"Feathery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... think so now, and in an ecstasy of joy she stood in the deep recess of the bay window, watching him as he went away through the moonlight and the feathery cloud of snow, wondering why, when she was so happy, there could cling to her a haunted presentiment that she and Arthur would never meet again just as they ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... is expressive; it is a contraction of the Anglo-Saxon fepern, and so shows that some of our ancestors marked its feathery form; and its history as a garden plant is worth a few lines. So little has it been esteemed as a garden plant that Mr. J. Smith, the ex-Curator of the Kew Gardens, tells us that in the year 1822 the collection of Ferns at Kew was ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... of wings, she had two little feathery arms, with which she fanned herself, and complained of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... And the feathery billows of blue-gold grass Bowed and murmured and bade them pass, Where a sigh of the sea-wind softly told them There is ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Christmas eve in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and through the streets of Nuremberg came drifting a feathery snow that heaped itself in fantastic patterns on the projecting windows and fretted stone balconies of the quaint and crowded houses. It was not an honest and single-minded snow-storm, such as would seek to shroud the whole city in its delicate white mantle, but rather a tricksy and capricious ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... hour after hour as the day wears itself out from early morning to late evening in that beautiful, cruel, enchanting earthly paradise, whose shores are washed by the bluest sea in the world, whose gardens are dotted with globes of golden fruit, and plumed with feathery palms, and where, as you wander in and out among the delicious shadowy foliage, you hear, incessantly, the sound of guns, and may, now and then, catch sight of some doomed creature with delicate white breast and broken wing, dropping, helpless and bleeding, into ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... a lordly park seen through the wrong end of a telescope. There were graceful maple trees, whose tiny star-like leaves were particularly adapted to the process of diminution which had checked the growth of trunk and branches. There were weeping willows with light-green feathery foliage, such as sorrowing fairies might plant on the grave of some Taliessin of Oberon's court. There was a double cherry in belated bloom; its flowers of natural size hung amid the slender branches like big birds' nests. There ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... the feathery foliage of the cocoanut palms could be made out, and the old sailor judged it time to take ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... shown signs of excitement, lifting their high shoulders and half unfolding the stiff drapery of their wings. As they saw their fellow overwhelmed they launched themselves from their perch and came hooting hoarsely over the rank, green tops of the palms and feathery calamaries. Swooping and circling they gathered over the hideous final struggle, and from time to time one or another would drop perpendicularly downward to stab the crown or the face of one of the preoccupied ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... was an inn. Just by the inn the road turned away sharply up the valley; the very last slope of the Jura, the last parallel ridge, lay straight before me all solemn, dark, and wooded, and making a high feathery line against the noon. To cross this there was but a vague path rather misleading, and the name ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... through the blue, sunny sky, By what breeze would my pinions be stirred? To what beautiful land should I fly? Would the gorgeous East allure, With the light of its golden eyes, Where the tall green palm, over isles of balm, Waves with its feathery leaves? Ah! no! no! no! I heed not its tempting glare; In vain should I roam from my island ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... and have heard others told of, but the best mirages of all we never hear described; the mirage that waterless travellers see at the last. Those fountains rising out of onyx basins, blue and straight into incredible heights, and falling and flooding cool white marble; the haze of spray above their feathery heads through which the pale green domes of weathered copper shimmer and shake a little; mysterious temples, the tombs of unknown kings; the cataracts coming down from rose-quartz cliffs, far off but seen quite clearly, growing to rivers bearing curious ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... watching the desert panorama roll back and away, beneath them. Afar, two or three little oases showed feathery-tufted palms standing up like delicate carvings against the remote purple spaces or against the tawny, seamed desolation that burned as with raw colors of fires primeval. Here, there, patches of stunted tamarisk bushes were visible. A moving line of dust showed where a distant caravan was ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... makomako, a yellow-flowered shrub, and many others none of us could name, carpeted the farther mountain-sides with brilliant colors. Everywhere were cocoanuts, guavas, and mangos. In the tree-tops over our heads the bindweed shook its feathery seed-pods, the parasite kouna dripped its deeply serrated leaves and crimson umbels, and thousands of orchids hung ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... cautiously through the screen of feathery leaves, Jethro saw that the elephants were standing immovable. Their great ears were erected and their trunks outstretched as if scenting the air. After two or three minutes hesitation they continued to ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... he flies; he is seized and thrown into a river, where, as he sinks, shoals of salmon raise a chorus of rejoicing, and he wakes out of the agonies of dream-drowning to find himself nearly suffocated by sinking into the feathery depths of Mrs. O'Grady's pet bed. After a night passed in such troubled visions the unfortunate Furlong awoke unrefreshed, and, with bitter recollections of the past and mournful anticipations of the future, arose and prepared to descend to the ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... of torpedo boat Number 19, which was evidently getting up steam in good time to go in search of the James B. Potter. But for the awning over their heads the party would also have seen that a thin, feathery film of smoke was curling upward from the cream-coloured funnel of their own craft; for although it had been decided not to go to sea until the afternoon, Jack had given instructions to have steam for ten o'clock, so as to ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... fox, in high northern latitudes, is perfectly white except the nose and tips of the ears, which are black, and the hair extends so as to cover its nails. The various kinds of owls, and the Canada jay, which winter in these latitudes, have a feathery, half-hairy protection to the toes. The American species of the reindeer, which under the name of cariboo, inhabits the country around the foot of Lake Superior, has its hoof split in such a manner that it, in fact, serves as a kind of snow shoe, spreading ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... once in four or five years perhaps, the feathery snow lies a foot deep, fresh-fallen, on the still country-side and in the woods; and the waxing moon sheds her large light on all, and Nature holds her breath to wait for the happy day, and tries to sleep but cannot, from sheer happiness and peace. ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... him come to-day! II Ne'er may his vessel stay, But glide with feathery sweep of many an oar, Till from his altar by yon island shore Even to our town he wind his prosperous way, In mien returning mild, And inly reconciled, With that anointing in his heart ingrained, Which the dark Centaur's ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... had pretty, white chintz curtains tied with blue ribbon, and similar stuff draped the mirror. The bed was a big canopy affair—I had to stand on a chair in order to dive off into its feathery depths—everything was very neat and clean, and the dainty linen had a sweet smell of lavender. I took one parting look out through the open window at the ivy-mantled towers of the old castle, which were all sprinkled with ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... Green were fast asleep in the White-House-with-the-Green-Blinds. The Toyman was fast asleep too. Rover and Brownie and Wienerwurst lay curled up in their kennels, with their eyes tight shut. On their poles in their house all the White Wyandottes perched like feathery balls, their heads sunk low on their breasts. On the roof cuddled the pretty pigeons, all pink and grey and white. In the barn Teddy, and Hal, and Methuselah, and Black-eyed Susan, and all the four-footed ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... altitude has a broad, flat, and somewhat bald-looking roof, and needs either a good tower or spire to relieve and dignify it. In front there are several pointed windows, a small circular hole above for birds' nests, two doorways with a window between them, a central surmounting gable, and a couple of feathery-headed perforated turrets, one being used as a chimney, and the other as a belfry. There is only a single bell at the church, and it is pulled industriously on Sundays by a devoted youth, who takes his stand in a boxed-off corner behind one of the doors. ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... soul waited on as falcons hover. I beat the reedy fens as I trampled past. I heard the mournful loon In the marsh beneath the moon. And then — with feathery thunder — the bird of my desire Broke from the cover Flashing silver fire. High up among the stars I saw his pinions spire. The pale clouds gazed aghast As my falcon stoopt upon him, and gript ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... leaving it all lacy blue with lilac, and misty white with lemonade bush, and lovely gold with monkey flower, and purple with lupin, and painted blood red with broad strokes of Indian paint brush, and beautifully lighted with feathery flames from Our Lord's Candles, and perfumy as altar incense ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... been nicknamed the peasant's clock, its flowers opening very early in the morning; while its feathery seed-tufts have long been in requisition ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... To her shadow fair; Meadow-sweet, in feathery clusters, Perfumed all the air; Silver-weed was there, And in one calm, ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... in the early morning light we struck across a wide fertile plain, beautifully cultivated; fields of rice alternating with maize stretched away to a wall of feathery bamboo broken by stately palms and glossy mangoes. After a little the country became more broken, rolling near by, mountainous in the distance. The vegetation, dense and tropical, hemmed in the line on both sides, but here and there charming trails led away through the jungle to villages ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... rose-colored buds and leaves; and the dog-wood, robed in the white of its own pure blossoms. Thencomes the sudden rain-storm; and the birds fly to and fro, and shriek. Where do they hide themselves in such storms? at what firesides dry their feathery cloaks? At the fireside of the great, hospitable sun, to-morrow, not before;—they must sit in wet ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... with the desolation which often broods over a large house thinly inhabited. The room—Anne's bedroom—lay westward, and a good deal of sunshine was still glinting in. A few late bees were buzzing about the open window, cheated perhaps by the feathery seeds of the clematis, which had long ceased flowering. There was no other sound. But many fine prints, a few painted portraits, and several white-gleaming statuettes, seemed as the sunlight struck them to burst ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... quivering wings are dressed in sober gray, Sure all the Muses this their bird inspire, And he alone is equal to a choir. Oh, sweet musician! thou dost far excel The soothing song of pleasing Philomel: Sweet is her song, but in few notes confined, But thine, thou mimic of the feathery kind! Runs thro' all notes: thou only know'st them all, At once ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... one day was out. She would be homeless, she would be driven to some house of charity, for a meal and a place to sleep, or else to sleep out under the sky. That would be delightful for once. She had always longed to sleep out of doors, to feel the breeze playing with her feathery hair in the dark, to watch the constellations turning slowly westwards, to listen to the night sounds, to the low rhythmical piping of the tree toad, the sorrowful cry of the little southern owl and the tolling of the hour in ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the Psyche "appears in the balcony of her boudoir, in the rays of the caressing sun; lying on the cloudy softness of an incomparable eider-down." She awaits the visit of the spouse, "the gentle Bombyx," who, for the ceremony, "has donned his feathery plumes and his mantle of black velvet." "If he is late in coming, the female grows impatient; then she herself makes the advances, and sets forth ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... back the joy stick. Detached, feathery clouds spread across the sky, and he was climbing for them. Paula looked behind at him, and he pointed. He saw her seem to stiffen upon ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... something of the converted life and essence that had been their blood. Its bole, five feet of stalwart diameter, rose straight and tapering to the first right-angle limbs, each in itself almost a tree. Its multitude of lance-head leaves swept outward and upward in countless succession to the feathery crests that stirred seventy feet overhead—seeming to brush the large, low-hanging stars ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... time to spare. How my heart was beating as I neared the familiar scene! The river slowed its pace there, like a discerning traveler, to enjoy the beauty of its shores. Smooth and silent was the water and in it were the blue of the sky and the feathery shadow-spires of cedar and tamarack and the reflected blossoms of iris and meadow rue. It was ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... action on clay. It makes the little, tiny pieces stick together to form feathery flocks which sink in water; lime therefore causes muddy clay water to become clear. The flocks cannot hold water back, and hence limed clay allows water to pass through. Limed clay is also less sticky ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... course of the river, and had gradually descended from the higher grounds to the immediate banks, which here spread out into a small meadow on each side. There were not now many flowers, but Saffy was pulling stalks of feathery-headed grasses, while Mark was walking quietly along by the brink of the stream, stopping every now and then to look into it. The bank was covered with long grass hanging over, here and there a bush of rushes amongst it, and in parts was a little undermined. On the opposite side lower ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... are on earth, O great king! O tiger among men, having entered his stomach, as I wandered around, I also beheld the whole tribe of the gods with their chief Sakra, the Sadhyas, the Rudras, the Adityas, the Guhyakas, the Pitris, the Snakes and the Nagas, the feathery tribes, the Vasus, the Aswins, the Gandharvas, the Apsaras, the Yakshas, the Rishis, the hordes of the Daityas and the Danavas, and the Nagas also. O king, and the sons of Singhika and all the other ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... who slowly paddles his canoe upon the waters of this western sound, each tree of different kind by shade of green and shape of crown is known; the Toh-a-mupt or Sitca spruce with scaley bark and prickly spine; the feathery foliage of the Quilth-kla-mupt, the western hemlock, relieved in spring by the light green of tender shoots. The frond-like branches and aromatic scent betray to him the much-prized Hohm-ess, the giant cedar tree, from which he carves his staunch ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... and in the drawing-room ready to receive her little friends, by half-past two; and very nice she looked in her light-blue merino frock, with its pretty embroideries, her long golden hair curled in the feathery ringlets Susan was so proud of making, her sleeves looped up with new bracelets, and a little embroidered handkerchief just ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... Sebastian our rain had thickened to a heavy downpour, and by the time we mounted to our rooms, three pair up in the hotel, it was storming in a fine fury over the bay under them, and sweeping the curving quays and tossing the feathery foliage of the tamarisk-shaded promenade. The distinct advantage of our lofty perch was the splendid sight of the tempest, held from doing its worst by the mighty headlands standing out to sea on the right and left. But our rooms were cold with the stony cold of the south when it is ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... the shadows of the beech-aisles of Dollan, she appears to be a large bird, with a philosophic contentment of mind—an ancient creature that, shunning the fellow-ships of the garish modern day and loving the leisure and the solitude of night, dreams of the past. But, beneath its loose feathery garments, her body, hardly larger than that of a ringdove, is altogether out of proportion to her long, narrow head and wide-spreading talons. Visions of the past may come to her, as, blinking at the light of day, she sits in the hollow of the ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... the park, and stopped. My eye took in the welcome sight of all the familiar things, the sparkling sandy paths, the silvery sheen of the grass, the dark shrubbery, the ragged umbelliform palms, the ceaselessly foaming gush of water, the feathery forest of bamboo, the blossoming of the giant trees—I breathed the heat-refined, insinuating air, heavy with perfume, and suddenly I felt my heart relieved, and delighted, and secure, as though I ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... generally commenced about twenty minutes before sun-set, when the feathery, fantastic, and regularly crystallized clouds in the higher regions of the atmosphere, became fully illumined by the sun's rays; and the fine mackerel-shaped clouds, common in these regions, were seen hanging in the concave of heaven like fleeces ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... any other sort of lady's favour, he wore a blood-red token. He bore no weapon of offence in his hand; but a gloomy shield, made of the feathers of some kind of bird, was cast over each shoulder. He was booted and spurred; and, looking upon Barbarosse with ardent eyes, raised his feathery arms, and struck them vehemently against his sides, making at the same time the most ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... At my right hand, ravines and defiles opened amidst the rocks, with passes between, evidently constructed by art, and bordered by trees resembling, for the most part, gigantic ferns, with exquisite varieties of feathery foliage, and stems like those of the palm-tree. Others were more like the cane-plant, but taller, bearing large clusters of flowers. Others, again, had the form of enormous fungi, with short thick stems supporting a wide dome-like roof, from which either ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... wooden tub set on a bench nailed between the two china-berry trees in the yard. Peter loved those china-berry trees, covered with masses of sweet-smelling lilac-colored blossoms in the spring, and with clusters of hard green berries in the summer. The beautiful feathery foliage made a pleasant shade for Emma Campbell's wash-tubs. Peter loved to watch her, she looked so important and so cheerful. While she worked she sang endless "speretuals," in a high, sweet voice that swooped bird-like ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... home and Waitstill hurried along, scarcely noticing the beauties of the woods and fields and waysides, all glowing masses of goldenrod and purple frost flowers. The stone walls were covered with wild-grape and feathery clematis vines. Everywhere in sight the cornfields lay yellow in the afternoon sun and ox carts heavily loaded with full golden ears were going home to the barns to be ready ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... colder with every hundred feet of their ascent. The sunshine had disappeared, grey clouds had gathered, and feathery flakes of snow began to fall lightly. The grass was soon covered with a thin white coating which gave a delightfully Alpine aspect to the scene. The prospect was glorious—the sharp, splintered, snow-crested crags stood out in bold relief against the neutral-tinted sky, and the long stretches of ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... with the guards who were stationed at certain distances along the canal. These men, in winter, attend to keeping the surface free from obstruction and garbage. After a snowstorm they are expected to sweep the feathery covering away before it hardens into a marble pretty to look at but very unwelcome to skaters. Now and then the boys so far forgot their dignity as to clamber among the icebound canal boats crowded ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... we give 'em a volley?" murmured "Swabs," gazing at the feathery puffs of smoke on the distant hillside, which looked so innocent, but each of which might mean death to the spectator. No order, however, was given to fire, and the command, "Right turn—forward!" put the marksman and his comrades ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... themselves from the fused mixture and form crystals. Under slow cooling, as in the interior of the flow, it becomes a stony mass composed of crystals set in a glassy paste. In thin slices of volcanic glass one may see under the microscope the beginnings of crystal growth in filaments and needles and feathery forms, which are the rudiments of the ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... the insects in the winter are prophetic,—from the delicate cocoon of some infinitesimal feathery thing which hangs upon the dry, starry calyx of the aster, to the large brown-paper parcel which hides in peasant garb the costly beauty of some gorgeous moth. But the hints of birds are retrospective. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... Victory-songs to thy lyre dost thou chant!—Ho, I call to thee, son Born to Latona, Dispenser of boding, on gold-gleaming throne Midmost of earth who art sitting:—thine ears shall be pierced with my moan! Thy Delos doth hate thee, thy bay-boughs abhor thee, By the palm-tree of feathery frondage that rose Where in sacred travail Latona bore thee In Zeus's garden close." [Footnote: Euripid. Ion, 885.—Translated ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... own tears thy song must tears beget, O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own Anguish or ardour, else no amulet. Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh, That song o'er which no singer's lids ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... through Maudesley Park, that delicious grassy arcade where the overarching branches of the old elms made a shadowy twilight, only broken now and then by sudden patches of yellow sunshine; where the feathery ferns trembled with every low whisper of the autumn breeze: where there was a faint perfume of pine wood; where every here and there, between the lower branches of the trees, there was a blue glimmer of still water-pools, half-hidden under flat green leaves of wild aquatic ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a pale girl with such lovely eyes. She wore a green kirtle, and round her body a broad silver girdle with figures upon it, such as the Finns use. Her bodice was of tar-brown skin, and beneath her stay-laces, which seemed to be of green sea-grass, was a foam-white chemise, like the feathery breast of ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... walk in Gibraltar was in search of a palm-tree. After threading the whole length of the town, I found two small ones in a garden, in the bottom of the old moat. The sun was shining, and his rays seemed to fall with double warmth on their feathery crests. Three brown Spaniards, bare-armed, were drawing water with a pole and bucket, and filling the little channels which conveyed it to the distant vegetables. The sea glittered blue below; an Indian fig-tree shaded me; but, on the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of snow, shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white winged birds, and settled about them as they slept. The moon through the rifted clouds looked down upon what had been the camp. But all human stain, all trace of earthly travail, was hidden ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... with a burst of pink and green. The mountains took on delicate shades, and the trees blossomed into vast flowers, feathery and ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... it was positively pleasant to stand about outside the tent and bask in the sun's rays. It was our first calm since we reached the summit too. Our socks and other damp articles which we hang out to dry at night became immediately covered with long feathery crystals exactly like plumes. ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... wide thorny leaves whence the mother root threw Up its crown of rich purple, bejewelled with dew, These feathery nothings, barbed, sparsely, with seeds, Must struggle for life with the ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... shrubby plants. In its long strings of balls, this sycamore differs from that of the United States, and is the platanus occidentalus of Hooker—a new species recently described among the plants collected in the voyage of the Sulphur. The cottonwood varied its foliage with white tufts, and the feathery seeds were flying plentifully through the air. Gooseberries, nearly ripe, were very abundant in the mountains; and as we passed the dividing grounds, which were not very easy to ascertain, the air was filled with perfume, as if we were entering a highly cultivated ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... acquainted with callithump when I straightened out the asparagus-bed. The weeds had got a master start there, and the feeble feathery asparagus shoots were quite overtopped and lost. I said the job required a microscopic eye and a delicate hand. I would set ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... The open door looked out pleasantly into the deep forest, where the waters of the cove, now at high tide, could be seen glittering through the trees. Soft moving spots of sunlight fell, checkering the feathery ferns and small piney tribes of evergreen which ran in ruffling wreaths of green through the dry, brown matting of fallen pine needles. Birds were singing and calling to each other merrily from the green shadows of the forest,—everything had a sylvan fullness and freshness of life. There are ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... his mind as he thought over the last situation of his making. The smouldering patches of red on the crumbling logs shrank smaller and smaller as the close-set little points of fire died out, and the feathery ash-flakes fell in a soft pile on ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... We made about a mile and a half an hour. Ahead of us the brown water street stretched in curves between endless walls of dense tropical forest. It was like passing through a gigantic greenhouse. Wawasa and burity palms, cecropias, huge figs, feathery bamboos, strange yellow-stemmed trees, low trees with enormous leaves, tall trees with foliage as delicate as lace, trees with buttressed trunks, trees with boles rising smooth and straight to lofty heights, all woven together by a tangle of vines, crowded down to the edge of the river. Their ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... landing-place being six miles away, at Ikunetu on the Cross River. There was some advantage in this, however, for the Mission launch was constantly moving up and down the waterway. The voyage was between low, bush-covered banks broken by vistas of cool green inlets, with here a tall palm tree or bunch of feathery bamboos, and there a cluster of huts, while canoes were frequently passed laden with hogsheads of palm oil for the factory, or a little dug-out containing a solitary fisher. The track from Ikunetu to Akpap was the ordinary shady bush path, bordered by palms, bananas, ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... round the course, the emperor and all his nobles sitting in the places of honour, looking on with enthusiasm, and the victor coming in at the goal, and the shouts and exclamations of the excited multitude. On the elevated ground behind the circus is a fringe of olive-trees, with a line of feathery elms beyond; and rising over all, the purple background of the Sabine and Alban hills. It is a lonely enough spot now; and the gentle hand of spring clothes the naked walls with a perfect garden of wild flowers, and softens with the greenest and tenderest turf the spots trodden by the feet ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Queen, then you must be a King. I think it is a lovely palace. What is that tree by the gate—all feathery pink?" ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... confident that in the north parts of Scotland there are trees on which grow white shells, which ripen, and then, opening, drop little living geese into the waves below. Gerard himself avers that from Guernsey and Jersey he brought home with him to London shells, like limpets, containing little feathery objects, "which, no doubt, were the fowls called Barnacles." It is almost needless to say that these objects really were the plumose and flexible cirri which the barnacles throw out to catch their food with, and which ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... on this south side, so sunny, with feathery trees and deep black shadows. It reminded me of Goethe, of ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... So wondrously fair; Illumining grasses And painting the air? You dear little shells, O, why do you shine? And feathery sea-weed ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... finely-cut fronds. Amongst the latter the slim assai-palm was especially noticeable, growing in groups of four or five; its smooth, gently-curving stem, twenty to thirty feet high, terminating in a head of feathery foliage, inexpressibly light and elegant in outline. On the boughs of the taller and more ordinary-looking trees sat tufts of curiously- leaved parasites. Slender, woody lianas hung in festoons from the branches, or were suspended in the form of cords and ribbons; whilst luxuriant ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... trees in the open cedar-grown field by the river; trees that Mr. Landholm had planted long ago. They were slow to turn, yet they were changing. One soft feathery head was in yellowish green, another of more neutral colour; and blending with them were the tints of a few reddish soft- tinted alders below. That group was not gay. Further on were a thicket of dull coloured alders at the edge ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... whole country, and there is nothing out of which such a party as you dream of could be constructed, except the broken remnant of those who deserted you when for the first time you needed their help and not their subserviency, and those feathery characters who are drawn hither and thither by the chances of office. I need not say to you that I am and can be nothing in this matter but the voice of the nation's deliberate resolve. The recent past is too painful, the immediate ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... and Datu. The bay, as far as we have seen, is free from danger; the beach is lined by a feathery row of beautiful casuarinas, and behind is a tangled jungle, without fine timber; game is plentiful, from the traces we saw on the sand; hogs in great numbers; troops of monkeys, and the print of an animal with ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... and a woman in love in the way that has been "the way of a man with a maid" from the beginning; in love, and each looking worthy of the other's love—he handsome in his blue serge, she beautiful in a light-brown fall dress with pale-gold facings, and the fluffy, feathery boa close round her fair young face. Civilization has changed methods, but not essentials; it is still not what goes on in the minds of a man and woman that counts, but what goes on in their ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... night, in a country extensively covered with wood, had passed, and the warmth of a summer morning, in that low latitude, was causing the streaks of light vapor, that floated about the meadows, to rise above the trees. The feathery patches united to form a cloud that sailed away towards the summit of a distant mountain, which appeared to be a common rendezvous for all the mists that had been generated by the past hours ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the best periods of the race, the same splitting pace being held by both through a heavy snow-wreath and up a dragging hill. At this point it was anybody's game, a dollar on Rossius and two half-dollars on the member of the feathery tribe. When five miles were called, the men were still shoulder to shoulder. At about six miles The Gasper put on a tremendous spirt to leave the men behind and establish himself at the turning-point at the entrance ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... highest peaks soared in a transparency of amethystine light beneath a blue sky traced with filaments of windy cloud. Some storm must have disturbed the atmosphere in Italy, for fan-shaped mists frothed out around the sun, and curled themselves above the mountains in fine feathery wreaths, melting imperceptibly into air, until, when we had risen above the cembras, the sky was ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... we could see how really delightful this ocean gem is. One mass of gorgeous, perfumed foliage blazes suddenly on the sight from the midst of the sea; feathery palms, broad trembling leaves, and groves of lofty cocoanut trees springing from the ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... some day, when the beds have ceased To cater for your daily feast, You'll see—the after growth is fair— A green and feathery forest there, And "here," you'll say, "is what shall cheer My palate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... the outcome, for he always liked to find himself pitted against a worthy antagonist. He seldom felt like exerting himself when the game was not worth the candle. He liked to cast a fly for bass, and having deceived them with a feathery lure, play them with a slender rod and fine line, giving them the sportsman's chance to get free if only they knew how to jump out of the water and throw themselves across ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... Time to pass, With his diamond oar and boat of glass A feathery dart from his store he drew, And shouted, while far and swift it flew, 'O ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... open nervously, and it fell to with the same squeak and clash as before. I stopped for a moment, and leaning over the low railing I looked eagerly up and down the silent street. The moon struggled through a feathery cloud at this instant, and flooded the scene before me with its gentle light; I saw a figure again, beyond the shadows of the tall, bare trees that lay upon the white moonlit walk, it stopped, and turned sharply around, a little red light was moving with ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... entirely cheered up that she practically forgot death. She began to count how much money her mother owed her for eggs—which reminded her to look into the nests; and when, in spite of a clucking remonstrance, she put her hand under a feathery breast and touched the hot smoothness of a new-laid egg, she felt perfectly happy. "I guess I'll go and get some floating-island," she thought. "Oh, I hope they haven't eaten it ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... The griffins on the doorstep stared straight before them with an expression of utter indifference; the feathery foliage of the white birch swayed gently back and forth; the peonies lifted their crimson heads airily; the snowball bush bent under the weight of its white blooms till it swept the grass; the fountain ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... shaken out the coils of lustrous brown hair which flowed about her shoulders glinting in the light of the shaded lamp, and it was with a little gesture of physical content she stretched her hands towards the hearth. A crumbling birch log still gleamed redly amidst the feathery ashes, but its effect was chiefly artistic, for no open fire could have dissipated the cold of the prairie, and a big tiled stove, brought from Teutonic ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... the groups of joyful people who were going up to the Feast, some on camels and asses, and some walking beside the beasts bearing tents or merchandise. The valley of the Jordan was bright with the freshness of spring, and as they came near Jericho with its rose-gardens, and orchards, and feathery palms, it looked like the gardens of Paradise. It was sometimes called Jericho "the perfumed" because of its great gardens of roses, and its balsam plantations from which they made perfumes that were sold in all the East. It was warm even in winter there, and no frosts destroyed its tropical ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... the morn, of the morn of the year, Chanting your lays in the bosky dell, Higher and fuller your round notes swell, Till the Fauns and the Dryads peer forth to hear The trilling lays of your feathery band: Ye came not, alas, from my ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent On either side; pitying the sad death Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath Of Zephyr slew him,—Zephyr penitent, Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament, 330 Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain. The archers too, upon a wider plain, Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft, And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top, Call'd up a thousand thoughts to envelope Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee And frantic gape of lonely Niobe, Poor, lonely ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... some one brought. Barbarous cries that she must not hear or understand came to his ears, and he knew that their pursuers were wheeling in discomfited flight. The circle of soldiers stood back. Something cold and feathery fell upon his upturned face and turned to moisture. He saw a tall man with features of wonderful beauty regarding them kindly and in silence; his white paludamentum was heavily fringed with purple, and Sergius recognized him now,—Marcus Marcellus, the new dictator. Another ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... was filled with the golden light of the blazing fagots, and through the open door Alice could see the feathery crystals falling in a wondrous, glittering curtain across the night. The stream roared in subdued voice as though oppressed by the snows, and the shadow of the fugitive as he moved about the fire had a savage, primal significance which ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... stump and rubbish heap was a thing of beauty, glorified by the ethereal covering of the snow; the dead clumps of ragwort by the road side, the withered branches of oak, the shrivelled trails of bramble all seemed transformed by the feathery particles into a ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... a few feet of each other. A hen ran across the road before one of them. A feathery seed-vessel, wafted from a wayside tree, fell at the feet of the other. And, unheeding this irony of nature, the two opponents came nearer, erect and rigid, looked in each ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... here," said she, admiring the feathery vegetation, which grew as tall as the stage along ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... same people, when you wrote "I have been dining with the Maxwell-Tempests to meet the So-and-sos," I could picture it all even to little Mrs. Maxwell-Tempest's attitudes. I was only in Germany once for three days, and I came away with an impression of a country weird as to food, feathery as to beds, and crammed full of soldiers; but I dare say it is a very good place to write a book. And now—my heartiest congratulations on having a book to write. It sounds—pardon me for saying it—a ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... digging teepsinna (an edible sweetish root, much used by them) as the moving village slowly progressed. As usual at such times, the trail was wide. An old jack rabbit had waited too long in hiding. Now, finding himself almost surrounded by the mighty plains people, he sprang up suddenly, his feathery ears conspicuously erect, a dangerous challenge to the dogs ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... here Rose had let her fancy have free play, and each garland, fern, and flower had its meaning. Mac seemed to have been reading this sweet language of symbols, to have guessed why Charlie's little picture was framed in white roses, why pansies hung about his own, why Psyche was half hidden among feathery sprays of maidenhair, and a purple passion flower lay at Cupid's feet. The last fancy evidently pleased him, for he was smiling over it, and humming to himself as if to beguile his patient waiting, the burden of the air Rose had ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... sprite, and at dead of night He'll come with his feathery tread, And dally with fancy, and play with your dreams, And light up your vision with silver beams, Though he leaves ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... picturesque object on the field; they are generally placed around or near a growth of bamboo, whose tall, graceful, and feathery outline is of itself a beautiful object, but connected as it is often seen with the returns of the harvest, it furnishes an ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... with shining eyes of love and admiration at the sleeping face of a child, a baby girl of scarce two years, the cherub face rosy with sleep, smiling in her dreams; the long, silky black lashes sweeping the flushed cheek; the abundant, feathery, jet-black curls floating loosely about—an exquisite picture ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... with the motionless hanging moss, and misty also in that Southern air that deepened when it came among their trunks to a caressing, mysterious, purple veil. Every line of this landscape, the straight forest top, the feathery breaks in it of taller trees, the curving marsh, every line and every hue and every sound inscrutably spoke sadness. I heard a mocking-bird once in some blossoming wild fruit tree that we gradually reached and left gradually behind; and more ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... Morning starts up from her couch on the deep, Where through the dim night hours, she pillows her sleep, I start from my slumbers, and hie me away Where the white torrent dashes its feathery spray,— I quaff the fresh stream as it bursts from the hill,— I pluck the fresh flowers that spring by the rill,— I watch the gray clouds as they curl round the peak That rises high over them, barren and bleak; And I ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... watch the stream, and not to fear reproof because she had ceased from toil. At Mauleverer, at this tranquil afternoon hour, while those rooks were sailing so calmly high above her head—yonder belated butterfly fluttering so happily over the feathery grasses—all nature so full of rest—they were grinding away in the hot schoolroom, grinding at the weekly geography lesson, addling their brains with feeble efforts to repeat by rote dry-as-dust explanations ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... corolla none; stamens 8-12, with brown anthers: fertile flowers sessile, solitary, or several on a common peduncle from the season's shoots; calyx hairy, 4-lobed, with 4 small petals at the sinuses; styles 2, short; stigmas 2, large, feathery, diverging, rose red. ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... their gallant commodore, pulled down with the ebb towards the mouth of the river, up which a stiffish breeze was blowing, just sufficient to ripple over the surface of the water glittering in the rays of the rising sun. On either hand rose a forest of tall trees, their feathery tops defined against the clear blue sky. In a short time the ships could be discerned in the offing, rolling their masts ominously from side to side, while ahead rose a threatening wall of white foam, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... my soul tossed on its own tides. But soon the inward harmony bounded in exulting choral strains. I heard a feathery rush; and straight beheld a form, traced all over with veins of vivid light. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... gazed at him in surprise, he drew out a bundle from under the thwart of one of the canoes. Undoing it he took out a long feathery plume. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... England it is considered a sign of summer when the housewives fill the fireplaces with branches of mountain laurel, and, later, with the feathery stalks of the asparagus. This is often, too, the timid expression of a tender feeling, under Puritanic repression, which has not sufficient vent in the sweet-william and hollyhock at the front door. This is a yearning after beauty and ornamentation which has no other means ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with fish, which as yet are wholly unsuspicious of the hook. Dolphins, rock-cod, pigfish, and blackfish may be caught as quickly as they can be hauled out. I look to the sea birds and the turtles to afford our principal source of revenue. Trinidad is the breeding-place of almost the entire feathery population of the South Atlantic Ocean. The exportation of guano alone should make my little country prosperous. Turtles visit the island to deposit eggs, and at certain seasons the beach is literally alive with ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... "came the dreaded snow. Around the camp-fires under the trees great feathery flakes came whirling down. The air was so full of them that one could see objects only a few feet away. The Indians knew we were doomed and one of them wrapped his blanket about him and stood all night under a tree. We children slept soundly ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... light—almost as much so as day—for everything was covered with the deep snow which had been falling silently ever since the evening before. The window was in a square recess; the old strange little panes of glass had been replaced by those which gave more light. A little distance off, the feathery branches of a larch waved softly to and fro in the scarcely perceptible night-breeze. Poor old larch! the time had been when it had stood in a pleasant lawn, with the tender grass creeping caressingly ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... was another Death's Head in the room, a burly, headlong, infatuated male which drove headlong at the tumbler and clung to it, slipping, sliding, filling the room with a feathery tattoo ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... bear a horse; and in several days and nights the frost has penetrated the earth several inches deep. The snow-storm of to-day is as severe as most storms experienced in the North. The wind has howled from the north-west, burdened with its cold, feathery flakes, which to-night lie at least twelve inches deep in places undisturbed. It is such a storm as our suffering pickets, and indeed our entire army, cannot ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... one, but clear. More snow had fallen, and the deep, feathery whiteness stretched away until lost in the dark background of the pines and spruces. A wavering line of smoke rose over the roof of the little old shack ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... hear The folded flocks, penned in their wattled cotes, Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops, Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock Count the night-watches to his feathery dames, 'Twould be some solace yet, some little cheering, In this close dungeon of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours, Dreaming of moths that ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... a glowing yellow, shot with feathery dashes of ruddy orange; yellow to green, and then the gray of the high starlit vault. But the stars are dimming, whimpering under their loss of power. Their archenemy of day is approaching, and they must shrink ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... caused it to be very late when we sat down amongst stones and triodia to devour our frugal supper. A solitary eagle was the monarch of this scene; it was perched upon the highest peak of a bare ridge, and formed a feathery sky-line when looking up the gorge—always there sat the solemn, solitary, and silent bird, like the Lorelei on her rock— above—beautifully, there, as though he had a mission to watch the course of passing events, and to record them in the books of time and fate. There ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... verse the mocking bird descended to a lower branch. The feathery songster drew his head to one side and appeared to be completely enraptured at the wonderful voice of the young singer. When the last note died away upon the air, her fond brother ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... amidst which mango groves, bamboo clumps, palms, and hamlets are scattered promiscuously. In some places the hills rise sheer from this, in others they are separated from the alluvial plains by belts of country known as the Tarai and Bhabar. The Tarai is low-lying, marshy land covered with tall, feathery grass, beautifully monotonous. This is succeeded by a stretch of gently-rising ground, 10 or 20 miles in breadth, known as the Bhabar—a strip of forest composed mainly of tall evergreen sal trees (Shorea ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... green land in which she woke. The leaves were just putting forth their feathery fronds of foliage, and the shorn lawns, the waving floods of growing wheat, and the smooth slopes of pastures presented pleasant pictures to the mountain-born girl. These thickly peopled farm-lands, the ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... From afar the bald eagle is seen in the sky, Now darting below, and now soaring on high; Now he takes from the fish-hawk his newly caught prey, And with speed to the forest he bears it away; Whilst the wood is alive with a feathery throng, Who from morning till night fill the air with their song. On one side is the lake where the wild cattle drink, And trample the rice which grows wild on its brink; The freshness untouch'd of earth's beauties declare, Neither ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... habits, the French call him Requin. I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon watch below, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon the main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and with a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it. Though ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... adding that on the morrow he, too, intended going on to Boston, to remain for a few days before Wilford sailed; then, feeling that he must in some way atone for his awkward speech regarding Aunt Betsy, he sought out Helen, still standing like a statue and watching the feathery line of smoke rising above the distant trees. Her bonnet had partially fallen from her head, revealing her bands of rich brown hair and the smooth, broad forehead, while her hands were locked together, and a tear trembled on her ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... England, he would like the tropical heat, the languor, the color of Martinique. He will not find them here. He comes instead into a strictly temperate region; and even when he arrives, his eyes deceive him. He sees the orange ripening in its dark foliage, the long lines of the eucalyptus, the feathery pepper-tree, the magnolia, the English walnut, the black live-oak, the fan-palm, in all the vigor of June; everywhere beds of flowers of every hue and of every country blazing in the bright sunlight—the heliotrope, the geranium, the rare ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... yards away, stripping every shingle from the roof better than a master builder could in a week. It fell a minute after on a tall tree by the courtyard gate, and as the trunk burst into white splinters I saw every leaf upon the feathery top turn light side up against the violet reflection in the sky beyond, and then the whole mass came down to earth with a thud that crushed the courtyard palings into nothing for twenty yards and shook me even across ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... Silly Peter was monarch of the air. In his own distorted mind he was master of all creatures that flew. Worldly cares he left to those who had inherited worldly material; as for himself, he was concerned only with the aerial strata and with the feathery creatures thereof. Nobody wanted it; so he acquired it as he acquired the cast-off hat that he wore. He fathomed it, tasted it, drank it, navigated his creatures through it, and even fanned life into it ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was dripping; the farther world was hidden or obscured by long veils of rain, driven in ragged clouds before a west wind. Yesterday the leaves had waved lightly, the undergrowth of shrubs had uplifted in feathery airiness of texture, the ground beneath had been crisp and aromatic with pine needles. Now everything bore a drooping, sodden aspect which spoke rather of decay than of the life of spring. Even the chickens had wisely remained ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... bamboo by its side, waving its willow-like sprays in the wind; a pair of mango-trees near, hung with fruit just ripening and reddish blossoms just opening, and a cocoa-tree or two lifting high above the rest its immense feathery leaves and its clusters ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... flanked by a straggling hedge of Osage-orange; and from the stile the ground falls away in green and gradual slope to a great plateau of measured and fenced fields, checkered, a month since, with bluish lines of Swedes, with the ragged purple of mangels, and the feathery emerald-green of carrots. There are umber-colored patches of fresh-turned furrows; here and there the mossy, luxurious verdure of new-springing rye; gray stubble; the ragged brown of discolored, frost-bitten rag-weed; next, a line of tree-tops, thickening as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... reclining on the bosom of the glorious stream. The beauty of the scenery of some of the islands is greatly increased by the date-palm, with its gracefully curved fronds and refreshing light green color, near the bottom of the picture, and the lofty palmyra towering far above, and casting its feathery foliage against a cloudless sky. It being winter, we had the strange coloring on the banks which many parts of African landscape assume. The country adjacent to the river is rocky and undulating, abounding in elephants and all other large ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... tall spruce, every tree and shrub, in place of leaves, had assumed a dress of milk white feathers. How dazzling it was. The eye could hardly bear the strong reflected light. A forest of feathers! We had never seen this effect in such perfection before. And now the sun, kissing these feathery sprays with warmth and burning ardor, made them blush rosy red, like the cheeks of a young maiden pressed by amorous lips. The feathery robe of the branches was as frail as false modesty, and melted away like good resolutions ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... something odd, mon vieux?" said one of the pompiers to me; and he led me through a labyrinth of cellars to a cold, deserted house. The snow had blown through the shell-splintered window-panes. In the dining-room stood a table, the cloth was laid and the silver spread; but a green feathery fungus had grown in a dish of food and broken straws of dust floated on the wine in the glasses. The territorial took my arm, his eyes showing the pleasure of my ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... sun's rays; the guava, growing at its feet, like an infant of the same family; the mammee—or abricot de St. Domingue—with its rich green fruit hanging in clusters, and a foliage rivalling the mango; the dark and feathery tamarind; the light and graceful indigo; the slow-growing arrowroot, with its palmy and feathery leaves spreading like a tender rampart round its precious fruit; boundless fields of the rich sugar-cane; ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... to the passer to buy them. Still their prices are high enough to mark the thoroughfare as one out of the common, and it is further distinguished by two rows of lofty eucalyptus trees. These have a real feathery beauty, and are perhaps a factor in the seemingly exorbitant prices demanded for the choice bungalow and home sites they shade. Save for a casual pioneer bungalow or two, there are no buildings to attract the notice ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... faster and faster. Great feathery flakes they were at first. The girls went on, laughing and chatting, with never a thought that harm could befall them through the gathering of these fleecy ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... represent, has offered to renew its confidence, but it has failed to restore ours. No amount of commission whatever, will tempt us to affront the awful majesty of Lynch, or to expose ourselves to the tar-and-feathery tortures which he prepares for those who blaspheme the Republic. We have ordered our buggy for the Home Circuit, and propose, by a course of deliberate mastication, and unlimited freedom of speech, to repair the damage which our digestion, and we fear our temper, has sustained during ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... sweetness, comes When blossoms are the sweetest; when the sea, Sparkling and blue, cries to the sun in joy, Or, silent, pale, and misty waits the night, Till the moon, pushing through the veiling cloud, Hangs naked in its heaving solitude: When feathery pines wave up and down the shore, And the vast deep above holds gentle stars, And the vast world beneath hides him ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... and sulphur and amber, Scarlet, and flame, and green, While five-foot apes did scramble and clamber, In the feathery-tufted treen. ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... months rolled on, October harvested the corn, November came with shortening days, Passed by in mist and rain,—was gone,— Yet still he came not; winter's snow In feathery vesture clothed the trees, Or, iceclad in a jewelled glow, They sparkled in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... following the capricious promise of the track soon found himself in a comparatively clear space, where the confused tracery of sunlight fell through the branches and the foliage overhead, and lay on the stream that shone in an easy curve like a bright sword-blade dropped amongst the long and feathery grass. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... Hark! among them birds chirp; a matutinal impulse seems astir in the woods; the moon is undimmed; the stars faint only because of her splendors; but one can feel that the earth has roused itself to a sense of a new day. And there, with such feathery flashes of white foam, such brilliant straight lengths of translucent water, such a leaping grace of impetuous motion, the currents of the mountain stream, like the arrows of Diana, shoot down the slopes. And now a vague mist is among the ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the return to amity, and then fell silent, looking into the fire, watching the blue spurt of the flames, the feathery curls of ash on ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... remaining cover, the body of the Synapta, snoodling beside it so artfully that they were quite concealed. The protector did not appear to resent the close company of the fish, which remained perfectly motionless. In a few seconds the Synapta began to extrude its feathery gills, which had been partly retracted on disturbance. I counted the gills, and while my forefinger indicated the sixth, a little fish, not previously noticed, appeared at the focus and edged off to the margin of the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... beaks and hanging on like bull terriers. They did this repeatedly; once one of the males dashed in and separated them, by giving one of the females a sharp tweak and blow. Then the males were at it again, their blue plumage mixing with the green grass and ruffled by the ruddy soil. What a soft, feathery, ineffectual battle it seemed in both cases!—no sound, no blood, no flying feathers, just a sudden mixing up and general disarray of blue wings and tails and ruddy breasts, there on the ground; assault but no visible ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... from formality passed between the two. And, as if in the expedient atmosphere of a real summer resort, an acquaintance grew, flowered and fructified on the spot as does the mystic plant of the conjuror. For a few moments they stood on a balcony upon which the corridor ended, and tossed the feathery ball ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... map in my head of the stretching landscape and curving bay. Ah! how delicious it was, the winding, climbing road, at whose every angle a fresh fair landscape fell away from beneath our feet or a shining stretch of sea, whose transparent green and purple shadows broke in a fringe of feathery spray at the foot of bold, rocky cliffs, or crept up to a smooth expanse of silver sand in a soft curling line of foam! "Kloof" means simply cleft, and is the pass between the Table Mountain and the Lion's Head, The road ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... and glowing, ambient, changeful, feathery, bright, Rather seem the floating vapors melting into ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... just before she hove in stays, I had heard a shrill voice sing out, "Take good aim, men—Fire"; but now each cannon in thunder shot forth its glance of flame, without a word being uttered, as she kept away to bring them to bear in succession, while the long feathery cloud of whirling white smoke that shrouded her sides from stem to stem, was sparkling brilliantly throughout with crackling musketry, for all the world like fire—flies in a bank of night fog from ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... garden from the canal and the low houses on the other side, showing its dark plume sharp and clear against the sunlit sky; but when the morning and the evening breezes blew in spring and summer, it swayed lazily, and the feathery top waved from side to side, and bent to the caressing air like a live thing. Ortensia loved the tree better than anything else in the garden; even better than the beautiful Greek Ariadne, which her uncle had himself brought from Crete in one of ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... had brought him was delicious: hot biscuits of feathery lightness, three wide slices of ham, a bowl of scrambled eggs, a pot of coffee, some preserved raspberries, and a tiny glass ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... apron, Psyche strolled away up an unfrequented staircase to the empty apartments, which seemed to be too high even for the lovers of High Art. On the western side they were shady and cool, and, leaning from one of the windows, Psyche watched the feathery tree-tops ruffled by the balmy wind, that brought spring odors from the hills, lying green and sunny far away. Silence and solitude were such pleasant companions that the girl forgot herself, till a shrill whistle disturbed her day-dreams, and reminded her what she ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... know what's possible, and what's not possible, according to my experience and capacity, as well as you do. Look at my long green body and these endless legs, and then talk to me about having wings and a painted feathery coat! Fool!—" ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten |
