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Waxen

adjective
1.
Made of or covered with wax.  Synonym: waxy.  "Careful, the floor is waxy"
2.
Having the paleness of wax.  Synonyms: waxlike, waxy.  "The soldier turned his waxlike features toward him" , "A thin face with a waxy paleness"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Waxen" Quotes from Famous Books



... will not allow to be forgotten. The leaden roofs were destroyed, the oak timbers that for several hundred years had supported them were destroyed, stone statues and flying buttresses weighing many tons were smashed into atoms, but not a single crucifix was touched, not one waxen or wooden image of the Virgin disturbed, not one painting ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis

... courteous to this Gentleman; Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes; Feed him with apricots and dewberries; With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries; The honey-bags steal from the humble bees, And for night-tapers, crop their waxen thighs, And light them at the fiery glow-worms eyes, To have my love to-bed, and to arise: Nod to him, Elves, and ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare

... are adorned in the gayest manner. I entered one, in which a sort of raree-show had been set up, illumed with a multitude of candles: the subject of it was the birth of Christ, who was represented in the background by a little waxen figure wrapped up in embroidery, and reclining upon an embroidered cushion, which rested upon another of pink satin. This was supposed to be the manger where he was born. Behind the image two paper bulls' heads looked unutterable ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... ghastly face, on whose brow the mysterious signet of everlasting rest was set. Still, immovable, solemn, placid—it lay beneath the gaze, with shrouded eye, and cheek like concave marble, and hueless, waxen lips. What depth, what grandeur, what duration in that repose! What inexpressible sadness, yet what sublime tranquillity! Helen held her breath, bending slowly, lower and lower, as if drawn down by a mighty, irresistible power, till her cheek almost touched the clay-cold cheek ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... therefrom, and the great room was very, very still; until at last the people were commanded to beat down the door. Then all the folk crowded close together to peer within, spoiling the table of its waxen tapers to cast light into the darkness, and there, O Kind Mother of God, lay my lady all in a little huddled heap before the shrine, an empty vial in her hand, and the breath departing from her body. Then came her women with low sobbing and laid her on her bridal ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... Here we have a reference to a custom well known in the Middle Ages. A waxen figure was made, and as it melted before the fire the person represented by it was supposed, similarly to waste away. It will be remembered that Horace ("Sat." i, 8, 30 sq.) speaks of the waxen figure made by the witch Canidia in order that the lover might consume away in ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... bonnet," the little girl said, and entered forthwith into a grave discussion with him as to the colour he thought more suitable for that waxen lady's winter cloak. ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... say to a start back, Mr Bartlett?" said Sir John at last, as he glanced at his son, who had just risen and gone knife in hand to dislodge a cluster of lovely waxen, creamy orchids from a tree overhanging ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... have sailed among the Cyclades, and passed the famous straits which take their name from the unfortunate Helle, whose fate is sweetly described by Apollonius Rhodius; you have passed the very spot, I conceive, where Daedalus fell into that sea, his waxen wings being melted by the sun; you have traversed the Euxine sea, I make no doubt; nay, you may have been on the banks of the Caspian, and called at Colchis, to see if there is ever another golden fleece." ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding

... later Sir Raymond's dead body lay before the altar, whereon burned many waxen tapers. Alone, upon the lowest step, Gilbert was kneeling, with joined hands and uplifted eyes, motionless as a statue. He had taken the long sword from the dead man's breast, and had set it up against the altar, straight and bare. It was ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... approached Rowland, to express the pleasure he had derived from his beautiful "collection." His smile was exquisitely bland, his accent appealing, caressing, insinuating. But he gave Rowland an odd sense of looking at a little waxen image, adjusted to perform certain gestures and emit certain sounds. It had once contained a soul, but the soul had leaked out. Nevertheless, Rowland reflected, there are more profitless things than mere sound and gesture, in ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... dance or two in the crowded rooms, they strolled out into the gardens, they ate ices under the roses in a secluded arbor. The place, the time, the air had their influence on Van Dyke. He was from Montana, where the magnolias do not shed their waxen petals at Christmas, and the gold-of-Ophir roses sternly refuse to leaf until the Fourth ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... named Roger Bolinbroke. Bolinbroke was seized on a charge of compassing the king's death by sorcery; and the sudden flight of Eleanor Cobham to the sanctuary at Westminster was soon explained by a like accusation. Her judges found that she had made a waxen image of the king and slowly melted it at a fire, a process which was held to account for Henry's growing weakness both of body and mind. The Duchess was doomed to penance for her crime; she was led bareheaded and barefooted ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... violet, and white—a rainbow of the Christian virtues and the Church's Year; boxes of frost and snow, festoons of coloured beads, fishes with gleaming scales, glass-winged birds, Santa Klaus in frost-bedecked mantle and scarlet cap, angels with trumpets set to their waxen lips; and everywhere and above all the image of the Holy Child. Sometimes it was the tiny waxen Bambino, in its pathetic helplessness; sometimes the Babe Miraculous, standing with outstretched ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless

... bees in arms Drive headlong from the waxen cells in swarms. Jack Straw at London Stone, with all his rout, Struck not the city ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... The hour of reception by the archduke had arrived. The exterior of the spacious edifice was illuminated from end to end by nunerous torches, and the capacious staircase was lighted by a double rank of torch-bearers, in splendid apparel. In the interior of the vast apartment huge waxen tapers were fixed above the chevron, or zig-zag moulding, which ran round the walls, and connected the casement of each window. Large crystal lamps, pendant from the point of each inverted pinnacle on the lofty roof, diffused a flood of brilliant light, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... a truly marvelous box of blue violets then disclosed to Arethusa's enraptured gaze. She almost forgot her unhappiness in sheer joy of the wonder of their beauty and fragrance. They were like waxen things in the absolute perfection of their tiny petals; and there seemed to be hundreds of them, each as perfect as a violet ever was, smiling at her ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox

... became wholly unconscious, a composite picture, vivid in its detail, engraved itself deeply, with exceeding swiftness, line by line, upon the waxen tablets of his mind. In this picture the thrush that had flown out of the ivy, the Empty House itself, and its horrible, pursuing Inmate were all somehow curiously mingled together with the black wings of the bull, and with his own sensation of ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood

... utterly vanished, and studding the moss-carpeted plains were only clumps of a willowy shrub from which hung, like grapes, clusters of white waxen blooms. The light too had changed; gone were the dancing, sparkling atoms and the silver had faded to a soft, almost ashen greyness. Ahead of us marched a rampart of coppery cliffs rising, like all these mountainous walls we had seen, into the immensities ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... Here was the sea, here was the land, here the number of soldiers, cannon, rounds of ammunition, resources in the matter of procuring aid, the telegraph, the railways, everything was here on this pale, waxen cloth, everything but a name. He stared at it, bewildered. He couldn't understand what a plan of this sort was doing outside the War Department. Instantly he became a soldier; he forgot that he was masquerading as a groom; he forgot everything but this mute thing staring up into his ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... pile of rocks into the circular central pool, wherein fat gold-fish went idly to and fro, nuzzling floating specks upon the surface. Through the polished green of the surrounding palms and rubber-plants stared gardenias and camelias; below, between maidenhair and sword-ferns, winked the little waxen blossoms of fuchsias and begonias: at intervals poinsettia flared audaciously among its more quietly dressed neighbors; and, in the far corners the golden spheres were swelling to fairly respectable proportions on the ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... here. Yet I cannot bear to think of her as passing through earthly life without tasting its deepest bliss, without the last pure ecstasy of human love, without the kisses of her own children on her lips, their waxen fingers ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... mothers in Christ's arms, and got His blessing, five minutes after He set them down were as full of romp as before they came to Him. The boy that because he has become a Christian is disgusted with ball-playing, the little girl who because she has given her heart to God has lost her interest in her waxen-doll, are morbid and unhealthy. You ought not to set the life of a vivacious child to the tune of ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... his face was waxen, the skin across his temples was tightly drawn, and his nose was like that of a dead person; but his under lip protruded with a determination that he had never before shown, and the set look about the mouth ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof

... fixed and ears sharpened by such terror as only the sin-steeped soul can know, they saw the waxen eyelids of the mummy slowly rise, the dim, glazed eyes look out from underneath them, the dry, black lips move, and heard a thin, harsh voice ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... the dead man's face from waxen yellow to stone grey. The servants saw it, whispered, and closed the inner shutters, and the yellow candle-light shone again in the room. Any light is better than daylight on ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... the way, a tremendous preponderance of the fair sex in dolls: what difficult social problems must agitate the Dolls' Houses! This was a pretty doll, with wide blue eyes, and a wealth of golden tow, and an expression of aristocratic innocence on its waxen cheek, faintly flushed with paint, and I bore it home with pride. But when I came to examine it, I found it was but a sawdust abomination. Oh the modelling of the arm, oh the anatomy of the leg, oh the patella proximate to the ankle! I felt that ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... uninjured head of the Prophet Khosrul. There it lay, exactly between the sundered halves of the Obelisk, . . pale rays of light glimmered on its bloodstained silvery hair and open glazed eyes,—a solemn smile seemed graven on its waxen-pallid features. And at a little distance off, on the breast of the black-robed headless corpse that remained totally uncrushed in an open space by itself, among the surrounding heaps of slain and wounded, glistened the CROSS ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... she in that white waxen hill Hath seal'd the primrose of her utmost skill. But now my muse hath spied a dark descent From this so precious, pearly, permanent, A milky highway that direction yields Unto the port-mouth of the Elysian fields: A place desired of all, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... your association with common persons; if you are not, every day like wax in the sun there will be melted away whatever you inscribe on your minds in the school. Withdraw then yourselves far from the sun so long as you have these waxen sentiments. For this reason also philosophers advise men to leave their native country, because ancient habits distract them and do not allow a beginning to be made of a different habit; nor can we tolerate those who meet us and say: See such a one ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus

... watching Western Christendom today, with all our hatred, bitterness, war, would have to say, If this is Christianity, then I am not a Christian. The Master, wandering through our cathedrals with their masses, waxen images and votive gifts, or through our Protestant churches with their fine-spun speculations insisted on as necessary to belief if one is to be a child of grace, would have to say, If this is Christianity, then ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... the best to make your Excellency an impartial relation thereof: I shall only say, that I shall strive according to my best understanding (that is, according to those rules your Lordship hath given me) to increase whatsoever talent he may have already. Truly, he is of gentle and waxen disposition; and God be praised, I cannot say he hath brought with him any evil impression; and I shall hope to set nothing into his spirit but what may be of a good sculpture. He hath in him two ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... now proceed to examine my double find. And first of all the pseudochrysalis, which put me on the alert. It is a motionless, rigid body, of a waxen yellow, smooth, shiny, curved like a fish-hook towards the head, which is inflected. Under a very powerful magnifying-glass the surface is seen to be strewn with very tiny points which are slightly raised and shinier than the surface. There are thirteen segments, including the head. The dorsal surface ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... has a perfect figure." Julie's own figure was quite perfect. "Do you remember Constance Vane? Nothing ever exceeded her beauty." Now Constance Vane—she, at least, who had in those days been Constance Vane, but who now was the stout mother of two or three children—had been a waxen doll of a girl, whom Harry had known, but had neither liked nor admired. But she was highly bred, and belonged to the cream of English fashion; she had possessed a complexion as pure in its tints as are the ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... inclination to keep his word, told him that He might always depend upon the Convent for his meals, and each of them made him some little present. One gave him a box of sweetmeats; Another, an Agnus Dei; Some brought reliques of Saints, waxen Images, and consecrated Crosses; and Others presented him with pieces of those works in which the Religious excel, such as embroidery, artificial flowers, lace, and needlework. All these He was advised to sell, in order to put himself into better ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... expressed his thanks, and now led them to his armory. Therein Robin saw, placed apart, a hundred strong bows with fine waxen silk strings, and a hundred sheaves of arrows. Every shaft was an ell long, and dressed with peacock's feathers and notched with silver. Beside them were a hundred suits of red and white livery, finely made and stitched. ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... saith the World, passing away: Chances, beauty and youth sapped day by day: Thy life never continueth in one stay. Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to grey That hath won neither laurel nor bay? I shall clothe myself in Spring and bud in May: Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decay On my bosom for ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... plains were vast, toilsome and tedious the way, Developing soon the fever germs that within her latent lay, And daily the velvet azure eyes with a brighter lustre burned, And the hectic flush of the waxen cheek to ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... looking down upon him, not wiping the great tears that welled up painfully into her eyes, lest in the act she should blot out the dear image and so lose sight of it for one last precious moment. She was an undemonstrative woman, but the lingering way in which she touched him, his hair, his face, his waxen hands, was all the more impressive for ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... May me thought(e) tho[1] It is five year or more ago; That it was May, thus dreamed me, In time of love and jollity. That all thing 'ginneth waxen gay, For there is neither busk nor hay[2] In May, that it nill[3] shrouded been And [4] it with new(e) leaves wrene[5] These wood(e)s eek recover green, That dry in winter been to seen;[6] And the earth waxeth ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock

... out covered with black. Two waxen tapers. The King's [defaced] picture at one end and a crucifix at the other. Onaelia [dressed in black] walking discontentedly weeping to ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker

... illumination filled the cabin, first the yellow flare of a match and then the light of a lamp, and as Father John's waxen face grew out of the darkness Peter whimpered and whined and scratched with, his ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... horn; Each pendant spider winds with fingers fine His ravel'd clue, and climbs along the line; Gay Gnomes in glittering circles stand aloof 480 Beneath a spreading mushroom's fretted roof; Swift bees returning seek their waxen cells, And Sylphs cling quivering in the lily's bells. Through the still air descend the genials showers, And pearly rain-drops deck the ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... garden was a favourite place for birds of all kinds, each hoping to secure an orange for dinner, and in order to frighten the birds away and keep a little fruit for himself, the master had fastened a waxen figure on ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... will laugh me down: my latest rival brings thee rest. Baby fingers, waxen touches, press ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... only to keep you from being carried away by the stream. The current is strong and the bank steep by the Hollow Oak Pool, and you had no arms or legs. You were old and ugly, but you would wash, and we loved you better than many waxen beauties.' ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... woe for me, more wretched than he is. What, dost thou turn away and hide thy face? I am no loathsome leper; look on me. What! art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf? Be poisonous too and kill thy forlorn queen. Is all thy comfort shut in Gloster's tomb? Why, then, dame Margaret was ne'er thy joy. Erect his statue and worship it, And make my image but an alehouse sign. Was I for this nigh wrack'd upon the sea, And twice by awkward wind from England's ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... bed, and on the mattress that young man, bleeding, white with a waxen whiteness, with closed eyes and gaping mouth, and pallid lips, stripped to the waist, slashed all over with crimson wounds, motionless ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... multiplication of honours and attentions, the tendency to deify the human, to remove those phenomena of irregularity which are the evidence of mortal strength, grows irresistible, and we find ourselves, unconsciously, substituting a waxen bust, with azure eyes and golden hair, for the homely features which (if we could but admit it) so infinitely better match the honest stories. Let us not busy ourselves to make excuse for our austere little genius of the moors. Let us ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... four silver candelabras, holding great waxen torches, served to illuminate this apartment. Yet let not modern beauty envy the magnificence of a Saxon princess. The walls of the apartment were so ill finished and so full of crevices, that the rich hangings ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... full of travelling necessaries to climb up into the carriage. After the lady came a grand stately-looking negro servant, with gold-braided cap and overcoat of white bear's fur, and on his arm, bundled up in rich velvet and costly fur, he carried a beautiful five-year-old boy, who looked like some waxen image ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... fled, and all the other children after her; pausing at a distance to look back at the alarming creatures who didn't speak the familiar language. Katy, wishing to leave a pleasant impression, made Mabel kiss her waxen fingers toward them. This sent the children off into another fit of laughter and chatter, and they followed our friends for quite a distance as they proceeded on ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... god Tum, who was linked with Ra as Ra-Tum, spat on the ground, and his saliva became the gods Shu and Tefnut. In the Underworld the devil serpent Apep was spat upon to curse it, as was also its waxen ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... pillar-box, I have wished I could unlock it and carry away its contents, to be studied at my leisure. I have always thought such a haul would abound in things fascinating to a student of human nature. One night, not long ago, I took a waxen impression of the lock of the pillar-box nearest to my house, and had a key made. This implement I have as yet lacked either the courage or the opportunity to use. And now I think I shall throw it away.... No, I shan't. I refuse, after all, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... miniature tubes, that you would have longed to pass your little finger through them, and feel their soft elasticity. She wore them in a crop, for in those days, when society was in a healthier state, young ladies wore crops long after they were twenty, and Penelope was not yet nineteen. Like the waxen ideal, she had round blue eyes, and round nostrils in her little nose, and teeth such as the ideal would be seen to have, if it ever showed them. Altogether, she was a small, round thing, as neat as a pink and white double daisy, and as guileless; for ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot

... wall on which we grew, very busy making a smart new dress for her doll, Miss Arabella, who sat propped up by a work-box at her back, with her arms straight out, and her toes turned in, but with a sweet smile upon her waxen face. They were evidently engaged in earnest conversation, for Susie kept speaking in her own voice for herself, and using a very shrill falsetto for Arabella, who, by the bye, appeared to reply only ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer

... disappeared, appeared again, and looked back. Then he again proceeded, and vanished, till, as a small waxen object, she saw him emerge from the nook that had screened him, cross the white fringe of foam, and walk into the undulating mass of blue. Once in the water he seemed less inclined to hurry than before; ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... to be fabulously faded,—something in the nature of a yellowed rose-tree shedding its leaves. But still Rome envied him that Chrysothemis. Then he recalled Poppaea; and that most famous Poppaea also seemed to him soulless, a waxen mask. In that maiden with Tanagrian outlines there was not only spring, but a radiant soul, which shone through her rosy body as a ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... abbots, and presumed to attribute to themselves a title, as well as estates, to which they have no just claim. In this state we found the church of Lhanpadarn, without a head. A certain old man, waxen old in iniquity (whose name was Eden Oen, son of Gwaithwoed), being abbot, and his sons officiating at the altar. But in the reign of king Henry I., when the authority of the English prevailed in Wales, the monastery of St. ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... is my princess? where's my Huncamunca? Where are those eyes, those cardmatches of Jove, That[1] light up all with love my waxen soul? Where is that face which artful nature made [2] In the same moulds where ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... Cryptomerias. The trees around a Shinto shrine are specially under the protection of the god to whom the altar is dedicated; and, in connection with them, there is a kind of magic still respected by the superstitious, which recalls the waxen dolls, through the medium of which sorcerers of the middle ages in Europe, and indeed those of ancient Greece, as Theocritus tells us, pretended to kill the enemies of their clients. This is called Ushi no toki ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... Sara. "A vast chamber where feasts are given. It has a vaulted roof, and a minstrels' gallery, and a huge chimney filled with blazing oaken logs, and it is brilliant with waxen ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... I pray thee, What in purchase shall I pay thee For this little waxen toy, Image of the Paphian boy?" Thus I said, the other day, To a youth who past my way: "Sir," (he answered, and the while Answered all in Doric style,) "Take it, for a trifle take it; 'Twas not I who dared to make it; No, believe ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... him. The photograph could not render his extraordinary fairness, nor the rich gold of his hair, nor the blue of his dazzling eyes. The first impression was that he was too beautiful for a man, that he had a woman's beauty, that he had the waxen beauty of a doll; but the firm, decisive lines of the mouth and chin, the overhanging brows, and the luxuriance of his amber moustache, spoke more sternly. Gradually one perceived that beneath the girlish mask, ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... skilled artisan with tempered and well-prepared gravers, but of the patient hands of a state prisoner with a mere nail sharpened on the stony walls of his dungeon, and the painful result of long and weary years. A strange contrast! the waxen image of the jailer, tricked out in his last garments; the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... there is the dome of Michael Angelo; and here, advancing towards her amid the red of the cardinals, the clatter of the guards, the tossing of the flabellae, as though looking at her alone—the two waxen fingers raised for her alone—is the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... sit on a modest roof, the shopkeepers cater to us. For in many of the stores, is there not an upper tier of windows for our use? The commodities of this second story are quite as fine as those below. And the waxen beauties who display the frocks greet us in true democracy with as ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... the waxen woman in his window at the top of Abbey Street," said one. "What business can bring him from his shop out here at this time and not a journeyman hair-cutter, but a master-barber that's left off his pole ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... this inner shrine of beauty, this Holiest of Holies where the spiritual graces dwell. He could not paint waxen limbs, with silver lights and golden and transparent mysteries of shadow, like those of Bacchus, Eve, and Ariadne. Titian himself was powerless to imagine movement like that of Aphrodite floating in the air, or of Madonna adjuring Christ in the "Paradiso," ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... probability, of decency, of fitness, or proportion—of that which distinguishes the likely from the palpable absurd—could they have to guide them in the rejection or admission of any particular testimony?—That maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen images consumed before a fire—that corn was lodged, and cattle lamed—that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry the oaks of the forest—or that spits and kettles only danced a fearful-innocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen when no wind was stirring—were all equally ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... noblest shrub as ever God have made," would Ben say, looking at its massive, cactus-like branches, with their red, waxen, tender-coloured berries. The cottage was very old, and the rose-thorn was the growth of centuries. Men's hands had never touched it. It had stretched where it would, ungoverned, unhampered, unarrested. It had a beautiful dusky glow about it always, from its peculiar thickness ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... find, before curling up underneath it; neither did his prayers prevent him from thinking—even on his knees—of his revolver, nor yet—by the force of untimely association—of the other revolvers in the Chamber of Horrors. He saw those waxen wretches huddled together in ghastly groups, but the thought of them haunted him less than it might have done in a feather bed; he had his own perils and adventures to consider now. One thing, however, did come of the ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... if you remember that it is not so very long ago since people at home believed in witches who sailed through the air to take part in diabolic ceremonies, and brought about the death of anyone by sticking pins into a little waxen image, and that even now the peasantry in out-of-the-way parts of the country still hold that some old women bewitch cows, and prevent milk turning into butter however long they may continue churning. Fairy superstitions have not quite disappeared, and the ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... work," he muttered— "And for rest a snuffle of psalms!" He smote on his leathern apron With his brown and waxen palms. ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... with a pale face and big pathetic brown eyes like a seal's, and his dress bore plain evidence of a mother's careful supervision, having all the uncreased trimness and specklessness rarely to be observed except in the toilettes of the waxen prodigies ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... she were in her own house. A whim had prompted her to bring Bijou and Louiset with her, and the dog crouched among her skirts, shivering with cold despite the heat of the day, while amid a bedizenment of ribbons and laces the child's poor little face looked waxen and dumb and white in the open air. Meanwhile the young woman, without troubling about the people near her, talked at the top of her voice with Georges and Philippe Hugon, who were seated opposite on the front seat among such a mountain of bouquets of white ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... year 1778, a similar experiment, to rid herself of an old husband. As the dose was rather strong, death was followed by the rapid and violent separation of the members. They employed all possible means to retain the body in a human form until the funeral was over. The face was covered with a waxen mask, and by this means was the condition of the corpse concealed. This separation of the members seems to be the usual effect of this poison, and is said to occur as soon as the body ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... shocked by the face. Never had he seen such disconcerting pallor. It was not the waxen hue of the convalescent, not the lifeless grey of the perfume-or snuff-maker, it was a prison pallor of a bloodless lividness unknown today, the ghastly complexion of a wretch of the Middle Ages shut up till death in a damp, airless, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... acid; thus a metallic solid will remain which exactly filled all the cavities. If such forms are required in silver, or any other difficulty fusible metal, the shells may be filled with wax or resin, then dissolved away; and the remaining waxen form may serve as the pattern from which a plaster mould may be made for casting the metal. Some nicety will be required in these operations; and perhaps the minuter cavities can only be filled under ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... a strong impression on the company was undoubted, yet none of the girls seemed inclined to dance with him. They looked askance at his waxen face, with its staring eyes and fixed smile, and shuddered. At last old Geibel came to the girl ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... fully presented in Lev. 25:35, 36, 37: "And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen into decay with thee, then thou shalt relieve him; yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase; but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... between the birthless past and the future that has no end. Behind me I left an old, decrepit world; religions dead and dying; calm tyrannies expiring in silence; women hushed and swathed, and turned into waxen dolls; love flown, and in its stead mere royal and “paradise” pleasures. Before me there waited glad bustle and strife; love itself, an emulous game; religion, a cause and a controversy, well smitten and well defended; men governed by reasons and suasion of speech; wheels going, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... a part, a whole wall, a whole beam of my life's house. I saw her suddenly in the blackness, her full red lips, her quivering nostrils, the curve of her breasts, her lithe movements from the hips, the way she set her feet down, the white flower waxen in the darkness of her hair, and the robin-wing flutter of her lids over her gray eyes when she smiled. I moved convulsively in my intense desire. I would have given my soul, my share of eternity, my honour, only to see that flutter of the lids over the shining gray ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... of our moral ideas may be shortly summed up as follows:—To each of us individually our moral ideas come first of all in childhood through the medium of education, from parents and teachers, assisted by the unconscious influence of language; they are impressed upon a mind which at first is like a waxen tablet, adapted to receive them; but they soon become fixed or set, and in after life are strengthened, or perhaps weakened by the force of public opinion. They may be corrected and enlarged by experience, they may be reasoned about, they may be brought home ...
— Philebus • Plato

... that the snow on his old woman's face was not melting; it was queer that the face itself looked somehow drawn, and had turned a pale gray, dingy waxen hue and ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... moment, but she lifted some lovely sprays of blush rosebuds, which the nurse took with a smile and a look of thanks. The girl's eyes followed her; and before the door closed she caught a glimpse of a little still form, and a cloud of fair curls, and a tiny waxen hand. Hildegarde buried her face in her hands and sobbed; while Benny's gentle nurse smoothed her hair, and spoke softly and soothingly. This was what she had called a "frolic,"—this! She had laughed, ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards

... Ralph was waxen master of himself by now, and was gotten wary indeed, so he made as if he liked Otter's counsel well, and became exceeding gay; for indeed the heart within him was verily glad at the thought of his escaping from thralldom; for more than ever now ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... fine elaborate effect thus produced was in no way impaired, but rather enhanced and invigorated, by the mahogany bookcase full of imperishable printed matter, the horsehair sofa netted in a system of antimacassars, the waxen flowers in their glassy domes on the marble mantelpiece, the Canterbury with its spiral columns, the rosewood harmonium, and the posse of chintz-protected chairs. Mr. Knight, who was a sincere and upright man, saw ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... by the nuns at Funchal, Madeira, and the fairy frostwork of sugar seen on great occasions in French convents. No womanly art is a stranger to the deft fingers of cloistered nuns. Bookbinding is a pursuit well known among them, as is also the mounting in delicate filigree of the "Agnus Dei" or waxen representation of the Lamb of God, blessed by the pope at Easter and distributed throughout Christendom from the papal metropolis. Another convent industry is the preparation of the wafers used in the celebration ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... I was roused by a little arm round my neck, and waked to think I had one of Raphael's cherubs by my side. Fingers of waxen softness were ruthlessly at work upon my eyes, and the little form that met my touch felt lithe and elastic, like a kitten's limbs. There was just light enough to see the child, perched on the edge of the ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... only one to stand at the last beside the grave he opened yesterday. I could not help it, I held out my hand to him as he stood there in the hall, I had no words wherewith to convey sympathy. He looked at it very much as he might have done at one of the waxen hands that belong to waxen figures in a shop-window, without one ray of the meaning it was intended to convey entering into his mind. I felt confused, uncomfortable. It seemed to me, then, irreverent to his sorrow, that I, a stranger, should have attempted the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... lady said well and that they would do this to the best of their power; wherefore, calling the boy into the warehouse, one of them began very lovingly to bespeak him thus, 'My son, thou art now somewhat waxen in years and it were well that thou shouldst begin to look for thyself to thine affairs; wherefore it would much content us that thou shouldst go sojourn awhile at Paris, where thou wilt see how great part of thy wealth is employed, more by token ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... the Walhalla motif, and Dorothea, bending over her doll, coquettishly kissed the waxen face. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... in little cells repose; But if night-robbers lift the well-stored hive, An humming through their waxen city grows, And out upon each other's wings ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... we may as well go down." Before they went, the professor tiptoed into his daughter's room. In the darkness he could only see her waxen face on the pillow, and her two eyes gazing fixedly at the ceiling. He did not speak, but immedi. ately withdrew, closing the ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... clear. Theron felt his blood tingle in an unaccustomed way as this priest of a strange church advanced across the room—a broad-shouldered, portly man of more than middle height, with a shapely, strong-lined face of almost waxen pallor, and a firm, commanding tread. He carried in his hands, besides his hat, a small leather-bound case. To this and to him the women courtesied and bowed their ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... had just eaten a cutlet with a good appetite, a thing which he had not done for months. Valentin, a sickly-looking young man, with scanty hair and beard and prominent cheek bones, on each of which was a bright red spot, while the rest of his face was of a waxen hue, rose quickly to show how much more sprightly he felt! And Clotilde was touched by the reception given to Pascal as a saviour, the awaited Messiah. These poor people pressed his hands—they would like to have kissed his feet; looking at him with eyes shining with gratitude. True, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... Then a second one was sacrificed. By this time the attraction had proved strong enough to bring Ruth Mary down from her high seat in the sun. She looked scarcely less a child than Tommy, as, with her face close to his, she watched the pale flame flower wasting its waxen stem. Then she must needs light one herself and hold it, with a little fixed smile on her face, till the flame crept down and ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... about it, also the lips were thick and slightly sensuous. Sir Robert knew this, and therefore he grew a moustache to veil them somewhat. To a careful observer the general impression given by this face was such as is left by the sudden sight of a waxen mask. "How strong! How lifelike!" he would have said, "but of course it isn't real. There may be a man behind, or there may be wood, but that's only a mask." Many people of perception had felt like this about Sir ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... had hitherto carpeted the earth here gave place to graceful ferns in rich variety, interspersed with delicate mosses of velvety texture, and here and there, in the more open spaces, small patches of a heath-like plant with tiny waxen blossoms of a tint varying from the purest white to a dainty purple. The silence of the forest was broken only by the gentle murmur of the wind in the tree-tops and the soft rustle of the foliage overhead, save when now and then a twittering bird flashed like a living gem from bough to bough; ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... redwood forests there is a tall, lovely pink lily, and many brown-spotted yellow tiger-lilies. Up in the mountain pines a snowy white Washington lily sometimes covers a mountain side with its tall stems bearing dozens of sweet waxen blossoms. In the wet, swampy places bright red, and many small orange ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

... minutes more 'Miss Theedory,' as all Northbourne called the captain's eldest daughter, was rowing across the bay with Queenie sedately facing her in the Bunk boat. Queenie had seated several members of her waxen family on either side of her, and taking them an airing was a serious responsibility for their anxious little parent. She was in truth over-burdened with family cares, being the owner of no less than thirteen dolls of various sizes and degrees of beauty. 'Miss Queenie's baker's ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell

... was a building of logs like the others, except that it was of one story. Father Brachet was already there, with Father Wills and Brother Etienne; and, after a moment, in came Brother Paul, looking more waxen and aloof than ever, at the head of the school, the rear brought up by Brother Vincent ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... and are riding through the shadowy aisles of the forest. It is a tropical forest. The outlines of the leaves, their breadth, their glowing colours all reveal this. The eye roams with delight over a frondage that partakes equally of the gold and the green. It revels along waxen leaves, as those of the magnolia, the plantain, and the banana. It is led upward by the rounded trunks of the palms, that like columns appear to support the leafy canopy above. It penetrates the network of vines, or follows the diagonal direction of gigantic llianas, that creep like monster ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... him besides his daily pains employ, To form the tender manners of the boy, And work him, like a waxen babe, with art, To perfect symmetry in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... the figures at the table, Walter nudged the old gentleman, gave him a significant, laughing glance, then stepping forward addressed the waxen man in a serious tone as though he ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley

... and ask Philip; and till she held her baby to her breast, she bitterly wished that she were free from the duties and chains of matrimony. But the touch of its waxen fingers, the hold of its little mouth, made her relax into docility and gentleness. She gave it back to Nancy to be dressed, and softly opened the ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell

... with us a little longer than those darlings of our earlier scenery; but before we have gone many miles the last conspicuous wave of fresh vegetation breaks hopelessly on a thirsty sand-hill, and we are given over to a wilderness of cacti. Here and there occurs a sightly clump of waxen yellow blossoms, where these vegetable hedgehogs are in their holiday attire,—but it must be confessed that the view is a melancholy change from our recent affluence of beauty. With the other succulent plants, the rich herbage of the prairie has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... on a far lonely roadway lived in seclusion among her waxen flowers and cracking walls and faded relics of a far yesterday, a hateful and withered and bitter old woman. To the lonely house on the lonely roadway came one day out of the world to live with the old woman her young and beautiful and very lovely granddaughter. ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan

... glanced into these windows before, hurrying nervously past, but now she lingered, trying to fill her heart with the waxen peace of that luxurious land of leisure. She walked very slowly all around the great square, three sides of which were crystal, the fourth being given up to huge open doors, through which streamed men and parcels and hurled themselves ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... and Calabrian customs the only Easter ceremonies which resemble the rites of Adonis. "During the whole of Good Friday a waxen effigy of the dead Christ is exposed to view in the middle of the Greek churches and is covered with fervent kisses by the thronging crowd, while the whole church rings with melancholy, monotonous dirges. Late in the evening, when it has ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... lilies-of-the-valley clustering about the chestnut boles upon the Colma, or in the beechwood by the stream at Macugnaga, mixed with garnet-coloured columbines and fragrant white narcissus, which the people of the villages call 'Angiolini.' There, too, is Solomon's seal, with waxen bells and leaves expanded like the wings of hovering butterflies. But these lists of flowers are tiresome and cold; it would be better to draw the portrait of one which is particularly fascinating. I think that ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... The freshness of her disposition has vanished with the freshness of her complexion; hard lines are perceptible in her very soul, and crowsfeet contract her very fancy. No longer pure and fair as the statue of alabaster, her beauty, like that of some painted waxen effigy, is tawdry and meretricious. It is not alone the rouge upon the cheek and the false tresses adorning the forehead, which repel the ardour of admiration; it is the artificiality of mind with which such efforts are connected that breaks ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various

... delicacy she had! There flashed across him the memory of a drooping blossom, which, in the Spring, he had seen her throw into the flames; with the words: "I can't bear flowers to fade, I always want to burn them." He could see again those waxen petals yield to the fierce clutch of the little red creeping sparks, and the slender stalk quivering, and glowing, and writhing to blackness like a live ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... when Mark first came there, it was graced by the perfume and gold of acacias, by wistaria and jasmine and honeysuckle, by the ivory goblets of magnolias, by crimson fuchsias, and where formerly its grey walls grew mossy north and east by pink and white camelias and the waxen bells of lapagerias. The garden was a wilderness of scarlet rhododendrons from the thickets of which innumerable blackbirds and thrushes preyed upon the peas. The lawns were like meadows; the lily ponds were marbled with weeds; the stables were hardly to be reached on account ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... to 'No. 9'? But at last the old professor—never long was he outdone— Opened up our shining oil cans and demolished all our fun!" In the laugh that rings so gayly through the richly curtained room, Join they all, save one; Why is it? Does he see the waxen bloom Tremble in its vase of silver? Does he see the ruddy wine Shiver in its crystal goblet, or do those grave eyes divine Something sadder yet? He pauses till their mirth has died away, Then in measured ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... windows waxen effigies of fine ladies, gracefully patient, display the latest dinner-gown from Paris, or the creamiest of be-ribboned tea-gowns. Or they pose in attitudes of polite adieux and greeting, all but smothered in a king's ransom of sable and ermine. Or, to the other extreme, they ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... was his own, though she has borne him a daughter—nay, two daughters (and he winces with a fresh and different pain)—the younger as old as she was then. Her raven hair is parted soft and silky off those pale, delicate temples; her long black lashes rest upon the waxen cheek. No; she never looked as beautiful, not in the calm sleep he used to watch so lovingly; and now the deep, fond eyes must open on his own no more. She was so gentle, too, so patient, so sweet-tempered, and O, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... Gallery Tower, lined on either hand by the retainers of the Earl of Leicester. The word was passed along the lines, "The Queen! The Queen! Silence, and stand fast!" Onward came the cavalcade, illuminated by 200 thick waxen torches, in the hands of as many horsemen, which cast a light like that of broad day all around the procession, but especially on the principal group, of which the Queen herself, arrayed in the most splendid manner, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... still. As Dorian looked at the face of his friend it seemed that the mortal flesh had become waxen white so that the immortal spirit shone unhindered through it. The young man's heart was deeply sorrowful, but it was a sanctified sorrow. Twice before had death come near to him. He had hardly realized that of his father's and ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson

... limits 35 At the end of the ocean.[2] Up thence quickly The men of the Weders clomb to the mainland, Fastened their vessel (battle weeds rattled, War burnies clattered), the Wielder they thanked That the ways o'er the waters had waxen so gentle. ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin

... fireside, fumbled in the box, and drew out a doll. She was an ugly, old-fashioned doll, with bruised waxen face of no particular color. Her mop of flaxen hair was straggling and uneven, much the worse for the attention of generations of moths. She wore a faded green silk dress in the style of Lincoln's day, ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown

... playthings, but the toy that attracted most attention was a neat castle of cardboard. Through the little windows one could see straight into the hall. Before the castle some little trees were placed round a little looking-glass, which was to represent a clear lake. Waxen swans swam on this lake, and were mirrored in it. This was all very pretty; but the prettiest of all was a little Lady, who stood at the open door of the castle; she was also cut out in paper, but she had a dress of the clearest gauze, and a little narrow blue ribbon over her shoulders ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... the eye, at least, there is no reminder of the scene of the Nativity in this close and stifling chapel, hung with costly silks and embroideries, glittering with rich lamps, filled with the smoke of incense and waxen tapers. And to the heart there is little suggestion of the lonely night when Joseph found a humble refuge here for his young bride to wait in darkness, pain and hope for ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... parties these terms: "Your shape is not unlike, and your colour is similar; so that the affair clearly and fairly becomes a matter of doubt. But that my sacred duty may not be at fault through insufficiency of knowledge, {each of you} take hives, and pour your productions into the waxen cells; that from the flavour of the honey and the shape of the comb, the maker of them, about which the present dispute exists, may be evident." The Drones decline; the proposal pleases the Bees. Upon this, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... had left an even, waxen sky. Leaves and ferns appeared drenched with the light just withdrawn. The hush, the warmth, the colour, were charged with some influence. The air of the time communicated itself to Lulu as intense and quiet happiness. She had not yet felt quiet with Ninian. ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale

... Claudet!" interrupted Heliobas, in a thrilling low tone. "And what of the child—the little waxen-faced helpless babe left to die on the banks of the Loire? But it did not die, Jeanne—it was rescued; and it shall yet live to loathe ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... [Footnote: Beside the blessing of the eggs and house, it is the custom in some parts of Italy, (and I have particularly observed it in Siena,) for the priest, at Easter, to affix to the door of the chief palazzi and villas a waxen cross, or the letter M in wax, so as to guard the house from evil spirits. But only the houses of the rich are thus protected; for the priests bestow favors only "for a consideration," which the poor cannot so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... larvae (Fig. 43) of a beetle of which we do not know the adult form. Of similar habits is probably a small moth (Nephopteryx Edmandsii, Plate I, Figs. 2; 2a, larva; Fig. 2b, chrysalis, or pupa) which undoubtedly feeds upon the waxen walls of the bee cells, and thus, like the attacks of the common bee moth (Galleria cereana, whose habits are so well known as not to detain us, must prove very prejudicial to the well being of the colony. ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... in search of aid, he could not immediately see the king, but was obliged to send in a message written on a waxen tablet. This passed from hand to hand, and finally reached Darius, who, recognizing the name at the bottom of the request, graciously said that he would receive the exiled tyrant ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber

... learned is like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose; at best, like a nose made out of another's flesh; it adheres to us only because it is put on. But truth acquired by thinking of our own is like a natural limb; it alone really belongs to us. This is the fundamental difference between ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer

... the silent and deserted wing was full of fantastic shadows. He threw himself on a chair beside a window without lighting his lamp. The rose garden outside was steeped in moonlight; the magnolia bells gleamed waxen-white against their glossy green leaves; the vines on the tall trellises threw a soft network of dancing shadows on the white-shelled walks below; the night air stealing about was loaded with the perfume of roses and ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... She was seated on a sofa, with a piece of delicate work in her hand; she was dressed in the most costly manner, and she looked as fair and almost as quiet as a waxen doll. ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... able to mar the golden glory of the curls which clustered around that splendid little head. She had soft brown eyes, which shone from beneath their silken lashes like "a tremulous evening star"; a mouth which made you think of a string of pearls threaded on scarlet; and a complexion of the waxen purity of the japonica, with the exception of a band of brownest freckles, which, extending from the tip of each cheek straight across the prettiest possible nose, added, I used to fancy, a new beauty ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... charmed by the penetrating sweetness of her voice, which possessed, let us say it here, an apostolic unction. The sick soul contemplated with admiration the truly extraordinary phenomenon presented by this woman, whose face was now resplendent. Rosy tints were spreading on the waxen cheeks, her eyes shone, the youthfulness of her soul changed the light wrinkles into gracious lines, and all about her solicited affection. Godefroid in that one moment measured the gulf that separated this woman from common sentiments. ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... was but slight, and only served to make the huge waxen torches flare more freely. By their brilliant blaze, we were enabled to take up the tracks, quite as rapidly as by the moonlight. At this point, the horse had been still going at full gallop; and his course, as it ran in a direct line, was the ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... to the topmost fronds of the loftiest palm, and, unless ruthlessly cut down, overthrowing the stately tree with their fatal embrace. Sausage and candle trees, with strange parodies of prosaic food and waxen tapers, climbing palms, sometimes extending for five hundred feet, and gigantic blossoms like crimson trumpets, or delicately-tinted shells of ocean, comprise but a tithe of Nature's wonders, crowned by the mighty "Rafflesia," the largest flower in the world, with each ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... and cold. The full moon was in the zenith. Its icy splendor lay on the bare streets, and on the walls of the dwellings. The lighted oblong squares of curtained windows, here and there, seemed dim and waxen in the frigid glory. The familiar aspect of the quarter had passed away, leaving behind only a corpse-like neighborhood, whose huge, dead features, staring rigidly through the thin, white shroud of moonlight that covered all, left no breath upon ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor

... [Ant. 13. Since heaven-espousing earth Gave the Republic birth, The mightiest soul put mortal raiment on 500 That came forth singing ever in man's ears Of all souls with us, and through all these years Rings yet the lordliest, waxen yet more strong, That on our souls hath shed itself in song, Poured forth itself like rain On souls like springing grain That with its procreant beams and showers were fed For living wine and sacramental ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... find our hoard Of honey-comb and honey stored; You would track us, if you could, Through the field, and through the wood, Till, within some hollow tree, You our waxen cells could see. But beware now what you do; Treat us well, and we'll ...
— The Nursery, July 1877, XXII. No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... protested against his introduction to the establishment, and used to pluck billfulls of hair from his stomach under pretence of lining a nest, which was never made. But in spite of this, the good gentle beast lived nigh as long as the magpie—long enough to be caressed by the waxen fingers of little children, who would afterwards gather round their father, and hear how the bear had been carried to the mountains in the bosom of the little boy who lost his way on the granite ranges, and went to heaven, in the year that ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... and keys and the like. But surely there could be nothing worth all that trouble in this room, she thought. Nor would anything of that kind have been necessary to get possession of the jewels. Besides, if any waxen impression of anything had been taken, Stephen Richford would have done it. Just for a moment it occurred to Beatrice that it would be a good idea to change her room, but she dismissed the impulse as cowardly, and besides, the manager had advised her that he had not another ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... of Apples was an Exhibition Hall, showing waxen examples of every Apple upon earth; and a market where Apples were sold; the short-lived Apples in their season, and the long-lived Apples the year around, and some were costly and some were cheap; and in the autumn the market was flooded—so that then all people could ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... betray private suspicion of the normal woman's volitional capacity by applying to her heart and mind the specific epithet "waxen." The feminine temperament takes the impress of its environment as easily as wax takes the impress of a seal. In two passages where this simile is employed,[31] the deduction from it is pressed to the furthest limit, and free-will is denied women altogether. Feminine ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... a little shriek of delight when her father held up a great mass of enormous waxen bells for her to ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... age. The like uncertainty attached to those spells which one person was supposed to be able to exercise over another. It was held, for example, that if something belonging to an individual, such as a lock of hair or a paring of the nails, could be secured and incorporated in a waxen figure, this figure would be intimately associated with the personality of that individual. An enemy might thus secure occult power over one; any indignity practised upon the waxen figure would result in like injury to its human prototype. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... woody deeps below Dunchuach the castle gleamed with fires, and a Highland welcome illumined the greater part of the avenue from the town with flambeaux, in whose radiance the black pines, the huge beeches, the waxen shrubbery round the lawns all shrouded, seemed to creep closer round the edifice to hear the sounds of revelry and learn what charms the human world when the melodious winds are still and the weather is cold, and out of doors poor thickets must ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... he now recant that wild opinion, And sing—as would that I could sing—of you! I was not born (alas!) the "Muses' minion," I'm not poetical, not even blue: And he (we know) but strives with waxen pinion, Whoe'er he is that entertains the view Of emulating Pindar, and will be Sponsor at last to ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.



Words linked to "Waxen" :   wax, colorless, colourless, waxy



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