Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Sylvan   /sˈɪlvən/   Listen
Sylvan

noun
1.
A spirit that lives in or frequents the woods.  Synonym: silvan.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Sylvan" Quotes from Famous Books



... part of our story, to which the preceding chapters should be taken, perhaps, as merely introductory, opens about midsummer, and among that remarkable group of sylvan lakes—nearly a dozen in number—which, commencing on the wild borders of northerly New Hampshire, and shooting off in an irregular line some fifty miles northeasterly into the dark and unbroken forests of Maine, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... suggestion of her affectionate admiration; and to those who knew and loved Mendelssohn (alas! the expressions are synonymous), the glorious wood itself, where he walked and mused and held converse with the spirit of Shakespeare, forms a solemn sylvan temple, forever consecrated to tender memories of his bright genius and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... upon the edge of a thick and venerable wood, beech and oak, walnut and hickory. Regimental headquarters was indeed within the forest, half a dozen tents pitched in a glade sylvan enough for Robin Hood. Here Cleave found Stafford sitting, writing, before the adjutant's tent. He looked up, laid down his pen and rose. "Ah! Where did you come from? I thought you in the Valley, in training for a brigadier!" He came forward, holding out his hand. "I am glad ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... springs, increased in volume and in sound, but it was soon far beneath us, pursuing its headlong course till it reached level ground, where it flowed in the midst of a beautiful but confined prairie. There was something sylvan and savage in the mountains on the farther side, clad from foot to pinnacle with trees, so closely growing that the eye was unable to obtain a glimpse of the hill sides, which were uneven with ravines and gulleys, the haunts of the wolf, the wild boar, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... charm, "unborrowed from the eye,"—but how has memory sanctified, history illustrated, and poetry illumined the scenes around us; where every rivulet had its attendant nymph, where every wood was protected by its sylvan divinity; where every tower has its tale of heroism, and "not a mountain lifts its head unsung;" and though the faith, the glory, and the power of the antique time be ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... all this youthful paradise around, And all the broad and boundless mainland, lay Cooled by the interminable wood, that frowned O'er mount and vale, where never summer ray Glanced, till the strong tornado broke his way Through the gray giants of the sylvan wild; Yet many a sheltered glade, with blossoms gay, Beneath the showery sky and sunshine mild, Within the shaggy arms ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... together in fantastic arches and tufts of deep pink and flush-white blossom, and the briony wreaths with their small bright green stars swung pendent from over-shadowing boughs like garlands for a sylvan festival. Or the thousands of tiny unassuming herbs which grew up with the growing speargrass, bringing with them pungent odours from the soil as from some deep- laid storehouse of precious spices. These choice delights were the old by-road's peculiar possession, and through ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... to the charred stumps. "Oh!" cried he, and out came Oh and led him to his sylvan realm. There Oh scattered about handfuls of wheat and called his doves, and there flew down such a multitude of them that there was no counting them, and one dove was just like another. "Dost thou recognize thy son?" asked Oh. "An thou knowest him again, he is thine; an thou knowest him not, ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous

... wild dreams and wilder words take wing, Deep in the woods I hear a shepherd sing A simple ballad to a sylvan air, Of love that ever finds your face more fair. I could not give you any godlier thing ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... depend on chance shots. With {129} numerous portages, keeping to the south shore of the St. Lawrence because that was best known to the Seneca guides, the canoes passed up Lake St. Louis and Lake St. Francis and glided through the sylvan fairyland of the Thousand Islands, coming out in August on Lake Ontario, "which," says Galinee, "appeared to us like a great sea." Striking south, they appealed to the Seneca Iroquois for guides to ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... In a broad sylvan meadow at the end of the narrow defile, within sound of the chief waterfall, we had the joy of seeing again the rest of our party, who had made an afternoon excursion thither to meet us. At a quiet, rural little inn just below, with an outside gallery possessing a view of the still, deep gorge ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... visitor to the woods of England,—the cuckoo,—is undoubtedly destitute of family affection, as are others of its relatives; but this is not the case with the whole tribe. As the spring advances, from the sylvan glades of Pennsylvania a curious note, constantly repeated, is heard, resembling the word "cow-cow." It is the note of a bird, and from the sound it resembles it is generally known as the "cow-bird." It is also called ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... beautiful squaws named Do-humme died in the Museum. She had been a great favorite with many ladies. Do-humme was buried on the border of Sylvan Water, at Greenwood Cemetery, where a small monument erected by her friends, designates her last resting-place. The poor Indians were very sorrowful for many days, and desired to get back again to their Western wilds. The father and the betrothed of Do-humme cooked various dishes of food and ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... not much, certainly, but it persisted. The impression, defective as I give it, had been pleasing; an impression of warm femininity, of graceful motion. It had had the quality, besides, of the unexpected and the fugitive, and the advantage of a sylvan background. Anyhow, it pursued him. He went on to his journey's end; stopped before the great gilded grille, with its multiplicity of scrolls and flourishes, its coronets and interlaced initials; gazed up the shadowy aisle of plane-trees ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... light began to spread around him,—the sun had risen above the horizon, and its cheerful radiance sparkled on every leaf and every blade of grass that bore a drop of dew. The morning mists rose hoveringly, paused awhile, and then lightly rolled away, disclosing one picture after another of exquisite sylvan beauty,—every living thing took up anew its burden of work and pleasure for the day, and "Now" was again declared the acceptable time. To enjoy the moment, and to make much of the moment while it lasts, is the very keynote of Nature's happiness, and David Helmsley found himself on ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... thought the dark-brown moors, The dusky mountain's shade, Down which the wasting torrent pours, Conceal'd so sweet a maid; When sudden started from the plain A sylvan scene and gay, Where, pride of all the virgin train, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... those wild and sylvan notes When morn's full chorus pours Rejoicing from a thousand feathered throats, And the lark ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean

... for a moment at the old hound that was sniffing and whimpering in his master's ears, as if he could answer him. Poor Jonquil! he has shared his master's fortune fairly—the better and the worse; for years his humble comrade in the sylvan solitudes of Charrebourg, and here the solitary witness of his parting moment. Who can say with what more than human grief that dumb heart is swelling! He will not outlive his old friend many days—Jonquil is past the age for ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... single fact that better illustrates the wide difference between these two stages of culture. But let us look for other terms of comparison. The scalping scene is no more the true picture of savagery than the bayonet charge of civilization. Savagery is sylvan life. Contrast Ka-ni-ga with New York. Ka-ni-ga is an Indian village in the Rocky Mountains. New York is, well—New York. The home in the forest is a shelter of boughs; the home in New York is a palace of granite. The dwellers in Ka-ni-ga are clothed in the skins of animals, rudely ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... true—the highly sylvan surroundings of the Trinidad "Sentinel" office—a little clearing in a pine forest—and its attendant fauna, made these signals confusing. An accurate imitation of a woodpecker was also one of Li ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... the boy's face, clear and untarnished in the moonlight. He was looking dreamily away at the lawn, dappled with the shadow of the slender young trees. They seemed creatures scarcely more sylvan than he, sprawled, like a loitering faun with his hands clasped behind his head. His mouth had the pure, full outlines of ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... Redwood Bungalows. It needs but a glance at its beguiling loveliness to know that here is another lesson in art and architecture by Bernard Maybeck. Here again is poetry in architecture, of a different order from the noble theme of Maybeck's Fine Arts Palace, but none the less poetry. This is a sylvan idyll, telling of lofty trees, cool shades, and secret bowers of fern and vine and wild flower, in the moist and tangled redwood forests. There is little used but rough-barked tree trunks, but what delicate harmony ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... neighbourhood of Mount Saint Helena, now so quiet and sylvan, was once alive with mining camps and villages. Here there would be two thousand souls under canvas; there one thousand or fifteen hundred ensconced, as if for ever, in a town of comfortable houses. But the luck had failed, the mines petered out; and the army of miners ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... opportunity of seeing the place, as it is one of the surprises of Gafsa, one of the few remaining town-houses that date from better days, being built originally for some Turkish grandee or governor—for him, I daresay, who drove the god-fearing widow to the sylvan seclusion of Leila. You step through the gate into an open square patio, surrounded, on the sides not abutting on the street, by an arched passage that reposes on old Roman columns. This covered loggia, running round three fronts ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... made to grow for them, or lay with their forelegs doubled under their breasts and chewed the cud, Haita, reclining in the shadow of a tree, or sitting upon a rock, played so sweet music upon his reed pipe that sometimes from the corner of his eye he got accidental glimpses of the minor sylvan deities, leaning forward out of the copse to hear; but if he looked at them directly they vanished. From this—for he must be thinking if he would not turn into one of his own sheep—he drew the solemn inference that happiness may come if not sought, but if looked ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... my Shakespeare to some sylvan nook; And pray thee, in the name of Days of old, Good-will and friendship, never bought or sold, Give me assurance thou wilt always look With kindness still on Spirits of humbler mould; Kept firm by resting on that wondrous book, Wherein the Dream ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... for the sleep-song of whispering leaves above your head, and the smell of a couch of balsam boughs. At tables spread with dainty fare you will be hungry for the joy of the hunt, and for the angler's sylvan feast. In proud cities you will weary for the sight of a mountain trail; in great cathedrals you will think of the long, arching aisles of the woodland: and in the noisy solitude of crowded streets you will ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... a hundred years ago was Sylvan Harmer, chiefly a stone cutter (he cut the stone for the tower), but also the modeller in clay of some very ingenious and pretty bas-relief designs for funeral urns, notably ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... visit the forest or the sequestered dell, where the notes of the feathered tribes are heard to the greatest advantage, without being impressed with the conviction that there is design in the arrangement of this sylvan minstrelsy.— ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... more credit; for what would appear a paltry provision spread out on the big dining-room table, will look quite sylvan and luxurious against this flowery background," she said brightly, and in the very moment of speaking her jaw dropped, and her eyes grew blank and fixed, as if beholding a vision too terrible ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... and inconstant ideas indigenous to a sea-faring stock, imbued with the spirit of change and unrest. A magical charm broods over the mysterious Temple, the materialised dream of a mighty past rescued from the sylvan sepulchre of equatorial vegetation, and restored to a vivid reality beside which the paintings of Egyptian tombs sink into comparative insignificance. The seclusion of the memory-haunted pile enhances ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... trying to coax this shyest of sylvan flowers into our gardens where other members of its family, rhododendrons, laurels, and azaleas make themselves delightfully at home. It is wild as a hawk, an untamable creature that slowly pines to death when brought into contact with civilization. Greedy street venders, who ruthlessly tear ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... is July! Just the month, my love, to fly To a sylvan solitude In the green and ancient wood. We will trip it as we go On the neo-Pagan toe, Sunny days and starry nights, Savoring the wild delights Of a turbulent desire That may set the ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor

... and there is ever a mischievous, bantering, half-ironical undertone in his lay, as if he were conscious of mimicking and disconcerting some envied songster. Ambitious of song, practicing and rehearsing in private, he yet seems the least sincere and genuine of the sylvan minstrels, as if he had taken up music only to be in the fashion, or not to be outdone by the robins and thrushes. In other words, he seems to sing from some outward motive, and not from inward joyousness. He is a good versifier, but ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... reason of that homelikeness which gave us pause in the houses. The trees looked American; there were American wood-roads penetrating the forest's broken and irregular extent; there was one steep-sided ravine worth any man's American money; and the dead leaves littered the sylvan paths with an allure to the foot which it was hard for the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... Sylvan poets glean, Who picture life without a flaw; Nature may form a perfect scene, But Fancy must the ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield

... silent on summer evenings. Walter liked to go there to read. Jem and Faith trysted there considerably; Jerry and Nan went there to pursue uninterruptedly the ceaseless wrangles and arguments on profound subjects that seemed to be their preferred method of sweethearting. And Rilla had a beloved little sylvan dell of her own there where she liked to ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... walks in search of any thing the surrounding woods afforded. Scarce two months had passed since their arrival and they were familiar with all the cosy retreats, nooks and pretty spots to be found. Surrounded by her followers, Lady Rosamond appeared as a naiad holding revel with her sylvan subjects. ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour

... entire country was intersected with rivers, inlets and creeks that were deep enough to float the sea going vessels of the age, and salt water penetrated the woods for miles, forming of the whole country, as John Fiske has expressed it, a sylvan Venice. Thus it was possible for each planter to have his own wharf and to ship his tobacco directly from his own estate. Moreover, it allowed him to receive from the foreign vessels what merchandise he desired to purchase. Hugh Jones wrote, "No country is better watered, for the conveniency ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... obstacles that stood in the path of the squadron were, as a rule, overcome by the exertion of the great powers of the steam-driven, iron-plated vessels; but at last there came a check, that, though it seemed at first insignificant, terminated the sylvan manoeuvres of the iron-clad navy. After running the gantlet of the burning cotton, butting down trees, and smashing through bridges, the column entered a stretch of smooth water that seemed to promise fair and unobstructed sailing. But toward the end of this expanse of water a kind of green scum ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... from your native glades, Where tyrant frost with famine leag'd proclaims "Who lingers dies"; with many a risk ye win The privilege to breathe our softer air And glean our sylvan berries. GISBORNE'S ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... feign, flatter, or abjure? But thou art placed above me; thou art Lord; From thee I can, and must, submiss, endure Cheek or reproof, and glad to scape so quit. Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to walk, Smooth on the tongue discoursed, pleasing to the ear, And tunable as sylvan pipe or song; 480 What wonder, then, if I delight to hear Her dictates from thy mouth? most men admire Virtue who follow not her lore. Permit me To hear thee when I come (since no man comes), And talk at least, though I despair to attain. Thy Father, ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton

... beasts of the forest were regarded as the herds of the woodland god Tapio and of his stately and beautiful wife. No man might slay one of these animals without the gracious permission of their divine owners. Hence the hunter prayed to the sylvan deities, and vowed rich offerings to them if they would drive the game across his path. And cattle also seem to have enjoyed the protection of those spirits of the woods, both when they were in their stalls and while they strayed in the forest. Before the Gayos of Sumatra ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... excursions of discovery into the interior of their world, Mrs. Ferrars and Myra in the pony-chair, her husband and Endymion walking by their side, and Endymion sometimes taking his sister's seat against his wish, but in deference to her irresistible will. Even Myra could hardly be insensible to the sylvan wildness of the old chase, and the romantic villages in the wooded clefts of the downs. As for Endymion he was delighted, and it seemed to him, perhaps he unconsciously felt it, that this larger and more frequent experience ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... and unaccountable condition of things, however, connected with the prepuce that does not exist with the other vestiges of our arboreal or sylvan existence. Firstly, the other conditions have nothing that interferes with their disappearance; whereas the prepuce, by its mechanical construction and the expanding portions which it incloses, tends at times rather to its exaggerated development than to its disappearance. ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... pick their way carefully through them. Copper mines, whose furnaces had been half destroyed by the English, were now overgrown with vines and half hidden by fallen trees, showed the combined ravages of war and nature. A few yards in advance of them the glen widened into a sylvan amphitheater, waving with firs and pines, and rendered almost impassable by underbrush. A short turning in the road suddenly brought them in front of a romantic waterfall. The cousins drew rein, watching the fall of the water in silence, ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison

... at sunset.' Every eve Some village gave the wanderers food and rest, Or half-built convent with its church thick-walled And polished shafts, great names in after times, Ely, and Croyland, Southwell, Medeshamstede, Adding to sylvan sweetness holier grace, Or rising lonely o'er morass and mere With bowery thickets isled, where dogwood brake Retained, though late, its red. To Boston near, Where Ouse, and Aire, and Derwent join with Trent, And salt sea ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... their swains See the beauty of their plains; And command them with their flocks To do reverence on the rocks; Where they may so happy be As her shadow but to see: Bid the birds in every bush Not a bird to be at hush: But to sit, and chirp, and sing To the beauty of the Spring: Call the sylvan nymphs together, Bid them bring their musicks hither. Trees their barky silence break, Crack yet, though they cannot speak Bid the purest, whitest swan Of her feathers make her fan; Let the hound the hare go chase; Lambs and rabbits run ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)

... the realm of poetry as "Owen Meredith," and as Lord Lytton in the realm of diplomacy and statesmanship, impressed her at the time as possessing an incontestable "faculty" in poetry, that made her expect a great deal from him in the future. She invited him to visit them in their sylvan retreat that summer at Bagni di Lucca, an invitation that he joyously accepted. Some great savant, who was "strong in veritable Chinese," found his way to Casa Guidi, as most of the wandering minstrels of the ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... wood, woodland, timber-land, woods, wold, wildwood. Associated Words: sylvan, sylviculture, nemophilist, nemophily, nemoral, afforest, afforestation, Silenus, hamadryad, glade, reforestize, reforestation, reboise, reafforest, forestry, forester, disboscation, disforest disforestation, hag, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... dense forest, at points meeting the edge of the bank. The trees of this heavily-timbered land, with their massive shafts standing close together, "cast a gloomy grandeur over the scene, and when stripped of their foliage appear like the black colonnade of a sylvan temple." In advancing into the interior, a picturesque and rolling country opens to view, covered with oak-openings or groves of white oak thinly scattered over the ground, having the appearance of stately parks. The appearance of the surface ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... and there is something infinitely tragic in the reader's sense of the contrast between the sternly prosaic life of the good people about her, their wholesome decency and their noonday probity, and the dusky sylvan path along which poor Hetty is tripping, light-footed, to her ruin. Hetty's conduct throughout seems to me to be thoroughly consistent. The author has escaped the easy error of representing her as in any degree made serious by suffering. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... upon it, and yet you lose your heart at a glance. It is as charming in its boat life as an old Holland canal; it is as delightful in its shore life as the Seine; and it is as picturesque and entrancing in its sylvan beauty as the most exquisite of ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... Senator Morgan proposes, and the reenactment of that old Adamic cry: "The woman whom thou gavest," but the disfranchisement of man, who is the only polygamist, and the stepping down and out of the sex as a legislator under whose fostering care this evil has grown. Retire to your sylvan groves and academic shades, gentlemen, as Mrs. Stanton suggests, and let the Deborahs, the Huldahs, and the Vashtis come to the front, and let us see what we can do toward the remedy of your wretched legislation. But suffrage for women in Utah has accomplished ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... men called it the Vale of Laudonniere. The afternoon was spent, and the sun was near its setting, when they reached the bank of the river. They strewed the ground with boughs and leaves, and, stretched on that sylvan couch, slept the sleep of travel-worn and ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... provides himself with a few broad leaves from the nearest sal tree, and forming these into a cup, he pins them together with thorns from the acacia. Squatting down in a circle, with half-a-dozen of these sylvan cups around, the attendant fills one with rice, another with dhall, a third with goat's-flesh, a fourth with turkaree or vegetables, a fifth with chutnee, pickle, or some kind of preserve. Curds, ghee, a little ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... subtle odor of fried pork overpowers methylic fragrance among the trees, then he who loves forests for their solitude leaves these brethren to their clumsy joys, and wanders elsewhere deeper into sylvan scenes. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... further, under the cool vault filled with woodland spicing, he came upon it. In its summer harlequin dress of scarlet and green, with hanging bells of poly-tinted berries, like some personified sylvan Folly, it seemed a fitting symbol of Susy's childish masquerade of passion. Its bizarre beauty, so opposed to the sober gravity of the sedate pines and hemlocks, made it an unmistakable landmark. Here ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... ordinary English country scenery, these gardens had been set by a great Frenchman who had caught the strange secret of the romance of utterly formal hedges. He could make of them a fitting framework for the glories of a court, or for sylvan life in Merrie England. There were miles of hedges; not yew, hornbeam had been chosen for this green, tranquil country. At one spot many avenues of hedges met together as if by accident, or by some rhythmic movement; it was a minuet of ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... alone: around him grew A sylvan tribe of children of the chase, Whose young, unwaken'd world was ever new, Nor sword nor sorrow yet had left a trace On her unwrinkled brow, nor could you view A frown on Nature's or on human face; The free-born forest found and kept ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... the next four hundred, till every human being becomes such a helpless compound of perverted inclinations, that he is altogether at the mercy of external circumstances, loses all independence and singleness of character, and degenerates so rapidly from the primitive dignity of his sylvan origin, that it is scarcely possible to indulge in any other expectation, than that the whole species must at length be exterminated by its ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... Massachusetts regiment, that which was fired upon in Baltimore. The first artillery company from Massachusetts had as its chaplain Stephen Barker. Others who served as army chaplains were John Pierpont, Edmund B. Willson, Francis C. Williams, Arthur B. Fuller, Sylvan S. Hunting, Charles T. Canfield, Edward H. Hall, George H. Hepworth, Joseph F. Lovering, Edwin M. Wheelock, George W. Bartlett, John C. Kimball, Augustus M. Haskell, Charles A. Humphreys, Milton ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... of this sylvan solitude, nobly declared that she could and would do without a set bath-tub, and proposed building a cabin and living near ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... her life, all her poems were of city streets and bustling multitudes. She was one of those who had been unable to join the excursion to Rouen when the President was there; but she had listened avidly to her friends' descriptions of the crowds. Before that time her muse had been sylvan, speaking of "Flow'rs of May," and hinting at thoughts that overcame her when she roved the woodlands thro'; but now the inspiration was become decidedly municipal and urban, evidently reluctant to depart beyond the retail portions of a metropolis. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... the preface to "Alceste," he said, "I imagined that the overture ought to prepare the audience for the action of the piece, and serve as a kind of argument to it." The atmosphere of the opera is that which pervades the sylvan life of Germany—its actualities and its mysteries, the two elements having equal potency. Into the peacefulness of the woods the French horns ("Forest horns," the Germans call them) usher us at once with the hymn which they sing after ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... sacred and home-felt delight, Such sober certainty of waking bliss, I never heard till now. I'll speak to her, And she shall be my queen.—Hail, foreign wonder! Whom certain these rough shades did never breed, Unless the goddess that in rural shrine Dwell'st here with Pan or Sylvan by blest song Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog To touch the prosperous growth of ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... to please every one. Hans loved its quiet and sylvan beauty. It was just such a place as he would choose to ramble in, book in hand, and dream away many a pleasant hour. Hendrik liked it much, because he had already observed what he termed "extensive spoor" about the spot: in other words, he had noticed ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... froth that I would blow off is I think most of the tremendous efforts being made in England by the Anglican church to attract favourable attention to itself apropos of the war. I came back from my visit to the Somme battlefields to find the sylvan peace of Essex invaded by a number of ladies in blue dresses adorned with large white crosses, who, regardless of the present shortage of nurses, were visiting every home in the place on some mission of invitation whose details remained obscure. So far as I was able to ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... Forthwith Despair— More keen that one of these was rotten— Moved me to seek some forest lair Where I might hide and dwell forgotten, Attired in skins, by berries stained, Absolved from brushes and ablution;— But, ere my sylvan haunt was gained, Fate gave me up ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... hut, together with the botanical studies and the formation of the herbarium, suggested the plan of the "Sylvan Year," and thereby lent additional interest to these pursuits, though at that time his main work was the prosecution of "The Intellectual Life," now that he had finished the correction of the handbook on etching. [Footnote: Contributed to ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... little cot back'd by a wood-fring'd height, Where sylvan Usk runs swiftly babbling by: Here thy young eyes first look'd on earth and sky, And all the wonders of the day and night; O born interpreter of Nature's might, Lord of the quiet heart and seeing eye, Vast is our debt to thee we'll ne'er deny, Though ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... for a few weeks of autumn, when they went to their villas for the vintage, transporting thither all the diversions of city life and venturing no farther afield than the pleasure-grounds that were but so many open-air card-rooms, concert-halls and theatres. Odo's tenderness for every sylvan function of renewal and decay, every shifting of light and colour on the flying surface of the year, would have been met with the same stare with which a certain enchanting Countess had received the handful of wind-flowers that, fresh from ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... their health or prescribe the cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies. It is quite another thing that he should be able to give account of his faith and expound to another the theory of his self-union and freedom. This requires rare gifts. Yet without this self-knowledge there may be a sylvan strength and integrity in that which he is. "A few strong instincts and a few plain ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... bustle of the world, they live in the most delightful climate, and richest soil imaginable; they are everywhere surrounded with beautiful prospects and sylvan scenes; lofty mountains, transparent streams, falls of water, rich valleys, and majestic woods; the whole interspersed with an infinite variety of flowering shrubs, constitute the landscape surrounding them; they are subject to few diseases; ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... green and level, on which the brigade was halted. About midway of the arc of water, the stream is spanned by a bridge. As the darkness crept on, the picture presented from our bivouac was in the highest degree charming, and might be supposed to realize some sylvan ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood

... songster of the Southern groves, and having built a nest in the wild wood (referring to his country home at Copse Hill), he is content in the companionship of his mate and his young, warbling to nature and to nature's God. If his notes reach beyond his sylvan hall, and fall upon ears without its wall, and plaudits of approval come in return, he trills responsively a grateful melody, and resumes his solo as he would do had no encore greeted him." ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... sting, Which makes a swain as wretched as a king. I envy none their pageantry and show; I envy none the gilding of their woe. Give me, indulgent gods! with mind serene, And guiltless heart, to range the sylvan scene; No splendid poverty, no smiling care, No well-bred hate, or servile grandeur, there: There pleasing objects useful thought suggest; The sense is ravish'd, and the soul is blest; On every thorn ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... have been left, together with the hemlocks and other trees undesirable in kind or in some way defective, so that the neighboring trees appear to have closed over the gaps make by the removal of the larger and better ones, maintaining the general continuity of the forest and leaving no sign on the sylvan sea, at least as ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... voice and tread, Lifts to the sound his ear, and rears his head; Bred by Ulysses, nourished at his board, But, ah! not fated long to please his lord! To him, his swiftness and his strength were vain; The voice of glory called him o'er the main. Till then, in every sylvan chase renowned, With Argus, Argus, rung the woods around: With him the youth pursued the goat or fawn, Or traced the mazy leveret o'er the lawn; Now left to man's ingratitude he lay, Unhoused, ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth

... dawned—the era of the commonplace. The interval was come when Shakespeare himself was to lie in a kind of twilight. Herrick was in spirit an Elizabethan, and had strayed by chance into an artificial and prosaic age—a sylvan singing creature alighting on an alien planet. "He was too natural," says Mr. Palgrave in his Chrysomela, "too purely poetical; he had not the learned polish, the political allusion, the tone of the city, the ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... piteous Shrieks and Cries of invisible Beings, echoing from haunted Spring and Dale, as ne'er smote human Ears before nor since: Nymphs and Wood-Gods, or they that had passed for such, breaking up House and retreating to their own Place. I warrant you, there was Trouble among the Sylvan People that Day—Satyrs ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... then, the champeen Day Begins to put on dawg among 'is push, An', as he mooches on 'is gaudy way, Drors tribute from each tree an' flow'r an' bush. An', w'ile 'e swigs the dew in sylvan bars, The sun shouts insults at ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis

... Netherlands. When peace was made in 1839 the treaty was again brought forward, signed, and promulgated. Thereupon all the States of Europe recognized the Kingdom of Belgium. The plenipotentiaries who then signed the treaty were Palmerston for Great Britain, Sylvan van de Weyer for Belgium, Senfft for Austria, H. Sebastiani for France, Buelow for Prussia, and Pozzo ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... dark hair and mustache, and smiling, handsome face, and his popularity among the class that he was pleased to denominate "gal critters." He piqued himself upon his several endowments as a hardy woodsman, his endurance, his sylvan craft, his pluck, and his luck and his accurate aim. The buck—all gray and antlered, for it was August—that hung across the horse, behind the saddle, gave token of this keen exactitude in the tiny wound at the base of the ear, where the rifle-ball had entered to pierce the brain; it might ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... of the sacerdotal duties, continued among the trees and rocks to collect their own congregations undiminished in number, and much more than ordinarily zealous, in their religious duties; and with the licence which such sylvan chapels were found to foster, denunciations against the Republic, and prayers for the speedy restoration of the monarchy, were mingled ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... boisterous, and seem to assail me from various quarters at once. I have often observed that this corner is a haunt and loitering-place for those winds which have no work to do upon the deep, dashing ships against our iron-bound shores; nor in the forest, tearing up the sylvan giants with half a rood of soil at their vast roots. Here they amuse themselves with lesser freaks of mischief. See, at this moment, how they assail yonder poor woman, who is passing just within the verge of the ...
— Beneath An Umbrella (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and go before I forget it. Dark as the wood might be by day, the moonlight seemed to fill every glade of it, showing us the gnarled trunks and the flowering bushes, the silent pools and the grassy dells. And in the midst of this sylvan rest, remote from men, a lonely thicket of the great Pacific Ocean, was this figure of civilization, a young girl decked out in white, with a pretty hat that Paris might have sent her, and little children, in their sailors' clothes, clinging trustingly, as children will in confidence ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... "The Beaches" was suffering from an invasion of wealth. Unquestionably it had been fashionable for a generation; but the people who had established summer homes there were inhabitants of the large neighboring city which they forsook during five months in the year to enjoy the ocean breezes and sylvan scenery, for The Beaches afforded both. Well-to-do New England families of refinement and taste, they enjoyed in comfort, without ostentation, their picturesque surroundings. Their cottages were simple; but each had its charming outlook to sea and a sufficient number ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... anglers, or botanists, would do well to take up their quarters at Bewdley, as a centre from which to explore the neighbourhood. There are few more charming spots than Ribbesford, a mile lower down the river; it is a sylvan bit of landscape, with grassy flats and weathered cliffs, the latter, rising abruptly from the stream, being delicately tinted into harmony with the boles, and foliage of the trees above them. Opposite is Burlish Deep, noted ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall

... in early morn, Awak'd a social sylvan flute. To notes as gay, as Dian's horn, Or ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley

... all his words, Thomas Williams was the hero. As people get used to the noise of a waterfall, at last we stood the perpetual sound without any inconvenience, and carried on quiet conversation, or sank into silent admiration, as we floated past the bold cliffs, or soft-wooded shores, of the sylvan Wye. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... again—two idle lads, in short (as we need not fear to acknowledge now), doing a hundred things that the faculty never heard of, or else it had been the worse for us,—still it was your prognostic of your friend's destiny that he was to be a writer of fiction." From this sylvan university Hawthorne came home to Salem; "as if," he wrote later, "Salem were for me the inevitable centre of ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... our sylvan holiday. (going.) Why, who comes here? As I live, my merry falconer, Christopher! And I'm impatient to be told the issue of his curious enterprise. Ha, ha, ha! to know if he's related to the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various

... their long necks with that peculiar cry of half-doubting surprise so familiar to a sportsman, then all was still for an instant. The world was steeped in the noontide sunlight, the mountain air tasted of the fresh [v]sylvan fragrance that pervaded the forest, the foliage blamed with the red and gold of autumn, the distant [v]Chilhowee ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... with an indifferent nod, as these two men parted amidst the sylvan peace of English meadow on that summer morning. They belonged to two different stations in life almost as far apart as two social stations could be, even in a republic. They were not, in any sense of the word, friends; they were merely partners, intensely awake, as partners ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... published in book form in 1907. In 1917 he collected in one attractive volume, Grenstone Poems, the best of his production—exclusive of his plays and prose—up to that date. One who knew Mr. Bynner only by the terrific white slave drama Tiger, would be quite unprepared for the sylvan sweetness of the Grenstone poems. Their environment, mainly rural, does not localize the sentiment overmuch; for the poet's mind is a kingdom, even though he is bounded in a nutshell. The environment, however, may be partly responsible for the spirit of healthy cheerfulness that animates ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... men were called in, for the man of the jungle must naturally know more about snakes than other men. These were probably Katkurrees, an aboriginal race, who live by woodcutting, hunting and other sylvan occupations. They proved to be practical men and at once sucked the wound. An intelligent Havildar of the Customs Department, who chanced to be present, then lanced the wound slightly to let the blood flow, and tied the leg tightly in two places above it. This was admirable. ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... neither here nor there is he able to persuade himself to discover a counsellor or a friend. In this connection, we do well to follow the poet's train of thought in the lyric called "In a Wood," where he enters a copse dreaming that, in that realm of "sylvan peace," Nature would offer "a soft release from man's unrest." He immediately observes that the pine and the beech are struggling for existence, and trying to blight each other with dripping poison. He ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... of a tree. hist, hush! bowl, a vessel. hissed, did hiss. boll, a pod. paws, the feet of beasts. nose, part of the face. pause, a stop. knows, does know. faun, a sylvan god. mote, a particle. fawn, a young deer. moat, a ditch. pride, vanity. toled, allured. pried, did pry. told, did tell. wain, a wagon. tolled, did toll. wane, to decrease. rein, part of a bridle. see, to behold. rain, falling water. sea, a body of ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... decorations may refresh the eye of the enthusiast, it would here seem that, with an extended policy, she had planted treasures, for another and a greatly larger class, far more precious to the eyes of hope and admiration than all the glories and beauties in her sylvan and picturesque abodes. Her very sterility and solitude, when thus found to indicate her mineral treasures, rise themselves into attractions; and the perverted heart, striving with diseased hopes, and unnatural passions, gladly welcomes ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... yards, and passing under the bridge which he had viewed with so much terror, the path ascended rapidly from the edge of the brook, and the glen widened into a sylvan amphitheatre, waving with birch, young oaks, and hazels, with here and there a scattered yew-tree. The rocks now receded, but still showed their grey and shaggy crests rising among the copse-wood. Still higher, rose eminences and ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... floret^, petiole; pin grass, timothy, yam, yew, zinnia. foliage, branch, bough, ramage^, stem, tigella^; spray &c 51; leaf. flower, blossom, bine^; flowering plant; timber tree, fruit tree; pulse, legume. Adj. vegetable, vegetal, vegetive^, vegitous^; herbaceous, herbal; botanic^; sylvan, silvan^; arborary^, arboreous^, arborescent^, arborical^; woody, grassy; verdant, verdurous; floral, mossy; lignous^, ligneous; wooden, leguminous; vosky^, cespitose^, turf-like, turfy; endogenous, exogenous. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... I were the intruder, and bound by all the laws of aerial chivalry to keep the peace. But this was no easy matter where Rose and Nettle were concerned, for when an imprudent weka appeared on the sylvan scene, looking around-as if to say, "Who's afraid?" it was more than I could do to keep the little terriers from giving chase. Brisk, too, blundered after them, but I had no fear of his destroying the charm of the day by taking even ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... When the gust hath blown his fill, Ending on the rustling leaves With minute drops from off the eaves. And when the sun begins to fling His flaring beams, me, goddess, bring To arched walks of twilight groves, And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves, Of pine, or monumental oak, Where the rude axe, with heaved stroke, Was never heard the nymphs to daunt Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt. There in close covert by some brook Where no profaner eye may look, Hide me from day's garish eye, While the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... pear-trees in the country many times over. (I can give you a list of the three best kinds, if you want it.) At this rate, we shall all be obliged to let our beards grow at least, if only to hide the nakedness of the land and make a sylvan appearance. The farmer sometimes talks of "brushing up," simply as if bare ground looked better than clothed ground, than that which wears its natural vesture,—as if the wild hedges, which, perhaps, are more to his children than his whole farm beside, were dirt. I know of one who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... of the Palais Royal made a delightful place for such an entertainment as the king's ball. In its contrasts of light and shadow, in its sombre alleys starred with colored lights, in its blend of courtly pomp and sylvan simplicity, it seemed the fairy-like creation of some splendid dream. Against the vivid greenness of the trees, intensified by the brightness of the blazing lamps, the whiteness of the statues asserted itself with fantastic emphasis. Everywhere innumerable flowers of every hue ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... as in the Rue de Rivoli at Paris." His patience was again a little tried when he found baggage-wagons ploughing up his favourite walks, and trumpeters in twos and threes teaching newly-recruited trumpeters in all the sylvan places, and making the echoes hideous. But this had its amusement too. "I met to-day a weazen sun-burnt youth from the south with such an immense regimental shako on, that he looked like a sort of lucifer match-box, evidently blowing his life rapidly ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... were curious and unhappy beings who, while carelessly strolling amidst sylvan shades, caught a hasty glimpse of some spirit of the woods, and were doomed ever afterwards to spend their lives in fruitlessly searching after it. The race of Fanatics are somewhat akin to these restless ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... was possible to avoid much ceremony by having the dinner upon the green turf, with sound of bugles, broaching of barrels, and all the freedom of a sylvan meal, it was necessary that the evening repast should, even for that very reason, be held ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... Zabern ground this time, nor stationary anywhere, but from the south some transient part of it, and not far off;—one ball struck a carriage near the King's tent, and shattered it. Thick mist mantles everything, and it is difficult to know what the Russians have on hand in their sylvan seclusions. After a time, it becomes manifest the Russians are on retreat; winding round, through the southern woods, behind Zorndorf and the charred Villages, to Klein Kamin, Landsberg way. Friedrich, following now on the heel of them, finds ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... in wonder seen, A mighty host of people wend their way In thousands, to the lovely sylvan park Of Versailles, to spend part of that blest day, In families of husband, children, wife, With basket of refreshments, simple, pure, Which, seated on some verdant bank, they shared, In peaceful happiness, serene ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... have not more healthful fare, Nor rest in calmer, sweeter sleep. They have no barns nor hoarded grain, Yet all day long a soft, sweet strain They warble forth from forest tree; Ever happy and ever free, Teaching a lesson dear to me. So free from care, O sylvan band; Fed by a heavenly Father's hand. Your freedom, O ye fowls of heaven, New courage to my soul hath given; I no more can doubt or sorrow: God will ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr

... comparatively level country on the north: it would be called a well-wooded country if we looked at it only from a distance. It is formed into long ridges, all green and wooded; but clumps of large trees, where villages have been, or are still situated, show that the sylvan foliage around and over the whole country is that of mere hop-poles. The whole of this upland region might be called woody, if we bear in mind that where the population is dense, and has been long undisturbed, the trees are cut ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... sculptor of the finest imagination, most delicate taste, and sweetest feeling would have dreamed of representing a faun under this guise; and, if you brood over it long enough, all the pleasantness of sylvan life, and all the genial and happy characteristics of the brute creation, seem to be mixed in him with humanity—trees, grass, flowers, cattle, deer, and unsophisticated man." This passage shows how much my father was wont to trust to first impressions, and even ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... merely prudent, while preparing the papers in the well known case of "The Arcadian Shepherds' Association of Tuolumne versus the Kedron Vine and Fig Tree Growers of Calaveras," that the Colonel should seek with a shotgun the seclusion of his partner's law office in the sylvan outskirts of Rough and Ready for that complete rest and serious preoccupation which Marysville ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... painted like skeletons. All is fear-inspiring and gloomy. No bright fancies are linked with the memories of the mountains. Hopeless explorers have named them out of their sufferings—Mount Misery, Mount Dreadful, Mount Despair. As when among sylvan scenes in places ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... in our sense. And yet a fortnight ago this sylvan retreat was the scene of murder ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill



Words linked to "Sylvan" :   disembodied spirit, spirit, wooded



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com