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Silvery   /sˈɪlvəri/   Listen
Silvery

adjective
1.
Resembling or reminiscent of silver.  Synonym: silvern.  "Singing in her silvery tones"
2.
Having the white lustrous sheen of silver.  Synonyms: silver, silvern.  "Repeated scrubbings have given the wood a silvery sheen"
3.
Of lustrous grey; covered with or tinged with the color of silver.  Synonyms: argent, silver, silverish.



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"Silvery" Quotes from Famous Books



... so much desert, for it was long since we had seen a good tree. The principal one in Cheyenne was not larger than a lilac-bush, and had to be kept wrapped in wet towels. The light vivid tints of the box-elder contrasted well with the silvery willows and cottonwoods, and still better with the long rows of sage-brush in the foreground and the yellowish cliffs behind. A high, singular butte called Chimney Rock was conspicuous for many miles; also ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... lake, Sharp purple-blue; the birches, thin And silvery, crowd the edge, yet break To let ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... red woollen shirts, under the sloping roof, their guns leaning against the uprights, their shot-belts and pouches hanging in front — the kangaroo-dogs lying round the fire, and as near to it as possible — the surrounding trees and shrubs glittering with a silvery light, their evergreen foliage rustling at the breath of the soft land-breeze — altogether formed a striking and ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... think it but a fond conceit— It cannot be, that Thou art gone! Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd:— And thou wert aye a masker bold! What strange disguise hast now put on, To make believe, that Thou art gone? I see these locks in silvery slips, This drooping gait, this altered size: But springtide blossoms on thy lips, And tears take sunshine from thine eyes! Life is but thought: so think I will That Youth and I ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... and he knew from the round and silvery sound she drew from her throat that she was minded to make one of the long speeches that appalled and delighted him with their childish logic and wild honour. 'If it were not that my cousin would run his head into danger I would will that he came to the King. ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... place, Thornton was conscious of a silvery drip, drip of water. Sound, like smell, has a power to arouse memory and control it. Thornton's thoughts flew back to the week he had spent in this old house with his girl wife. He recalled the sunken room and the fountain with those wonderful ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... the slow clock in her sitting- room, then the quick silvery echo from downstairs. Rachael glanced about nervously. The ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... of the Essenes to answer, and his eyes falling on Mathias' face he read in it a web of argument preparing wherein to catch him, and he prayed that God might inspire his answers. At last Mathias, in clear, silvery voice, broke the silence that had fallen so suddenly, and all were intent to hear the silken periods with which the Egyptian thanked Paul for the adventurous story he had related to them, who, he said, lived on a narrow margin of rock, knowing nothing of the world, and unknown ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... voyageur's approach would startle some wild beast slaking his thirst in the cool river, or a flock of waterfowl were driven from their covert, where the willow branches, drooping, dipped their leaves of silvery gray within the water. They floated on till evening, when the sun approached the prairie, and his broad, round disc, now shorn of its dazzling beams, defined itself against the sky and grew florid in the gathering haze: when the birds began to reappear, and flitted noiselessly among the trees, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... and back door, but finding them quite naturally locked they made no further effort to effect an entrance. They contented themselves with strolling around it once again, admiring its shingles that were weather-beaten to a silvery gray, enthusing over the quaintly-gabled windows of its upper story, calling each other's attention to its ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... for twilights, for moonshine, for deep silence, for starry nights, and silvery seas—in such things you excel; one feels as if one were there, and one envies you the fairy scenes of ocean. But, I implore you, be not sentimental. That is the feeble part of your poetry, to my thinking, and spoils the rest. By the way, I should like to ask you whose are those soft eyes, that ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... I shall ever remember this night to my last day. There was a pleasant, refreshing odor in the air, the scent of the wild thyme which grows in these sand dunes. The moon rose over the Manzana range and flooded the broad valley with its soft, silvery rays. Suddenly, at a sharp turn of the trail, we found ourselves surrounded by silent forms arisen from the misty ground. "Don Reyes Alvarado," spoke the voice of the Indian, known as the macho, ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... watching the tints soften and mellow as dusk fell. Every minute now brought its swift quota of changing beauty. A violet haze enveloped the purple mountains, and in the crotch of the hills swam a lake of indigo. The raw, untempered glare of the sun was giving place to a limitless pour of silvery moonlight. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... the mind attuned to the active, busy world of thought and action when awakened from sleep by any sudden and rude summons to arise and be stirring, and when called into existence by the sweet and silvery notes of softest music stealing over the senses, and while they impart awakening thoughts of bliss and beauty, scarcely dissipating the dreamy influence of slumber! Such was my first thought, as, with closed lids, the thrilling chords of a harp broke upon my sleep and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... waterfall in Bern, near Lauterbrunnen, 8 m. S. of Interlaken, with a sheer descent of 980 ft.; in the sunlight it has the appearance of a rainbow-hued transparent veil, and before it reaches the ground it is dissipated in silvery spray. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... said a little star, 'To make the dark world bright; My silvery beams can not struggle far Through the folding gloom of night; But I'm only a part of God's great plan, And I'll cheerfully do the best ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton

... House Beautiful, at once modern and aesthetically right, a dim harmony in lovely purples, blues and greens, with the few fine things it possessed properly spaced and grouped, the old gardens showing through the latticed windows, and golden or silvery lights, like those in a Blanche interior, gleaming in ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the east turned rose, the outline of the trees defined themselves, there was a stirring of the silvery green leaves. They were among olive groves—but the spirits of the trees were dancing. Far below them, a pool of deep colour, they saw the ancient sea. They saw the tiny specks of distant fishing-boats. The sailors were singing ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... lying in the silvery little harbour, sternly eyeing out of its stern portholes a saucy little English corvette beside, began playing sounding marches as a crowd of boats came paddling up to the steamer's side to convey us travellers to shore. There were Russian schooners ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... in the waste of years. Changed to unlovely is that breast of snow, And dimmed her eye, and wrinkled is her brow; And querulous the voice by time repressed, Whose artless music stole me from my rest. Age gives redress to love; and silvery hair And earlier ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... in the hall without struck midnight, but Mr. Ravenslee sat there long after the silvery chime had died away, his chin sunk upon his broad chest, his sombre eyes staring blindly at the fading embers, lost in profound and gloomy meditation. But, all at once, he started and glanced swiftly ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... he will but let himself be charmed, the enchantment will take hold of him and lead him on through a city of dreams and visions, and memories strange and great, without end. Ever since Rome began there must have been just such silvery nights; just such a voice rang through the same air ages ago; just as now the velvet shadows fell pall-like and unrolled themselves along the grey pavement under the lofty columns of Mars the Avenger and beneath the wall of the Forum ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... drove the others from view. But only for a moment, for again under new forms they reappeared. In the sun's path they wandered, where every ripple, great or small, every little spit or spray looked like molten silver, where the water lost its dark green color and became a dazzling, silvery flood, only to vanish and become a wild waste of sullen turbulence, each dark foreboding sea rising and breaking, then rolling on again. The dash, the sparkle, the silvery light soon vanished with the sun, ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... still in this mouldering hut looking out on the glens where fell the sunlight. Some homely bird warbled endlessly on in her retreat, lifted her small voice till every hollow resounded with her content. Silvery butterflies wavered across the sun's pale beams, sipped, and flew in wreaths away. The infinite hordes of the dust raised their universal voice till, listening, it seemed to me their tiny Babel was after all my own old, far-off ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... train that was speeding eastward across southern New Mexico. It was one of the white nights of that region, when the full moon, shining like sun-lighted snow and hanging so low in the sky that it seems to be dropping earthward, fills the clear, dry air with a silvery radiance and floods the barren plain with a transfiguring whiteness, in which the gray sands glimmer as if with some unearthly light of ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly

... Yet why?—a silvery current flows With uncontroll'd meanderings; Nor have these eyes by greener hills Been soothed, in all my wanderings. And, through her depths, Saint Mary's Lake Is visibly delighted; For not a feature of those hills Is ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... the river—how it glistens and sparkles in the sunshine," burst out Spouter. "See how it winds in and out like a silvery ribbon among the hills and brushwood and then comes out to cut the broad and fertile ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer

... in the nearer sky—moving blobs of silver luminosity in the mud-brown light of the Zed-ray. A hundred or more moving silver blobs. They were taking form. The silvery phosphorescent look faded, became grey-white. Took definite shape. Waving arms and legs! Bones bereft of flesh. Human skeletons! Limbs waving rhythmically. Bony arms, with fingers clutching metal weapons. ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... lower fields marked out by huge agaves, lay the Happy Valley. Its contrast of vivid greens, of white quintas, of the two extinct volcanos overlooking Orotava, and of the picturesque townlets facing the misty blue sea, fringed with a ceaseless silvery surf by the brisa, or north-east trade, the lord of these latitudes, had not a symptom of the Madeiran monotony of verdure. Behind us towered high the snowy Pilon (Sugar-loaf), whose every wave and fold were picked out by golden ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... growth of the same industry on the Clyde. The contrast is startling, and although it may be gratifying to the pride of those who are identified with the northern river, it must create sad and humiliating emotions in the breasts of others who have seen the "silvery Thames" shorn so completely of her ancient glory and prestige as a mart of naval architecture. The Clyde has not directly made capital out of the Thames, but the progress of the one has undoubtedly been stimulated by the misfortunes of the other. It is impossible to ignore the fact that the ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... to the seat of it, and the very next wave likely to devour us. In desperation, I sprang for the reef, and ran for a man half-wading, half-swimming to reach us; and God so ordered it, that just as the next wave broke against the silvery rock of coral, the man caught me and partly swam with me through its surf, partly carried me till I was set safely ashore. Praising God, I looked up and saw all the others as safe as myself, except Manuman, my friend, who was still holding ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... little scout, that when the iron year Changes, and the first fleecy clouds deploy, Comest with such a sudden burst of joy, Lifting on winter's doomed and broken rear That song of silvery triumph blithe and clear; Not yet quite conscious of the happy glow, We hungered for some surer touch, and lo! One morning we awake, and thou art here. And thousands of frail-stemmed hepaticas, With ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... the case to be much younger than the clock. The Captain assured us that it was the best time-keeper in the world. It only requires winding once a month; used to show the day of the month, but some meddler disarranged that part of the machinery. The dial plate is of some white metal, brilliant and silvery. Captain Knox said it was brass, but I have seen things look more brazen that were not ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... would mantle in her cheek; her eyes would beam, till they appeared as if, like bright planets, they could almost cast a shadow; and dimples, before concealed, would show themselves when indulged in her silvery laugh. Although her form was commanding, still she was very feminine: there was great attraction in her face, even when in repose—she ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... of all the long procession of men who had been touched by the unutterable futility of the lives of men, who had tried by phrases to make things otherwise, who had taught unworldliness. Dim enigmatic figures they were—Democritus, Socrates, Epicurus, Christ; so many of them, and so vague in the silvery mist of history that he hardly knew that they were not his own imagining; Lucretius, St. Francis, Voltaire, Rousseau, and how many others, known and unknown, through the tragic centuries; they had wept, some of them, and some of them had laughed, and their phrases ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... of a tinkling drip as the canoe parted the waters. There is nothing like a canoe flight under stars to tranquilize a troubled and perplexed spirit, and Dan was soon won to the mood he sought. It seemed to him that Sylvia, enfolded in the silvery-dim dusk in the bow, was a part of the peace of sky and water. They were alone, away from the strifes and jars of the world, shut in together as completely as though they had been flung back for unreckoned ages into ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... quite a relief to come upon even an artistically-arranged Magasin de Charcuterie, with its rows of glazed tongues, mighty Lyons sausages, yellow terrines of Strasbourg pies, fantastically shaped pickle-jars, and pyramids of silvery ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... the visitor, in a silvery, flute-like voice, which the girl could not but admire. "You will forgive me for calling so soon? My old friendship with Mr. Brooke—whom I have known for years—made me anxious to see you, dear, as soon as possible. You will receive me also as ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... giving this look by one word: it was expressive of her being so much of her life alone.] delicate, sweet, without being at all what we call fine. She looked sixty, and had on a mutch, white as snow, with its black ribbon; her silvery, smooth hair setting off her dark-gray eyes,—eyes such as one sees only twice or thrice in a lifetime, full of suffering, full also of the overcoming of it; her eyebrows [Footnote: "Black brows, they say, Become some women best; so that there be not Too much ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.

... was during the severe winter of the Crimean War, when indulging in my favourite sport of wild-fowl shooting, that I witnessed the following strange scene. It was a bitterly cold night towards the end of November or beginning of December; the silvery moon had sunk in the west shortly before midnight; the sport had been all that could be desired, when I began to realise that the blood was frozen in my veins, and I was on the point of starting for home, when my attention was drawn to ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour

... Moab and Midian, saw that he was not strong enough to withstand the sacred marauders, and well knew that surrender meant a wholesale massacre—that those who had dared to defend their homes would be placed under harrows of iron—that the silvery head of the aged grandsire would sink beneath a sword wielded in the name of God; that unborn babes would be ripped from the wombs of Moabite women and the maidens of Midian coerced into concubinage by their heaven-led captors. In this dire extremity Balak bethought him ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... bantering voice from behind us, with silvery cadence to its laughter, could belong to no one but Enid Faye. I grasped that it was her car which Kennedy leaned upon. I gasped a bit as I saw her directly at my side, her dainty chamois motoring coat ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... were, the marvellous beauty of her face and form. Her large deep eyes had lost their lustre, her clear creamy skin looked dull and opaque. Even the magnificent hair seemed to have been robbed of its sheen, and here and there amidst its masses gleamed a silvery thread. ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... soul By angels clad in silvery stole And shining sandals for its flight Along the upward ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey

... reshing. The veranda was almost deserted, most of the women being in their rooms, gossiping or dressing for the arrival of their husbands, fathers, sweethearts, or possible sweethearts. Birds were embroidering the silence of the hour with a silvery whisper that spoke of rest and good-will. The slender brook to the left of me was droning like a bee. Everything was charged with peace and soothing mystery. A feeling of lassitude descended upon me. I was too lazy even to think, but the landscape was continually ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... itself, or up in the bay-window, overlooking the gray lake, where they cosily took their coffee. This delightful function, Virgilia as much as intimated, might be but the beginning of many; this, if little Preciosa rightly understood, was only the withdrawal of the first of the filmy, silvery curtains that intervened between her and the full splendour of society. Virgilia murmured of the present opening of the golf season—it would come early this year; and she did not stop with proposing Preciosa for the Knockabout (which was good enough for a certain sort ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... west the breeze had freshened. It came in little hasty gusts, like the breath of invisible giants. The inky night seemed to lighten, and, here and there, the flash of a star shone out, while a faint, silvery sheen struggled for mastery in the stirring fog which fought so desperately to deny the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... promised faithfully to send it me to-day. The loveliest coat in the world—"fumee de Londres," the salesman had called it, and in fact, it was the colour of the purple-grey smoke that ascends in solid spirals from factory chimneys. There were stripes too of silvery grey chenil which made a play-ground for lights and shadows. In shape it was like an old print of a coachman driving a four-in-hand, long with a flapping cape, and the lining was the colour of the sky when the sun ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... great stillness fell behind him. Scott dropped into silence, and they sat together, he smoking, she leaning back in her chair idle, with wistful eyes upon the silvery sea. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... that Hope had made, and placed there for Colonel Clifford. That worthy frequented the spot because he had done so for years, and because it was a sweet turfy slope; and there was a wonderful beech-tree his father had made him plant when he was five years old. It had a gigantic silvery stem, and those giant branches which die crippled in a beech wood but really belong to the isolated tree, as one Virgil discovered before we were born. Mary Bartley then lowered her parasol, and settled into the Colonel's chair under the shade patulae ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... north had none. For five minutes the appearance, was most magnificent. Streaks of blue and crimson red light appeared in several parts. At ten minutes to eight, long lines began to form on the east, then west, and varying to north-west, very bright, silvery and phosphorescent. Before nine, the rays shot up from the horizon north-east, and finally north—the southern hemisphere, at the same time, losing its brilliance. This light continued in full activity of effulgence to ten, and, after my retiring from the piazza, its gleams were visible through ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... to Edith I flung myself through the opening. A tunnel stretched before me. It glowed with the same faint silvery radiance. Down it I raced. The passage turned abruptly, passed parallel to the walls of the outer courtyard and ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... negress in a red turban, lowering the bucket into the great shingle-hooded well. And the front door of the big, unguarded home stood open, with the trustfulness of the golden age; or what is more to the purpose, with that of New England's silvery prime. Gertrude slowly passed through it, and went from one of the empty rooms to the other—large, clear-colored rooms, with white wainscots, ornamented with thin-legged mahogany furniture, and, on the walls, with old-fashioned engravings, chiefly of scriptural subjects, hung very ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... of blue anemones, we came upon the rich plain of Khania, lying broad and fair, like a superb garden, at the foot of the White Mountains, whose vast masses of shining snow filled up the entire southern heaven. Eastward, the plain slopes to the deep Bay of Suda, whose surface shone blue above the silvery line of the olive groves; while, sixty miles away, rising high above the intermediate headlands, the solitary peak of Mount Ida, bathed in a warm afternoon glow, gleamed like an Olympian mount, not only the birthplace, but the throne of immortal Jove. Immense olive trees from the dark-red, fertile ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... other verge of the forest of Beaumanoir. A broad plain dotted with clumps of fair trees lay spread out in a royal domain, overlooked by a steep, wooded mountain. A silvery brook crossed by a rustic bridge ran through the park. In the centre was a huge cluster of gardens and patriarchal trees, out of the midst of which rose the steep roof, chimneys, and gilded vanes, flashing in the sun, of the Chateau ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... reading in my study, with books lying about all round me. Suddenly a voice, marvellously clear and silvery, called me by name. Starting up and turning, I saw behind me a long vista of white marble columns, Greek in architecture, flanking on either side a gallery of white marble. At the end of this gallery stood a shape ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... every gradation from pale rose to the ruddiest of copper—not excluding that strange marbled complexion concerning which I cannot make up my mind whether it be a beauty or a defect; while the xanthous tones, the yellows, pass through silvery gold and apricot and cafe au lait to a duskiness approaching that of the negro. At this season the skins are still white. Your artist must come later—not later, however, than the end of August, for on the first of September ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... When the still silvery dawn uprolls And all the world is "standing to;" When young lieutenants damn our souls Because ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various

... tales of Englishmen beyond the Atlantic, and that they too should claim their share of traffic with that golden and magnificent Unknown which was called America. The rivalry between England and Holland, already so conspicuous in the spicy Archipelagos of the east, was now to be extended over the silvery regions of the west. The two leading commercial powers of the Old World were now to begin their great struggle for supremacy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... most experienced boat's crew of Europe. In the stern of each sat a chief guiding his bark, with the same unpretending but skilful and efficient paddle, and behind him, drooping in the breezeless air, and trailing in the silvery tide, was to be seen a long pendant, bearing ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... "Here!" said a silvery voice at his elbow; and turning round, they saw a tall, slender figure, cloaked, hooded, and masked. "Surely, you two do not want me ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... was like in his old age. Both the man and woman had retained the personal regard for themselves which is so pleasant in old people, and Mrs. Blood was still as dainty as could be, in her trim gowns, generally of some fluffy black or silvery gray material, and Parasang was as strong and wholesome looking as an ox. I shall always regret that I was not present when they met. A study of their faces then would have ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... to, though the listener was little more than a child, the heart of the chief began to swell in his great bosom. Like a child he was pleased. The gray day about him grew sweet; its very grayness was sweet, and of a silvery sheen. When they arrived at the burn, and, easily enough from that side, he had handed them across, he was not quite so glad to turn from them as he ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... of that day, however (my friend and I returned in time for a late dinner), I wandered among the Roman remains of the place by the light of a magnificent moon, and gathered an impression which has lost little of its silvery glow. The moon of the evening before had been aqueous and erratic; but if on the present occasion it was guilty of any irregularity, the worst it did was only to linger beyond its time in the heavens, in order to let us look at ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... professional employment, the poet turned away, and gave himself up to a sort of vague reverie, which he called thought. Sometimes he watched the moon, pouring a silvery liquid on the clouds, through which it slowly melted till they became all bright; then he saw the same sweet radiance dancing on the leafy trees which rustled as if to shake it off, or sleeping on the high tops of hills, or hovering down in distant valleys, like the material ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... mind 'Till it is hush'd and smooth! O unconfin'd Restraint! imprisoned liberty! great key To golden palaces, strange ministrelsy, Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves, Echoing grottos, full of tumbling waves And moonlight, aye, to all the mazy world Of silvery enchantment!—who, upfurl'd Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour But ...
— Sleep-Book - Some of the Poetry of Slumber • Various

... prairies blossoms the deep pink prairie rose, the only native climbing rose of the States, and on rocky banks in Pennsylvania woods may be found the beautiful wild hydrangea flowers, silvery white or rose-color. Let the young flower-seeker not fail to look for the interesting parnassia, or grass of Parnassus, so named by the learned Dioscodorus more than eighteen hundred years ago, who found it growing on Mount Parnassus. One species of this little plant is abundant ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... with his course. Now came the tug of war! I knew my hooks were good and the line sound, therefore I was determined not to let him escape beyond the favourable ground; and I put a strain upon him, that after much struggling brought to the surface a great shovel-head, followed by a pair of broad silvery sides, as I led him gradualhy into shallow water. Bacheet now cleverly secured him by the gills, and dragged him in triumph to the shore. This was a splendid bayard, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... an elevated tableland in the centre of the island, out of which sprang towards the sky two mountains of prodigious height—that of Mauna Loa, the nearest, in the form of a smooth dome; and Mauna Kea, surmounted by nine snow-covered cones. Above the tableland appeared a silvery cloud, showing the whereabouts of the fearful crater of Kilauea, which it was the intention of the two commanders to visit on the following morning. As night closed in, its position was rendered still more visible by the glare of the ever-burning fires within the crater reflected ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... there is, as yet, little sign of spring. Its bed is all choked with last year's reeds, trampled about like a manger. Yet its running seems to have caught a happier note, and here and there along its banks flash silvery wands of palm. Right down among the shabby burnt-out underwood moves the sordid figure of a man. His hat is battered, and he wears no collar. I don't like staring at his face, for he has been unfortunate. Yet a glimpse tells me that he is far down ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... Life's Mystery The Fallen Tree There is an Air of Majesty Think Not That the Heart Is Devoid of Emotion Humanity's Stream Nature's Lullaby The Spirit of Freedom Is Born of the Mountains The Valley of the San Miguel To Mother Huberta Suggested by a Mountain Eagle The Silvery San Juan As the Shifting Sands of the Desert Missed If I Have Lived Before The Darker Side The Miner Life's Undercurrent They Cannot See the Wreaths We Place Mother—Alpha and Omega Empty Are the Mother's Arms In Deo Fides Shall Love, as the Bridal Wreath, Wither and Die ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... which survives, live all the wild and pleasing peculiarities of nature: its complete irregularity, its vistas, in whose perspective the quiet cattle are peacefully browsing; its refreshing glades, where the grey rocks arise from amid the nodding fern; the silvery shafts of the old birch trees; the knotted trunks of the hoary oak, the grotesque but graceful branches which never shed their honours under the tyrant pruning-hook; the soft green sward; the chequered light and shade; the wild luxuriant weeds; the lichen and the moss—all, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... band of sky, as broad as the widest part of the Milky Way, which was neither black nor sparkling with stars, but glowing as brightly as the full moon! From the eastern horizon to the zenith it stretched, a great "Silvery Way," as Van Emmon labeled it; and as the darkness deepened and the night lengthened, the illumination crept on until the band of light stretched all the way across. Van Emmon racked his brains to account for ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... silently, and then, again averting her face, looked away from me towards the wide expanse of the lagoon, gleaming hot and silvery under a ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke

... however, they scrambled up the steep mountain-side, and safely carried their riders round frightful projections and past dangerous, dizzy precipices. So wild, so romantic was the scene, with its shifting lights and shadows, its sudden bursts of silvery lustre where the valley lay open to the moon, and its depths of darkness in many a winding recess, that even Madame Pfeiffer's uncultured companions were irresistibly moved by its influence; and as ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous

... came down ten minutes later, considerably the worse for his night's rest. Yesterday he had had a day's beard on him; to-day he had two, and there was a silvery sort of growth in the stubble that made it look wet. His eyes, too, were red and sunken, and he began almost instantly to talk about a drink. Frank stood it for a few minutes, then he understood ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... life) uniform dark bright green above with creamy white bar below eye; lateral stripe silvery white; ventral surfaces deep yellow; posterior surfaces of thighs yellow ...
— Descriptions of Two Species of Frogs, Genus Ptychohyla - Studies of American Hylid Frogs, V • William E. Duellman

... 'Providence permitting, and nothing happening to prevent,' the poet made his appearance at the proper hour, like any ordinary mortal, and acquitted himself with such rhythmical eloquence, such keen, silvery humor, as brought the house down, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... symbols of what coming ages brought, Realization gives the answer, which in vain the Savage sought. For we know the silver arrow, fatal to all sorcery, Was the gleaming light of Progress speeding from across the sea, Before which the Red Man vanished, shrinking from its silvery light As the magic waters yielded to the silver arrow's blight. And the tiny shoot with leaflets, by the sunlight warmed to life, Was the Vine of Civilization in the wilderness of strife; With no friendly ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten

... Bangs," said father, with silvery tenderness in his voice which I felt sure had gained him the reputation of never having lost a case in which a woman was involved, "I want you to tell us all that happened on the day that Jed let the mule escape him. Look at me and tell me all ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... these specimens of the orchis—winged flowers, that seem always ready to fly from their frail and leafless stalks. The long, flexible stems of the cactus, which might be taken for reptiles, encircle also this trunk, and clothe it with their bunches of silvery white, shaded inside with bright orange. These flowers emit a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... sullenly under the light of the moon. Fascinated, charmed, I stood to watch it. The moon had changed her mind; she meant to shine now; the clouds had all vanished; the sky was dark and blue; the stars were shining; but the wind had quickened, and the waves rolled in briskly, with white, silvery foam marking their progress. ...
— The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Everyday Life Library No. 3 • Charlotte M. Braeme

... of its tone, and its sincere idolatry of youthful love, the caressing grace of the language which describes the spiritualised beauty of Emily Hood and the exquisite charm of her slender hands, and the silvery radiance imparted to the whole scene of the proposal in the summer-house (in chapter iii., 'Lyrical'), give to this most unequal and imperfect book a certain crepuscular fascination of its own. Passages in it, certainly, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... have heard a pebble fall, A beetle hum, a cricket sing, An owlet flap his boding wing On Giles's steeple tall. The antique buildings, climbing high, Whose Gothic frontlets sought the sky, Were here wrapt deep in shade; There on their brows the moonbeam broke Through the faint wreaths of silvery smoke, And on the casements played. And other light was none to see, Save torches gliding far, Before some chieftain of degree, Who left the royal revelry To bowne him for the war. A solemn scene the Abbess chose; A solemn hour, her secret ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... Chambord, and the church of Brou. In painting, there came from Italy workmen like Maitre Roux and the masters of the school of Fontainebleau, to have their later Italian voluptuousness attempered by the naive and silvery qualities of the native style; and it was characteristic of these painters that they were most successful in painting on glass, an art so [156] essentially medieval. Taking it up where the middle age had left it, they found their whole work among the last subtleties ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... gay laugh rang silvery through the frosty air. Jerry had been asking the question at intervals ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... after a blank pause which seemed to have lasted only a few minutes, Rodd opened his eyes upon the bright silvery light once more, to find that it struck across from the window in the opposite direction, for he was wide awake, listening to a soft tap, tap, tap, evidently administered by a ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... by the river. Butterballs and scoters paddled up at his approach. Bits of rotten ice occasionally swirled down the diminishing stream. The sunshine was clear and bright, but silvery rather than golden, as though a little of the winter's snow,—a last ethereal incarnation,—had lingered in its substance. Around every bend Thorpe looked for some of Radway's crew "driving" the logs down the current. He knew from chance encounters ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... Seagreave sat down. He was tall and slight and fair, so very fair that his age was difficult to guess. His hair, with a silvery sheen on it, swept in a wing across his forehead, and he had a habit of pushing it back from his brow; his eyes were of a vivid blue, peculiarly luminous, and his features, which were regular, showed a fine finish of modeling. His age, as has been said, was a matter of conjecture, ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... launched himself out into the moon glow. The female followed. For a few moments they floated like gray ghosts over Peter, silent as the night shadows. Then, with the suddenness and speed of a bolt from a catapult, the giant male shot out of a silvery mist of gloom and struck Peter. The two rolled over the carcass of the fawn, and for a space Peter was dazed by the thundering beat of powerful wings, and the hammering of the owl's beak at the back of his neck. The male had ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... He knew the hidden ponds and slow-creeping little rivers where the beavers build their dams, and raise their silent water-cities, like Venice lost in the woods. He knew the vast barrens, covered with stiff silvery moss, where the caribou fed in the winter. On the Decharge itself,—that tumultuous flood, never failing, never freezing, by which the great lake pours all its gathered waters in foam and fury down to the deep, still gorge of the Saguenay,—there Jean was at home. There was not a curl ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... tits will engage in what may be called a "responsive exercise," swinging their two-part song back and forth in the woods like a silvery pendulum. Not soon shall I forget a winter day on which I listened with delight to such an antiphonal duet. I was standing in a road that wound along the foot of a steep, wooded bluff, and the two minstrels were in the woods above ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... happiness accruing to an innocent mind. When tired of this they proposed the game of "Let them give unto the kite a little onion with the mite." What laughter and merriment ensued! How the quiet wood echoed with the silvery voices of those beautiful, delicate creatures! Wearied of this game they dispersed for a little. A few formed a group seated at the foot of the trunk of an oak, and went in for the pleasant enjoyment of recounting in a low voice a thousand puerilities; others went in with enthusiasm ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... night he and his father were descending the Rhine, when he felt an inspiration come over him to sing. His voice was silvery and flute-like, and breathed the emotional sentiment of the heart of youth. As the boat drew near the Lei, Lore, the enchantress, heard the song, and she herself became spellbound by the sentiment and deep feeling expressed in ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... those May evenings that promise that summer is close at hand. The air was soft and warm; there was no wind, and in the clear starlight Rebecca could see the shadows of the tall elm tree near the blacksmith shop, and the silvery line of the softly flowing river. As she stood waiting for Lucia she looked up into the clear skies and traced the stars forming the Big Dipper, nearly over her head. Low down in the west Jupiter shone brightly, and the broad band of shimmering stars that formed ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis

... him excessively,—to put an end to which he only saw one certain way. He therefore asked her to be Lady Rufford before he got on his drag to go out hunting on the last Saturday in March. "Rufford," she said, looking up into his face with her lustrous eyes, and speaking with a sweet, low, silvery voice,—"are you ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... suddenly, as if broken in two, he fell with his head upon his son's shoulder. He had been taller than Sergey, but now he became short, and his dry, downy head lay like a white ball upon his son's shoulder. And they kissed silently and passionately: Sergey kissed the silvery white hair, and the old man ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev

... gorgeous sight, and beautiful the ringing laugh and silvery voice of youth. No dream of desponding dread shadowed their hearts, though danger and suffering, and defeat and death, were darkly gathering round them. Who, as he treads the elastic earth, fresh with the breeze of day, as he gazes on the cloudless blue of the ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... with the fairy cap in her bosom, ascended the green summit of the Sun's hill, now glimmering in the moonlight, and drew from its hiding-place the pledge that had been entrusted to her. As if by a miracle, the little flower, touched by the moon's silvery glow, expanded in an instant. Almost spontaneously it began to oscillate in her hand, and shrill and clear the little bell rang, so that it resounded into the adjacent wood, whence a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... splendor. Why did not Captain Cook have taste enough to call his great discovery the Rainbow Islands? These charming spectacles are present to you at every turn; they are common in all the islands; they are visible every day, and frequently at night also—not the silvery bow we see once in an age in the States, by moonlight, but barred with all bright and beautiful colors, like the children of the sun and rain. I saw one of them a few nights ago. What the sailors call "raindogs"—little patches of rainbow —are often seen drifting about the heavens ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... lay before their eyes a short time later, when Gerald stopped the machine half way up the side of one of the mountains, and they gazed out over the valley, through which a silvery stream of water flowed merrily toward the Potomac. Then, their eyes thoroughly satiated, they began to look for a suitable place in which ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond

... lengthened, the transport, so far from passing, spread through all her lithe form. Suddenly she turned aside, drew herself up, faced him again, and began to inquire, "Do they ever—" but broke down once more, fell upon the old woman's shoulder with a silvery tinkle, shook, hung limp, threw one foot behind her, and tapped the deck with her toe. A married couple drifting by, obviously players and of the best of ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... chattered oaths of the Hidinhitu bird. [40] Dotted here and there over the misty landscape, appeared dark clumps of a tree called "Kullan," a thorn with an edible berry not unlike the jujube, and banks of silvery mist veiled the ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... the evening air, and loth to lose Day's grateful warmth, though moist with falling dews Look for the stars, you'll say that there are none; Look up a second time, and, one by one, You mark them twinkling out with silvery light, And wonder how they could ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... then burst through a thick cloud, and shot a ray of silvery light just upon the spot where ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... through which a faint light shone. Thence he saw the Loire, the beautiful slopes of Saint-Cyr, the gloomy marvels of Plessis, where lights were gleaming in the deep recesses of a few windows. Far in the distance lay the beautiful meadows of Touraine and the silvery stream of her river. Every point of this lovely nature had, at that moment, a mysterious grace; the windows, the waters, the roofs of the houses shone like diamonds in the trembling light of the moon. The soul of the young ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac

... field, on which thousands of the young of these animals lay in helpless inability to move. Most of these were what are called "white-coats,"—fat little things, covered with a thick coat of woolly fur,—but a few had attained their third week of existence, and wore their close-laid fur, whose silvery, sword-like fibres, when wet, lie flat and smooth ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... damning evidence of the rolled r's. Combined with the silvery fair hair and the determined little mouths and chins, it was irresistible. Clearly they were foreigners, and equally clearly they were not Italians, or Russians, or French. Within a week the nurses spoke of them in private as Fritz and Franz. Within a fortnight a deputation of staff sisters ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... of silvery snow, and on it in letters of pure ice the children read: THIS WAY TO ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit

... becomes darker as we go down, running through all shades of brown until at a considerable depth it is black. Peats produced principally from grasses are grayish in appearance at the surface, being full of silvery fibres—the skeletons of the blades of grasses and sedges, while below they are ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson

... scarcely set in a cloudless shimmer of rose, and, sailing up from the east, a full moon cast a rippling, silvery ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... my ears, I passed through the sleeping village and out on to the road. The moon was exceptionally bright and unobscured, although a dense bank of cloud crept slowly from the west, and before me the path stretched as an unbroken thread of silvery white twining a sinuous way up the bracken-covered slope, to where, sharply defined against the moonlight sky, a coppice in grotesque silhouette marked ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... many voices marshaled in one hymn Wound through the night, whose still, translucent moments Lay on each side their breath; and the hymn passed Its long harmonious populace of words Between the silvery silences. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various



Words linked to "Silvery" :   euphonous, silvern, achromatic, euphonious, neutral, bright



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