"Buttercup" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Stingy spun it was Greenie's business to fold and put away carefully in the centre of a buttercup. He would get it and be back before it was time for Stingy to dance. He measured his way quickly over to the buttercup, his little back fairly popped into the air every other half second as he went furiously humping himself along. He found the cobweb covered with the gold dust ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 40 And, grasping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul for grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, 45 The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf or a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace, The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 50 And lets ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... potted geranium. Great care should be taken, however, that it is a plant of the correct species, for in the etiquette of courtship all flowers have different meanings and many a promising affair has been ruined because a suitor sent his lady a buttercup, meaning "That's the last dance I'll ever take you to, you big cow," instead of a plant with a more tender significance. Some of the commoner flowers and their meaning in courtship are ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... if you love to fill your books with flowers. It is a real bookish delight, and they make such a pretty diary. My poets are full of them, and they all mean a memory—old spring mornings, lost sunsets, walks forgotten and unforgotten. Here a buttercup pressed like finely beaten brass, there a great yellow rose—in my Keats; my Chaucer is like his old meadows, 'ypoudred with daisie,' and my Herrick is full of violets. The only thing is that they haunt me sometimes. But then, again, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... morning, very early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... bright yellow buttercup-looking flowers, are now in full luxuriance of bloom in wet places near running water; they may not be esteemed beautiful by all, and yet all God's works, and all his flowers, are good and beautiful. Let any one see them as I have seen them, a large flowerbed of an acre and more, one ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... (Cruciferae); the poppies (Papaveraceae); the water-lilies (Nymphaceae); the berberries (Berberideae); the custard-apples (Anonaceae); the magnolias (Magnoliaceae); and, finally, the great group (Ranunculaceae) containing the anemones, the clematis, hellebore, monkshood, and the buttercup, which last is of great use to the student of Botany because it is an excellent ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... study any of the following flowers: cherry, apple, buttercup, wild mustard, and start from the outside, we will find an outer and under part which in most flowers is green. This is called the calyx (Figs. 70-74). In the buttercup and mustard the calyx is divided into separate ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... books, is Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Dore. It is all the more agreeable that we may even "begin with a little aversion." It suggests itself as a sort of interloper in the great business of Dumas and Co.: it opens, indeed, only a few years before D'Artagnan rode up to the inn on the buttercup-coloured pony. And, in manner, it may look at first as if the writer were following another but much inferior example—our own G. P. R. James; for there are "two cavaliers," and one tells the other a tale fit to make him fall asleep and off his saddle. But it improves remarkably, and before you ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the air, some of it at close quarters with collisions barely avoided. Twenty enemy machines were accounted for in the fighting, some flopping about until they broke up in the air and others being driven down on their noses in yellow buttercup fields so far back of the fighting line that no shell had ever marred the ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... the ranunculus aquatilis, the water buttercup, is under water its leaves are all finely indented, and the divisions are furnished with capillaries; but as soon as the stalk of the plant reaches the surface the leaves, which develop in the air, are broadened out, rounded, and simply lobed. If the ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... sulk and be cross because you can't have everything you want. Be happy where you were put. Did you ever hear the little poem called The Discontented Buttercup? It is the story of a buttercup who mourned because she couldn't be a daisy with white frills like her neighbor flowers, and she didn't see the loveliness of the day nor feel the softness of the breezes because she spent all her time in vain wishes. So she asked a robin who had paused to rest near her if he wouldn't ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... reckon the previous existence and interaction of all the antecedent ones. Is it probable, then, even a priori, that if life or anything like it exists on any other planet, it would exist in forms at all as near our own as a buttercup is to a human being, or a sea-anemone is to a cat or ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... always in a frantic rush and flurry, that produces no impression on anybody. A whirlwind of feathers, that's about it. He goes out into the highway and brandishes a double-handed sword—in order to sweep off the head of a buttercup. And I suppose he expects the public to believe that his wild language, all about nothing, means strength; just as he hopes that they will take his noisy horse-laugh for humor. That's Octavius Quirk as a writer—a ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... distinctly as the daisy and buttercup are meadow flowers, the violet is a bank flower, and would fain grow always on a steep slope, towards the sun. And it is so poised on its stem that it shows, when growing on a slope, the full space ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... the Fountain Hotel, but they were not yet out of their dens. We saw the track of only one, and he was not making for the hotel. At all the formations where the geysers are, the ground was bare over a large area. I even saw a wild flower—an early buttercup, not an inch high—in bloom. This seems to be the earliest wild flower in the Rockies. It is the only ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs
... make it jolly," answered Dorothy. "If there is one thing in this world worth while, it is fun," and she tossed her yellow head about like a buttercup, that has no other ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... mention,—if, when you speak, she drops into silence and changes the subject,—why, look there for something! just as, when going through deep meadow-grass, a bird flies ostentatiously up before you, you may know her nest is not there, but far off, under distant tufts of fern and buttercup, through which she has crept with a silent flutter in her spotted breast, to act her pretty little falsehood ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... butterflies—insect vagrants that they are—have no fixed home, and they therefore stray far above the level at which bee-blossoms altogether cease to grow. Now, the butterfly differs greatly from the bee in his mode of honey-hunting: he does not bustle about in a business-like manner from one buttercup or dead-nettle to its nearest fellow; but he flits joyously, like a sauntering straggler that he is, from a great patch of color here to another great patch at a distance, whose gleam happens to strike his roving eye by its size and brilliancy. Hence, as that indefatigable ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... years the old Squire had been breeding a herd of Jerseys. There were sixteen of them: Jersey First, Canary, Jersey Second, Little Queen, Beauty, Buttercup, and all the rest. Each one had her own little book that hung from its nail on a beam of the tie-up behind her stall. In it were recorded her pedigree, dates, and the number of pounds of milk she gave at each ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... who loved them dearly, called her "orange blossoms"; but when at dinner, Klaas would keep on, dipping his potatoes into the hot butter, while others were all through, his mother would laugh and call him her Buttercup. But always Klaas wanted more cheese. When unusually greedy, she twitted him as a boy "worse than Butter-and-Eggs"; that is, as troublesome as the yellow and white plant, called toad-flax, is to the farmer—very pretty, but nothing but ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... valleys are dark, And she chatters and dances the blessed day long, Now laughing in gladness, now singing a song. She never is silent; the whole summer day She is off on the green with the blossoms at play; Now seeking a buttercup, plucking a rose, Or laughing aloud at ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... meet her on the dusty street, And daisies spring about her feet; Or, touched to life beneath her tread, An English cowslip lifts its head; And, as to do her grace, rise up The primrose and the buttercup! I roam with her through fields of cane, And seem to stroll an English lane, Which, white with blossoms of the May, Spreads its green carpet in her way! As fancy wills, the path beneath Is golden gorse, or purple heath; And now we hear in woodlands dim Their unarticulated hymn, Now walk through ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... of course it's been darker since I've grown up" (Miss Dinsmore's gold was fast becoming silver); "Sary Ann's is changin', too, I see. Miss Bray says she isn't over-fond of stirrin' round; and I shouldn't wonder if 't was so. Sary Ann don't look no more like workin' than a buttercup; but then, as I tell Miss Bray, corn is made for usin' and flowers for starin' at, and I don't know as any special sign is set on either of 'em to show which is the best. Don't mind them youngsters, Sandy; they're ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... BUTTERCUP or CROWFOOT - (R. sceleratus) Highly-polished petals, which spangle (R. acris) the fields and hedges with gold. (R. repens) All much alike; all haunting (R. bulbosus) kitchen-gardens and pastures, where the cattle, disliking their taste, leave the ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... no good. He came to himself, at long intervals, to find that he had been looking about his room and wondering how it had formerly been furnished—whether a settee in buttercup or petunia satin had stood under the farther window, whether from the centre moulding of the light lofty ceiling had depended a glimmering crystal chandelier, or where the tambour-frame or the picquet-table had stood.... ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... cheered her eyes and calmed the unrest of her heart, as she rode. Among the dead leaves of the woods, the snowy blossoms of the blood-root had already burst forth in starry clusters; the anemones trembled between the sheltering knees of the old oaks, and here and there a single buttercup dropped its gold on the meadows. These things were so many presentiments of brighter days in Nature, and they awoke a corresponding ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... Houri, Cupid, Apollo^, Hyperion, Adonis^, Antionous^, Narcissus. peacock, butterfly; garden; flower of, pink of; bijou; jewel &c (ornament) 847; work of art. flower, flow'ret gay^; [flowers: list] wildflower; rose, lily, anemone, asphodel, buttercup, crane's bill, daffodil, tulip, tiger lily, day lily, begonia, marigold, geranium, lily of the valley, ranunculus, rhododendron, windflower. pleasurableness &c 829. beautifying; landscaping, landscape gardening; decoration &c 847; calisthenics^. [person who is beautiful] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the head Of many a columbine; And, taken from their rocky bed, They in our wreaths shall twine. Saxifrage, so small and sweet, Grows in plenty at our feet; From the grass we gather up, Golden bright, the buttercup. ...
— Cousin Hatty's Hymns and Twilight Stories • Wm. Crosby And H.P. Nichols
... yourself. That you should have it all to yourself in your own pulpit we accede to you; but out here, on the heath, surely I may have my turn. You do not believe in Rumtunshid? Then why should farmer Buttercup be called on to believe in the communion of the saints? What does he believe about it? Or why should you make little Flora Buttercup tell such a huge fib as to say, that she believes in ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... leaf, but the leaves were much smaller and grew close to the ground, as the plant flourished most where the grass was close- cropped by the sheep, forming a smooth turf like that of our chalk downs. The flowers were never crowded together like the buttercup, forming sheets of shining yellow, but grew two or three inches apart, each slender stem producing a single flower, which stood a couple of inches above the turf. So fine were the stems that the slightest breath of wind would set the blossoms ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... of their own cows. He could shut his eyes and see how each one looked. Clover was red, Teenie black, and Buttercup had white spots on ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... smoothed and evened with utmost nicety. Thirty feet wide they were at their widest, then drew toward each other with no break in their symmetry; they did not close. Above was, roughly, a ten-foot rift, ragged edged, through which poured light like that in the heart of pale amber, a buttercup light shot through with curiously evanescent ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... all of them and Tangle-wood itself would turn into cinders and vanish in smoke up the chimney—even the present chronicler saw the point; though, at the same time, he somehow could not help believing in the reality of Primrose, Buttercup, Dandelion, Squash-blossom, and the rest. Thus early did he begin to grasp the philosophy of ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... of a box may be arithmetic, the painting of a buttercup may be nature study, the construction of a model, or of dramatic properties may be geography or history, not by any means the only way of learning, but one of the earlier ways and a very sound way; there is a purpose to serve ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... his attenuated appetite the unhappy mate made David cook an omelet and bake a seed-cake, the latter so richly compounded that it opened to the knife like a freckled buttercup. With the same object he stuck night-lines into the banks of the mill-pond, and drew up next morning a family of fat eels, some of which were skinned and prepared for his breakfast. They were his favourite fish, but ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... rain that might well be called golden, seeing the sun, shining as it fell, turned all its drops into molten topazes, and every drop was good for a grain of golden corn, or a yellow cowslip, or a buttercup, or a dandelion at least;—while this splendid rain was falling, I say, with a musical patter upon the great leaves of the horse-chestnuts, which hung like Vandyke collars about the necks of the creamy, red-spotted blossoms, and on the leaves of ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... underground retreats from the region poisoned by sunshine. NEXT YEAR you will find the grass growing tall and green where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through their ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... finished. Periwinkle is very much grown, and is expected to shut up her baby house and throw away her doll in a month or two more. Sweet Fern has learned to read and write, and has put on a jacket and pair of pantaloons—all of which improvements I am sorry for. Squash Blossom, Blue Eye, Plantain, and Buttercup have had the scarlet fever, but came easily through it. Huckleberry, Milkweed, and Dandelion were attacked with the whooping cough, but bore it bravely, and kept out of doors whenever the sun shone. Cowslip, during the autumn, had either the measles, or some eruption that looked very much like ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the prize roses have got bugs on 'em he sets to work and kills the bugs; sprays the plants same's he would ordinary bushes, and they go to growing again like any other civilized flowers. An orchid ain't no more to him than a buttercup. He's too used to 'em. He's used to dogs as well, and with the shifting fashions he's seen during his fifty years with the family he's had experience with most every kind of dog that ever was. For there's fashions in dogs, you know, as well as in coats and hats. ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... bad—worse, almost, Luke thought. When everything else went brave and young with new greenery; when the alders were laced with the yellow haze of leaf bud, and the brooks got out of prison again, and arbutus and violet and buttercup went through their rotation of bloom up in the rock pastures and maple bush—the farm buildings seemed only the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... otherwise to become a listener and observer. In this divided attitude of mind his observation was chiefly engaged. He noted particularly the string of gold beads which Miss Wycliffe wore, and their reflection against her throat reminded him of a children's game, which consisted in holding a buttercup beneath the ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... flowers are increasing in our meadows, the former to the detriment of the grass itself, and to the loss of the butter-makers, for the cows will not eat the buttercups' bitter stems. Like the ox-eye daisy, the buttercup is a typical meadow flower, tall, so that it tops the grasses and catches the sun in its petals, thin-foliaged, for no real grass-growing flower has broad or remarkable leaves, and with a habit of deep, underground growth far ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... heart in that holy kiss; it was a golden morning; there was gold in the beaming sunlight, gold in the leaves of the lowly flower, and on the lips of the maiden. There, that is my story," said the buttercup. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... reached the road, the traction engine was not in sight, so they sat in the bank and waited, Mrs. Marston regal in the chair; and Hazel held a buttercup under Edward's chin to see if he ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... She never got much farther than recognizing the tiger lily and the wild rose, but she rediscovered Hugh. "What does the buttercup say, mummy?" he cried, his hand full of straggly grasses, his cheek gilded with pollen. She knelt to embrace him; she affirmed that he made life more than full; she was altogether reconciled . . . for ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... fields and fruit-trees; the Scheme changed into a mass of wild- flowers; a lame boy knocked it over with his crutch; gold fell in a brilliant, singing shower, and where each sovereign fell there sprang up a buttercup or dandelion. Rogers rubbed his eyes ... and realised that the sun was rather hot upon his face. A dragon fly was perched upon his hat three ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... the Buttercup,[67:1] but in Shakespeare's time it was applied to the Ragged Robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi), and I should think that this was the flower that poor Ophelia wove into her garland. Gerard says, "They are not used either in medicine or ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... was really almost more than semi-detached. It had been but lightly wedged between two buttercup stalks. The two eggs in it were at once unseated, and one was broken. ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... of bonfires and wet earth. He took him through the seasons, telling him of the blown golden armies of the daffodils that marched out for Easter, and the fragrant white glory of the may; and the pale pink stars of the hedge-roses, and the yellow joy of buttercup fields wherein cows stand knee-deep and munch, in order to give Thomas sweet ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... the more lovingly, because he knows how short a time they have to be together, and as if they both, for the time, try to forget that they must part so soon. Then the hill grows green as if by a sudden miracle, and the bluebell, the dandelion, the buttercup, the dog-daisy, the wild rose, the raspberry and the strawberry spring up in lavish abundance, by every brook, on every hillock, on every mountain-slope; then hundreds of insects hum in the grass as in a tropical land; then cows, horses, and ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... it is as easy to forget the months and what they showed us, when once they are gone. Just for the moment I tell myself that I know May like the multiplication table and could pass an examination on its flowers, their appearance and their order. To-day I can affirm confidently that the buttercup has five petals. (Or is it six? I knew for certain last week.) But next year I shall probably have forgotten my arithmetic, and may have to learn once more not to confuse the buttercup with the celandine. Once more I shall see the world as a garden through the eyes of a stranger, my breath ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... a flower really is. Take, for example, a buttercup, cotton, tobacco, or plum blossom (see Figs. 31 and 32). You will find on the outside a row of green leaves inclosing the flower when it is still a bud. These leaves are the sepals. Next on the inside is a row of colored leaves, or petals. Arranged inside of the petals are some ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... same way. It forms a large ball, and browner; dandelion seed-balls are white. The grass is dotted with them now; they give a glossy, silky appearance to the meadows. Tiny pink geranium flowers show on bunches of dusty grass; silver weed lays its yellow buttercup-like flower on the ground, placing it in the angle of the road and the sward, where the sward makes a ridge. Cockspur grass—three claws and a spur like a cock's foot—is already whitened with pollen; already in comparison, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... was showing the Ashland dairyman the bull calf, child of Red Rover VII and Buttercup IV, Mrs. Egg saw her oldest daughter's motor sliding across the lane from the turnpike. It held all three of her female offspring. Mrs. Egg groaned, drawling commonplaces to her visitor, but he stayed a full hour, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the Gr. [Greek: anemos], wind), a genus of the buttercup order (Ranunculaceae), containing about ninety species in the north and south temperate zones. Anemone nemorosa, wood anemone, and A. Pulsatilla, Pasque-flower, occur in Britain; the latter is found on chalk downs and limestone pastures ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... a dear little puppy it was!" said Alice, as she leant against a buttercup to rest herself, and fanned herself with her hat. "I should have liked teaching it tricks, if—if I'd only been the right size to do it! Oh! I'd nearly forgotten that I've got to grow up again! Let me see; how is it to be managed? I suppose I ought to eat or drink something or other, ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... said the oldest woman, with a nod of her white-capped head. "I tried him wi' a buttercup. I held it under his chin, and he loves butter. So he's a Lindsay; all the Lindsays love butter. I know, for I was nurse in the family a hundred ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... grass and the flowers," said the fairy queen. "In every blade and in every bud lie hidden notes of fairy music. Each violet and daisy and buttercup,—every modest wild-flower (no matter how hidden) gives glad response to the tinkle of fairy feet. Dancing daintily over this quiet sward where flowers dot the green, my little people strike here and there ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... Jesus in every buttercup and every primrose, and every little daisy, and in every dewdrop, and heard something of the song of the angels in the notes of the nightingale and the skylark. Oh! Jesus was there, and they felt Him, and they saw Him. ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith
... the countryside seems to faint from its own loveliness, from the intoxication of its scents and sounds. Creamy-white may, splashed here and there with crimson, flooded the hedges in breaking waves of flower-foam; the fields were all buttercup glory; every tree had its cuckoo, calling; every bush its blackbird or thrush in full even-song. Swallows were flying rather low, and the sky, whose moods they watch, had the slumberous, surcharged beauty of a long, fine day, with showers not far ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... held Peter, then a crowing baby, in her lap. Gilbert was tickling Peter's chin with a buttercup, Nancy was putting a wreath of leaves on her mother's hair, and Kathleen was swinging from an apple-tree bough, her yellow ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... here," he said, when they had gone a little further; "but just look at that hickory! It's growing as yellow as a buttercup." ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... I'd been a good brother, and that Little Billie thought so too. Ma said she just couldn't live with Little Billie gone—Myrtle and me didn't answer, somehow. And one day I heard her singin' at the piano—she and pa had joined the town troupe to sing Pinafore. She was Little Buttercup, and pa was Dick Deadeye, and so they practiced together. And I always, to this day, think of Little Billie whenever I hear any one sing "The Nightingale Sighs for the Moon's Bright Rays." These things always get mixed together and stay ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... recollect you called me a cool and calculating Englishman. I shall take you down to the lake, where it will be cool, and there I shall find a Smorblomst, or a buttercup, and by placing it to your chin, I shall be able to calculate the transparency of your complexion from the ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... they reached the bed of pebbles at the bottom,—these spots, not less than the whole surface of the valley, from the river to the mountains that girdled it in, were carpeted all by a soft green grass, thick, short, perfectly even, and vanilla-perfumed, but so besprinkled throughout with the yellow buttercup, the white daisy, the purple violet, and the ruby-red asphodel, that its exceeding beauty spoke to our hearts in loud tones, of the love and of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... black. Hops climb the ash and hang their clusters, which impart an aromatic scent to the hand that plucks them; broad burdock leaves, which the mouchers put on the top of their baskets to shield their freshly gathered watercresses from the sunshine; creeping avens, with buttercup-like flowers and long stems that straggle across the ditch, and in autumn are tipped with a small ball of soft spines; mints, strong-scented and unmistakable; yarrow, white and sometimes a little lilac, whose flower is perhaps almost the last that the bee visits. In the middle of October I have ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... she proceeded to adjust some dainty gilt cups that stood on a small table. "That is, if you are allowed to have coffee at night. From your roseleaf cheeks, I fancy you drink only honeydew or buttercup tea." ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... Gill, Canada thistle, Nightshade, Burdock, Buttercup, Yellow dock, Dandelion, Wild carrot, Wild mustard, Ox-eye daisy, Shepherd's purse, Chamomile, St. John's-wort, Mullein, Chickweed, Dead-nettle (Lamium), Purslane, Hemp-nettle (Galeopsis), Mallow, Elecampane, Darnel, Plantain, Poison hemlock, Motherwort, Hop-clover, Stramonium, ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... juicy enough, but within are full of the concentrated essence of pungency and profanity. Well, there are hundreds of such plants, even in cold climates, to tempt the eyes and poison the veins of unsuspecting cattle or childish humanity. There is buttercup, so horribly acrid that cows carefully avoid it in their closest cropped pastures; and yet your cow is not usually a too dainty animal. There is aconite, the deadly poison with which Dr. Lamson removed his troublesome relatives. ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... boy noticed that some of the travellers hesitated, slowed up, and finally stood quite still. He saw that the tall beech tree stopped, and that the roebuck and the wheat blade tarried by the wayside, likewise the blackberry bush, the little yellow buttercup, the chestnut tree, ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... the hill, his eyes roaming vaguely over the landscape, which was looking its fairest on this mellow June afternoon. Yonder rolled the downs, all golden green in the light of the sinking sun, nearer at hand lay the meadows, very sheets of buttercup gold; every leaf and twig of the hedgerow was a-glitter, too—all Nature, it seemed, had arrayed itself in splendour to correspond with the old pauper's sudden access of wealth. Not that any such fancy crossed his dazed mind. As he shuffled along he thought of how he had walked this way last year, ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... subordinate to the germ in the egg, than the calyx to the blossom. It bursts at last; but it never lives as the corolla does. It may fall at the moment its task is fulfilled, as in the poppy; or wither gradually, as in the buttercup; or persist in a ligneous apathy, after the flower is dead, as in the rose; or harmonise itself so as to share in the aspect of the real flower, as in the lily; but it never shares in the corolla's ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... earth to sky, and was about to give it up, when a buttercup fell at his feet, and he caught sight of Miss Celia smiling at him from behind her brother, who did not see ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Buttercup. Any medicine you hand out is good to me. But say, that dope about hidden ores may not be all Indian at that, for I recollect that mountaineers of Tennessee had the same hunch about coal veins, and an old lead vein where one family went for their ammunition. They could use it ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... seven years. Its range is very wide, and in these twenty-three stories, we have the best of the mystical war legends from "The Grey Angel" to "Cafard," the gentle irony of "The Recruit" and "Defeat," and the gracious vision of "Spindleberries," "The Nightmare Child," and "Buttercup-Night." Nowhere in the volume do we find the slight touch of sentimentality which has marred the strength of Mr. Galsworthy's later novels, but everywhere very quietly realised pictures of a golden age which is still possible ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and its every movement is nothing but an involuntary and inevitable reaction to a certain stimulus. If he's right, then I'm a buttercup—but that's neither here nor there. Loeb—all he did was to restate destiny, one of humanity's oldest ideas, in the terms of tropisms, infusoria and light. Omar Khayyam chemically reincarnated in the Rockefeller Institute. Nevertheless those who accept his theories have to admit that there is ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... science. The answer is very brief; the poet does not imagine something which is not there. A beauty or a suggestion is a truth, and the poet sees a beauty or a suggestion. He would indeed be false and an enemy to science if he said that a primrose by the river's brim was a buttercup, or that it was red when it is yellow, but it is no fiction when he declares that the primrose tells him this or that of nature or of God. It may not tell the scientist anything of the kind, but that is because the scientist does not look for such a thing ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... vegetable world green almost universally colours the leaves, yellow has more to do with the flowers. The flowers we love best are yellow: the cowslip, the daffodil, the crocus, the buttercup, half the daisy, the honeysuckle, and the loveliest rose. Yellow, too, has its turn even with the leaves; and what an artist he shows himself when, in autumn, he 'lays his fiery finger' upon them, lighting up the forlorn woodland with splashes—pure palette-colour of audacious gold! He ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... our beliefs seem to be peculiarly indubitable. One might instance the belief that two and two are four, that two things cannot be in the same place at the same time, nor one thing in two places, or that a particular buttercup that we are seeing is yellow. The suggestion we are to examine is that such: beliefs have some recognizable quality which secures their truth, and the truth of whatever is deduced from them according to self-evident principles of inference. This theory is set ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... does for us are typified in this nursery-tale. We all of us have our vague reminiscences of the stately home of our childhood,—for we are all of us poets and geniuses in our youth, while earth is all new to us, and the chalice of every buttercup is brimming with the wine of poesy,—and we all remember the beautiful, motherly countenance which nature bent over us there. But somehow we all get stolen away thence; life becomes to us a sooty taskmaster, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... are always asking, do I remember, remember The buttercup bog-end where the flowers rose up And kindled you over deep with a coat of gold? You ask again, do the healing days close up The open darkness which then drew us in, The dark that swallows ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... on plants that the seed would have to be in the ground two years in order to germinate. I didn't know that and left them in only a few months. I think the only way is to buy the plants. It is a very beautiful plant, yellow and shaped like golden glow, belongs to the same family as the buttercup. ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... on before: The bee rings out his bugle bold, The daisy spreads her marbled floor, The buttercup her cloth ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... spring out of the fields and soar into the sky, dropping crystal chains of joyous trills. The cottage gardens would be full of flowers, there would be poppies gleaming scarlet in the corn, and in buttercup-time all the green grass would be ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... mother was very proud of him, and she was always hoping he would blossom, but he never did. He lived in the house in winter, but in spring Mother set him out in the flower-bed, just beside the double buttercup. So when the buttercup blossomed, with its lovely yellow balls, I played that Old Moneybags, who was an odious old miser, was counting his gold. Then, when the petals dropped, he piled his money in little heaps, and finally he buried it. He wasn't very interesting, ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... the vining winter varieties in the C. maxima or C. pepo family seem acceptably adapted to dry gardening. These include Buttercup, Hubbard, Delicious, Sweet Meat, Delicata, Spaghetti, and Acorn. I wouldn't trust any of the newer compact bush winter varieties so popular on raised beds. Despite their reputation for drought tolerance C. mixta varieties (or cushaw squash) were believed to be ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... is up, the moon is up! The larks begin to fly, And, like a drowsy buttercup, Dark Phoebus skims the sky, The elephant with cheerful voice, Sings blithely on the spray; The bats and beetles all rejoice, Then let ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... Margate Pier. Excursionists discovered embarking in two rival sailing-boats, the "Daisy" and the "Buttercup," whose respective Mates are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... to join them. The women started and turned suddenly: one threw up her hands, and darkened her face. It was in the pathway of a broad meadow, deep with grass, wherein the red sorrel topped the yellow buttercup, like rust upon the season's gold. Robert hastened on. He scarce at the moment knew the man whose shoulder he seized, but he had recognised Dahlia and Rhoda, and he found himself ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Her muzzle is too blunt; then she does not bite as do the sheep; she has not upper teeth; she crops. But on the lower slopes, and margins, and rich bottoms, she is at home. Where the daisy and the buttercup and clover bloom, and where corn will grow, is her proper domain. The agriculture of no country can long thrive without her. Not only a large part of the real, but much of the potential wealth of the land is wrapped up ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... must shout 'Buttercup!' at the top of your voice, and twitch the rope HARD; then I'll call, 'Hurrap!' with all my might at the same moment. And if she starts quickly we mustn't ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... asked the girl somewhat stiffly, for she had a suspicion of what was coming. A little negro girl in the back kitchen named Buttercup also had a suspicion of what was coming, and stationed herself with intense delight behind the door, through a crack in which she could both ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... the brook, followed by Richard and Warren, and Sarah started up the lane. Rosemary, picking a buttercup for Shirley, was surprised to ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... the next page, if the baker man brings me a pound of soap bubbles with candy in the middle for Cora Janet's doll, I'll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the buttercup. ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... be the forest, And he can be the sun, Or a buttercup, or an hour of rest When the weary day ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer
... Veget.,' t. iv, p. 426. The same author also cites Romer as having found two plants of Ranunculus, from the stem of which emerged a daisy. As it is not an uncommon practice to stick a daisy on a buttercup, it is to be hoped no hoax was played off on ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... stuff?" Peterson was asked, referring to the brownish "milk" subsequently identified as coming from a dainty young cow known as Melody Buttercup ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... a tea rose, stood doubtfully in the cedar-wood door, poised for flight either way, sucking in the dimple at the left of her mouth. Running at his call she flew into his arms and dropped her buttercup head on his shoulder. For the first time he smiled, and the wise wife slipped quietly away and watched them from the door, guessing at their murmurs, counting their kisses. ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... gravel-strewn slope I found some more tiny flowers of a day. One was a white daisy, very frail and delicate on long thin stem with scarcely any leaves. Another was a yellow flower, with four petals, a pale miniature California poppy. Still another was a purple-red flower, almost as large as a buttercup, with dark green leaves. Last and tiniest of all were infinitely fragile pink and white blossoms, on very flat plants, smiling wanly up ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... alpina), and pink, white, and yellow stonecrops (sedum). All of them fairly hug the ground. There are other plants that form a carpet of foliage, but the flower stalks rise higher. These include white rock cress (Arabis albida), the permissible double buttercup (Ranunculus acris fl. pl.), the also permissible double German catchfly (Lychnis viscaria), another double flower, "fair maids of France" (Ranunculus aconitifolius), Carpathian bellflower (Campanula Carpatica), grass pink ...
— Making A Rock Garden • Henry Sherman Adams
... smote him with her wings, As through the glade, dark in the dim, she flew; Yet still the Pedlar his old burden sings,— 'What, pretty sweetheart, shall I show to you? Here's orange ribands, here's a string of pearls, Here's silk of buttercup and pansy glove, A pin of tortoiseshell for windy curls, A box of silver, scented sweet with clove: Come now,' he says, with dim and lifted face, 'I pass not often such ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... washed in innocency, and adjusted it in a tie which was like the white rose of Sharon. Myrtle Hazard was, he thought, on the whole, the handsomest girl he had ever seen; Susan Posey was to her as a buttercup from the meadow is to a tiger-lily. He, knew the nature of the nervous disturbances through which she had been passing, and that she must be in a singularly impressible condition. He felt sure that he could establish intimate spiritual ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... good thing," said Martin, twirling a buttercup as he swallowed his last crumb, "but I also like butter. Do not you, ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... to flower I watch him go; He seems a floating flake of snow: Now to a milkweed bloom he's clinging; There on a buttercup he's swinging; And now he makes a little ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... don't see how you know whether you like it or not," Betsy observed, "unless you've looked into a buttercup to find out." ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... I'm going to have the daintiest things possible . . . things that will match the spring, you understand . . . little jelly tarts and lady fingers, and drop cookies frosted with pink and yellow icing, and buttercup cake. And we must have sandwiches too, though they're ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Ignorance, had a diseased feeling against growing old, which seems to us to be very prevalent. He was sorry to lose every parting hour. "I have seen a fearful sight to-day," he would say—"I have seen a buttercup." To others the sight would only give visions of the coming Spring and future Summer; to him it told of the past year, the last Christmas, the days which would never come again—the so many days nearer the grave. Thackeray continually expressed the same feeling. He reverts to the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... in our latitude, the pledge of May. It comes when the grass is short, and the fresh turf sets off its "ring of gold" with admirable effect; hence we know the poet is a month or more out of the season when, in "Al Fresco," he makes it bloom with the buttercup and the clover:— ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... behind you," groaned the Goblin, and Davy, turning, saw a buttercup growing on a stem almost as tall as he was himself. He picked it, and hurried away across the meadow to look for water, the buttercup, meanwhile, growing in his hand in a surprising manner, until it became a full-sized teacup, with a handle conveniently growing ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... buttercup, The dandelion splendid, Their heads are bravely holding up, Now winter's ...
— The Nursery, June 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 6 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... afield we shall discover yet more. It is May, and a heavy rainstorm has caused the petals of a trillium to forget themselves and return to their primitive hue of leafy green. A month later we come upon a buttercup, one of whose sepals has grown out as a small but perfect leaf. Later still in summer we find a rose in the same surprising case, while not far off is a columbine bearing pollen on its spurs instead of its anthers. What family tie is betrayed in all this? No other than that sepals, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... carry out the plans of the High Command and see no sense in them, should be savage in their irony when they pass a peaceful house where their doom is being planned, and green-eyed when they see an army general taking a stroll in buttercup fields, with a jaunty young A.D.C. slashing the flowers with his cane and telling the latest joke from London to his laughing chief. As onlookers of sacrifice some of us—I, for one—adopted the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... and kissed the child, and the little one half opened his eyes. They plucked some of the rich flowers, but also took with them the despised buttercup and ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... declared Mrs. Arty. "Still, there was one thing about Horatio. I never had to look up his account to find out how much he owed me. He stopped calling me, Little Buttercup, when he owed me ten dollars, and he even stopped slamming the front door when he got up to twenty. O Mr. Wrenn, did I ever tell you about the time I asked him if he wanted to have ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... was through, I am sadly afraid some of the gay young fellows forgot they were in the presence of ladies, they laughed so loud, and talked so much nonsense, and one of them came very near upsetting the table at which he sat, spilling his buttercup of dew all over the new gossamer dress of Lilliebelle, who ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... was like one luminous ghost: and buttercup, daisy, snowdrop, primrose gathered Margaret, vagrant, flighty, light to the winds that wafted her as fluff, and tossed them suddenly aloft, and back they came to be tangled in her bare hair; and now she ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... a twelvemonth yet, although it seems ten years agone, since I blew the downy globe to learn the time of day, or set beneath my chin the veinings of the varnished buttercup, or fired the fox-glove cannonade, or made a captive of myself with dandelion fetters; for then I had not very much to trouble me in earnest, but went about, romancing gravely, playing at bo-peep with fear, making for myself strong heroes ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... where the daisies grow, Great fields of tall, white daisies, and I saw Them bend reluctantly, and seem to draw Away in pride when the fresh breeze would blow From timothy and yellow buttercup, So by their fearless beauty ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... child of wealthy parents, who was born in London in 1819. When he was four years old the family moved to Herne Hill, a suburb south of London, where his intense love of nature developed as he looked over open fields, "animate with cow and buttercup," "over softly wreathing distances of domestic wood," to the distant hills. His entertaining autobiography, Praeterita (1885-1889), relates how he ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Clownish fun with Pantaloonish wisdom and chuckles. When you were young, you used, I think, to enjoy a butterfly's kiss; and that, you remember, was when your mother brushed your cheek with her eye-lashes. And also when you were young you held a buttercup under other children's chins to see if they liked butter, and they always did, and the golden glow showed and the world was glad. And you held a shell to your ear to hear the sound of the sea, and when it rained, you ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... Pirlaps to set a dainty little round table (not at all like a multiplication table) with pink shell dishes, and put on a jar of honeysuckle honey and a pat of buttercup butter. Then Avrillia baked the waffles and they ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... time. He stands before me, and who does not easily stick fast when marsh and mire are so near? As for the hyacinthine purple cloak, I wear it because I like it. His crocus-yellow one is less to my taste, though he certainly looks fine enough in it in the sunlight. It shines like a buttercup in the grass. You know the plant. When it fades—and I ask whether you think Philostratus looks like a bud—when it fades, it leaves a hollow spiral ball which a child's breath could blow away. Suppose in future we should call the round buttercup seed-vessels ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... arm, and away they went over the green meadows, where the cowslips and buttercups grew, making the grass look as if it were dotted all over with gold. Sometimes the two friends stopped by the way to rest under a buttercup, and sip a little morning dew; but seeing every one hastening past them, while they wasted their time, the Dormouse jumped up again, and cast a sly look at his blind friend as he asked him what he ...
— The Butterfly's Ball - The Grasshopper's Feast • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Buttercup, "I Have not been at all shy In impressing that rule On each child ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... the seaside—its sign towards the roadway, its sun-blistered green bench and tables, its shapely white windows and its row of upshooting hollyhock plants in the garden. A hedge separated it from a buttercup-yellow meadow, and beyond stood three poplars in a group against the sky, three exceptionally tall, graceful and harmonious poplars. It is hard to say what there was about them that made them so beautiful to Mr. Polly; but they seemed ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... time, and then settled nicely in reach upon a robin-run-rake by the hedge-side. Philip stole cautiously forward, cap in hand, and then made a dab down to secure the brightly-painted prize; but, with one or two flaps from those gorgeous wings, it was out of reach, over the palings, and away across the buttercup-gilded meadow ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... ordinary plant could live, even on this rich and watered alluvial debris. The only plants that escaped the cattle were such as were either poisonous, or thorny, or resinous, or indestructibly tough. Hence we had only a great development of solanums, talas, acacias, euphorbias, and laurels. The buttercup is replaced by the little poisonous yellow oxalis with its viviparous buds; the passion-flowers, asclepiads, bignonias, convolvuluses, and climbing leguminous plants escape both floods and cattle by climbing ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... heartstrings musical. Is not the hawthorn for the Queen of May? And cuckoo-flowers for whom the cuckoo's voice Hails, like an answering sister, to the woods? Is not the maiden blushing in the rose? Shall not the babe and buttercup rejoice, Twins in one meadow? Are not violets all By name or nature for the breast of Dames! For them the primrose, pale as star of prime, For them the wind-flower, trembling to a sigh, For them the dew stands in the eyes of day That blink in April on ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... for me a kiss." His face grew thoughtful, then the rogue Lisped out: "Well, this is most in vogue: An acorn-cup of sugar first, Sprinkle quite well with bubbles burst, Then add a pinch of down that lies All over June's brown butterflies. Mix well, and take, to stir it up, The stem of one long buttercup. But, sir, you ne'er can taste a mite Until I add the appetite." Whereat, ere I could turn to start, I saw—I ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... picture rather than a suggestion of the ordinary human passion as felt by ordinary human people. She is exotic—well, what else should she be? One does not, at any rate one should not, quarrel with an exquisite tropical flower and call it unnatural because it is not a buttercup or ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... a faint, milky blue, like the blue that moves under the white cloud in a moonstone, and the first far down ray of morning sun, coming up with the balmy wind from still, secret places where the youth of the world slept, shimmered golden as a buttercup held under the pearly chin of a child. This was only Marseilles, but already the smell of the south was in the air, the scent of warm salt sea, of eucalyptus logs burning, and pine trees and invisible orange groves. On the platform, osier baskets packed full of flowers sent ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... can only kick them all about in the air when you tumble? Legs are meant to walk with, you know. Now, don't be cross about it, and don't begin putting out your wings yet; I've some more to say. Go down to the frog that lives behind that buttercup—give him my ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... orders.—If, in the vegetable world, we commence with the buttercup, and trace all the various kinds and sizes of plants that exist, up to the pine (Norwegian), and down again to the hautboy (Cormack's Princesses); if, among the lower animals, we begin with a gnat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Bring them here, and let us see. Nine kinds of grasses, and a rush. Six kinds of clovers and vetches; and besides, dandelion, and rattle, and oxeye, and sorrel, and plantain, and buttercup, and a little stitchwort, and pignut, and mouse-ear hawkweed, ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... of the primrose, and sugar of the violet, and butter of the buttercup. He shook dewdrops from the cowslip into the cup of the harebell, spread out a large lime-leaf, set his breakfast upon it, and feasted daintily. And he invited a humming-bee and a gay butterfly to partake of his feast, but his favorite guest was ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... is decidedly, or rather has been in his youth, a buttercup," resumed the stranger, continuing the remarks he had begun, and addressing himself to his auditors at the window, without paying the least attention to the exasperation of d'Artagnan, who, however placed himself between him and them. "It is a color very well known in botany, but till the present ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... smoked and cooled, and Gerda, a cigarette stuck in one side of her mouth, a buttercup in the other, mumbled "Penelope's baby's come, by the way. A girl. Another ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... from the life of the tree, and now crept out again to adorn the summer. The long loops of the laburnum hung heavy with gold towards the sod below; and the air was full of the fragrance of the young leaves of the limes. Down in the valley below, the daisies shone in all the meadows, varied with the buttercup and the celandine; while in damp places grew large pimpernels, and along the sides of the river, the meadow-sweet stood amongst the reeds at the very edge of the water, breathing out the odours of dreamful sleep. The clumsy ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... knew that it is only in their first love affairs that women have the patience to watch the flower unfold itself. He himself was of infinite patience in that pastime. He bit his lip and struck with his cane at the buttercup heads. He had made a wretched beginning, with his "good and sweet." his "young and innocent and beautiful like—like." If the girl had been a shade less innocent the whole business would ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... her native bole Coming at dusk, when the dim stars emerge, To a slow river at whose silent verge Tall poplars tremble and deep grasses roll, Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoal Of the freaked flag and meadow buttercup, Bend till thine image from the pool beam up Arched with blue heaven like an aureole. See how adorable in fancy then Lives the fair face it mirrors even so, O thou whose beauty moving among men Is like the wind's ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... not in the carriage; that it would stop; that I could get out, and run, dancing and shouting, through the fields. I broke the silence. I implored the lady to stop the carriage; to let me go and find my home; to let me gather one buttercup, one blade of grass. She drew her glimmering veil more closely around her; I believe she thought the wind blew a little. On, on, we went! At length we stopped, and I thought it was my mother's house. I looked out for ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... we had our second nautical entertainment in honour of the day. Muriel's 'first appearance' as 'Little Buttercup,' in the old-fashioned costume of a Portsmouth bumboat woman, consisting of a blue gown, red shawl, and bonnet of antique shape, was greeted with vociferous applause, and it was only out of deference to her feelings of mingled modesty and fatigue (for it ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... the unconsidered minority who went to bed as usual. Outside in the country, even in the suburbs, June came in glory, with woods in freshest livery of green, with fragrance of hawthorn and broom and gorse, buttercup meadows and gardens brimmed with roses. It seemed to George Goring and Mildred as though somehow this warmth, this gayety and richness of life in the earth had never been there before, but that Fate and ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... over the wooden palings on each side—suddenly the trees stopped on the left, and out one came on the top of the field sloping down to the south into Dulwich valley—open field animate with cow and buttercup, and below, the beautiful meadows and high avenues of Dulwich; and beyond, all that crescent of the Norwood hills; a footpath, entered by a turnstile, going down to the left, always so warm that invalids could be sheltered there in March, when to walk elsewhere would have been death ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... possible by lessening temptation, is based on what life has taught me, that the fundamental character of people is not greatly alterable, but that the alteration of their circumstances will certainly influence the effect and working of their capacities and instincts. The buttercup which is tall with a flower at the end of a high firm stalk and leaves with slender spike fingers, if it grows in an open meadow, becomes a stunted flower on a short stem, and its leaves form squat webs, in order to force its growth on a close-cropped lawn. The experience of the American ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... for by the escape of imprisoned air unequally expanded, but "a veil of mystery hangs over the whole."[EN18] The valley-sides of dark trap were striped with white veins of heat-altered argil; the sole with black magnetic sand; and patches of the bed were buttercup-yellow with the Handn (dandelion), the Cytisus, and the Zaram (Panicum turgidum) loved by camels. Their jaundiced hue contrasted vividly with the red and mauve blossoms of the boragine El-Kahl, the blue flowerets of the Lavandula (El-Zayti), and the delicate ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... was very angry, but it would never do to show it. So he tried to look as gentle as a good child reading a book. He rubbed some of the yellow of the egg off his chin, and stuck it on his leg like a buttercup. He shrugged his shoulders up in a bunch, and then, with a sneeze as if he had caught cold in the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... did my heart bleed, verily. 'Twas for the young Lord of Mallow—but a lad with buttercup curls and speedwell eyes, and a smile to win the love o' any maid in her reason (though, to be sure, my lady was in her reason). He comes to me and gets between my knees, like any little eanling that might 'a' been mine ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... multiplied by bulbs, buds or cuttings, etc. Some cultivated anemones and crowfoots (Ranunculus) are of this character, and even the marsh-marigold (Caltha palustris) has a petalomanous variety. I once found in a meadow such a form of the meadow-buttercup (Ranunculus acris), and succeeded in keeping it in my garden for several years, but it did not make seeds and finally died. Camellias are known to have both types of double flowers. The petalomanous ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... on grain, seed, green leaves, and insects. They have been seen as eager as country children after the ripe blackberries in the hedges, or, later in the year, after sloes and haws. The root of the buttercup is also a very favourite food of the pheasant, and they will eat greedily of acorns. When kept in confinement, the young birds require very careful feeding with ants' eggs, and many other kinds of ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... edification and delight, was so attractive that my words are of no avail. Picture twenty-eight young ladies, each dressed to represent a flower—hollyhock, pansy, moss, rose, morning-glory, eucalyptus blossom, pink clover, yellow marguerite, Cherokee rose, pink carnation, forget-me-not, buttercup, pink-and-white fuchsia, lily of the valley, wine-colored peony, white iris, daffodil, and so on. They advance with slowly swaying motion, with wreaths uplifted until they reach the stage, where sit the guests of honor. There ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... regular types of flowers, as in the buttercup, we pass on to more and more involved and unsymmetrical forms, as the columbine, monk's-hood, larkspur, aristolochia, and thus finally to the most highly specialized or involved forms of all, as seen in the orchid—the multifarious, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... bottom-plant, and flourishes only when rooted. The Nitella is another pleasing variety. The Ranunculus aquatilis, or Water-Crowfoot, is to be found in almost every pond in bloom by the middle of May, and continues so into the autumn. It is of the buttercup family, and may be known as a white buttercup with a yellow centre. The floating leaves are fleshy; the lower ones finely cut. It must be very carefully washed, and planted from a good joint, allowing length enough of stem to reach the surface. Some of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various |
