"Springtime" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Phoenician rules for navigating the Mediterranean, to keep the Great Bear "ever on the left as he traversed the deep" when sailing from the pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar) to Corfu. Yet such a course taken now would land the traveller in Africa. Odysseus is said in his voyage in springtime to have seen the Pleiades and Arcturus setting late, which seemed to early commentators a proof of Homer's inaccuracy. Likewise Homer, both in the Odyssey [2] (v. 272-5) and in the Iliad (xviii. 489), ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... on every face and illuminated it into all that it might be. The cheerful hours of easy labor vary but do not destroy the pursuit of pleasure and of recreation. Youth in such a Utopia is a very springtime of hope: adult life a busy and cheery activity: and age itself, watching from its shady bench beneath a spreading tree the labors of its children, is but a gentle retrospect from which ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... do to care to waste time in profitless discussion. For it was spring term. Nobody but a Harding girl knows exactly what that means. The freshman is very likely to consider the much heralded event only a pretty myth, until having started from home on a cold, bleak day that is springtime only by the calendar, she arrives at Harding to find herself confronted by the genuine article. The sheltered situation of the town undoubtedly has something to do with its early springs, but the attitude of the ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... said, "I need an airing. Take me out and shake me out! Oh!" he stretched his arms above his head. "Have I been hibernating and is it springtime again?" ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... ago, before the sun learned to shine so brightly, people believed very strange things. Why, even the wisest thought storm clouds were war-maidens riding, and that a wonderful shining youth brought the springtime; and whenever sunlight streamed into the water they said to one another, "See, it is some of the shining gold, some of the magic Rhine-gold. Ah, if we should find the Rhine-gold we would be masters of the world—the whole world;" and ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee
... line 65 this is one of the finest specimens of Anglo-Saxon poetry. It expresses as few poems in English have done the spirit of adventure, the wanderlust of springtime. The author was a remarkable painter of the sea and its conditions. From line 65 to the end the poem consists of a very tedious homily that must surely ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... peaceful was the world! So still, so still. The smoke came curling up here and there through the sweet air of spring, a snowbird tripped along the white coverlet of the earth, and before a Calvary, I saw a peasant kneel and say an Ave as he went to market. There was springtime in the sun, in the smell of the air; springtime everywhere but in my heart, which was all winter. I seemed alone—alone—alone. I felt the tears start. But that was for a moment only, I am glad to say, for I got my courage again, as I did the night ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... stepped toward her. "Eh, laird of Glenfernie, ye gave me a start! I thought ye came out of the ground by the ash-tree!... Wound is healed, and life runs on to another springtime?" ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... light in the saddle, since with one plunge she would hurl thee to the ceiling, if you are not careful. She burns always, and is always longing for male society. Our poor dead friend, the young Sire de Giac, met his death through her; she drained his marrow in one springtime. God's truth! to know such bliss as that of which she rings the bells and lights the fires, what man would not forfeit a third of his future happiness? and he who has known her once would for a second ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... the buried acorn and to make it burst forth from its prison walls, will He leave neglected in the earth the soul of man, made in the image of his Creator? If He stoops to give to the rose-bush, whose withered blossoms float upon the autumn breeze, the sweet assurance of another springtime, will He refuse the words of hope to the sons of men when the frosts of winter come? If matter, mute and inanimate, though changed by the forces of nature into a multitude of forms, can never die, will the imperial spirit of man suffer annihilation when it has paid a brief visit like a ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... airy, ethereal creatures, with delicate peach blow complexions, and very small hands and feet. They seemed to favor all kinds of fluffy and flimsy things; they were explosions of all the colors of the springtime. There were leaves and flowers and fruits and birds in their hats; and there were elaborate filmy veils to hold the hats on. They descended from the motor, and Samuel had glimpses of ribbons and ruffles, of shapely ankles and daintily slippered ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... This little song of springtime was noted from the singing of a Tigua girl of the pueblo of Isleta, N.M., by my honoured and lamented friend and co-worker, Professor John Comfort Fillmore. It tells the story of the semi-arid region where ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... pious daughter, eight years old, with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations of play and village mirth to travel all day long on dusty roads with her afflicted father. For this did God send her a great reward. In the springtime of the year, and whilst yet her own spring was budding, he recalled her to himself. But her blind father mourns forever over her; still he dreams at midnight that the little guiding hand is locked ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... knowledge gained in the springtime of your guileless youth to the foul purpose of bringing desolation to the doors of those you once knew and respected! John! John! is the image of the maiden whom in her morning of beauty and simplicity ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... suspicion, unfriendliness, even dislike, everywhere you go. But, if I must be honest, I will confess that I hate social pastimes. To work and to dream, to travel, to listen to music, to be in England in the springtime, to read, to give of myself to those who most specially need me—if any there be?—that is what I now call happiness, the rest is merely boredom in varying degree. My only regret is that one has generally to live so long to discover what the constituents of happiness ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... "It's springtime now," repeated Peony. "Ow, it's wonderful, seems like as if I was gettin' too much given me, so as I can never repay. But I'm keepin' count, I'm not forgettin'. It ain't long now before I'll pay my debt. Come the middle ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... replied the Prince; "it is a charming and poetic idyl which you present to me. We should flee far from the world, eh? We should go to an unknown spot and try to regain paradise lost. How long would that happiness last? A season during the springtime of our youth. Then autumn would come, sad and harsh. Our illusions would vanish like the swallows in romances, and we should find, with alarm, that we had taken the dream of a day for eternal happiness! Forgive my speaking plain ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... should crave no better end than to fall in a last charge for the King and the good cause. As it is, unless God put some heart into our leaders, the army will melt away like snow upon a dyke in the springtime, and William will have an open road to London and the throne of England. He may have mair trouble and see some bloodshed before he lays his hand on the auld crown of Scotland. When I may get awa to the North countrie I know ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... laugh pealed out. "Poor sisters! Why, boy, the world is full of love, and not all for the Saints and the Brethren, and it is good—good—good!" She opened her arms wide. "'Tis the devil and the monks who call it evil. Hast thou never seen the birds mate in the springtime, nor ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... long, hot Kansas summer, a glorious autumn, and a short, nippy winter swung by in their appointed seasons. And now the springtime was unrolling in dainty beauty of tender green leaf, and growing grass, and warm, sweet air, and trill of song bird. College students philosophize little in the springtime of their sophomore year. Having learned all that books can ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the gentle springtime away in budding beauty; its silver showers and sunshine, its green meadows and its flowers. So, likewise, passed the summer with its yellow sunlight, its quivering heat and deep, bosky foliage, its long twilights and its mellow nights, through which the frogs croaked ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... let the Springtime pass And Summer in its wake; Ahead are fields of flower and grass All fragrant for your sake: With hearts of joy we say farewell, With laughter, wave and nod, It's always May for us who dwell In seasons close ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... as the springtime Her crown of verdure weaves, And all the trees on all the hills Open their thousand leaves. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... weary work, living through the ever-lengthening days of that cold bleak springtime, waiting for the help which never came, which never could come, so it seemed to us, with that army watching us from the land, and that fleet of ships girding us in ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... embankments, all of which might be made beautiful at no great cost. I need not labour this: here and there by a casual bunch of rhododendrons or of gorse, or by a sheet of primroses or wild hyacinths in springtime, the thing is proved, and has been proved again and again to me by the comments ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... git cross, Massa Benteen, case a laugh don't nebber do nobody no hurt," he cried, shrinking back as if expecting a blow. "But dat's jest wat she am, sah, an' a heap sweeter dan de vi'lets in de springtime, sah." ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... you pass a roadside ditch or pool in springtime, take from it any bit of stick or straw which has lain undisturbed for a time. Some little worm-shaped masses of clear jelly containing specks are fastened to the stick: eggs of a small snail-like shell-fish. One of these specks magnified proves ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... each other, were in a world of their own; a world which knew no hidden household in the purlieus of Mercer; no handsome, menacing, six-year-old child; no faded, jealous woman, overflowing with wearisome caresses! In this springtime world was Edith—vigorous, and sweet, and supremely reasonable;—and never temperamental! And this young man, loving her.... Maurice turned over on his face in the grass; but he did not kiss the earth's "perfumed garment"; he ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the whole winter season in the utmost preparation for the renewal of the war. When the frosts had been melted by the springtime sun, he went back to Sweden and there spent five years in warfare. By dint of this prolonged expedition, his soldiers, having consumed all their provision, were reduced almost to the extremity of emaciation, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... and motionless for some moments, gazing on the scene, and inhaling the sweet balm of the mellow air. It was the soft springtime—the season of flowers, and green leaves, and whispering winds—the pastoral May of Italia's poets: but hushed was the voice of song on the banks of the Tiber—the reeds gave music no more. From the sacred Mount in which Saturn held ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... is a year without Summer, Heart without love is a wood without song. Rise then, revive then, thou indolent comer: Why dost thou lie in the dark earth so long? Rise! ah, thou can'st not! the rose-tree that sheddest Its beautiful leaves, in the Springtime may bloom, But of cold things the coldest, of dead things the deadest, Love buried once, rises not from the tomb. Green things may grow on the hillside and heather, Birds seek the forest and build there and sing. All things revive in the beautiful ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... constructed a hut. Fish were in plenty, wild fowl offered easy mark, and in springtime the ice floes brought down the seal herds. There was no lack of food, but rescue seemed forever impossible; for no fishing craft would approach the demon-haunted isle. A year passed, two years,—a child was born. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... me! I have as much respect for our mother's memory as you have, but if she had not died now, I don't know how far my sacrifices might have gone. Have you noticed in the springtime, brother, how the fallen leaves of yesteryear cover the ground as if to smother all the young; things that are coming out? What do these do? They push aside the withered leaves, or pass right through them, because they ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... again, and standing, as I used to love to stand of an evening, by the stile, under the big elm, and watch how the sunset did redden the white birches, and fade in the water. Oh, it was so nice in the springtime, with the hawthorn that grew on the other ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... them from their very first meeting and they gradually became almost inseparable comrades. Their common love of outdoor life took them on long walks into the woods, from which they came burdened with the first blossoms of the springtime, or they would return from the river, laden with fish, for Steven insisted upon making Pepeeta his companion in every excursion; nor was it hard to persuade her to join him, she was so naturally a creature of the ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... around again. The springtime was coming, and the prairie roads were good and dry, and the doctor had told him he must live in the open air awhile and ride and walk and drive. He stood in no want of "mounts," for three or four of his cavalry friends were ready to lend him a saddle-horse ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... yet she had struggled on under the burden for four years—four long years this spring; but even at this late day, she was overcome with a feeling of homesickness, as poignant as it had been in her first Canadian springtime. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... way of repairing roads, Al. They dig the dirt out of the gutters in the springtime and fill up the rut holes, and then the next spring do the same thing over again, from 'generation to generation,' as the good Book says. I'm satisfied myself," he continued, "that our county will never go ahead until we begin putting down good roads. I was telling our ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... Swinburne, nor Brooke, nor any other poet ever sounded the heights and depths and glory of Youth as did Seeger. He sang it as he breathed it and lived it, and just as naturally. His singing of it was as rhythmic as breathing, and as sweet as the first song of an oriole in springtime. In his fifth sonnet, a form in which he loved to write and of which he was a master, he sings youth in ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... sun shone bright and warm; and all the little world of Wildbad was alive and merry in the genial springtime. Now and again heavy wagons, with black-faced carters in charge, rolled by the window, bearing their precious lading of charcoal from the forest. Now and again, hurled over the headlong current of the stream that runs through the town, great lengths of timber, loosely strung together in interminable ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... hawthorn takes away Heaven: all the spring falls dumb, and all the soul Sinks down in man for sorrow. Night and day Forego the joy that made them one and whole. The change that falls on every starry spray Bids, flower by flower, the knell of springtime toll. ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... pound of Aqua Mellis in the Springtime of the Year, warm a little of it every morning when you rise in a Sawcer, and tie a little Spunge to a fine Box combe, and dip it in the water and therewith moisten the roots of the hair in Combing it, and it will grow long and thick and curled ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... of Allan Water, When the sweet Springtime did fall, Was the miller's lovely daughter, The fairest of them all. For his bride a soldier sought her, And a winning tongue had he: On the banks of Allan Water, None so ...
— Old Ballads • Various
... someone, something, more responsive to my young feelings than essays on magnetism, and a man, father though he was, immersed in demonstrations and problems. It was then that this distant picture in the days of the fragrant and reviving springtime, filled me with unutterable and ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... springtime appear longer and more wearisome. We counted every day, and were disgusted with March for having thirty-one of them. What greatly increased our impatience and the splendour of our anticipation was ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... tin can in his hand. — Let you go asleep, and not have us destroyed. MARY — lying back sleepily. — Don't mind him, Sarah Casey. Sit down now, and I'll be telling you a story would be fit to tell a woman the like of you in the springtime of the year. SARAH — taking the can from Michael, and tying it up in a piece of sacking. — That'll not be rusting now in the dews of night. I'll put it up in the ditch the way it will be handy in the morning; and now we've that done, Michael Byrne, I'll go along with you and welcome ...
— The Tinker's Wedding • J. M. Synge
... the winter came and was gone again, and another springtime was at hand, with its new life stirring in blade and twig and branch, and its mystical call to the hearts ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... Tressa saw him go without a worry in the world but that he would return too soon. Where only the three of them lived it was almost impossible for the two lovers to creep away by themselves. Even a sympathetic daddy becomes a burden in the springtime ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... the viscountess—the viscount is dead—washes off the walnut juice, dresses in best array, is seen and recognised by Aucassin, they are married with great pomp, and are happy ever after. A dear little innocent story, fresh and sweet with the springtime bloom of early literature, withal full of curious pictures of the feelings of the time relative to ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... five days which have passed since the National Festival, the heat has increased by three degrees. We are in full summer now, and begin to feel weary; all have lost their fine rosy color of springtime; necks and legs are growing thin, heads droop and eyes close. Poor Nelli, who suffers much from the heat, has turned the color of wax in the face; he sometimes falls into a heavy sleep, with his head on his copy-book; ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... blooms as with springtime's hue; Uncounted bloom the roses, the golden world Seems wrapt in peace; oh, bear me thither, Purple-wrought clouds! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... pushed back the thick quilt, and began to observe the garment on the so sweet and smooth, so soft and graceful body. She had kept on an under garment, but her heart was filled with Springtime thoughts, and she offered no ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... 4aabb, 5ca: A love-lorn maiden's warning to her sex not to be deceived, as she, by false men in springtime ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... "Ah, fickle Springtime, it's just like a woman!" said Uncle Tooter, with a deep-drawn sigh that must have come all the way up ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... are his own work; and their exact date it is impossible to determine. Part of his book was composed in 1426, but one at least of the carols was probably written in the last half of the fourteenth century. They seem indeed to be the later blossomings of the great springtime of English literature, the period which produced Chaucer and Langland, an innumerable company of minstrels and ballad-makers, and the mystical poet, Richard Rolle ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... reconciliation and good feeling. England was united in a heroic queen whom all sects, ranks, and parties idolized. The whole country exulting in its new sense of freedom and power became a fairyland of youth, springtime, ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... first year. The five months spent at Fort Mandan did not drag. The best part of the winter's work lay in the attitude which was taken in dealing with the Indians. In every particular of behavior, the strictest integrity was observed. An Indian is as ready as any one to recognize genuineness. Before springtime, the Mandans and Minnetarees knew ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... was young?" he answered. "My dear, I am young now. I shall always be young in the springtime. I shall never be old except when I ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... full, because she had something in common, even in repose, with a projectile, of great size, loaded and ready for use. That indeed, to Susie's romantic mind, announced itself as half the charm of their renewal—a charm as of sitting in springtime, during a long peace, on the daisied, grassy bank of some great slumbering fortress. True to her psychological instincts, certainly, Mrs. Stringham had noted that the "sentiment" she rejoiced in on her old schoolmate's part was all a matter of ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... towards the stranger, my eyes roamed over the hillside to discover which of my lambs had strayed:—Rosamond, Cowslip, Eglantine and Gillyflower—I could see them all safe with their dams, and many more besides. All the lambs that springtime I had named after the flowers that I hoped to plant another year in the garden of that cot beside the stream. And all the flowers I could see and name were safe beside their dams, as I leapt down the hillside. Nay, Periwinkle was missing! Periwinkle was ever a ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... it might be, nor so melancholy as I strove to make it. Frankly, I was a trifle homesick this morning. There was something in the air which recalled to me the Loire in the springtime." ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... whose cottages, for a wonder in this village, stood in a row; and amongst scraps of her talk which were repeated to me I heard how her little brother—only five years old, but strong at throwing stones—threw at a girl playmate and knocked out one of her eyes. That happened in the springtime. In the autumn of the same year a mishap, if possible more shocking at the moment, befell another child in that row of cottages. A man there one evening was trimming a low hedge. His tool was a fag-hook—well sharpened, for he was one of the ablest men in the village. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... of the primitive Chaldeans, the stock whence Israelites, Babylonians, Assyrians, and other Semitic communities sprang, was in the low-lying territory surrounding the Persian gulf. During the rainy seasons these lands were flooded by the overflow of the great rivers. The sun of springtime, rising upon this mass of waters which stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see, drew forth from their bosom the life and beauty of summer flowers and fruit. From observation of this regularly recurring phenomenon ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... considerable distance it could plainly be seen that he was behaving with remarkable agility for one so heavy. Repeatedly his pursuers headed him off, but he rushed past them, seemingly possessed by the blind sense of direction that guides the homing pigeon or the salmon in its springtime run. He was headed ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... of the night listening to the growth of her half-starved heart. Oh, but there was a warmth there now. . . .! Springtime and the moon in flood. What new leaves are these which the trees put forth? Bird, singing at the peep of morn, where gottest thou thy song? Be still, be still, thou stranger, fluttering a wing at my breast. . ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... suspected, however, that there should be a semicolon after "Ver," and that "Merry springtime's harbinger, with her bells dim," refers to a totally different flower—the snowdrop, to wit. And I have lately learnt from Dr. Grosart, who has carefully examined the 1634 edition (the only early one), that ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Barrier hereabouts, would strain the ponies' legs and break the hearts of the dogs. Scott thought all this out and certainly overcame preliminary difficulties by getting so much pony food, provision, and paraffin out to One Ton Camp and Corner Camp. He felt the benefit next springtime. This second little run out is not worth describing; we sighted Bowers's party coming back with the five ponies whilst we were camped one night, and we noted that they were travelling very quickly, which proved all was well ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... Shamus be springtime grew betther, And a trouble came into his mind; And he'd take himself off to the village, And be leavin' ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... and day. When she had talked with her uncle a short time before, the effects of her sleeplessness and anguish had been plainly apparent. But there, within that room, her color coming to her face, her eyes shining with excitement and emotion, she looked as fresh and as beautiful as the springtime without. ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... replied Marcia, boldly; "that you may save your soldiers and your allies; that they may lie in rest and luxury, and that, ere springtime, the cities of the Latin Name, yes, truly, and the very rabble of Rome, shall come to you on their knees for leave to bear the horseheads along the Sacred Way, up the ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... window, after reading the account of this accident. She might have been just on the other side of the glass, looking in at him—and then he thought of her as the pale figure of a woman, seen yet unseen, flying through the air, beside the train, over the fields of springtime green and through the woods that were just sprouting out their little leaves. He closed his eyes and saw her as she had been long ago. He saw the brown-eyed, brown-haired, proud, gentle, laughing girl he had known when first ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... rippleless and the mountains are bathed in a rosy flood. But for all that, in other ways—in flower-clothed slopes, in luxurious valleys, in winding rivers and foaming cascades—the Pyrenees present pictures that, with the freshness of springtime to aid them, cannot ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... the glow of your hearth and your board The springtime for us was revived and restored, And everyone blossomed, from hostess to guest, In story and sentiment, wisdom and jest; And even the bard like a robin must sing— And, sure, after that, who could ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... all in all, it must be accounted a blessing. Like the falling of the leaves, it touches the heart with a pleasing sadness,—a sadness more delicious, if one is born to enjoy it, than all the merry-making of springtime. And even for the most unsentimental of naturalists the autumnal season has many a delightful hour. The year is almost done; but for the moment the whole feathered world is in motion, and the shortest walk may show him the choicest of rarities. Thanks to the passing of the birds, his local studies ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... calm, Bultitude, or I shall leave you. Listen to reason. You are here for your good. Youth, it has been beautifully said, is the springtime of life. Though you may not believe it, you will never be happier than you are now. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... Seared grass curls firmly over tender sprigs, And my rose bush there curves its brown thorned twigs. Beneath my window, tulip bulbs lay snug, Quite safe and warm in earthy winter rug. All nature resting for a springtime gain, And quiet gray tones soothe ...
— Some Broken Twigs • Clara M. Beede
... themselves rather rigidly to this diet. Here the variability of the sparrow again gives him the advantage. He may have the family fondness for seeds, but in their absence he can be content with almost anything edible. In the early springtime, when the seeds of last year are gone and those of the new year have not yet been produced, the sparrow is not averse to eating young buds from the trees. At this time he is not unlikely to eat our sprouting lettuce and peas. It is easy to be severe on him in this matter; ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... leafage, the June morning sunlight came in at the open window by the boy's bed, under the green shades, across the shadowy, white room, and danced a noiseless dance of youth and freshness and springtime against the wall opposite. The boy's head stirred on his pillow. He spoke a quick word from out of his dream. "The key?" he said inquiringly, and the sound of his own voice awoke him. Dark, drowsy eyes opened, and he stared half seeing, at the ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... other, hear the gipsies singing; over all of us is the glamour cast. Some resist and sit resolutely by the fire. Most go and are brought back again, like Lady Cassilis. A few, of the tribe of Waring, go and are seen no more; only now and again, at springtime, when the gipsies' song is afloat in the amethyst evening, we can catch their voices in ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in Kentucky, gay, irresponsible, Southern springtime, that comes bursting impetuously through highways and byways, heedless of possible frosts and impossible fruitions. A glamour of tender new green enveloped the world, and the air was sweet with the odor of young and growing things. The brown river, streaked with green ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... powder, but every particle is still unconquered ice, and only the gentle kiss of the sun can subdue and melt it into sweet water. High explosives and poisonous gas can devastate the earth, but only the balmy breath of the springtime can clothe it in verdure and cause it to ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... anxiously. He was not seeing her at all. His eyes looked beyond, across the fragile, lily-petals, through the solid black wall, at a vision he saw in the world. Dong-Yung bent her head to sniff the familiar sweet springtime orchid hanging from the jade stud ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... Also, it had seemed good to her maidenly pride that Dr. Callandar should know—well, that he should see—just exactly what he should know and see she did not formulate. But underneath her temporary disappointment she felt as light and glad as a bird in springtime. ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... pastoral, to its civilization and art in more conscious forms; but my heart stays in the campagna, where are the song-contests, the amorous praise of maidens, the boyish boasting, the young, sweet, graceful loves. Fain would I recover the breath of that springtime; but while from my foot "every stone upon the way spins singing," make what speed I can, I come not to the harvest-feast. Bees go booming among the blossoms, and the flocks crop their pasture, and night falls with Hesperus; but fruitless on my lips, as at some shrine whence the god is ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... more care to her dress. Her stern apprenticeship was over. She had so successfully trampled upon the thorns in her path that she could pause to enjoy the flowers. To modern readers her new furniture and gowns are welcome signs of the awakening of the springtime in her cold and wintry life. But her sisters resented them, particularly because, while they, needing less, received less from her bounty, Charles, waiting for a good opening in America, was living ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the grass close by her. One of them hopped round the other, fluttering his outstretched wings, and chirping and nodding his little head; all at once they coupled. Jeanne watched them, as surprised as if she had never known of such a thing before; then she thought: "Oh, of course! It is springtime." ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... large; the little woman beside him was daintily wrought. She was saffron-brown, as a woman of the white race can well be, with smiling eyes of bluest blue. In quaint sage-green draperies, she seemed a flower, with her small vivid face irresistibly reminding Saxon of a springtime wake-robin. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... In the springtime of his vigor, / when he was young and bold, Could tales of mickle wonder / of Siegfried be told, How he grew up in honor, / and how fair he was to see: Anon he won the favor / of ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... other on the village street with exactly such salutation, and now both reverted to it. The tall, regal woman in her India shawl and the stout, middle-aged man had both stepped back to their vantage-ground of springtime ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... meal. You come from a race of nomads which even today roams the world. I arrived just in time. We'll leave together; for I, too, am, because of my career, a wanderer. Always together! We will be able to find happiness in any land whatsoever. We'll carry springtime with us, the happiness of life, and will love ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... canyon a deep-worn path led along the base of the bluff; and as the two best friends followed along its windings Hardy pointed out the mysteries of the land: strange trees and shrubs, bristling with thorns; cactus in its myriad forms; the birds which flashed past them or sang in the wild gladness of springtime; lizards, slipping about in the sands or pouring from cracks in the rocks—all the curious things which his eyes had seen and his mind taken note of in the long days of solitary riding, and which his poet's soul now interpreted ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... long intimate evenings, she and Oliver left to their caprice, she and Oliver walking and driving together, wandering where their fancy took them in the springtime of city and country. She laughed sometimes at him, he seemed so dazed by the consciousness of utter possession. "You are sure you are not bored, darling?" he would often ask these first days. She could not reassure him enough; could not find ways enough to prove ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... weighted with misgivings, which would take no certain shape. There crowded upon him recollections of busy autumn days when the grain harvest overtook the belated hay-making, and men toiled till late in the fields; of long nights in the springtime when he tugged at the fishing-nets, and felt the mackerel slipping and flapping past his feet in the darkness; of the longer winter nights when he joined the gatherings of the boys and girls to dance jigs and reels on the earthen floor of some kitchen. It seemed now that all this was past and ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... general interest, and so I will write you about the flowers. There are many kinds of flowers, spring flowers, and summer flowers, and autumn flowers, but no winter flowers. Wild flowers grow in the woods, and it is nice to hunt them in springtime, and we must remember to give some to the poor and hospitals, also. Flowers can be made to grow in flower-beds and placed in vases in houses. There are many names for flowers, but I call them ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... early the next morning, when only the birds, who scarcely seem to sleep at all in springtime, and the busiest people in Oakfield were up, that Peter Rogers might have been seen setting a ladder against Sir Godfrey's oak-tree and preparing to go up it. Mr. Collins came to the inn door ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... and her boy, who was already dear to her as the first grandson of the man whose suit, it is true, she had rejected, but to whom she owed the delicious consciousness of having loved and been loved in the springtime ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I was almost lonesome before you stepped in but now I feel—well, spring mad or something. I do believe we'll have a wedding soon and a real old-fashioned springtime." ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... five o'clock. He was to be the guest of Oaklea, but most of his time was spent at The Locusts. That night, when moonlight and springtime filled the valley with ethereal whiteness and sweetness, he and Betty sat out on the porch. Three generations of Romance made enchanted ground of the whole place. In the library an older Jack and Elizabeth sat recalling the night like this when ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... St. Pierre, the commander of Fort Le Boeuf, asked Washington, in rich diplomatic sarcasm, to descend to the particularization of facts, and the lithe figure disappeared behind the snows of the mountains only to come again across the mountains in the springtime with sterner questioning. There was then no talk of Cabot or La Salle, of Indian purchase or crown property. Jumonville may have come out from Duquesne for peaceable speech, but Washington misunderstood ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... storm blew over, as such springtime storms will, Dan had learned a lesson, and felt that he never again wished to venture on the dizzy heights where wise heads turn and strong feet falter. Though Dud and Jim, who both had pocket money ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... springtime is here,' it says, 'thou soul unloosened—the restlessness after I know not what. Oh, if we could but fly like a bird! Oh, to escape, to sail forth as on a ship!' Camarada, give me your hand. I will give you ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... Eldorado Creeks where men with underground fires burning both night and day tried with puny strength to checkmate the stubborn ice king in order to add to the dumps to be hopefully washed out in the springtime. Though they burned their eyes from their sockets in these pestilential smoke holes, and though from badly cooked and scanty meals their blackened limbs made declaration that the dreaded scurvy was upon them; still there were always ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... cheese. I have had quite enough of digressions and of follies. They are the happy youth of an article. They are the springtime of it. They are its riot. I am approaching the middle age of this article. Let us be solid upon ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... the dew Singin' all together! Springtime sweet, an' frosty fall Happy be the weather! Earth has gardens for us all, ...
— Thoughts I Met on the Highway • Ralph Waldo Trine
... relate that which I know. If a report went forth I was alive, Then had some god been busy with the fame. Myself I knew not. In the prince's house, And in the throng of his retainers lost, I spent the pleasant springtime of my youth. In silent homage My heart was vowed to his most lovely daughter. Yet in those days it never dreamed to raise Its wildest thoughts to happiness so high. My passion gave offence to her betrothed, The Castellan of Lemberg. He with taunts Chafed ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... slumber above the exquisite plough-boy with his primrose locks, as he wanders, whistling, on his way. Nature, inartistic, monotonous Nature, will renew the sap of her youth, and the dewy freshness of her first pale springtime, but the sap of your youth will have run dry for ever, and the voice of your springtime will be mute and toneless. Ah, Jimmy, Jimmy! ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... physician of Padua, and a man of much wisdom and common-sense, besides. Between the old man and his grandchild there was a very tender sentiment, that soon formed itself into an abiding bond. Together they rambled along the banks of the Po, climbed the hills in springtime looking for the first flowers, made collections of butterflies, and caught the sunlight in their hearts as it streamed across the valleys as the shadows lengthened. On these solitary little journeys they usually carried a copy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... Springtime days, these! When little tots climb up and entwine their arms about our necks. If this were married life's only compensation it would not prove in vain—for when the babies enter the home the tie that binds becomes hard and fast—if the man is a manly man. To become the father of a bright-eyed ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... blades of grass suggested springtime. The boys had played the role as long as they cared to. It had served the purpose that was intended. But they must not hurt the feelings of Seigerman, or let the cause of their zeal become known to their benefactor ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... the last of the series of historical festivals which mark the springtime of our Christian year. And without this one the rest would leave us with a sense of incompleteness; for we should be without its gift of the abiding and indwelling Spirit, and the fulfilment of the ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... In the sculptured group of the fountain, flowers bloom and love awakens. It is a fresh and graceful composition. The murals are on the faces of the corridor arches. No one can mistake their meaning. Springtime shows her first blossoms, and the happy shepherd pipes a seasonal air to his flock, now battening on new grass. In the companion picture, Seedtime, are ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... gold and wreathed in roses. A festoon of pink and crimson flowers lay about her neck, its long ends falling almost to the foot of her frock, and her hair was crowned with roses. And her dancing had changed. It was no longer the springtime she portrayed, with all her plastic grace of motion, symbolizing its delicate evanescence with arch hesitations and fugitive advances, and all ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... your note, written on the 4th of May, which I received the other day. I always rejoice to think of you in the springtime, because, like other young things, you enjoy the opening buds, flowers, and sunshine after the long grave winter. But winter is a good friend, although he has a grave face; we should be all the better for a ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... the Reverend Mother, walking with her head held high, and sunlight in her eyes, as I have ofttimes seen her walk in the garden in Springtime, when the birds are singing, and a scent of lilac ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... not the burdens with one of your fingers." I am a follower of Him who came "not to send peace on the earth, but a sword." All an infernal system of oppression, like the sweating system, asks, is to be let alone. To uncover its atrocities is like turning over a huge stone in the meadow in springtime, that has been a hiding-place for bugs and worms that nest away in the dark. As soon as the hot, searching sunlight finds them, they will wriggle and squirm in agony until they can crawl under cover again. So I do not wonder that, ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... springtime Bernadou and Margot were wedded, going with their friends one sunny morning up the winding hill-path to the little gray chapel whose walls were hidden in ivy, and whose sorrowful Christ looked down through the open porch across the blue and hazy width of the river. Georges, ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various |
