread upon the grass close to the lilac clump, and by an unfashionable little table Miss Caroline sat, in a chair sadly out of date, reading of Childe Harold. It was understood that the minister had there sat in another antiquated chair of capacious arms and upholstered in faded green velvet, a chair brought by Clem; and ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... anxiously addressing her daughter, "I hope, Tabby, that Miss Nix will send home your lilac-colored ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... listening, while the evening unfolded over the lawns its soft waves of gold, which lit up with bluish rays the shade of the pines. There he could forget himself until he heard footsteps approaching in the street. The night scattered its scents over the garden: lilac in spring, acacia in summer, dead leaves in the autumn. When Jean-Christophe, was on his way home in the evening from the Palace, however weary he might be, he used to stand by the door to drink in the delicious scent, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... stopped in the act of putting on his lilac kid gloves. "What have I done? I may be a very bad fellow, but I'm not quite so bad as ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... things are to be seen, Such pleasant things to do, The April earth it is so green, The April sky so blue, The path from dawn to even-song So joyous is to-day, Up, little ones! and dance along The lilac-scented way! ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... early spring that flooded with waving purple the cool glens, and grassy knolls; yellow primroses that nestled in little clumps round the gnarled roots of the oak-trees; bright celandine, and blue speedwell, and irises lilac and gold. There were grey catkins on the hazels, and the foxgloves drooped with the weight of their dappled bee-haunted cells. The chestnut had its spires of white stars, and the hawthorn its pallid moons of beauty. Yes: surely she would come if he could only find her! She would come with him ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... Rhodopis was as full of sound, and scent and blossom as a night in fairy-land. It was one labyrinth of acanthus shrubs, yellow mimosa, the snowy gelder-rose, jasmine and lilac, red roses and laburnums, overshadowed by tall palm-trees, acacias and balsam trees. Large bats hovered softly on their delicate wings over the whole, and sounds of mirth and song echoed from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... brash which steadily gave place to a heavier variety, composed of larger and more angular fragments. A swishing murmur like the wind in the tree-tops came from the great expanse. It was alabaster-white and through the small, separate chips was diffused a pale lilac coloration. The larger chunks, by their motion and exposure to wind and current, had a circle of clear water; the deep sea-blue hovering round their water-worn niches. Here and there appeared the ochreous-yellow colour ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... caused her a feeling of discomfort. Wounded in all her feelings, full of repugnance, she could not get used to it all. She had grown up full of affectionate admiration for a very different style of art—her mother's fine water-colours, those fans of dreamy delicacy, in which lilac-tinted couples floated about in bluish gardens—and she quite failed to understand Claude's work. Even now she often amused herself by painting tiny girlish landscapes, two or three subjects repeated over and over again—a lake with a ruin, a water-mill beating ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... warmly than usual on the lilac tufts the morning that Eppie was married, for her dress was a very light one. She had often thought, though with a feeling of renunciation, that the perfection of a wedding-dress would be a white cotton, with the tiniest pink sprig at wide intervals; so that when Mrs. Godfrey Cass ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... batteries which had thundered away since early morning. The result of this was that many of the enemy's shells dropped right in front of us. I remember noticing that while the smoke of our shells had a lilac color that of the enemy's ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... in the middle of the room was covered with a beautiful cloth with red stripes and six large silver covers upon it, the napkins folded like a boat in the shining plates, the salt-cellar and the sealed bottles, and the large cut glasses sparkling in the sun which came over the groups of lilac ranged along the windows. ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... enchanted place, walled around with starlit darkness, visited by wisps of breezes shaking down from their wings the breath of lilac and syringa, flowering wild grapes, and plowed fields. Down at the foot of our sloping lawn the little river, still swollen by the melted snow from the mountains, plunged between its stony banks and shouted its ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... that soap may change the color of an article, as, for instance, scarlet hosiery or lilac print, if the garment be not badly soiled, it may be cleansed by washing without soap in water in which pared potatoes have been boiled. This method will also prevent color from running in ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... but at the end where Eric stood there was a square, treeless place which had evidently once served as a homestead garden. Old paths were still visible, bordered by stones and large pebbles. There were two clumps of lilac trees; one blossoming in royal purple, the other in white. Between them was a bed ablow with the starry spikes of June lilies. Their penetrating, haunting fragrance distilled on the dewy air in every soft puff of wind. Along the fence rosebushes ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for "scraps" of silk, muslin, and so-forth, to dress dolls for the fair. They were very sweet, for they knew they could make a fool of me. Father was not in, and I guess they timed their visit so that he wouldn't be. They got half a yard of pink silk, as much of blue, ditto of lilac and black, a yard of every kind of narrow ribbon in the store, a remnant of book-muslin, three yards—in all, about six dollars' worth of "scraps," and then asked me if I wasn't going to give a box of raisins and the coffee for the table. I said ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... his first audience she was dressed in black and received him in a room where yellow flowers were massed. On the second occasion she was in grey and the flowers were pink. At the third audience her dress was purple and the flowers were of lilac and white. ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... on her bed's edge, swathed in a lilac silk kimona — delicate relic of school days. Her bandaged feet, crossed, dangled above the rag-rug on the floor; her slim, tanned fingers were interlaced over the ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... sunset, far and low, On its westward windows dashes Primrose or pomegranate glow; And above, in glimmering splashes, Lilac stars ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... Kenmare, Sneem, Darrynane, to Cahirciveen, and thence towards Killorglin, is harrowing and startling. The whole potato crop is literally destroyed, while over a very wide surface the oat crop presents an unnatural lilac tinge to the eye; at the same time, in too many instances, the head is found flaccid to the touch, and possessing no substance. The barley crop, too, in many places, exhibits the effect of a powerful blight. In some places, also, where turnips have been grown, they present—as, indeed, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... from such lips: I felt rooted to the saddle—a sensation which, with me, was sufficiently rare. I looked round in helpless bewilderment, at the shimmering Serpentine, and the white houses in Park Lane gleaming out of a lilac haze, at the cocoa-coloured Row, and the flash of distant carriage-wheels in the sunlight: all looked as usual—and yet, there was I on the back of a horse which had just inquired 'whether I ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... Mocket's lay down a steep hillside, and along the river-bank, under a drift of coloured leaves, and by the sound of falling water. Mocket dwelt in a small house, in a small green yard with a broken gate. A red creeper mantled the tiny porch, and lilac bushes, clucked under by a dozen hens, hedged the grassy yard. As the hunter and Lewis Rand approached, a little girl, brown and freckled, barefoot and dressed in linsey, sprang up from the stone before the gate, and began to ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... doorstep he met little Susy, with her lilac pinafore in flames. She had been trying to reach something from the mantelpiece, and had climbed up on the unsteady old fender. There was no guard in front of the open fire, and the draught had drawn her pinafore towards the bars and set ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... blue now, with crests of foam; the island coast opposite was a shadowy streak stretched across the feet of the sun. Oh, it was beautiful to stand at that open window in the freshness, listening to the robin on the bare lilac bush a few yards away, to the quarrelling of the impudent sparrows on the path below, to the wind in the branches of the trees, to all the happy morning sounds of nature. A joyous feeling took possession of her heart, a sudden overpowering delight in what are called common things—mere earth, sky, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... utter sighs, and even cries, moving convulsively their heads, arms, and legs. Then a man suddenly made his appearance; no one had seen him enter; you might have fancied he came out of the tank. He was dressed in a lilac robe, and held in his hand a long wand, which he several times dipped into the mysterious tank; then he made a sign, the doors opened, and twenty robust servants entered, and seizing such of the patients as began ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... of my voice the hounds leapt back; and, on a traveller's oath, I verily believe, once, and how swiftly, and how fearfully and brightly, those childish lids unsealed their light as of lilac that lay behind, glanced briefly, fleetingly, on one who had ventured so far, ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... come to Lloydsboro Valley earlier than usual. Red-bud trees glowed everywhere, and wild plum and dogwood and white lilac were all in bridal array. At The Locusts the giant trees which arched over the long avenue had not yet hung out their fragrant pennons of bloom, but old Colonel Lloyd, sauntering down towards the gate, was clad ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Sir David Basset or Dame Deborah dream that the lame pedlar-woman, in the lilac print dress and white mob-cap, whom they passed in the park, and who curtsied so low as the great coach lumbered past, was the Royalist leader whom everyone was searching for; neither did they dream that Millicent, who was waiting so demurely on the steps to ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the feverfew and stocks, The guelder-rose and hollyhocks; Outside my trellised porch a tree Of lilac frames a sky ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... garden is laid out in the modern landscape style. Fences carefully concealed, a deep fringe of hard wood trees on one side, a trim lilac hedge on the other, and a plantation of shrubs, roan, barbary, sumac, lilac and young maple. On the side west of the house was observable, next to a rustic seat, in the fork of a white birch, an archaeological monument made with the key-stone of Prescott ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... from Mr. Edwards's. This stood up gauntly white until near the orchard, where it was completely hidden by the high, feathery stalks of the asparagus-bed, by a row of great sunflowers, now heavy and bent with their disk-like seed-pods, and by a clump of lilac bushes. As his eye traveled along the white expanse, he gave a quick start, and his face ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... the world. Into which peaceful Eden stole at this point the serpent, and, as is usual, in the shape of woman. Little Eleanor, long-legged, slim, fresh as a flower in her crisp, faded pink dress, came around the corner. In one hot hand she carried, by their heads, a bunch of lilac and pink and white sweet peas. It cost her no trouble at all, and about half a minute of time, to charge the atmosphere, so full of sweet peace and rest, with a saturated solution of bitterness and disquiet. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... said the lady, as she trilled out a little tune by whistling until it sounded like a bird in the lilac bush. "Have you any apples?" she asked, puckering ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... vain efforts to lure down the elusive creature. The haze of very early morning pervades the garden which is the scene of their faint aspiration. One cannot see very clearly there. The ladies' furbelows are blurred against the foliage, and the lilac-bushes loom through the air as though they were white clouds full of rain. One cannot see the ladies' faces very clearly. One guesses them, though, to be supercilious and smiling, all with the curved lips and the raised eyebrows of Experience. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... edge, swathed in a lilac silk kimona—delicate relic of school days. Her bandaged feet, crossed, dangled above the rag-rug on the floor; her slim, tanned fingers were interlaced over the book on ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... us seemed changed, and assumed a gloomy aspect. A wood of aspen trees which we were passing seemed to be all in a tremble, with its leaves showing white against the dark lilac background of the clouds, murmuring together in an agitated manner. The tops of the larger trees began to bend to and fro, and dried leaves and grass to whirl about in eddies over the road. Swallows and white-breasted swifts came darting around the britchka and even ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... indeed; but still, after all, notwithstanding the expensiveness and beauty of the decorations which adorned it, I do not know that Jennie enjoyed it any more than she did a little seat that she had under some lilac bushes, near the brook at the bottom of her father's garden, ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... the lilac-scented air Descends the tranquil moon! Like thistle-down The vapory clouds float in the peaceful sky; And sweetly from yon hollow vaults of shade The nightingales breathe out their souls in song. And hark! what songs of love, what soul-like ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... pale gilded branches Stiff and high in the wind. On the lawns Patches of gray-lilac snow Melt in the hollows of the terraces. The park is an ocean of fawn-colored plush, Ridged and faded. Sharp and delicate, My shadow moves after me on the rumpled grass— Grass like a pillow worn by a ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... writes his name Franz Florimond. We always had so many flowery names mixed up with our olla-podrida talk. Your name is flowery too. I used to say Mamita would have called you Lady Viola; but violet colors and lilac colors are cousins, and they both suit your complexion and ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... than the charm, quieter and less analytic, of any sort of complete and out-of-the-common-run sort of house. To sit in a room like the one I was sitting in, with the figures of the tapestry glimmering grey and lilac and purple in the twilight, the great bed, columned and curtained, looming in the middle, and the embers reddening beneath the overhanging mantelpiece of inlaid Italian stonework, a vague scent of rose-leaves and spices, put into the china bowls by the hands of ladies ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... got the lilac bushes and cut off a part of the roots while the other men were digging the holes, and they planted the lilac bushes in the holes, but they didn't do it so carefully as they had with the other kinds ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... of wild plum, and settled herself on her boulder with a bound. Stretching forth one of her steel-tipped pads toward the south she seemed to draw the purple distance as one draws a lady by her scarf. The thin lilac-tinted haze parted on the gorge of the Rio Grande, between the white ranges. The walls of the canon were scored with deep perpendicular gashes as though the river had ripped its way through them with its claws. Yellow pines balanced on the edge ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... ivy is green again, the chestnut-tree is full of leaf, the Persian lilac beside the little fountain is flushed with red and just about to flower; through the wide openings to the right and left of the old College of Calvin I see the Saleve above the trees of St. Antoine, the Voirons above the hill of Cologny; while the three flights of steps ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... leaves become all green, while those that live on bark become brown? How have the desert animals become yellow and the Arctic animals white? Why were the necessary variations always present? How could the green locust lay brown eggs, or the privet caterpillar develop white and lilac-coloured lines on its ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... of the 10c the stamps of this issue provide but little variation in shade but the 10c more than makes up for this lack in the others for it exists in almost every conceivable tint from bright red-lilac through shades of violet and brown to a brown so intense as to be catalogued as a ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... express harmony and serenity,—have not yet, that I am aware, had reared to them their merited poetic monument, unless, indeed, Whitman has done this service for the hermit thrush in his "President Lincoln's Burial Hymn." Here the threnody is blent of three chords, the blossoming lilac, the evening star, and the hermit thrush, the latter playing the most prominent part throughout the composition. It is the exalting and spiritual utterance of the "solitary singer" that calms and consoles the poet when the powerful shock of the President's assassination ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... could get you some flowers," she said eagerly, "some out of our garden. Oh, we had such lots there, such lovely ones, roses, and violets, jessamine and lilac, and may—oh, all sorts. I had a garden of my own, too. Oh, I'd love to take you to granny's, and let you see ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... temple in a more tenantable state of repair, above a river crossed by a broken bridge, the ragged arches strongly reflected in the water; at the back, in the centre of the horizontal line (gracefully waved with lilac mountains), was the sun, rising or setting, it was never quite certain which; whilst little ill-drawn, inch-high figures straggled about in the foreground, and furnished a name to the picture: AEneas and Dido, Venus and Adonis, Cephalus and Aurora, Apollo ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... the ashes that were all that was left of the home. Men were playing a hose into it and every time they moved the stream, here or there, a great hiss and cloud of vapor came up. Some one had hung the Judge's straw hat on a lilac bush and there it advertised itself. But the Judge drew himself up and stiffened his body and set his teeth, as he looked at that scene, and I knew then he would not break down again, but would play the game he had begun to ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... sat down at her writing-table, and very hurriedly wrote something on some lilac-coloured letter paper on which the initials of her name had been stamped; this she folded up, sealed it and sent it by her butler to ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... and drew back in the shadow of a tall lilac bush. They were well across the campus and now, at the end of the path, near the gate and not far from Lenox Hall, something moved in and out of the moonlit way. It seemed to cross from the big stone wall and glide into ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... mansions, which still exhibited evidences of taste and culture, even in neglect and decay. Borders of box lined the graveled walks and encircled beautiful flower shrubs, or clusters of japonica, of manifold hues; the mock-orange, the lilac and magnolia tree were blooming luxuriantly, and grew to a remarkable height. What a contrast to the bare gardens we had left at home, amid a cold and cheerless storm. We were now in another zone, in the full bloom of summer. After helping ourselves to roses in ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... later the east wind was still blowing, and the chilled sunshine still feebly shining down upon the nipped lilac and laburnum blossoms. The garden at Walpole Lodge was shorn of half its customary beauty, yet to Helen Romer, pacing slowly up and down its gravel walks, it had never possibly presented a fairer appearance. For Mrs. Romer had won her battle. All that she ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... all the country-side there was no garden so lovely as his. Sweet-william grew there, and Gilly-flowers, and Shepherds'-purses, and Fair-maids of France. There were damask Roses, and yellow Roses, lilac Crocuses and gold, purple Violets and white. Columbine and Ladysmock, Marjoram and Wild Basil, the Cowslip and the Flower-de-luce, the Daffodil and the Clove-Pink bloomed or blossomed in their proper order as the months ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... progress of the baby. When little Evelyn was put into short frocks, and her little, dancing feet were shod with leather instead of wool, Maria felt a sort of delicious wonder, similar to that with which she watched a lilac-bush in the yard when its blossoms ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... he murmured to himself, a little wearily, for he knew where his weakness lay,—an invincible repugnance to the ugly things of life. As he passed on, however, his spirits rose again. He caught a breath of lilac scent from a closed florist's shop. He looked up to the skies, over the housetops, faintly blue, growing clearer every moment. Almost he fancied that he looked again into the eyes of this strange girl, recalled her ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... elsewhere—no other, in fact, than Dobble. He, too, was dressed en militaire, with a frogged coat and spurs; and was walking with a showy-looking, Jewish-faced, black-haired lady, glittering with chains and rings, with a green bonnet and a bird-of-Paradise—a lilac shawl, a yellow gown, pink silk stockings, and light-blue shoes. Three children, and a handsome footman, were walking behind her, and the party, not seeing me, entered the ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... yellowish stalks and blades of bright-green grass were to be seen; the little rivulets glittering in the sunshine, and sweeping clods of earth and tiny chips of wood along with them; the reddish twigs of the lilac, with their swelling buds, which nodded just beneath the window; the fussy twitterings of birds as they fluttered in the bush below; the blackened fence shining wet from the snow which had lately melted off it; and, most of all, the raw, odorous ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... dressed. She had intended dropping in informally on Sibyl Forbes, still an outcast, in spite of her intercession, and wore a gown of dove-colored cashmere and a hat of the same shade with a long lilac feather. ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... quarters of a yard long, half a yard wide; a piece of crimson china ribbon; one piece of gold-colour, one of shaded lilac, and a rug-needle. ...
— The Lady's Album of Fancy Work for 1850 • Unknown
... magazine into the back yard where Freddie was playing with his wheelbarrow under the lilac-bushes. She sat down by the big pear-tree to read, though not forgetting to keep an eye on her little brother's proceedings. Missions seemed as interesting as ever as she read. Presently she saw Evaline coming out of ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... all over again, finding, of course, many things which had escaped us the night before. We saw our first Melocactus, and our first night-blowing Cereus creeping over the rocks. We found our first tropic orchid, with white, lilac, and purple flowers on a stalk three feet high. We saw our first wild pines (Tillandsias, etc.) clinging parasitic on the boughs of strange trees, or nestling among the angular limb- like shoots of the columnar Cereus. We learnt to distinguish the poisonous Manchineel; ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... direct path over the moors. Leaving Princetown railway station upon his left hand he set his face west where the waste heaved out before him dark against a blaze of light from the sky. The sun was setting and a great glory of gold, fretted with lilac and crimson, burned over the distant earth, while here and there the light caught crystals of quartz in the granite boulders and flashed up from the evening ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... business, came in red-handed, and proved a botanist. It was a Woodsia hyperborea—that was the Latin name—and was rare in those parts, he said; but the Herrschaft should come earlier for flowers. July was the month. Then there was geum, and pale blue-fringed campanulas, and rich lilac asters, yellow violets, the white scented wax-flower, arnica and yellow aconite, both excellent medicines; there were thunder-flowers, and blood-drops, and grass of Parnassus, and hundreds more, all cut down by the scythes. There were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... on the arm of our dear Prince?" asked a little fat man, girt in a white satin waistcoat, and a spray of white lilac in his buttonhole. ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... next enclosure did not a magnolia open its hard white flowers against the watery blue of April? And was there not, a little way down the line, a fence foamed over every May be lilac waves of wistaria? Farther still, a horse-chestnut lifted its candelabra of buff and pink blossoms above broad fans of foliage; while in the opposite yard June was sweet with the breath of a neglected syringa, which ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... eyes. At other times she was brooding in her room or sitting in her garden, where she was now, and where she found most comfort—the garden that Hale had planted for her-where purple asters leaned against lilac shrubs that would flower for the first time the coming spring; where a late rose bloomed, and marigolds drooped, and great sunflowers nodded and giant castor-plants stretched out their hands of Christ, And while June ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... was the kitchen yard, a gray and gritty expanse, with never a tree or bush to shade it except the lilac hedge bounding it on the garden side, and one sickly peach tree growing at the corner of "the house." Three hens and one rooster were scratching about the flat stone at ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... to thirty in the large ant-heaps which one constantly meets with in the bush, and which when rifled, in January or February, yield a rich harvest of these eggs. A shrub very much like dogwood, with a lilac flower rather like a large thistle, but with the leaves turned back, was plentiful, and is a valuable product, horses being able to live upon it for many weeks without water, though it does not look especially succulent. We saw beautiful parrots ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... schoolroom for nearly four years now, ever since her seventeenth birthday, and she knew every feature of the big bare room by heart, and every detail of the length of village street that the high, uncurtained windows commanded. She had stood at this window in all weathers: when locust and lilac made even ugly little Weston enchanting, and all the windows were open to floods of sweet spring air; when tie dry heat of autumn burned over the world; when the common little houses and barns, and the bare trees, ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... (At the end of the north aisle, in the chapel beside the choir.) Another picture painted chiefly for the sake of the included portraits, and remarkably cold in general conception; its color has, however, been gay and delicate, lilac, yellow, and blue being largely used in it. The flag which our Saviour bears in his hand, has been once as bright as the sail of a Venetian fishing-boat, but the colors are now all chilled, and the picture is rather crude than brilliant; a mere wreck of what it ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... startled by the appearance of the young lady. Laura had marked the outburst of warm weather by the donning of a white dress and her summer hat. In one hand she held a bunch of lilac that she had been gathering for her stepmother; in the other a volume of a French life of St. Theresa that she had taken an hour before from Augustina's table. In anticipation of the great favor promised ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his hands out of his pockets, picked a leaf from a lilac bush beside the path, and put the stem of the leaf seriously into a corner of his mouth, before finding anything to say. "Well—well, all right," he finally responded. "I'll tell you—if ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... minute," Lavretsky cried after her unexpectedly. "I have a great favour to beg of your mother and you; to pay me a visit in my new abode. You know, I have had a piano sent over; Lemm is staying with me; the lilac is in flower now; you will get a breath of country air, and you can return the same day—will you consent?" Lisa looked towards her mother; Marya Dmitrievna was assuming an expression of suffering; ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... shouldn't swear at all, or, if they did, should break their oaths as gracefully as I did mine, when I whispered it was "so good of him, to be willing I should stay in the cottage where I had always lived, and where every rose-tree and lilac knew me!" And that was true, too. But not all the truth. What need to be telling truths all the time? And what had women tongues for, but to hold them sometimes? Perhaps "he," too, would have preferred a journey to Europe, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... glace silk, shaded in light green and lilac. The skirt trimmed with four rows of fringe of green and lilac silk intermingled. The corsage low and plain, with a pelerine which passes along the back and shoulders, and is brought down to the front of the waist in a point. This pelerine is edged with two rows ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... it out through a back window into a lilac bush, and we'll pick it up at our leisure. You may not have noticed that this old pile is built up against an abandoned mill. We shall loiter back to the inn carrying the loot quite boldly with us. You might lug it yourself as ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... attent, Waiting in vain for one blest sound— The little frock, with lilac scent, That used to whisper up the stair; Then in my arms with one wild bound— Your lips, your eyes, your hair. Never the south wind through the rose, Brushing its petals with soft hand, Made such sweet talking as your clothes, ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... Freddie went. He looked out, and as he did so, he saw something shaggy and black walk under the lilac bush in front of ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Meadow Brook • Laura Lee Hope
... out of the window. Little windows, and the lilac and green of the garden were reflected ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... we have changed from what we were, we're not the carefree lot we were, Our hearts are filled with sorrow now and grave concern and pain, But it is good to see once more the budding lilac tree once more, And find the constant roses here to comfort ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... little time for enamel-work or leaf-embroidery. Her sisters bring the gifts—Spring, wind-flowers, Solomon's-Seal, Dutchman's-breeches, Quaker-ladies, and trailing arbutus, that smells as divinely as the true May. Autumn has golden-rod and all the tribe of asters, pink, lilac, and creamy white, by the double armful. When these go the curtain comes down, and whatever Powers shift the scenery behind, work without noise. In tropic lands you can hear the play of growth and decay at the ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... pink and white beauty, but with rose all deadened into white, like a sick pink pearl. Her pink and white character had also suffered the effacement of the years. She was as dainty and as negative as a piece of Dresden China. She loved to dress in lilac and old lace: and that is how I painted her, regarding her as a bit of exquisite decoration to be treated flat like a panel of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... found this afternoon upon the Rocky river, in full flower: it was a tall slender stalked bush, about six or eight feet high, growing almost in the bed of the river, with leaves like a geranium, and fine delicate lilac flowers about an inch and a half in diameter; here, too, we found the first gum-trees seen upon any of the watercourses for many miles, as all those we had recently crossed, traversed open plains which were quite without either trees or shrubs of ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... pace, he looked up, eagerly, into the dumfounded man's face, tail waving, dark eyes aglint with expectation. It had been hard to locate the weapon, in all that tangle of lilac-stems. It had been harder to carry the awkwardly heavy thing all the way back, in his mouth, without dropping it. But, if this was the plaything the Master had chosen, Lad was only too willing ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... a snake to be poisonous which was not so. However, we had the mata hari, sun-snake, black and coral colour, and a metallic green flat-headed creature, Fortrex trigonocephalus, which were venomous enough. I once had a little flower-snake for a pet. It was beautifully marked with green and lilac, and used to catch flies climbing about the room; but one day it mounted to the top of a high door, the wind blew the door to, and my pretty snake was thrown to the ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... shrill vociferation of his name came from the gooseberry garden without. She had grown suspicious at his long disappearance, and had leapt to the conclusion that he had climbed over the wall behind the sheltering screen of the lilac bushes; she was now engaged in energetic and rather hopeless search for him among the artichokes and ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... It appeared that he was getting up. Horribly depressed and sorry for him, Kenny went to sleep again. When he awoke the sun was laughing iridescently from meadow trails of rain. The fragrance of wet pine came in through the barn window. The lilac in the garden was ready to flower. Kenny longed to be off. Nevertheless he breakfasted at some length in the farm kitchen and paid so handsomely in coin and grace that there was ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... restful mysteriousness of a forest glade, suggested by the stems and the leaves of the plants ranged along the balustrade of the open side. In the streaks of light falling through the open doors of the reception-rooms, the blossoms, white and red and pale lilac, came out vivid with the brilliance of flowers in a stream of sunshine; and Mrs. Gould, passing on, had the vividness of a figure seen in the clear patches of sun that chequer the gloom of open glades ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... certain birthday of father's, when mother had determined to be gay. It was just before supper. Cyril, clad in his first brief trousers, was to knock at the study door with a little purple nosegay in his hand, to show his father that the lilac had bloomed. Olive, in crimson cashmere, was to stand near, and when the door opened, present him with her own picture of the cat and her new kittens; while mother, looking so pretty, with her own gift all ready ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... years, Lydia did not reply, but went to the window and gazed absently at the tiny patch of flowers beyond the door—the two lilac trees in full blossom, the thread of glistening river, and behind it all, the northern wilderness. Just below the window stood the missionary and the ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... herself in her dressing-room, which was filled with baskets of orchids, bouquets of roses, and bunches of lilac, when a telegram was brought to her. She tore it open. It was a message from The Hague containing ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... think, more than a fortnight of severe weather, and in March the sun was positively summer hot. I am out of doors almost all day. Our spring, however, has made up for the lenient winter, by being as cold and capricious as possible, and at this moment hardly a fruit-tree is in blossom or a lilac-tree in bud; and looking abroad over the landscape, 'tis only here and there that I can detect faint symptoms of that exquisite green haze which generally seems to hang like a halo over the distant woods at this season. I do not remember so backward a spring since I have been in this country. I ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... swelled across the blossoms of the spring, which were lighting up every shabby corner and hillside garden. Through this pleasant confusion of past and present, of spring-time scattering blossoms upon the graves, of old ivy walks and iron bars imprisoning past memories, with fragrant fumes of lilac and of elder, one could picture to oneself, as in a waking dream, two figures advancing from the corner house with the ivy walls—distinct, sedate—passing under the old doorway. I could almost see the lady, carefully dressed in many fine muslin ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... lands which you have enjoyed in your much-travelled experience. The Antipodes, Canada, the United States, Norway, Belgium before the tragedy—you make it all just as vivid to us as those cold spring days on the rolling Tay, the glowing time of lilac and Mayfly, or the serene evenings when the roach float dips sweetly at every swim. Whatever one's mood, salmon or gudgeon, spinning bait or black gnat, Middlesex or Mississippi, your pages have something ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... The lilac bloom faded from mountain and woodland; already meadow and pasture lay veiled under the thickening dusk. The last day-bird had piped its sleepy "lights out"; bats were flying high. When the moon rose the first ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... the country, some robins built a nest in a lilac-bush in the garden. One day I looked in the nest, and saw one little green egg. Two or three days after, I saw three more little green eggs, and pretty soon what did I see there but four ...
— The Nursery, June 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 6 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... and following her eyes I saw behind the high, green hedge bordering the road on which we were walking some red roofs rising, half hidden by the masses of white cherry blossom which hung over them. A cottage was there boasting a garden in front, a garden that was filled with lilac and laburnum not yet in bloom; filled to overflowing, for the lilac bulged all over the hedge in purple bunches and the laburnum poured its young leaves down on it. A tiny lawn, rather long-grassed and not innocent of daisies, took up the centre of the ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... stranger was, and wherever he was, he knew how to tease Miss Kitty Cat. Now he howled at her from the thicket of lilac bushes on the edge of the flower garden. Now he mewed at her from the hedge in front of the farmhouse. And though Miss Kitty Cat tried to get a glimpse of him, she couldn't see anything that even faintly resembled ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... apple trees there was a platform built around it with a flight of steps leading up to it. It was what the children called the apple tree house. Here Clara and Alice were playing dolls. Peggy could seldom be induced to play dolls. She ran up the steps and made a dash for Clara. Clara, in a lilac frock, was sitting primly on one of the wooden chairs with which the platform was furnished. Her hair was a darker brown than Alice's, and her face had the pallor of the city child who has lived indoors all winter. She was rather a stiff little girl in ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... shuts out the sea and hides from the Hermit the glory of the sundown. But we can behold its effects on Mt. Sanneen, on the clouds above us, on the glass casements in the villages far away. The mountains in the east are mantled with etherial lilac alternating with mauve; the clouds are touched with purple and gold; the casements in the distance are scintillating with mystical carbuncles: the sun is setting in the Mediterranean,—he is waving his farewell to ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Jean manifested undisguised satisfaction when the dim still-room precincts were fairly left behind, and they got into the pleasant old walled-in garden, where the yellow afternoon's sun was lying on the opening fruit-blossom, and bringing delicious scents out of the newly-blown lilac and hawthorn. She kept pulling Geordie's corduroys, to draw his attention to all that captivated her as they walked along the broad gravel walk. This was certainly a much pleasanter way home than along ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... books, volumes sewn in familiar covers, were taken out and put back hopeless: they had no charm; they could not comfort. Is this something new, this pamphlet in lilac? I had not seen it before, and I re-arranged my desk this very day—this very afternoon; the tract must have been introduced within the last hour, while we ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... responsibility for his poetic images and his moral reflections, blossoms unknown to my naturalist's garden; but I can swear to the truth of all he says, for it corresponds with what I see each summer on the lilac-trees of ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... the smell of clover came with the springtime breezes from the meadow yonder! The red-headed woodpecker heard them at play, and she clambered out of the hollow maple and dodged hither and thither as if she, too, shared their merriment. Yes, and the yellow thistle-bird, whose nest was in the blooming lilac-bush, came and perched in the pear-tree and sang a little song about the dear little eggs in her cunning home. And there was a flower in the fence-corner,—a sweet, modest flower that no human eyes but the little boy's had ever seen,—and she sang ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... and swing me in! Trees are bare, but birds begin Twittering to the peeping leaves, On the bough beneath the eaves. Wait,—one lilac bud I saw. Icy hillsides feel the thaw. April chased off March to-day; Now I catch ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... weather, as hot as the Italian climate I had lately left. I have never seen so many birds and flowers in my garden. Liszt was playing the piano on the ground floor, and the nightingales, intoxicated with music and sunshine, were singing madly in the lilac-trees around." ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... under a great lilac tree in full purple bloom. She moved to it and sat down, but Nap remained upon his feet, watching ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... the water from the old wheel fell with silvery echo and ran rippling over the stones into the river. Somewhere above the cliff a negro was playing a banjo and far down the river, beside a little cottage torn with shot and shell, but still standing, a mocking-bird was singing in the lilac bushes. ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... The flowering lilac bends its fresh, fragrant clusters over the dead man's head; the swallow again flies past; "quivit! quivit!" Now the men come with nails and hammer; the lid is placed over the corpse, whose head rests on ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... when quite unexpectedly something happened, something utterly amazing and out of the common, and which was to be fraught with entirely unlooked-for consequences. As she put her foot on the first of the steps that led to the side door a figure moved silently from under the shade of a lilac bush close by, and, tapping her upon the arm, drew her aside ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the twilight Here in the abbey close, Pouring from your lilac-bough Note on pebbled note, Why do you sing so, Making your song so bright. Swelling to a throbbing curve That ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... and sent a glorious day for the May Day Festival. It was an early spring and everything that could do honor to the day had burst into blossom: daffodils that bordered the lawns of the campus houses nodded their delicate yellow heads in the morning sunlight; clumps of lilac bushes formed bouquets of purple and white and from an occasional old apple tree showers of pink petals ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... asked Phillis, trying to peep between the lilac-bushes, but failing to discover more than the white glimmer ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... Prince was young and had lately come to live in the doctor's square house, with the three peaked windows in the roof, and the tall box borders and lilac bushes in its neat front yard, Oldfields was just beginning to wake from a fifty years' architectural sleep, and rub its eyes, and see what was thought about a smart little house with a sharp gabled roof, and much scalloping of its edges, which a new store-keeper had seen fit to build. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and awfully well, too, to his own singing. Mamma, who was attired in a flowing pink dressing-gown and a black hat trimmed with lilac, became suddenly emulous, and with her spade under her arm joined in the jig. This lasted for about a minute, and was a never-to-be-forgotten sight. They skipped round the hall, they changed sides, they swept ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... far back, then?" said Rebecca, wishing to appear interested, but really intent upon a new sprout at the foot of the lilac-bush. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... much mischief during the remainder of the day, except chewing up the dish-rags which were hung on the lilac bush to dry, and all the ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... like an Italian one, and for the last few days—at least the last four—without the slightest particle of cloud, and the sun blazing. With this, not a breath of air. The mountains look quite crimson and lilac, and everything glows with the setting sun. The evenings are quite a relief. Really one cannot undertake expeditions, the heat is so great. We thought of you, and wished you could be here; you would ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... with negro servants at their bridles, bare-legged water-carriers with hairy goat-skins slung over their shoulders, and Arab women in a heap of veils, cloaks, mufflings, all of the same ashy white, the caftans of clutched children peeping through in patches of old rose and lilac and pale green. ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... rocks lay upon the yellow sands and darkened, near the shore, the translucent sea. At the entrance of the black caverns the spray leaped up on the advance of every wave,—not in threatening but as if at play. Far away over the lilac and green waters arose the craggy peaks of Skye, their projections and hollows in the softest light and shadow. As the sea-birds rose from their rest upon the billows, opposite the sun, diamond drops fell from their ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... panel with the pale, proud face of old General Fotherington's dead wife painted on it, which every midnight he was once believed to return and visit. But when other parts of the house had fallen into hopeless disrepair, Helen had taken Tommy's little hatchet, and had felled the lofty lilac-hedge that obscured all the southern windows of the room, had cleaned the old paint, made good use of a bucket of white-wash, reset the broken glass herself, and then moved chattels and personals into the vacancy, and given it a more homelike appearance than it had worn ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... up, as I feared we should be," Mrs. Peterkin at length ventured to say, finding herself in a lilac-bush by the side of the piazza. She scarcely dared to open her eyes to see ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... take careful note of the locality; blows are exchanged and the rival swains indulge in mild skirmishing on the floor, then shake the dust off their wings and fly away. I find them, opposite my window, in the refreshment-bar of the lilac-bush, whose branches bend with the weight of their scented panicles. Here the Bees get drunk with sunshine and draughts of honey. Those who have had their fill come home and fly assiduously from tube to tube, placing their heads in the ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... fair promise of ripening fruits. The high sloping hills surrounding the fertile vale of Cold Springs were clothed with the blossoms of the gorgeous scarlet enchroma, or painted-cup; the large pure white blossoms of the lily-like trillium; the delicate and fragile lilac geranium, whose graceful flowers woo the hand of the flower-gatherer only to fade almost within his grasp; the golden cyprepedium, or mocassin flower, so singular, so lovely in its colour and formation, waved ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... Wallencamp, when no fresh winds were borne to us from the ocean. The sun shone hot on the stunted cedars. The tides crept in lazily. All one weary afternoon, in the hum and stir of the dusty school-room, little Bessie Sartell—Captain Sartell's youngest, and his darling—sat stringing lilac blossoms together in a chain. She was such a cunning edition of the big Captain. She had the same strong Saxon physique in miniature, the same clear pink and white complexion, eyes hardly more limpidly blue than his, and hair that was sunniest flax, like ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... [lilac] or pipe-tree, so easily propagated by suckers or layers; the flower of the white (emulating both colour and flavor of the orange) I am told is made use of by the perfumers; I should not else have named it among ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... train to Brackenhurst. All the world knows Brackenhurst, of course, the greenest and leafiest of our southern suburbs. It looked even prettier than its wont just then, that town of villas, in the first fresh tenderness of its wan spring foliage, the first full flush of lilac, laburnum, horse-chestnut, and guelder-rose. The air was heavy with the odour of May and the hum of bees. Philip paused a while at the corner, by the ivied cottage, admiring it silently. He was glad he lived there—so very aristocratic! What joy to glide direct, on ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... day he met her on the stairs going to her room. She carried a lilac gown over her arm and a large hat in her hand. She was smiling at the hat. He smiled ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... comfortably back of his head and looked at her. She was gazing out over the Bad Lands to the East. "In the very centre, as a sort of protecting nurse to all the littler flowers," he went on, "is a big lilac bush, and there the bees and humming birds are thick on a warm spring day. There are plenty of birds too, but I didn't know so many of them. They nested everywhere—in the 'big tree,' the orchard, the evergreens, the hedges, and in the long row of maple trees with trunks as big as a barrel and limbs ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... inner door, and Mrs. Petullo, flushed a little to her great becoming in spite of a curl-paper or two, and clad in a lilac-coloured negligee of the charmingest, came into the office with a well-acted start of surprise to find ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... down there among the lilac-bushes, as if somebody were listening to all that was said by the growing crowd on the front-door step, and another whisper went across the walk: "Clint, give him his right ear. The left sticks. I'm afraid I'll pull him off ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... musicians were giving the afternoon concert. Between its two stationary divisions moved a current of promenaders, with some such effect as if the colors of a lovely garden should have liquefied and flowed in mingled rose and lilac, pink and yellow, and white and orange, and all the middle tints of modern millinery. Above on one side were the agreeable bulks of architecture, in the buff and gray of Carlsbad; and far beyond on the other were the upland slopes, with villas ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... old red house was the talisman that brought back to her mind the familiar picture. She wondered if it lay over the hill beyond that rugged road. She closed her eyes and saw the green fields, the mighty balm-of-gilead tree, the lilac bushes, and the dull red walls of the house standing back from the village street, not far from the white-steepled church. She could see it all, plainly. The thought came to her suddenly that it was home. It was the first realization she had of old Hercules Thayer's kindness. ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... a start at the favoured hour of ten. Under the lee of the Quinconces, past the Hotel Richelieu, Villa Richelieu, and the elevated Villa Marguerite, and we were fairly on our way, the air sweetly laden with the scent from the flower-decked fields and the lilac-trees ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... and there was the pure water running by, where she could fill her watering pot, morning, noon and night, and saturate the fibres exposed to the sun's bleaching rays. And there was a thick row of blossoming lilac bushes shading the lower windows the whole breadth of the building, in which innumerable golden and azure-colored birds made their nests, and beguiled the spinster's labors ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... mute depositories of frightfully tragic secrets. One bright spring morning in the very olden time, says the tradition, a Lord of this domain left his castle. It was when the sweet violet first cast its odours on the breeze, when the bright and abundant bloom of the lilac and laburnum gracefully decorated the gardens, and the country was reclad in all the charming freshness of the season. After a short absence, he returned, accompanied by a lovely bride;—but ere long she died. He went again, returning ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... some lilac bushes, she enjoyed the great decorum of the arrest, and heard the dialogue of the two men die away along the path. Soon after, the rolling of a carriage and the beat of hoofs arose in the still air of the night, and passed speedily ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a mile from the Craigie House in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the road leading to the old town of Watertown, is Elmwood, a spacious square house set amongst lilac and syringa bushes, and overtopped by elms. Pleasant fields are on either side, and from the windows one may look out on the Charles River winding its way among the marshes. The house itself is one of a group which before the war for independence belonged to ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... land is a mistake, for, not only is there much rock projecting wherever mountains or rocky capes and islands rise, but the snow seldom looks white, and if carefully looked at will be found to be shaded with many colours, but chiefly with cobalt blue or rose-madder, and all the gradations of lilac and mauve which the mixture of these colours will produce. A White Day is so rare that I have recollections of going out from the hut or the tent and being impressed by the fact that the snow really looked white. When to the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... Just now the lilac is in bloom, All before my little room; And in my flower-beds, I think, Smile the carnation and the pink; And down the borders, well I know, The poppy and the pansy blow ... Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through, Beside the river make for you A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep Deeply ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... "Bill Summers," "I was up to your folkeses house jist two or three days ago. No, there ain't many changes to speak of. The lilac bush by the kitchen window is over a foot higher, and the elm in the front yard died and had to be cut down. And yet it don't seem the same place that ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... to be paid to his father. The empress was very kind to the Mozarts, and sent them costly dresses. 'Would you like to know,' writes Leopold to Hagenauer, his host at Salzburg, 'what Wolferl's (a pet name for Wolfgang) dress is like? It is of the finest cloth, lilac-coloured, the vest of moire of the same colour. Coat and top-coat with a double broad border of gold. It was made for the Hereditary Duke Maximilian Franz.' In the picture which is preserved in the Mozart collection at Salzburg, Mozart is painted in this dress. Wolfgang never showed the least embarrassment ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... paused and were talking together. Mary's high, sweet laugh floated over the flowers, then her voice, a mere murmur. His voice, lower still. Then silence. They had turned back, together, down the lilac walk. ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... know it is very different from Sindbad's. In his valley, there was only a diamond lying here and there; but, in the real valley, there are diamonds covering the grass in showers every morning, instead of dew: and there are clusters of trees, which look like lilac trees; but, in spring, all their blossoms are ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... married folks. Bill, the handsome West Indian black, married my pretty washerwoman Rosalind, and was thought rather assuming because he was asked in church and lawfully married; and she wore a handsome lilac silk gown and a white wreath and veil, and very well she looked in them. She had a child of two years old, which did not at all disconcert Bill; but he continues to be dignified, and won't let her go and wash clothes in the river, because the hot sun makes her ill, and ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... touches coaxing, delicate, And arts that never tire, They tie the rose-trees each to each, The lilac to the brier, Making for graceless things a grace, With steady, ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... the sky, the grass and flowers, and one could see the joy of life sparkling in her eyes. Sometimes she would dart forward to catch some flying creature, crying out as she brought it back: "Look, uncle, how pretty it is! I want to hug it!" And this desire to "hug" flies or lilac blossoms disquieted, angered, and roused the priest, who saw, even in this, the ineradicable tenderness that is always budding in ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... death in life, the ultima linea rerum. It was the last decree, the irrevocable sentence, the absolute end: and I had not yet reached half the Psalmist's span; I had not yet forgotten the lost summer mornings when the breeze scented with lilac came blowing through the casement, bearing with it the sound of ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... to all the things and people in it she had known and lived with, and turn her face to meet new things and new people. Nothing would be familiar to her in that strange world, not even tea-cups with blue rims like these she was washing up for the last time. Everything new, down to the two lilac prints, made longer than ever before, lying at the bottom of the new black box. It was wonderful to think of, and very confusing to the mind. There would even be a new baby to look after. But when Biddy reached this point she smiled securely, for she had no fears about the baby, though ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... termed it, backwards and forwards along the little path under the old elm-tree in front of the summer-house, with its bare branches stretched out like a giant's fingers clutching at the sky, always turning when he got up to the lilac bush and retracing his steps slowly and deliberately, as if anxious to tread in his former footprints in the very centre of the box- ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson |
