"Withered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Mr. De Blacquaire, who had been watching the old lady since her arrival. She turned her head in a swift, bird-like way, and fixed her curiously youthful eyes upon him for an instant. The withered old face lit up with a smile which so transfigured it that for the moment it matched the youth ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... rolled along the slopes, the rain fell monotonously, and the river, invisible in the darkness, mingled its melancholy music with the fitful soughing of the wind. Lights gleamed in the windows of the houses; occasionally a great glare illuminated the whole village; the withered foliage glowed in the shaft of crimson fire; far below, the water twinkled and rippled as if reflecting a conflagration: it was the hour of casting at the foundry, when the chimney belched its volumes of smoke, and the molten iron poured ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... After thirty there are few conversions and fewer fine beginnings; men and women go on in the path they have marked out for themselves. Their imaginations have become firm and rigid even if they have not withered, and there is no turning them from the conviction of their brief experience that almost all that is, is inexorably so. Accomplished things obsess us more and more. What man or woman over thirty in Great Britain dares to hope for a republic before ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... notes Mr. Gabb describes the flower as "large, 3 to 3.5 inches long, bell-shaped, of a beautiful purplish red color," concerning which Dr. Engelmann remarks "this would indicate a Coryphanth, but the tubercles show no trace of a groove, and, moreover, a withered remnant of a flower laterally attached (say 18 to 20 mm. long), so that I have no doubt that Mr. Gabb's statement is founded on some error." It is very probable that the flowers are scarlet and larger than Dr. Engelmann suggests. The species is closely allied to C. roseanus, but differs in ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... thanksgiving for the end of the peril which had beset the country. The stockmarket recovered from funereal depths and jumped upward. In all the great cities hysterical rapture so heated the blood of the people that all restraints withered. In frantic joy women were raped in the streets, dozens of banks were looted, thousands of plateglasswindows were smashed while millions of celebrants wept tears of 86 proof ecstasy. Torn tickertapes made Broadway ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... of the threshing—shortly after New Year—at Rocky Rises. The green boughs, which had been lashed to the veranda-posts on Christmas Eve, had withered and been used for firewood. The travelling steamer had gone with its gang of men, and the family sat down to tea, the men tired with hard work and heat, and with prickly heat and irritating wheaten chaff and dust under their clothes—and with smut (for the crop had been a smutty one) "up ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... guardian." On the grass beneath the tree lay an unsheathed sword. William took the sword in his hands, but the maiden looked at him piteously and wept, so that he hesitated; then, hardening himself, he plunged the sword into her heart and a great moan was heard, and the fire disappeared, and only a withered rose-tree stood before him. Then he heard the voice say that he must pierce his own heart with a thorn from the tree and let the blood fall upon its roots. This he did, and as he did so he felt the sharpness of Death, as though the last ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... ran in. They both approached the bed. They beheld the face of their mistress looking like the yellowed dead petals of a rose, wrinkled, withered, ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... thinking of what he had best do with himself. All before him was blank darkness, as black as the darkest night you ever saw. He reached out his hand to get some fruit to eat, but only one or two withered apples remained on the table. Was he to starve to death? Suddenly he noticed that the tinkling music of the fountain had ceased. He hastily groped his way to it, and he found in the place of the dancing, running stream ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... that the Umiro, having gained information of the intended attack, had lain in ambush within high withered grass, in which they had awaited the arrival of ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... bruises. The neighboring peasants surrounded the apparently lifeless body, and listened with awe to the frenzied imprecations of Frau Proch upon the murderer of her son. "May he die in a foreign land," said she, lifting her withered hands to Heaven, "without wife to nurse him or priest to speak peace to his soul! May his body lie unburied, a prey for wolves and vultures! May his inheritance pass into the hands of strangers, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Pons was a little withered old man. He was born in our house—I know, for it chanced that mention was made of it this very day I am describing. Pons was all of sixty years. He was mostly toothless, and, despite a pronounced limp that compelled him to go slippity-hop, he was ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... flicker of light was imminent in his withered face as he beheld the others proudly lift their hats and exhibit ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... creature had been struck with the palsy. As Clarence went close to the bed, she opened her eyes, and fixing them upon him, she stretched out her withered hand, caught fast hold of her grand-daughter, and then raising herself, with a violent effort, she pronounced the word "Begone!" Her face grew black, her features convulsed, and she sunk down again in her bed, without power of utterance. Clarence ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... address, and I have seen her mother. Poor things!' he added, 'they are indeed in want. Their room is on the sixth floor, and one miserable bed and a broken chair are all the furniture. For ornament, there was a rose-tree, in a flower-pot, upon the window-seat: it was withered, like its ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... I turn at the request, and caught a half glance of his features. May no eye destined to reflect the beauties of the New Jerusalem inward upon the beatific soul behold such a sight as mine then beheld! My immortal spirit, blood and bones, were all withered at the blasting sight; and I arose and withdrew, with groanings which the pangs of death shall never ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... the stomach. They have villages which contain a million of inhabitants. Their boats are drawn by men, but their carriages are moved by sails. A married woman while young and pretty is a slave, but when she becomes old and withered is the most powerful, respected, and beloved person in the family. The emperor is regarded with the most profound reverence, but the empress mother is a greater person than he. When a man furnishes his house, instead of laying stress, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... said moved the Court powerfully, but when the withered little flower of a man, the Chevalier, told in quaint brief sentences the story of the Sieur de Mauprat, his sufferings, his exile, and the nobility of his family, which had indeed, far back, come of royal stock, and then at last of Guida and the child, more than ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Bonaparte, and his voice was now loud and firm. "Ah! I shall never hesitate between such alternatives. I should bear disgrace, abject insignificance, and an utter lack of power? And my hand should not be withered—it should be able yet to grasp a sword and pierce my breast ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... healthily intelligent and progressive human being ever the same for many weeks together? Change—readjustment—is the keynote of life; the very breath of it. When you can accuse me of not changing I shall know that I have fallen into the sere and withered leaf past redemption. And now that I have expiated myself—(probably to your more complete confusion!)—we'll have a short canter to blow away cobwebs. The road is rather less ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... and gave him a look. No, it was not a look; it was the merest fraction of a look, but it withered him up. ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... other reasons why we did not immediately marry. Mary felt an entire conviction of the propriety of her conduct. It would be absurd to suppose that, with a heart withered by desertion, she was not right to give way to the emotions of kindness which our intimacy produced, and to seek for that support in friendship and affection, which could alone give pleasure to her heart, and peace to her meditations. It was only about six months ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... further possible that the Italian stage was on the way to something great when the Counter-reformation broke in upon it, and, aided by the Spanish rule over Naples and Milan, and indirectly over almost the whole peninsula, withered the best flowers of the Italian spirit. It would be hard to conceive of Shakespeare himself under a Spanish viceroy, or in the neighbourhood of the Holy Inquisition at Rome, or in his own country a few decades later, at the time o English Revolution. ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... in crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done; peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes; until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow; their human capacities are withered and starved; they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth or ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "Spiro." The superstitious veneration entertained for the old saint is a constant source of quarrel between the English residents and the native Ionians. But the historian may be pardoned for gazing with a momentary interest on the dead hands, now black and withered, that subscribed the Creed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Francesco Sansovino, energetically pleaded for the Gothic pile, and prevailed. It was successfully repaired, and Tintoret painted his noblest picture on the wall from which the Paradise of Guariento had withered before the flames. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Men. He is a hero and a battle-god: The spoils and the rewards he justly won, Others have seized, and left his haughty heart A withered laurel. ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... but the loyal conditions of daily breath are never told. Because Leonardo made models of machines, dug canals, built fortifications, and dissipated half his art-power in capricious ingenuities, we have many anecdotes of him;—but no picture of importance on canvas, and only a few withered stains of one upon a wall. But because his pupil, or reputed pupil, Luini, labored in constant and successful simplicity, we have no anecdotes of him;—only hundreds of noble works. Luini is, perhaps, the best central type of the highly-trained Italian painter. He is the only man who entirely united ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... supported by a large body of infantry, who extended to within about half the distance between the French line and their own reserves. The fire was terrific—so terrific that several of the French regiments refused to advance. Others started; but withered away so fast, under the deadly fire, that only two corps—besides the Zouaves—persevered ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... gather the yellow tulips, the broad-petalled roses, and in autumn the bright scarlet bramble leaves. The brown leaves of the Spanish chestnut, too, pleased him; anything with richness of colour. The old and grey, and withered man gathered the brightest of petals for his old and grey, ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... as she drew herself to her full height and withered me with a look of surpassing scorn. "Am I to regard myself ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... human love! thou spirit given, On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven! Which fall'st into the soul like rain Upon the Siroc-withered plain, And, failing in thy power to bless, But leav'st the heart a wilderness! Idea! which bindest life around With music of so strange a sound And beauty of so wild a birth— Farewell! for I ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... father made in compassing the crown! I Richard's body have interred new: And on it have bestowed more contrite tears Than from it issued forced drops of blood: Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay, Who twice a day their withered hands hold up Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests Sing still for Richard's soul. More will I do; Though all that I can do is nothing worth, Since that my penitence comes after ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... the long intestines of ruminating animals. He has only one inferior aperture, as in birds. He has no soles to his feet nor has he the power of moving his toes separately. His hair is flat, and puts you in mind of grass withered by the wintry blast. His legs are too short; they appear deformed by the manner in which they are joined to the body, and when he is on the ground, they seem as if only calculated to be of use in climbing trees. He has forty-six ribs, ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... one general direction must be borne in mind—each ingredient must be powdered before mixing. Potpourri should be made before the season of outdoor flowers passes. Pluck the most fragrant flowers in your garden, passing by all withered blossoms. Pick the flowers apart, placing the petals on plates and setting them where the sun can shine upon them. Let the petals thus continue to dry in the sun for several days. Each flower may be made ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous
... I sweep up the withered leaves, might be heard at a furlong's distance."—T. CARLYLE, from ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... When I wuz a little shaver my ma told me always to mind my manners, an' when I didn't she whaled the life out of me. An', do you know, stranger, she's just a leetle, withered old woman, but if she could 'pear here right now I'd be willin' to set down right in these bushes an' say, 'Ma, take up that stick over thar an' beat me across the shoulders an' back with it as hard as you kin.' I'd ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... very long, for they are not very much withered. I should say it was done about ten ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... my bairn, because she was not of us," replied David. "She is a withered branch will never bear fruit of grace—a scapegoat gone forth into the wilderness of the world, to carry wi' her, as I trust, the sins of our little congregation. The peace of the warld gang wi' her, and a better peace when she has the grace to turn to it! If ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... almost 30 years. As 1983 began, the system stood on the brink of bankruptcy, a double victim of our economic ills. First, a decade of rampant inflation drained its reserves as we tried to protect beneficiaries from the spiraling cost of living. Then the recession and the sudden end of inflation withered the expanding wage base and increasing revenues the system needs to support the 36 million ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... old heathen, pointing a withered finger to the handsome spire of the Bang-kah chapel, that lifted itself toward the sky, "Look now, the chapel towers above our temple. It is larger than the ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... barley were smitten; for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was bolled: but the wheat and the rye were not smitten, for they were not grown up;' so will SELF-SATISFACTION arise, after worldly pride and vanity have been withered up. Let him who has found inward peace content himself that he is arrived at the Pillars of Hercules, beyond which there is no safe way. That self-integrity which deems itself immaculate is dangerous. ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... year after he had declined the Harvard professorship, when he was yet but forty years old, he gave this humorously exaggerated account of his physical failings due to his nervous strain: "I began The Nation young, handsome, and fascinating, and am now withered and somewhat broken, rheumatism gaining on me rapidly, my complexion ruined, as also my figure, for I am ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... again soon, shook her dry, withered fist at the porter, and cried, "Ha! thou insolent churl, I will pray thee ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... loved Britons, see your Shakespeare rise, An awful ghost confessed to human eyes! Unnamed, methinks, distinguished I had been From other shades, by this eternal green, About whose wreaths the vulgar poets strive, And with a touch, their withered bays revive. Untaught, unpractised, in a barbarous age, I found not, but created first the stage. And, if I drained no Greek or Latin store, 'Twas, that my own abundance gave me more. On foreign ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... know what may not have been hidden away in some of the queer old bureaux I told you of. Family papers of importance, perhaps; possibly some ancient love-letters, forgotten in the confusion of their leave-taking; a lock of hair, or a withered flower, perhaps, that she, my poor old lady, would fain have clasped in her hand when dying, or have had buried with her. Ah, yes; there must be many a pitiful old story ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... area of ten miles in diameter. Even now its depth when full must be very considerable, for high on the branches of the trees that grow in the area, the last flood had left quantities of driftwood and withered grass; and the rocks and banks were coated with the yeasty foam, that remains after the subsidence of an ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... the window there leans an old maid. She plucks the withered leaf from the balsam, and looks at the grass-covered rampart, on which many children are playing. What is the old maid thinking of? A whole life drama is unfolding itself before ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... of all the Dogs lay at his master's feet and whined a little for sympathy while the people hunted for themselves, and the myriad-footed Rain danced on the dry thatch of the hut and the baked mesa. Later the creek rose in its withered banks and began to talk to itself in a new voice, ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... my revenge might be complete. I hated the whole world with an intolerable, murderous hate; and to mock and make my race suffer was the only real pleasure I found. The very name, the bare mention of religion maddened me. A minister's daughter, a minister's son, a minister himself, had withered my young life, and I blasphemously derided all holy things. Oh, Edna! my darling! it is impossible to paint all the awful wretchedness of that period, when I walked in the world seeking victims and finding ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... the stalwort blows of men Who long had suffered under savage hate. Hunters and settlers of the valley roused At length to vengeance. With a rapid hand The blockhouse-door I opened and rushed out, Wielding my rifle. Youth, this arm is old And withered now, but every blow I struck Then made the blood-drops spatter to my brow, Until I bathed in crimson. With deep joy I felt the iron sink within the brain And clatter on the bone, until the stock Snapped ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... woes on woes; Till some strange means afford a sudden view Of some vile plot, and every woe adieu! Now, should we grant these beauties all endure Severest pangs, they've still the speediest cure; Before one charm be withered from the face, Except the bloom, which shall again have place, In wedlock ends each wish, in triumph all disgrace; And life to come, we fairly may suppose, One light, bright contrast to these wild dark woes. These let us leave, and at her sorrows look, Too ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... and down the siding brown The great black crows are flyin', And down below the spur, I know, Another 'milker's' dyin'; The crops have withered from the ground, The tank's clay bed is glarin', But from my heart no tear nor sound, For I have gone past carin' — Past worryin' or carin', Past feelin' aught or carin'; But from my heart no tear nor sound, For ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... to pass on another sabbath, that he entered into the synagogue and taught: and there was a man there, and his right hand was withered. 7 And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, whether he would heal on the sabbath; that they might find how to accuse him. 8 But he knew their thoughts; and he said to the man that had his hand withered, Rise up, and stand forth in the midst. And he ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... arrogance and jeweled pride, of the sorrow it may jostle from its path; and perhaps it is happy for us as we move along in smiles and pleasantness, not to comprehend that the glance which meets our own comes from the bleakness of a withered heart—withered by penury's ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... this weed small white blossoms open as still as stars of frost. Upon these blossoms lies a fragrance so pure and wholesome that the searching sense is never cloyed, never satisfied. Years after the blossoms are dried and yellow and the leaves withered and gone, this wholesome fragrance lasts. The common people, who often put their hopes into their names, call it life-everlasting. Sometimes they make themselves pillows of it for its virtue ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... the more equable climate of Northern France, one can form no conception of those parched mountain gorges where not even a bush can be found to shelter a bird, where, at most, the wanderer sees in summer here and there a withered lavender, where all the springs are dried up, and where a dead silence, hardly broken by even the hum of an insect, prevails. But if a storm bursts forth, masses of water suddenly shoot from the mountain ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... and thoroughly seasoned by this Fall, but now, when the workmen are ready to prepare it for exhibition, it has shown new life, new shoots have appeared, and two tufts of green now decorate the otherwise dry and withered log, and the yucca promises to bloom again before the winter is over. One of the most perfect specimens of the Douglass spruce ever seen is in the collection, and is a decided curiosity. It is a recent arrival from the Rocky Mountains. Its bark, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... in full flower and the haulms of sturdy growth promised well for the crop of tubers beneath, some indeed being already half withered, as if fit for digging; while pods were thick on the two rows of peas planted, and the scarlet runners were a mass of ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... rather (Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned For ever now to have their lot in pain— Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced Of Heaven, and from eternal splendours flung For his revolt—yet faithful how they stood, Their glory withered; as, when heaven's fire Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines, With singed top their stately growth, though bare, Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepared To speak; whereat their doubled ranks they bend From wing to wing, and half ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... the beechen bough, And 'neath the hemlock, whose thick branches bent Beneath its bright, cold burden, and kept dry A circle, on the earth, of withered leaves, The partridge ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... station; the undulating turnip-fields and fields of pale stooked corn, the reaping-machines and the women tying up the bean-straw, the white line of the Forth, and the whole pale, delicate country under the low, tender, intimate northern sky. Even the smell, sweet and pungent, of the withered potatoes, bringing the sense of knowing it all, turnings of roads and of the land, so well. And similarly inside the castle, where I lingered on the pretext of writing a note to those ladies. It was all unchanged; the escutcheons in relief on the ceiling, the view of cornfield and ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... beauty, know that the rose too blooms, but quickly being withered, is cast on the dunghill; for blossom and beauty have the same time allotted to them, and both together envious time ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... the pulpit and the stream of exhortation withered on his lips. No one in the body of the audience stirred; no one but himself had clearly seen what had happened. Vague rows of 'saints' with gaping countenances stared up at him, while he shouted, 'Will nobody stop them? as we whisked out through ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... immediately appeared in the adjoining room, and the bishop found himself completely encircled by lights, which shone upon the worn, haggard face of the duchesse, revealing every feature but too clearly. Aramis fixed a long ironical look upon her pale, thin, withered cheeks—her dim, dull eyes—and upon her lips, which she kept carefully closed over her discolored scanty teeth. He, however, had thrown himself into a graceful attitude, with his haughty and intelligent head thrown back; he smiled so as to reveal ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... could I feel as I have felt—or be what I have been, Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished scene; {252} As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish tho' they be, So, midst the withered waste of life, those tears would flow ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... know how they are smothered in the lusts of the body, how they are debased by the fear of man, how blind they are to the providence of God! You know how oppression has put out the eyes of their souls, and withered its sinews. If now, at length, a Saviour has once more for them stretched out His healing hand, and bidden them see, and arise and be strong, shall I resist the work? And you, father, will you not aid it? I would not presume; but if ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... blarney!" She flushed with pleasure, and pressed her fresh cheek against his withered one. ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... they do in State's prison, but I didn't suppose old Winthrop was built exactly on that plan. I thought the great point here was to wake a man up and inspire him to try to do better and all that sort of thing. And I am doing better, and I know it, and so does he, but his soul is so dried up and withered that he can't think of anything but ancient history. He hasn't the least idea of what's going on here to-day. I'll bet the old fellow, when he has the toothache, groans in dactylic hexameters and calls for his ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... garden. No. Around the house, on every side, north, south, east, and west, the eye rested only on black desolation. Not a blade of grass, not a leaf could be seen—even the very bark was stripped from the trees, that now stood as if withered by the hand of God! Had fire swept the surface, it could not have left it more naked and desolate. There was no garden, there were no fields of maize or buckwheat, there was no longer a farm—the kraal stood in the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... themselves labelled threepence or fourpence! We did not know whether to smile or to drop a tear, as we contemplated these baits hung out to tempt the coins from the exiguous purses of ancient maidens, forlorn widows, withered annuitants, stranded humanity in every stage of shipwrecked penury. I am reminded of Thackeray's "Jack Spiggot." "And what are your pursuits, Jack? says I. 'Sold out when the governor died. Mother lives at Bath. Go down there once a year for a week. Dreadful slow. Shilling whist.'" ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... came to stand before them a fiery messenger from the skies. But such was the miracle—for it seemed no less. The bent figure straightened, the trembling voice grew clear and strong, the dim eyes brightened, into the withered cheeks flowed colour—into the whole aged personality came slowly but surely back the fires of youth. And once more in a public place Ebenezer Blake became the mouthpiece of ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond
... saw the ravages which the terrible night he had passed through had caused. Yesterday, the banker was rosy, firm, and upright as an oak, now he was bent, and withered like an old man. His hair had become gray about the temples, as if scorched by his burning thoughts. He was only the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... embittered by a hopeless struggle to sustain life, in a ceaseless combat with competing foes on every hand; spurred to a frenzy of fury, curse the day which gave them birth. Why should they live only to suffer? With moral natures starved and withered, they declare that all justice is a mockery, all honesty, a myth! They have lost faith in God, and confidence in man! They care not for the needs of posterity, or for the nemesis of a future existence! In this desperate condition, they either commit ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... touch of bitterness on my mouth Like salt, burning in. And my hand withered in your hand. For you were straining with a wild heart, back, back again, Back to those children you had left behind, to all the aeons of the past. And I was here in the under-dusk of ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... cold where I sat, my first object was to try and drive the brute away. I therefore kept pelting him with pieces of withered branches, which I broke off; but to no purpose. Still snarling occasionally, he kept smelling round and round the tree, frequently casting a look up at me with his glittering eyes. Now and then he went to a little distance, and seemed ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... Lucky Chance; or, An Alderman's Bargain is original save for the details of Lady Fulbank's design upon Gayman, when he is conveyed to her house by masqued devils and conducted to her chamber by Pert dressed as a withered beldame. In this Mrs. Behn exactly copies Shirley's excellent comedy, The Lady of Pleasure, produced at the Private House in Drury Lane, October, 1635, (4to 1637). In the course of Lady Bornwell's intrigue with Kickshaw he is taken blindfold to the house of the procuress, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... variety of material is used by birds that build open nests. Cotton and feathers enter largely into the composition of the lining of a Shrike's nest. In Florida the Mockingbird shows a decided preference for the withered leaves and stems of life-everlasting, better known as the plant that produces "rabbit tobacco." The nest of the Summer Tanager is made almost entirely of grasses, the outer half being green, freshly plucked blades that contrast strikingly ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... the outward or ritualistic expression of the idea, already suggested by Virgil in the fourth Eclogue and the Aeneid, that a regeneration is at hand of Rome and Italy, in religion, morals, agriculture, government; old things are put away, new sap is to run in the half-withered trunk and branches of a noble tree. The experience of the past, as with Aeneas after the descent into Hades, is to lead to new effort and a new type of character, of which pietas in its broadest sense is the inspiring motive. Henceforward the Roman is to ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... busy workers; there was almost a profusion of half-formed rainbows; and atmosphere and cloud so blended that it was hard to say where one began and the other ceased. On every twig, dead weed, and spire of withered grass hung innumerable drops that now were water and again diamonds when touched by the inconstant sun. Sweet-fern grass abounded in the lawn, and from it exuded an indescribably delicious odor. The birds were so ecstatic in their songs, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... on the piano, tearing the pink petals from a half-withered rose, while her guardian, the Hon. John Garcide, finished what he had to say and pulled out his cigar-case ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... onward;— For thee the last will soon be o'er. Rest thee, oh, rest thee! Flowers have withered thus before,— And, my poor heart, what wouldst thou more? Rest thee, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to find that the vegetables we had planted were making little progress. They would shoot up at first very strongly, like the "seed which fell on stony ground," but, as soon as a gale arose, the tops turned black and shortly afterwards withered away. It was apparently an effect of the salt spray which, in rough weather, used to blow across the isthmus. Hamilton planted some willows and other cuttings, which shared ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... both understood a canoe," said Banks. His voice was still high-pitched, like that of a man under continued stress, and his eyes burned in his withered, weather-beaten face like the vents of buried fires. "But likely it was then, while you was freighting the outfit around to the glacier, you came across ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... agreeably struck both with its external appearance and the peculiarity of its sweetness. But this also was exceedingly apt to give headache. The palm-tree, out of which the cabbage had been taken, soon withered throughout. ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... and continued so, till he went over to Hanover, in the beginning of the following year, with Lord Clarendon, who was sent thither by Queen Anne. At his return, upon the death of that Queen, all his hopes became withered, but Mr. Pope (who you know, is an excellent planter) revived and invigorated his bays, and indeed, very generously supported him, in some more solid improvements; for remember a letter, wherein he invited him, with a very impoetical warmth that, so long as he himself had a shilling, ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... good-humouredly, and Philip could not help regarding her with a certain admiration. Her small, sharp, subtile face, beneath its mask of smiling indifference, looked positively youthful in the judicious candle-light; only the little, bird-like, withered hands bore the stigmata of age. And he could not conceive her changing; to the last, those tell-tale hands apart, she would be comely and cynical, and would die as she had lived, secure "in the high places of laughter"—a laughter that, for all its geniality, struck ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... you give him the choice, he may prefer pleasures which do not degrade him to those which do. And this choice is offered to every man who possesses in literary or artistic culture a never-failing source of pleasures, which are neither withered by age, nor staled by custom, nor embittered in the recollection by ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... friend of hers who had made an unfortunate marriage with a man in a store. Consequently I was placed in the window of a furnished room, rent in advance, water two flights up, gas extra after ten o'clock at night. Two of my leaves withered off here. Also, I was moved from one room to another so many times that I got to liking the odor of ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... so, but once, In days that no man thinks upon, Fair voices echoed from its stones, The light above it leaped and shone: Once there were multitudes of men, That built that city in their pride, Until its might was made, and then They withered age by age and died. But now of that prodigious race, Three only in an iron tower, Set like carved idols face to face, Remain the masters of its power; And at the city gate a fourth, Gigantic and with dreadful eyes, Sits looking toward the lightless ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... with it the icy, northerly wind came over the withered reeds. The sun had disappeared behind the firs, and it made one cold only to look at the crimson sky, covered with tiny, red ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... lips. And then Grace found herself kneeling at her friend's feet. "Grace," she said, "do you not know that I love you? Do you not know that I love you dearly?" In answer to this Grace kissed the withered hand she held in hers, while the warm tears trickled upon Miss Prettyman's knuckles. "I love you as though you were my own," exclaimed the schoolmistress; "and will you not trust me, that I know ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... on by a menial. If my social evolution had continued—if I had expanded, for instance, into a literary tourist, of sound Conservative principles— I would have seen the inside of the boss's house before I had done. But, as it happened, I withered and contracted from that point—simultaneously, mind you, with a perceptible diminution of my inherent ignorance and correlative uselessness. Such, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Rome. My halls and the public places of Rome are full of the antique effigies of my forefathers, and the annals of Rome abound with the records of triumphs led by the Quintii to the Roman Capitol; and so far from age having withered it, to-day, yet more abundantly than ever of yore, flourishes the glory of our name. Of my wealth I forbear, for shame, to speak, being mindful that honest poverty is the time-honoured and richest inheritance of the noble citizens of Rome; ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... sunset, but may be heard singing at intervals during the day. His food consists of wild fruits, such as blackberries and raspberries, snails, worms, slugs and grubs. He also obtains much of his food amongst the withered leaves and marshy places of the woods and shrubberies which he frequents. Few birds possess a more varied melody. His notes are almost endless in variety, each note seemingly uttered at the caprice of the bird, without any perceptible approach ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... Kotzebue in which the author, after ridiculing "the missionary zeal that, like a fire on the steppes, caught the kings of Poland and Scandinavia and moved them to frantic efforts for the conversion of neighboring peoples," proudly stated, "But while her neighbors all accepted Christianity and the withered cross drew steadily nearer to the green oak, Prussia remained faithful to ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... blew in through the open door, and she shut it again, going back to her low chair on the hearth. Through her blinding tears she saw her father's brown hands stretched out to her, and the withered ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... length we come to feel that the Greeks were not far wrong in thinking each tree had a dryad in it, animating it, protecting it against destruction, dying when the tree withered. Some Faraday shows us that each drop of water is a sheath for electric forces sufficient to charge 800,000 Leyden jars, or drive an engine from Liverpool to London. Some Sir William Thomson tells us how hydrogen gas will chew up a large iron spike as a ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... of firework flowers, fifty flowers for 2 sen, or 1d., each of which, as it slowly consumes, throws off fiery coruscations, shaped like the most beautiful of snow crystals. I was also tempted by small boxes at 2 sen each, containing what look like little slips of withered pith, but which, on being dropped into water, expand into ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... glen there was very little snow, only a few veins and patches here and there, threading and seaming the steep, as if a white-footed hare had been coursing about. Little stubby brier shoots, and clumps of russet bracken, and dead heather, ruffling like a brown dog's back, broke the dull surface of withered herbage, thistle stumps, teasels, rugged banks, and naked brush. Down in the bottom the noisy brook was scurrying over its pebbles brightly, or plunging into gloom of its own production; and away at the bend of the valley was seen the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... overpowered her, that she had sunk down upon the senseless earth which covered him, conscious only of the wild, sickly longing, like him to flee away and be at rest. She had reached her home; exertion no longer needed, the unnatural strength, ebbed fast, and the frail tenement withered, hour by hour, away. And how might Julien mourn! Her work on earth was done. Young, tried, frail as she was, she had been permitted to show forth the glory, the sustaining glory, of her faith, by a sacrifice whose magnitude was indeed apparent, but ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... A heat that curled and withered the very weeds. The corn-blades drooping, sulking still. Mother and Sal ironing, mopping their faces with a towel and telling each other how hot it was. The dog stretched across the doorway. A child's bonnet on the floor—the child out in the sun. ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... whom I meane it most, And eke to her whose faire immortall beame Hath darted fyre into my feeble ghost, That now it wasted is with woes extreame, 25 It may so please, that she at length will streame Some deaw of grace into my withered hart, After ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... buried on the Trojan shore, and around his grave, it is said, there grew very wonderful trees. These trees withered away as soon as their tops reached high enough to be seen from the city of Troy. Then fresh trees sprang up from their roots, and withered in like manner when they reached the same height, and so this marvelous growth ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... never conveyed. They shone with splendour near six hundred years. In the sixteenth century, their estate was about 1400l. a year; great for that time, but is now, exclusive of a few pepper-corns and red roses, long since withered, reduced to one little farm, tilled for bread by the owner. This setting glympse of a shining family, is as indifferent about the matter, and almost as ignorant, as the ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... unfortunate individuals who never seem to get beyond childhood in their development? Many a man at forty years is as childish in mind, and as immature in judgment, as a well-developed lad of eighteen would be. They are like withered fruit plucked before it was ripe; they can never become like the mellow and luscious fruit allowed to mature properly. They are unalterably molded; and the saddest fact of all is that they will give to their children the same imperfections; and the children ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... they maddened me. Would the Welse remain the Welse? Would the blood persist? Would the young shoot rise straight and tall and strong, green with sap and fresh and vigorous? Or would it droop limp and lifeless, withered by the heats of the world other than the ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... home. Mr. Amherst rises from his chair; the dull red of old age comes painfully into his withered cheeks as he stands gazing at her, slight, erect, with her proud little ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... We could not conceive her associating familiarly with the gaunt but good-natured Scathelock, and Mutch the miller's son. Summer, too, must pass away from Sherwood as it does from every sublunary scene. The leaves fall—the birds are mute—the grass has withered down—and there is snow lying two feet deep in the forest,—and then, wo is me for poor Marian, shivering in her slight silken kirtle in the midst of a faded bower! So that we were sometimes compelled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... cousin, unobservant of Nature generally, has never given a thought to any of its particular phenomena; and that now presented to his gaze is one of the strangest. For while they stand watching the uinay, its flowers continue to close their corollas, the petals assuming a shrunk, withered appearance. ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... ground, causing it to remain barren for ever. There is, for instance, a dark-looking piece of ground devoid of verdure in the parish of Kirdford, Sussex. Local tradition says that this was formerly green, but the grass withered gradually away soon after the blood of a poacher, who was shot there, trickled down on the place. But perhaps the most romantic tale of this kind was that known as the "Field of Forty Footsteps." A ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... replied the girl, and the next morning, when the ox spoke to her, she answered him as she had been told, and he fell down straight upon the ground, and lay there seven days and seven nights. But the flowers in the garden withered, for there was no one to ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... be moved by religious emotion; if your spirit is no longer exalted by music, and you do not linger over certain lines of poetry, it is because the love-instinct in your heart has withered to ashes of roses. It is idle to imagine Bobby Burns as a staid member of the Kirk; had he been so, there would now be no Bobby Burns. The literary ebullition of Robert Burns (he himself has told us) began shortly after he had reached the age of indiscretion; and the occasion was his being ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... I thought ye wuz the cop," the old crone went on, as she grasped my arm in a hand whose thinness I could feel through my thin jacket. "A nice arm it is ye have got, and yit ye don't speak as if ye be one of we uns, be you?" The withered hand held me as though in a vise, while I could feel the gin-laden breath of the unfortunate creature as she peered close ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... down at her knee, laying her face on the clasped hands in her lap, and for a few minutes neither wept nor spoke. Then a stifled sob broke from the girl, and Aunt Plenty gathered the young head in her arms, saying, with the slow tears of age trickling down her own withered cheeks: "Bear up, my lamb, bear up. The good Lord won't take him from us I am sure and that brave child will be allowed to pay her debt to him. I ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... can we demand of the bird that he fly under the receiver of an air-pump? What a multitude of beautiful scenes the people of taste have cost us, from Scuderi to La Harpe! A noble work might be composed of all that their scorching breath has withered in its germ. However, our great poets have found a way none the less to cause their genius to blaze forth through all these obstacles. Often the attempt to confine them behind walls of dogmas and rules is vain. Like the Hebrew giant they carry their ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... thin, thinner than ever, and stiff as if she had withered. Her face was sallow and dry, and the luster had gone from her black hair. Her wide mouth twitched and wavered, wavered and twitched. Though it was warm summer she sat by a blazing fire with ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... blazing sun! Doth Macistus sleep On his tower-clad steep? No! rapid and red doth the wildfire sweep: It flashes afar on the wayward stream Of the wild Euri'pus, the rushing beam! It rouses the light on Messa'pion's height, And they feed its breath with the withered heath. But it may not stay! And away—away— It bounds in ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... sullen sky, The naked boughs whisper melodies Of Summer spent and of Spring gone by— Of days once glad that are gone forever, Of lips once true that will answer never, Of life and love that are but as these Dead leaves of Autumn grown withered and dry. ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... earth, and that his Mary would soon follow him; but their darling Jennie would be sheltered and taught, and that by a true disciple of their Lord and Master. No more anguish lest his precious child should become a prey to the wary and dissolute; no more grief at her withered, cheerless youth; no more sorrowings for the wants that he could not appease. "Oh! too much! too much mercy and goodness hast thou shown toward Thine unworthy servants, my Saviour and my God!" murmured he, and a violent hemorrhage ensued, occasioned by the ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... self-chosen, arising gradually to the level determined by their abilities. The germ of theocracy was fairly developed, and apparently burgeoned vigorously during each period of peace, only to be checked and withered during the ensuing war when the shamans and their craft were forced ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... and heart. He gave himself up to thinking of Mary, and their walk in the wood, and the sprained ankle, and all the sayings and doings of that eventful autumn day. And then he opened his desk, and examined certain treasures therein concealed, including a withered rose-bud, a sprig of heather, a cut boot-lace, and a scrap or two of writing. Having gone through some extravagant forms of worship, not necessary to be specified, he put them away. Would it ever ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... smile that sat singularly on his withered face, he took up a newspaper and went towards the fireplace, where he sat stiffly in an armchair, taking an enormous interest in the morning's news. He read a single piece of news three times over, and a fourth ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... last. Speech shook him like a flame: "Yea, though thou plucked the stars from out the sky, Each lovely one would be a withered shame — Each thou couldst find or name — To ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... without counting the cost, but because he knew what poverty meant, and a fellow-feeling made him kind. Even in Venice he set aside a fixed sum for charitable purposes. It was to his credit that neither libertinism nor disgrace nor remorse withered at its root this herb of grace. Cynical speeches with regard to friends and friendship, often quoted to his disadvantage, need not be taken too literally. Byron talked for effect, and in accordance with the whim of the moment. His acts do not correspond with his words. Byron rejected and repudiated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... which bordered the garden. She had her water-vase in her hand, and she sprinkled the thirsting plants, which seemed to brighten at her approach. She bent to inhale their odor. She touched them timidly and caressingly. She felt, along their stems, if any withered leaf or creeping insect marred their beauty. And as she hovered from flower to flower, with her earnest and youthful countenance and graceful motions, you could not have imagined a fitter handmaid for the ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... her first work, sixty-two years had passed; and this interval had been crowded, not only with political, but also with intellectual revolutions. Thousands of reputations had, during that period, sprung up, bloomed, withered, and disappeared. New kinds of composition had come into fashion, had gone out of fashion, had been derided, had been forgotten. The fooleries of Della Crusca, and the fooleries of Kotzebue, had for a time bewitched the multitude, but had left no trace behind them; nor had ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with which Mr. Linton's French chalk had been applied. At one end, near the railing guarding the trapdoor, the Cunjee musicians were stationed, and close to them a queer old figure hovered—old Andy Ferguson, gnarled and knotted and withered; Irish, for all his Scotch name, and with his old blue eyes full of Irish fire at the thought of "a spree." He held his old fiddle tenderly as he might hold a child; it, too, was the worse for wear, and showed in more ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... length, and her greatest weight nine pounds. Probably it is a long-lived, and certainly it is a very hardy animal. Where it has any green substance to eat it never drinks water; but after a long summer drought, when for months it has subsisted on bits of dried thistle-stalks and old withered grass, if a shower falls it will come out of its burrows even at noonday and drink eagerly from the pools. It has been erroneously stated that vizcachas subsist on roots. Their food is grass and seeds; but they may also sometimes eat roots, as the ground is occasionally seen scratched ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... from the wall, and mournfully contrasting with the general brilliant appearance of the apartment, inclosed a picture of a beautiful female; and bending over its frame, and indeed partly shadowing the countenance, was the withered branch of a tree. A harpsichord and several cases of musical instruments were placed in different parts of the room; and suspended by broad black ribbons from the wall, on each side of the picture, were a guitar and a tambourine. On a sofa of unusual size lay a ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... uniform brown expanse, almost treeless, which impresses the traveller with a feeling of sadness and weariness. Even in Azerbijan, which is one of the least arid portions of the territory, vast tracks consist of open undulating downs, desolate and sterile, bearing only a coarse withered grass and a ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... of withered bracken, casting a shadow much more substantial than itself, which was the last dwindled outpost of the screen of trees; and Richard hissed over his shoulder, "Hush!" though she had not spoken. But nothing could ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... a summer evening, filled with blossoms of poppies and corn-flowers. A wild storm sweeps over the field; the corn is broken down; the flowers are crushed beneath its weight, draggled and withered. A poppy, torn up by its roots, is ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... showered from her looks of sorrow;— And where tall corn and all seed-bearing grass Rose from beneath her step, they wither now Fading under the frown of her bent brows: [18] The springs decrease;—the fields whose delicate green Was late her chief delight, now please alone, Because they, withered, seem ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... and thy dead past shall be Alive forever with eternal day; And planted on his bosom thou shall see The flowers revived that withered on the way Amid the ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... the world has offered so great encouragement, whether in fame or money, to men of science and literature, as the present. Formerly, authors flourished under the patronage of princes, or withered by their neglect; but now they are encouraged and paid by the people, and reap where they have sown, whether kings will or not. The poverty of authors was once proverbial; but now the only authors who are ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... she could ever want anything more than a sun-dial! she thought, while she passed along the borders, harvesting her little crop. She had finished with the hollyhocks, and now she was bending over a bed of withered columbines. And there were the foxglove seeds still clinging. Really, it was almost impossible to keep up. How brilliant the salvia was to-day, and what a brave second blossoming that was of the delphinium, ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... in prison? How should we rejoice not, if her wreaths renew their flowers? All the world is sweeter, if the Athenian violet quicken: All the world is brighter, if the Athenian sun return: All things foul on earth wax fainter, by that sun's light stricken: All ill growths are withered, where those fragrant flower-lights burn. All the wandering waves of seas with all their warring waters Roll the record on for ever of the sea-fight there, When the capes were battle's lists, and all the straits ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... youthful bards, or in the descriptions of early travellers; myrtle, ivy and ilex, all plants equally agreeable to the genius of the place, and the subjects of the poet, now perform the office of the long-withered bays, and encircle the tomb ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... pollen-masses far more with you than in this neighbourhood. But I am utterly puzzled about the foot-stalk being so often cut through. I should suspect snails. I yesterday found thirty-nine flowers, and of them only one pollen-mass in three flowers had been removed, and as these were extremely much-withered flowers I am not quite sure of the truth of this. The wind again is a new element of doubt. Your observations will aid me extremely in coming to some conclusion. (596/1. Mr. More's observations on the percentage of flowers ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... any but the largest Kernels, and such as are plump: For since in the finest Shells there are sometimes withered Kernels, it would be very imprudent to make ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... our journey's end; but poor Ben, God bless the boy, he little dreampt he'd be cut off so soon in the prime of life, and leave his bones 'yer to rot. I war young too, then, and little thought I should ever come to be this old, withered-up creature ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... not in thine own power? Why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God!" Instantaneous as the lightning of heaven, Almighty vengeance descended upon the unhappy criminal, and withered him in a moment. "Ananias hearing these words, fell down and gave up the ghost; and great fear came on all them that heard these things." He was immediately buried, and about three hours afterward, his wife, totally ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... cities, and to commonwealths, that were both happily governed and well peopled. Under the equator, and as far on both sides of it as the sun moves, there lay vast deserts that were parched with the perpetual heat of the sun; the soil was withered, all things looked dismally, and all places were either quite uninhabited, or abounded with wild beasts and serpents, and some few men, that were neither less wild nor less cruel than the beasts themselves. But, as they went farther, ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... angle of the road where a few withered tree branches alone separated them from the others. They perceived the brown body of the carriage, half open like a huge rat-trap, and beside it the forbidding faces of their would-be captors. Trenck launched these words through the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... long ceased to be Pashenka and had become old, withered, wrinkled Praskovya Mikhaylovna, mother-in-law of that failure, the drunken official Mavrikyev. She was living in the country town where he had had his last appointment, and there she was supporting ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... Fortune, Rosalie Bambousse's lover. He was a little man, withered by age, and with a cringing manner. He tilled a small piece of stony land near Les Artaud, and was very poor. La Faute de ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... which his pride makes him anxious to conceal, this only adding to his stilted and repellent attitude. In spite of all these drawbacks, the emperor fences exceedingly well, rides with pluck, and even skill, managing to hold his reins with his poor withered left hand when in uniform, in order to keep his sword-arm free, and during his visit to Austrian Poland, which I referred to at the beginning of this chapter, I more than once saw him with my own ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... on the hem of her skirt, and struck out into the Maidan. It spread before her green where the slanting sun searched through the short blades, brown and yellow in the distance, where the light lay on the top of the withered grass. It was like a great English park, with something of the village common, only the trees, for the most part, made avenues over it, running an arbitrary half-mile this way or that, with here and there a group dotted about in the open; and the brimming tank-ponds were of India and of nowhere ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... so, were Moral Science to dare call in question, (as she sometimes has done, and may dare to do again!), the Morality of the Bible,—we should find her monstrous image nowhere so fitly as in that of the man whose withered hand CHRIST healed in the Synagogue,—if the same man had proved such a wretch, as straightway to lift up his arm with intention to smite his Benefactor ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... information, this weighing and measuring and what not, and now he sat with a stern, compelling eye fixed on his victim, as much as to say: "Do you mean to tell me that I've done all that for nothing?" If Jimmie had actually refused to sign his name, what a blast of scorn would have withered him! ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... walked so erect could be said to lean. He had adorned his bonnet the autumn before with a sprig of the large purple heather, but every bell had fallen from it, leaving only the naked spray, pitiful analogue of the whole withered exterior of which it formed part. His sporran, however, hid the stained front of his kilt, and his Sunday coat had been new within ten years—the gift of certain ladies of Portlossie, some of whom, to whose lowland eyes the kilt was obnoxious, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... mounts again on broad, expanded wing, as if rebounding upon the air, and sails leisurely away. It is the sublimest feat of the season. One holds his breath till he sees him rise again. Sometimes a squirrel or bird or an unsuspecting barn-fowl is scathed and withered beneath this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... raiment above the body. Where physical perfection goes hand-in-hand with spiritual excellence, there alone (as I maintain) is true beauty. I could show you many a woman whose outward loveliness is marred by what is within; who has but to open her lips, and beauty stands confessed a faded, withered thing, the mean, unlovely handmaid of that odious mistress, her soul. Such women are like Egyptian temples: the shrine is fair and stately, wrought of costly marble, decked out with gilding and painting: but seek the God within, and you find an ape—an ibis—a goat—a ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... of antiquarian interest, stimulating thought not otherwise than as warning examples! Clio has fallen from her pedestal. That radiant creature, in identifying her interests with those of theocracy, has become the hand-maiden of a withered and petulant mistress, a mercenary slut. So things will remain, till mankind has acquired a fresh body of ethics, corresponding to modern needs. It is useless, it is dangerous, to pour new wine into old bottles. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... first moments than might be supposed. But I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose had shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... blanched cheek, the withered hands, and emaciated frame, and the listless life, have other sources than the ordinary illnesses of ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... desolating, autumnal wind remained. The sky was laden with heavy, leaden clouds; it was cold and wretched. That evening the cranes flew southward, gabbling in the sky. The grass in the ravine was yellow and withered. There was sunshine there in the daytime, and Olya wore a white dress. It was there the two of them, Agrenev and Olya, usually bade each ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... kissed in return, and followed unreluctantly as they half dragged, half carried me into their domicil. On the door-sill of the inner apartment I found myself locked in the skinny arms of a brown and withered crone, who was said to be my grandmother, and, of course, my youthful moustache was properly bedewed with the moisture of ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... told her father. He again sent her down; she reported extending surface of land, and then he sent her down with some earth and a creeping plant. The plant grew, and she continued to come down and visit it. After a time its leaves withered. On her next visit it was swarming with worms or maggots, and the next time she came down they had ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... at them as they withered in the blaze, then said, "Have you any objection to my carrying away the ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... she replied; she took from a jug the rose, which the princess had laid on the bosom of her grandchild, and offered it to her. Before Uarda could take it, the withered petals fell, and dropped upon her. The surgeon stooped, gathered them up, and put them into ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that have been transplanted to head. Occasionally I find a head that has withered away and upon examining it find it rotted away at the stem. Can you suggest ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... of what was to her the greatest and most dreaded power on earth, she screamed herself hoarse, uttering imprecations until about her mouth there hung a blood-flecked foam, and her long finger-nails were driven deep into the flesh of her withered palms. All quaked visibly at her wrath, for none knew who might next offend her and pay the penalty for so doing with their lives: none knew who might next fall victim to her insane passion for causing suffering ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... now happened one of those wonderful things which sometimes occur in real life, but which, in novels, we pronounce improbable. Whilst we were speaking a train arrived; and I noticed a little withered old man,—a little smirking mummy of a man,—with a face all wrinkles and smiles, coming out of the building with his coat on his arm. I noticed him, because he was so ancient and dried up, and yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various |
