"Vernal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a pretty, shady, fancifully laid out garden, with shell-bordered walks, a grotto, a summer-house, and a gate opening into Nicholson Street. Beyond the garden a glimpse was to be caught through the trees of a trim bowling green. It had rained the night before, and a delightful, almost vernal freshness breathed in the air. The bees made a great buzzing amongst the grapes, and the birds in the mulberry-trees sang as though it were nesting time. Mistress Stagg and her old acquaintance sat at a table placed in the shadow of the vines, and sipped their wine, while Audrey obediently gathered ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... the sun shone on him, and he looked at the red blood in his three fingers, as he held them up before his face, he would say, 'Yes, to-day he has been out.' He knew the forest with its beautiful vernal green only from the fact that the neighbor's son brought him the first green branch of a beech-tree, and he held that up over his head, and dreamed he was in the beech wood where the sun shone and the birds sang. On a spring day the neighbor's boy also brought ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... Roman Republic. The Persians hold that this tint was introduced by Kay Kawus (B. C. 600) when mourning for his son Siyawush. It was continued till the death of Husayn on the 10th of Muharram (the first month, then representing the vernal equinox) when it was changed for black. As a rule Moslems do not adopt this symbol of sorrow (called "Hidad") looking upon the practice as somewhat idolatrous and foreign to Arab manners. In Egypt and especially on the Upper Nile women dye their hands ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... work—indeed, there are certain persons who seem to have required the stimulus of necessity to make them break through an initial indolence of nature. When Johnson found fault with Gray for having times of the year when he wrote more easily, from the vernal to the autumnal equinox, he added that a man could write at any time if he set himself doggedly to it. True, no doubt! But to write doggedly is not to court favourable conditions for artistic work. It may be a finer sight for a moralist to see a man performing ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... vernal Heat Shall Old Acquaintance Old Acquaintance greet, Under the Branch that leans above the Wall To shed his ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... efficient cause, the tendency to suicide should be as great at the time of the fall equinox as it is at the time of the spring equinox; but this is not the case. Two hundred and seventy-two suicides out of every thousand occur in the vernal equinoctial period and only two hundred and fifteen in the autumnal equinoctial period, and this proportion holds good throughout the whole northern hemisphere. Light, therefore, must ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... num'rous on the shore. Meantime, Ciconians to Ciconians call'd, Their neighbours summoning, a mightier host And braver, natives of the continent, Expert, on horses mounted, to maintain Fierce fight, or if occasion bade, on foot. 60 Num'rous they came as leaves, or vernal flow'rs At day-spring. Then, by the decree of Jove, Misfortune found us. At the ships we stood Piercing each other with the brazen spear, And till the morning brighten'd into noon, Few as we were, we yet withstood them all; But, when the sun verged westward, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... secession is an utter impossibility. Is the great Constitution under which we live, covering this whole country, is it to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun, disappear almost unobserved, and run off? No, sir! No, sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption of the Union; but, sir, I see as plainly as I can see the sun in heaven what that disruption itself must produce; I see that it must produce war, and such a war as I ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... secular variations are much more rapid in progress. (b) Annual variations—These were first discovered in 1780 by Cassini. They represent a cycle of annual change of small extent, from 15' to 18' only. In Paris and London the annual variation is greatest about the vernal equinox, or March 21st, and diminishes for the next three months, and slowly increases again during the nine following months. It varies during different epochs. (c) Diurnal variations were discovered in 1722 by Graham. A long needle has to be employed, or the reflection of a ray of light, ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... such as scholars own, See how his eye in ecstasy pursues The steps of Nature tracked in radiant hues; Nay, in thyself, whate'er may be thy fate, Pallid with toil or surfeited with state, Mark how thy fancies, with the vernal rose, Awake, all sweetness, from their long repose; Then turn to ponder o'er the classic page, Traced with the idyls of a greener age, And learn the instinct which arose to warm Art's earliest essay and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... rippling darkness of the streams; the lilies recalled the faintly tinted paleness of her cheeks; the silene roses, scattered throughout the hedges, called forth the remembrance of the young maiden's rosy lips, and the vernal odor of the leaves appeared to him like an emanation of her ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... looks are like the vernal May, When ev'ning Phoebus shines serene, While birds rejoice on every spray; An' she has ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... compliment to the brides, were celebrated after the Persian fashion, and during the vernal equinox. For at no other period, by the ancient laws of Persia, could nuptials be legally celebrated. Such an institution is redolent of the poetry and freshness of the new world, and of an attention to the voice of nature, and the analogies of physical ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... balm divine; But well the striplings bore their fated parts (The heavens all parts assign)— Never felt life's care or cloy. Each bloomed and died an unabated Boy; Nor dreamed what death was—thought it mere Sliding into some vernal sphere. They knew the joy, but leaped the grief, Like plants that flower ere comes the leaf— Which storms lay low in kindly doom, And kill them in ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... to make me hope, that much of my malady is the effect of cold, and that some degree at least of recovery is to be expected from vernal breezes and summer suns[808]. If my life is prolonged to autumn, I should be glad to try a warmer climate; though how to travel with a diseased body, without a companion to conduct me, and with very little money, I do not well see. Ramsay has recovered his limbs in Italy[809]; and Fielding ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Bat looked at Steena and growled. She looked calmly back at him and nodded once. From then on they traveled together—the thin gray woman and the big gray tom-cat. Bat learned to know the inside of more stellar bars than even most spacers visit in their lifetimes. He developed a liking for Vernal juice, drank it neat and quick, right out of a glass. And he was always at home on any table where ...
— All Cats Are Gray • Andre Alice Norton
... old heathen burying barrows on Stone Horse Head quieted off for the time being. Deadham, meanwhile, in act of repossessing its soul in peace and hibernating according to time-honoured habit until the vernal equinox. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... changes from heat to cold are every where dangerous; but, in countries where little caution is used in dress, they must often prove fatal. The winds in Carolina are changeable and erratic, and, about the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, commonly boisterous. In summer, they are sultry and suffocating; in winter, cold and dry. Beyond doubt, the flat maritime part is a most unhealthy situation, and the first settlers could scarcely have been cast ashore in any quarter of the globe ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... Russian one, where every man is but a co-proprietor with the north wind in the fee-simple of his own ears. Indeed, so great an epicure am I in this matter that I cannot relish a winter night fully if it be much past St. Thomas's day, and have degenerated into disgusting tendencies to vernal appearances. No, it must be divided by a thick wall of dark nights from all return of light and sunshine. From the latter weeks of October to Christmas Eve, therefore, is the period during which happiness is in season, which, in my judgment, enters the room with ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... breaths. The amazed Lieutenants went about snuffing up the gale; and, for once. Selvagee had no further need to flourish his perfumed hand-kerchief. It was as if we were sailing by some odoriferous shore, in the vernal season of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... set forth in the freshness of the morning, and the woods that had been so black and bewildering at my coming opened before us in easy paths, and all that tropical squalor that had been foul with sweat and insects seemed strangely vernal to me, so that I could hardly believe that I had trodden that way before. And for our companion all the way along—or, at least, for my other companion—was the Wonder of the World, the beautiful strangeness of living, and that marvel of a man's days upon the earth which lies ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... perfectly-kept carriage-roads, and easy and pleasant foot-paths. It was in the spring-time, and the peach-trees and almond-trees hung full of blossoms and bees, the lizards lay in the walks absorbing the vernal sunshine, the violets and cowslips sweetened all the grassy borders. The scene did not want a human interest, for the peasant girls were going to market at that hour, and I met them everywhere, bearing heavy burdens on their own heads, or hurrying forward with their ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... occurrence of this dreadful morning. The daisies have thrice bloomed on Camberwell-green; the sparrows have thrice repeated their vernal chirps in Camberwell-grove; but the Miss Maldertons are still unmated. Miss Teresa's case is more desperate than ever; but Flamwell is yet in the zenith of his reputation; and the family have the same predilection for aristocratic ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... understand more than partially and imperfectly. And it is this, taken together with the fact that he is the first English poet to read whom is to enjoy him, and that he garnished not only our language but our literature with blossoms still adorning them in vernal freshness,—which makes Chaucer's figure so unique a one in the gallery of our great English writers, and gives to his works an interest so inexhaustible for the historical as well as ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... in-doors a great deal. She became quite a student, reading more than she had done since her marriage But her seclusion was always broken for the periodical visit to Winterborne's grave with Marty, which was kept up with pious strictness, for the purpose of putting snow-drops, primroses, and other vernal flowers thereon ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... of course, the editor knows. And the spring offensive! I have seen that kind of vernal gladness. What an advent! When you find the first blue egg in the shrubbery behind your billet in Artois; when the G. S. O. 2 comes into the mess with a violet in his fingers, and shows it to every doubter, then you know the time has ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... bloom. Gentle creatures haunted it, and there was none to make afraid; wood-pigeons cooed and crickets chirped their shrill roundelays, anemones and lady-ferns looked up from the moss that kissed the wanderer's feet. Warm airs were all afloat, full of vernal odors for the grateful sense, silvery birches shimmered like spirits of the wood, larches gave their green tassels to the wind, and pines made airy music sweet and solemn, as they stood looking heavenward through veils of summer sunshine or shrouds ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... surely blest. Whatever fruits in different climes were found, That proudly rise, or humbly court the ground; Whatever blooms in torrid tracts appear, 115 Whose bright succession decks the varied year; Whatever sweets salute the northern sky With vernal lives that blossom but to die; These here disporting own the kindred soil, Nor ask luxuriance from the planter's toil; 120 While sea-born gales their gelid wings expand To winnow ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... enjoyment might hardly have been increased had her thoughts been more free from Robin's troubles, when she came down dressed for her first party, so like a lily of the valley in her delicate dress, that Owen acknowledged that it justified her choice, and murmured something of 'in vernal green and virgin white, her festal robes, arrayed.' Phoebe was only distressed at what she thought the profanation of quoting from such a source in compliment to her. Honora was gratified to find the lines in his memory upon any terms. Poor dear Honor, in one ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the north-eastern part of the state they disappeared in November or December, and did not return until the middle of February, or later if the weather happened to be severe. From the time of their vernal arrival they were to be seen in every ramble until they took flight for their breeding haunts in the North. One spring some of them were still loitering in Kansas on the eleventh of May, and were singing ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... Krishna, Mithra, Buddha. Vishnu had not one but nine incarnations. Christianity bears alarming resemblances to Mithraism. Mithra, too, was born in a cave. The dates of Christ's birth and death may be astronomical: the winter and vernal equinoxes. But the conflict of the authorities regarding these dates is mortifying. The four gospels are in reality four witnesses warring against each other. They were selected haphazard at a human council. They were not composed until the latter part of the second century, and the synoptic ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... would tempt me from home, you would; but, just now, from home I must not, will not go. I feel greatly better at present than I did three weeks ago. For a month or six weeks about the equinox (autumnal or vernal) is a period of the year which, I have noticed, strangely tries me. Sometimes the strain falls on the mental, sometimes on the physical part of me; I am ill with neuralgic headache, or I am ground to the dust with deep dejection of spirits (not, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... scientific character, we may be certain that although no omens are mentioned, both parties had omens in mind. The astronomical reports, of which quite a number have already been published,[550] may therefore be reckoned as part of the omen literature. The vernal equinox was a period of much significance. ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... necessary to link you to us and we employed our foremost captivator, the dandy of two countries, the international Lothario, the Viscount-baron Gratian von Linden-hohen-Linden-cum de Terremonde. Luckily, too, he had been at the same period as myself, smitten with your vernal charms, and he entered upon his amorous mission with gusto. You believed him very wealthy, but let me tell you that the cash he really had under hand was our petty expense fund. Judge by that what a capital we control!" exclaimed Von Sendlingen proudly. "Our poor Gratian ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... the geranium at my window. It had put forth two sickly leaves. Two sickly leaves for me, and the world alive with vernal things! Spring, thou Queen of the ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... last night. The last few days have begun the vernal equinox. It rained torrents all night and stopped at dawn. The wind was northeast and cool. Cloudy overhead, with purple horizon all around—a forbidding day. But we decided to go fishing, anyhow. We had new, delicate three-six ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... he by his informing tongue deserv'd, "His doom, but Acheloides, from whence "Your wings, and bird-like feet, whilst still you bear "Your virgin features? Was it that you mix'd, "When Proserpine the vernal flowers would cull, "Amidst her numerous train? The nymph you sought "Through earth's extent in vain; that ocean too "Your anxious search might scape not, straight you pray'd "For waving wings to winnow o'er the deep; "And favouring ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me; from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of Nature's ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... the wilds of enchantment all vernal and bright, In the days of delusion by fancy combined With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight, Abandon my soul, like a dream of the night, And ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... harvest and processing of the grape. All the wineries for hundreds of miles around had shipped hogshead after hogshead and barrel after barrel of fine wine—red, white, rose, still, or sparkling—as joyous sacrifice to Dionysus/Bacchus, and in thanks that the fertility rites of the Vernal Bacchanal had brought them good crops. Wine flowed from everywhere into the city, and now the immense reserves were stacked away, awaiting the revels. Even the brewers and distillers had sent along their wares, from the mildest beer to vodka of 120 proof, joining unselfishly ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in life. The root of an ash tree, on the bank which bends round the little bay, had been half bared by the waters during one of the winter floods, and afforded a commodious resting-place, whereon I took my seat, at once basking in the sun and bathing, as it were, in the vernal breeze. But delightful as all about me was to eye, and ear, and feeling, it brought with it a natural reflection, that the scene which I now beheld was the same which it had been and would continue to be, while so many of those with whom I had formerly enjoyed it, were past away. Our day-dreams ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... certain qualifications with regard to property, education, or labor. The educated Jews, in particular, were smiled upon benevolently "from above": they were regarded by the Government as a factor making for assimilation and as a connecting link with the lower Jewish classes. The vernal sun of Russian liberty, which flooded with its rays the social life of the whole country, just then emerging from serfdom, shone also for the hapless Jewish people, and filled their hearts with cheer and hope. The blasts of the reveille which had been sounded in the best ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... taken as a fixed point in the sky, from which the distance of the sun could be measured at the beginning of the year, the moon being used as a mere pointer for the purpose. At a later date, however, this mode of determining time was abandoned, and the new year was made directly dependent on the vernal equinox. The month was subdivided into weeks of seven days, each of which was consecrated to ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... lies open on the west and north to a vast extent of ocean, and is cooled in the summer by perpetual ventilation, but by the same blasts is kept warm in winter. Their weather is not pleasing. Half the year is deluged with rain. From the autumnal to the vernal equinox, a dry day is hardly known, except when the showers are suspended by a tempest. Under such skies can be expected no great exuberance of vegetation. Their winter overtakes their summer, and their harvest ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... Goodfellow, in a suit of leather, close to his body, his hands and face coloured russet colour, with a flail."—Grim, the Collier of Croydon, Act 4, Scene 1. At other times, however, he is presented in the vernal livery of the elves, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... gained his noontide height, will appear an 'unillumined, blank, and dreary plain, with more than wintry cheerlessness and gloom saddening the heart;' whereas, if it be regarded from the quarter whence the lord of light dispenses his beams, 'then will a vernal prospect greet ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... with their load, All the friends who went before us fall or falter by the road! We have come a weary distance, seeking what we may not get, And I think we are but children, chasing rainbows through the wet. Tell me not of vernal valleys! Is it well to hold a reed Out for drowning men to clutch at in the moments of their need? Go thy journey on without me; it is better I should stay, Since my life is like an ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... winter winds forget to blaw, An' vernal suns revive pale nature, A shepherd lad by chance I saw, Feeding his flocks by ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... rose, the gem of flowers! Rose, the care of vernal hours! Rose, of every god the joy! With roses Venus' darling boy Links the Graces in a round With ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... twelve years the difference is found to be of one degree, that is to say, the three hundred and sixtieth part of the circumference of the whole heaven. Thus after seventy-two years the colure of the vernal equinox which passed through a fixed star, corresponds with another fixed star. Hence it is that the sun, instead of being in that part of the heavens in which the Ram was situated in the time of Hipparchus, is found ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... green; On his fair brow a flowery crown was seen, Where the pale Primrose with the Cowslip vied, And fragrant Violets shone in purple pride. Upon a Bull he rode, whose horns were gay With many a golden flower and budding spray. Around him every vernal Songster fled, While the Lark soar'd and whistled o'er his head. And now he smil'd with joy, and now, apace, The crystal tears bedew'd his alter'd face. Like the young Fondling on his Mother's breast, Who cries for absent joys, and thinks ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... Ask the flower If she loves the vernal shower, Or the kisses of the sun, Or the dew, when day is done. As she answers, Yes or No, Darling! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Dugan's cafe was feasible; so Danny yielded to the vernal season as far as a glass of bock. Seated in a dark, linoleumed, humid back room, his heart and mind still groped after the mysterious meaning ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... between the Babylonian and Egyptian years appears in the fact that the Babylonian new year dates from about the period of the vernal equinox and not from the solstice. Lockyer associates this with the fact that the periodical inundation of the Tigris and Euphrates occurs about the equinoctial period, whereas, as we have seen, the Nile flood comes at the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... ritual and theology, and said that in the Middle Ages there was a unity (Einheit) which ought to be again recovered. All Europe was then one fatherland with a single faith. The period of the Arthursage was the blossoming time of romance, the vernal season of love, religion, chivalry, and—sorcery! He pleaded for the creation of a new ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... On this delightful vernal day, In scenes so rich and fair, The spirit feels a hallow'd ray Kindling its essence there; And Fancy haunts the mourner's urn, "With thoughts that breathe, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... frost has all been out of the ground many days; the snow has all disappeared from the mountains; the sun is warm, but the grass does not grow, nor the early seeds come up. The quickening spirit of the rain is needed. Presently the wind gets in the southwest, and, late in the day, we have our first vernal shower, gentle and leisurely, but every drop condensed from warm tropic vapors and charged with the very essence of spring. Then what a perfume fills the air! One's nostrils are not half large enough to take it in. The smoke, washed by the rain, becomes the breath ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... flowed out in graceful memories indulged of the past or the dead, of incidents when life was young and promised to be happy,—gave generous sketches of his rivals,—the high contention now hidden by the handful of earth,—hours passed fifty years ago with great authors, recalled for the vernal emotions which then they made to live and revel in the soul. And from these conversations of friendship, no man—no man, old or young—went away to remember one word of profaneness, one allusion of indelicacy, one impure thought, one unbelieving ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... bow'rs of myrtle, Love, summer-tressed and vernal-eyed, At morn or eve is seen to wander, A dark-haired girl is at his ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... from their lips or trickling from their pens; when the flowers of life were in full bloom, and all the birds of spring were singing. The twigs are now bare, perhaps, and the leaves have fallen; but, for all that, shall we not,—remember the vernal time? As for you, young people, whose May (or April, is it?) has not commenced yet, you need not be detained over other folks' love-rhapsodies; depend on it, when your spring-season arrives, kindly Nature will warm all your flowers ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this autumnal festival, the Sun-fte Mihrgn (which balanced the vernal Nau-roz) into Michaelmas and its goose-massacre. It was so called because it began on the 16th of Mihr, the seventh month; and lasted six days, with feasts, festivities and great rejoicings in honour of the Sun, who now ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... and wintry night, Its flowing robes were snowy white; No vernal zephyrs fan its form— It ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... FANCY, seated in her rock-roof'd dell, Listening the secrets of the vernal grove, Breathes sweetest strains to thy symphonious shell, And gives new echoes to the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... "Things in Heaven, Ned, and Things on Earth, and Things under the Earth. The old Story, whereof you have alreadie seen many Parcels; but, you know, my Vein ne'er flows so happily as from the autumnal to the vernal Equinox. Howbeit, there is Something in the Quality of this Air would arouse the ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... deck the earth, In garb of vernal loveliness; And sorrow shall abound, and mirth Betimes shall cheer our ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... opened their sleepy eyes and stretched their thin forms, there comes the great worldwide army of the birds, whose bright eyes peer at us from tree, thicket, and field, whose brilliant feathers and sweet songs bring summer with a leap—the height of the grand symphony, of which the vernal peeping of the frogs and the squirrels' chatter were only the first notes ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... many a child, from the roof-tree diurnal, A scene of distraction or dullness severe, With the longing of youth for diversion and cheer, That comes like the spring-time refreshing and vernal, Goes out on a ruinous, reckless career, Returning, if ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... perfume that communicates to all created beings the intoxicating sense of a new creation; the sense that makes you trail your hand in the water from a boat, and loosen your hair to the breeze while your mind revives with the springtide greenery of the trees? A little plant, a species of vernal grass, is a powerful element in this veiled harmony; it cannot be worn with impunity; take into your hand its shining blade, striped green and white like a silken robe, and mysterious emotions will stir the rosebuds your ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... human organism, brought together (in a chapter on "The Periodic Movements in the Reproductive Organs of Woman," in his Nervous Diseases of Women, 1840, pp. 61-70) much interesting evidence to show that the system undergoes changes about the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, and that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... recreation and for the noble effects of music on the mind. The music was to be both vocal and instrumental; and of the various instruments the organ is named in chief. (3) Excursions. "In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with Heaven and Earth. I should not therefore be a persuader to them of studying much then, after two or three ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... up and down, and then in exhaustion sank on a chair. He opened the window and looked into the night. He could see nothing. The sky was dark with unmoving clouds, but the fresh air blew gratefully against his face, laden with the scent of the vernal country; a light rain was falling noiselessly, and the earth seemed languid and weary, accepting the moisture with little ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... interposed Adriatic, is meditating; neither be fearfully solicitous for the necessaries of a life, which requires but a few things. Youth and beauty fly swift away, while sapless old age expels the wanton loves and gentle sleep. The same glory does not always remain to the vernal flowers, nor does the ruddy moon shine with one continued aspect; why, therefore, do you fatigue you mind, unequal to eternal projects? Why do we not rather (while it is in our power) thus carelessly reclining under a lofty plane-tree, or this pine, with ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... 'Twas like a vernal morn, yet overhead The leafless boughs across the lane were knitting: The ghost of some forgotten Spring, we said, O'er Winter's world ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... way—for the Holborough confectioner had been put upon his mettle by Mrs. Oliver—served prettily in the cottage parlour. The sun shone brightly upon Mr. Granger's espousals. The village children lined the churchyard walk, and strewed spring flowers upon the path of bride and bridegroom—tender vernal blossoms which scarcely harmonised with Daniel Granger's stalwart presence and fifty years. Clarissa, very pale and still, with a strange fixed look on her face, came out of the little church upon her husband's arm; and it seemed to her in that hour ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... And from the chambers of the west The warm breezes, travelling out, Breathed the new scent of flowers about, My truant steps from home would stray, Upon its grassy side to play, List the brown thrasher's vernal hymn, And crop the violet on its brim, With blooming cheek and open brow, As young and ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... evidently familiar with this vernal drumming of the woodpeckers, but quite misinterprets it. Speaking of the red-bellied species, he says: "It rattles like the rest of the tribe on the dead limbs, and with such violence as to be heard ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... earth's prolific energy restore. The lives of man and beast demand the change; Hence fowls the air, and fish the ocean range. Of heat and cold, this just successive reign, Which does the balance of the year maintain, The gard'ner's hopes, and farmer's patience props, Gives vernal verdure, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... with traveling the purlieus of Perdition, the sulphur-fumes of those profounder depths of degradation being too strong for lungs accustomed to chant optimistic lays; the glare of the burning marl too fierce for eyes used only to vernal meads and still waters; but even here, in the Purgatorium as it were, sights and sounds calculated to appall the stoutest heart are not wanting. Here stalks the demon Poverty. He is by no means so hideous as some of his brethren ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... sempiternal, Never wintry, never vernal, Still the same through all the changes That our wondering eyes behold. Spring is but his time of wooing— Summer but the sweet renewing Of the vows he utters yearly, Ever fondly and sincerely, To the young bride that he weddeth, When to heaven departs the old, For ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... is the breath of vernal shower, The bees' collected treasures sweet, Sweet music's melting fall, but sweeter yet The still, small voice of ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... 1. Sweet-scented Vernal Grass.—Small growth; yield of hay light. For pastures it is very early, and grows quickly after being cropped, and is excellent for milch-cows; grows well on almost any soil, but most naturally on high, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... lay then Before my view the saintly multitude, Which in his own blood Christ espous'd. Meanwhile That other host, that soar aloft to gaze And celebrate his glory, whom they love, Hover'd around; and, like a troop of bees, Amid the vernal sweets alighting now, Now, clustering, where their fragrant labour glows, Flew downward to the mighty flow'r, or rose From the redundant petals, streaming back Unto the steadfast dwelling of their joy. Faces had they of flame, and wings of gold; The rest was whiter than the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... The Last Tournament that Modred finds the beginning of his opportunity. The brief life of the Ideal has burned itself out, as the year, in its vernal beauty when Arthur came, is burning out in autumn. The poem is purposely autumnal, with the autumn, not of mellow fruitfulness, but of the "flying gold of the ruined woodlands" and the dank odours of decay. In that miserable season is held the ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... later,[10] the spirit of Greece shone for one brief moment in a work of pastoral elegance that has survived the changing tastes of succeeding generations. The 'romance of Daphnis and Chloe is the last word of a world of sensuous enervation toying with the idea of vernal freshness and virginity. It is a genuine picture of the purity of awakening love, wrought with every delicacy of sentiment and expression, and yet in such manner as by its very naivete and innocence to serve as a goad to satiated appetite. It has been ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... sceptred monarchs, and obey'd Their leader's call, and round them throng'd the crowd. As swarms of bees, that pour in ceaseless stream From out the crevice of some hollow rock, Now clust'ring, and anon 'mid vernal flow'rs, Some here, some there, in busy numbers fly; So to th' Assembly from their tents and ships The countless tribes came thronging; in their midst, By Jove enkindled, Rumour urged them on. Great was the din; and as the mighty ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... distant years, Warm, eloquent, and holy, as the balm Of flow'rs impearl'd with dew, which summer skies Diffuse around—I mark the marble brow Of polish'd symmetry, the eyes more blue Than violets in their vernal bloom, the neck Swanlike, and moulded with ethereal grace; And feel their magic influence on my mind. I will embody them, and give the stamp Of fervid genius to their various charms, Ere this last aspiration is extinct In the unbroken slumbers ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... old dismantled Manhattan hospital. The taste of spring was in the air: one of the dentists was having his sign regilded, a huge four-pronged grinder as big as McTeague's in Frank Norris's story. Oysters going out, the new brew of Bock beer coming in: so do the saloons mark the vernal equinox. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... peace upon those days When Virtue watch'd my childhood's quiet ways, Whence a warm spark of Nature's holy flame Gave the farm-yard an honourable name, But left one theme unsung: then, who had seen In herds that feast upon the vernal green, Or dreamt that in the blood of kine there ran Blessings beyond the sustenance of man? We tread the meadow, and we scent the thorn, We hail the day-spring of a summer's morn Nor mead at dawning day, nor thymy heath, Transcends the fragrance of the heifer's breath: May ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... Beyond, the Beyond of Nature, was built up in the ancient religion of the Veda, and peopled with Devas, and Asuras, and Vasus, and Adityas, all names for the bright solar, celestial, diurnal, and vernal powers of nature, without altogether excluding, however, even the dark and unfriendly powers, those of the night, of the dark clouds, or of winter, capable of mischief, but always destined in the end to succumb to the valor and strength of ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... Fair is the vernal quarter of the year! And fair its early buddings and its blowings— But just suppose Consumption's seeds appear With ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... of the instruction at St. Denis and the consecration at Chartres were followed on the day of the vernal equinox by a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the mind in sleep; But breathe the vernal air! Our hours may thus improvement reap, And who has ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... is only seven nautical leagues from Cumanacoa. It scarcely ever rains in the first-mentioned place, while in the latter there are seven months of wintry weather. At Cumanacoa, the dry season begins at the winter solstice, and lasts till the vernal equinox. Light showers are frequent in the months of April, May, and June. The dry weather then returns again, and lasts from the summer solstice to the end of August. Then come the real winter rains, which cease only in the month of November, and during which torrents of water pour down ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... for her education. She came out for the purpose of sitting for the picture. I first saw her in an apartment of one of the sumptuous palaces of Genoa. She stood before a casement that looked out upon the bay, a stream of vernal sunshine fell upon her, and shed a kind of glory round her as it lit up the rich crimson chamber. She was but sixteen years of age—and oh, how lovely! The scene broke upon me like a mere vision of spring and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... amatory and venereal, to live in a "rustle of (imaginary) copulation." On the other hand the utterly artificial life of civilization, which debauches even the monkeys in "the Zoo," and which expands the period proper for the reproductory process from the vernal season into the whole twelvemonth, leaves to the many, whose lot is celibacy, no bodily want save one and that in a host of cases either unattainable or procurable only by difficulty and danger. Hence the prodigious amount ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... their vernal beauty rife, To all the Gospel preach, The Resurrection and the Life, In ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... 345 Impatient sent at Hector; but it flew Devious, and brave Gorgythion struck instead. Him beautiful Castianira, brought By Priam from AEsyma, nymph of form Celestial, to the King of Ilium bore. 350 As in the garden, with the weight surcharged Of its own fruit, and drench'd by vernal rains The poppy falls oblique, so he his head Hung languid, by his helmet's weight depress'd.[14] Then Teucer yet an arrow from the nerve 355 Dispatch'd at Hector, with impatience fired To pierce him; but again his weapon err'd Turn'd by Apollo, and the bosom struck ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... A full half-century of story! And now, our Century's end in view. May's back once more in vernal glory, And with it brings your Jubilee, (Punch came to his one year before you!) "Many Returns," Ma'am, may you see, And honoured be the hour ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various |
