"Lilac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sweet flowers do not readily yield an essential oil, so in such oases we have to rely altogether upon more or less successful substitutes. For instance, the perfumes sold under the names of "heliotrope," "lily of the valley," "lilac," "cyclamen," "honeysuckle," "sweet pea," "arbutus," "mayflower" and "magnolia" are not produced from these flowers but are simply imitations made from other essences, synthetic or natural. Among the "thousand flowers" ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... the foot of the stair. A softer light was in her eyes when they came to the bow of the ship, and Alan fancied he heard a strange little cry on her lips as she looked about her upon the paradise of Taiya Inlet. Straight ahead, like a lilac ribbon, ran the narrow waterway to Skagway's door, while on both sides rose high mountains, covered with green forests to the snowy crests that gleamed like white blankets near the clouds. In this melting season there came to them above the ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... barks, over their coarse food,—sour black bread, boiled buckwheat groats, and salted cucumbers,—doffing their hats and crossing themselves reverently before and after their simple meal, and chatting until the red glow of sunset in the north flickers up to the zenith in waves of sea-green, lilac, and amber, and descends again in the north, at the pearl pink of dawn. Sleep is a lost art with these men, as with all classes of people, during those nerve-destroying "white nights." When all the silvery ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Pinus laricis, Pinus mughus) are rare in the Balkans, but abundant in the higher regions of the southern mountain group, where the Pinus peuce, otherwise peculiar to the Himalayas, also flourishes. The wild lilac forms a beautiful feature in the spring landscape. Wild fruit trees, such as the apple, pear and plum, are common. The vast forests of the middle ages disappeared under the supine Turkish administration, which took no measures for their protection, and even ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... spinning wool and "that kind of spinning was powerful slow". Thinking a moment, she added: "And my mother was one of the best dyers anywhere 'round, and I was too. I did make the most colors by mixing up all kinds of bark and leaves. I recollect the prettiest sort of a lilac color I made with maple bark and pine bark, not the outside pine bark, but that little thin skin that grows right down next to the tree—it was ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... changing the mortal calm of the under-sea where all follow and devour, only to be devoured in turn. Near the surface floated the medusae, living parasols of an opaline whiteness with circular borders of lilac or red bronze. Under their gelatinous domes was the skein of filaments that served them for ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... quiet self-respect, and the largeness learned from sorrow, was almost capable of not weeping that she had left at home her apple-green Poland mantlet and jockey bonnet of lilac satin checked with maroon. But Dolly had no such weight of by-gone sorrow to balance her present woe, and the things she had left at home were infinitely brighter than ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... wasn't even fluttered at his buying the ounce of tobacco; he knows that he purchases the same quantity of the same sort of tobacco every week. Uncle James might just as well have lain on his back in the garden and chattered to the lilac tree about the ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... no one could see it in mine, that I could hide it. And I have one vivid recollection of a quiet room with flowers in it, and latticed windows, but I don't know where it was or how I came there, or who were the people in it who spoke to me. There was a tall woman with grey parted hair in a lilac gown. I can see her now. And I swore before God that I had left off the drug. And some one standing behind me took the little infernal machine out of my pocket, and I was confronted with it. And ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... voice the hounds leapt back; and, on a traveller's oath, I verily believe, once, and how swiftly, and how fearfully and brightly, those childish lids unsealed their light as of lilac that lay behind, glanced briefly, fleetingly, on one who had ventured so far, ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... a drawing-room, prettily but somewhat showily decorated. The walls are papered with a design representing large clusters of white and purple lilac. The furniture is covered with a chintz of similar pattern, and the ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... was a bed of myrtle, and another one of verbenas, over which the butterflies hovered on hot summer days, and another of pansies, and along the wall great clumps of valley lilies. And at the end of the path was a lilac bush that the Judge's wife had planted in the first ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... how glad my garden must be for it, and imagining what the flowers and buds would think when the drops began to fall. I imagined out a most interesting dialogue between the asters and the sweet peas and the wild canaries in the lilac bush and the guardian spirit of the garden. When I go home I mean to write it down. I wish I had a pencil and paper to do it now, because I daresay I'll forget the best parts before I ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... evening unfolded over the lawns its soft waves of gold, which lit up with bluish rays the shade of the pines. There he could forget himself until he heard footsteps approaching in the street. The night scattered its scents over the garden: lilac in spring, acacia in summer, dead leaves in the autumn. When Jean-Christophe, was on his way home in the evening from the Palace, however weary he might be, he used to stand by the door to drink in the ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... the children sat; and near them was an old grindstone, streaked with rust, and worn by many summers of sharpening scythes; a tin dipper hung on the wooden frame, nearly full of last night's rain, and with some lilac stars floating ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... the long, flowered skirt of a lilac silk reception dress of Mrs. Lincoln's, and Budd was getting into one of her ruffled morning wrappers, while Tad began to sing at the ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Lightly he laugh'd, as one that read my thought, And on we went; but ere an hour had pass'd, We reach'd a meadow slanting to the North; Down which a well-worn pathway courted us To one green wicket in a privet hedge; This, yielding, gave into a grassy walk Thro' crowded lilac-ambush trimly pruned; And one warm gust, full-fed with perfume, blew Beyond us, as we enter'd in the cool. The garden stretches southward. In the midst A cedar spread his dark-green layers of shade. The garden-glasses shone, and momently The twinkling laurel ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... The night of storm was over, but the wind, dying away before the dawn, seemed to bring with it all the sweetness of the cleansed places, to be redolent even of the budding trees and shrubs,—the lilac bushes, drooping with their weight of moisture, and the pink and white chestnut blossoms, dashed to pieces by the rain but yielding up their lives with sweetness. The streets, in that single hour between the hurrying homewards of the belated reveller ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hundred distinct varieties, ranging from pure white to lilac-purple, scarlet and pink, and when in full bloom the entire plant might be easily mistaken for a large bouquet, so literally covered is ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... clothes and shoes; the big summer hats, with stones on them to keep them from blowing away, looked like immense shells. It was strange that even the sea seemed to sound differently when all those leaping, laughing figures ran into the waves. Old Mrs. Fairfield, in a lilac cotton dress and a black hat tied under the chin, gathered her little brood and got them ready. The little Trout boys whipped their shirts over their heads, and away the five sped, while their grandma sat ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... in the residential part of the town. Only one man they saw, and at his approach MacQueen drew Melissy behind a large lilac bush. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... bosom—there, in a heart-niche, One shall outlive the other—is 't hard to tell which? In the name of all starry and beautiful things, What is it? the cross in the centre, these rings, And the petals that shoot in an intricate maze, From the disk which is lilac—or purple? like rays In ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... was grown over lushly with grass; but at the end where Eric stood there was a square, treeless place which had evidently once served as a homestead garden. Old paths were still visible, bordered by stones and large pebbles. There were two clumps of lilac trees; one blossoming in royal purple, the other in white. Between them was a bed ablow with the starry spikes of June lilies. Their penetrating, haunting fragrance distilled on the dewy air in every soft puff of wind. ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was a promise of a calm morning. The dancing choirs of the stars were interwoven in wondrous patterns on the distant horizon, and, one after another, they flickered out as the wan resplendence of the east suffused the dark, lilac vault of heaven, gradually illumining the steep mountain slopes, covered with the virgin snows. To right and left loomed grim and mysterious chasms, and masses of mist, eddying and coiling like snakes, were creeping thither along the furrows of the neighbouring cliffs, as though ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... voluble, always ready to talk, and not in the least backward in exhibiting his accomplishments. The low-toned, plaintive sounding conversation of the jays with each other, not only beside the nest, but when flying together or apart, or in brief interviews in the lilac bush, pleased me especially, because it was exactly the same prattle that a pet blue jay was accustomed to address to me; and it confirmed what I had always believed from his manner, that it was his most loving and intimate expression, the tone in ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... and every blossom, however small, is a mystery, a miracle. Here is the star of Bethlehem, wide open in the sunshine and showing so purely white amidst the green, and yonder is the purple fringe-like tuft of the weird muscari. Along the banks of the stream tall lilac-purple, stock-like flowers rise proudly above the grasses. They belong to the hesperis or dame's violet, a common wild-flower in this valley. Upon my left is the abrupt stony slope of the gorge. Between it and the meadow are shrubs of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... its lowest ebb; he suggested no means of replenishing it, and I thought of none. He had heard that it was possible to live in Paris upon next to nothing with very great luxury, so we tried it; we strolled through the lilac aisles among bonnes and babies, attended military spectacles, rode on omnibuses, dined on the country heights, went to theatres, and had a most pleasurable time, gaining everywhere front places, friendly smiles, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... moon went down in the west. The sky was a pale lilac, like a great concave mirror reflecting the heather. Then it darkened to a deeper purple, and made my thoughts feel like pansies, as they blossomed in my mind. We fell into silence. But Mrs. James said afterward that was because we were hungry and didn't realize what ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... yonder! The red-headed woodpecker heard them at play, and she clambered out of the hollow maple and dodged hither and thither as if she, too, shared their merriment. Yes, and the yellow thistle-bird, whose nest was in the blooming lilac-bush, came and perched in the pear-tree and sang a little song about the dear little eggs in her cunning home. And there was a flower in the fence-corner,—a sweet, modest flower that no human eyes but the little boy's had ever seen,—and ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... steamer rounded the point and turned into Avalon Bay. Almost a perfect semicircle, the beach of glistening white sand enclosed a basin of turquoise sea in which were reflected the dark, rich tones of the cliffs, all glowing like an opal beneath the sun, while above rose the hills covered with the wild lilac and greasewood of California. Even the tame sea-lions which frequent the harbor and follow incoming boats, and which frequently are to be seen hauled up on small fishing-craft, seemed to fit wonderfully into the scene. A passenger who heard the boy's exclamation of delight, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the left, where are seen the well and lilac bushes by the wall, in the now open field, lived Nutting and Le Grosse. But ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... It appeared that he was getting up. Horribly depressed and sorry for him, Kenny went to sleep again. When he awoke the sun was laughing iridescently from meadow trails of rain. The fragrance of wet pine came in through the barn window. The lilac in the garden was ready to flower. Kenny longed to be off. Nevertheless he breakfasted at some length in the farm kitchen and paid so handsomely in coin and grace that there was talk of ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... smaller babies with her, one on either side. "Amma! Look!" she called; but italics are inadequate to express the emphasis. "LOOK, Morning—glory—kissing—'chother," and she pointed with eagerness to the nestling little clusters of lilac, growing, as their pretty manner is, close to each other. Then, seizing each of the babies in a fervent and somewhat embarrassing embrace, she hugged and kissed them both; and finally wheeling round on the flowers, addressed them impressively: ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... which must doubtless have been collected at great expense, owing to the severity of the winter. The halls of Lucrece and of La Reunion, in which the dancing quadrilles were formed, resembled an immense parterre of roses, laurel, lilac, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... sadness, is now too frequently added the gloomy and depressing evidence of human neglect. Briers and weeds grow in tangled thickets over the forgotten graves; birch-trees and barberry bushes spring up unchecked. In one a thriving grove of lilac bushes spreads its dusty shade from wall to wall. Winter-killed shrubs of flowering almond or snowballs, planted in tender memory, stand now withered and unheeded, and the few straggling garden flowers—crimson ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... aside to Mrs Quantock, screaming out "Who is that Indian"? for if Mrs Quantock heard the Indian would hear too, but as soon as she could, she turned back towards the house again, and when once the lilac bushes were between her and the road she walked with more than her usual speed, in order to learn with the shortest possible delay from Peppino who this fresh subject of hers could be. She knew there were some Indian princes in London; perhaps it was one of them, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... for a moment. "Going to play garden around the house. This is a—a lilac tree!" And he set the flower-pot down close to Bert's elbow. Bert was now busy trying to put a pasteboard chimney on his house, and did not notice. A moment later Bert's elbow hit the flower-pot and down it went on the floor, breaking into several pieces ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope
... passed, but did not bring with them the slightest change. Madame Chebe's cashmere was a little more threadbare, the little lilac frock had undergone a few additional repairs, and that was all. But, as Sidonie grew older, Frantz, now become a young man, acquired a habit of gazing at her silently with a melting expression, of paying her loving attentions that were visible to everybody, and were unnoticed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the miser's house. Contrary to the usual custom of rogues and villains, he went up to the front door, and knocked vigorously. The heart of the watcher leaped with expectation, and he crept like a cat on the grass till he had obtained a position behind a lilac bush, near the front door. The first summons of the unseasonable visitor did not procure a response from within, ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... the distant rose-red hawthorn. Though she was here under shadow of the trees, the sun beyond shone on the fresh and moist grass; and at the end of the glades there were glimpses of brilliant color in the foliage—the glow of the laburnum, the lilac blaze of the rhododendron bushes. And how still the place was! Far off there was a dull roar of carriages in Piccadilly; but here there was nothing but the bleating of the sheep, the chirp of the young birds, the stir of the wind among the elms. Sometimes ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... contact with the things we meet in sleep was still upon him. He got up and flung open his lattice window. From the garden beneath rose the sweet scent of May flowers, very different from that of his dream which yet lingered in his nostrils, whilst from a neighbouring lilac- bush streamed the rich melody of the nightingale. Presently it ceased before the broadening daylight, but in its stead, pure and clear and cold, arose the notes of the mavis, giving tuneful thanks and glory to its Maker. And, as he listened, a great calm stole upon his spirit, and kneeling ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... creatures in the island. Now the whole existence of this man, who was once so happy and so much envied, is changed. The smiling cottage, that hung over the gulf like a swan over a transparent lake, is sad and desolate; the little enclosure, with its hedges of lilac and hawthorn, where joyous groups used to come and sit at the close of day, is silent and deserted. No human sound dares to trouble the mourning of this saddened solitude. Only towards evening the waves of the sea, compassionating such great misfortunes, come ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... out in it, though it is beautiful to behold. The sky these last two evenings has been like an Italian one, and for the last few days—at least the last four—without the slightest particle of cloud, and the sun blazing. With this, not a breath of air. The mountains look quite crimson and lilac, and everything glows with the setting sun. The evenings are quite a relief. Really one cannot undertake expeditions, the heat is so great. We thought of you, and wished you could be here; you would fancy yourself ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... silver-streaked, moved slightly and held out an emaciated hand heavy with rings. Her head was tied round with a silk handkerchief or takrita of pansy purple; she wore seroual, full trousers of soft white silk, and under a gold-threaded orange-coloured jacket or rlila, a blouse of lilac gauze, covered with sequins and open at the neck. On the bony arm which she held out to Victoria hung many bracelets, golden serpents of Djebbel Amour, and pearls braided with gold wire and coral beads. Her great eyes, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... with two men at the bar, drinking something which resembled beer, and giving that impression of forming a large crowd which two men always give in a saloon. The bartender, a tall pale Swede with a diamond in his lilac scarf, stared at Babbitt as he stalked plumply up to the bar and whispered, "I'd, uh—Friend of Hanson's sent me here. Like to ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... joy; turning in between the tubbed box-trees at Lovett's Court, loitering for a moment to gaze out over the smooth harbor and nod to the stragglers of the congregation before they entered the big green door flanked by the lilac panes. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... angel," a tatterdemalion scholar, an inspired derelict, a scaramouch god,—and I recollect how, in its marble whiteness, the thing leered and peered at me with a look that seemed to have about it all the fragrance of all the lilac-blossoms in the world, mixed with all the piety of all our race's children and the wantonness of all old heathen dreams. It is like Socrates, that head; and like a gargoyle on the tower ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... her? Brave men have died thus. Revenge demanded keener punishment. So I walked softly on those lilac hills, Touching my rhibab lightly as ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... very bright and clear, and the sun shone through soft lilac leaves on more important folios, while Mr. Jellicorse, with happy sniffs—for his dinner was roasting in the distance—drew a single line here, or a double line there, or a gable on the margin of the paper, to show his head clerk what to cite, and in what letters, and what to omit, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... is feared that soap may change the color of an article, as, for instance, scarlet hosiery or lilac print, if the garment be not badly soiled, it may be cleansed by washing without soap in water in which pared potatoes have been boiled. This method will also prevent color from ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... only gardeners, grumbling, talk or think of rain. A few fleecy white clouds seemed painted. So motionless were they, on the sky, reproducing the Hurlingham colours far above the ground. A gentle breeze coming up from the river brought with it the odour of lilac ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... process; but the effect of the alteration is most strikingly shown by colors: the tint of pink cotton velvet becomes deepened to an intense degree; and printed calicoes, especially with colors hitherto applied with little satisfaction—such as lilac—come out with strength and brilliancy, besides producing fabrics finer than could be possibly woven by hand. The strength, too, is increased by this process; for a string of calico which breaks with a weight of thirteen ounces when not soaked, will ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... were a little afraid of the bees, but Theodora was one of those persons whom bees seem never to sting. She was accustomed to care for them, and thus to be about the hives a great deal. Not one of us happened to think of that empty bee-hive. The shed and some lilac shrubs concealed the place from the house; and Doad went unsuspected to and from the hive, which she kept filled with apples. We spent hours in searching for her hoard, but did not learn where she had concealed it until she told us ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... blazing violet light." I have seen nothing like this yet, but can quite realize what such a storm must be like, for I have observed already how different the color of the lightning is. The flashes I have seen were exactly of the lilac color he described, and they followed each other with a rapidity of succession unknown in less electric regions. And yet my last English letters were full of complaints of the wet weather in London, and much self-pity for the long imprisonment in-doors. Why, those very people don't know what weather ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... hath not a trace of sweetness It thrills one through and through, With promises of Joy in all completeness What time the skies are blue. When robins from the apple-trees are flinging Out on the air their silver shower of song,— In lilac days, when children run a-singing, No single thought shall ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... had passed out of sight, Cynthia came from the kitchen with an armful of wet linen and began spreading it upon some scrubby lilac bushes in a corner of the yard. After fifteen years it still made her uncomfortable to have Christopher around when she did the family washing, and when it was possible she waited to dry the clothes until he had gone ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... winds were borne to us from the ocean. The sun shone hot on the stunted cedars. The tides crept in lazily. All one weary afternoon, in the hum and stir of the dusty school-room, little Bessie Sartell—Captain Sartell's youngest, and his darling—sat stringing lilac blossoms together in a chain. She was such a cunning edition of the big Captain. She had the same strong Saxon physique in miniature, the same clear pink and white complexion, eyes hardly more limpidly blue than his, and hair that was sunniest flax, like the ends of the ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... clinging with her old arm to the erect figure beside her, stand aside close to the ditch and watch the regiment tramp by. 'Cheer up, mother,' one man calls. 'We're goin' to shift the Boshies out for you,' and 'Bong jewer,' says another, waving his hand. Another pulls a sprig of lilac from his cap and thrusts it out as he passes. 'Souvenir!' he says, lightly, and the young woman catches the blossom and draws herself up with her eyes sparkling and calls, 'Bonne chance, Messieurs. Goo-o-o-d ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... white, and green tint perfectly blended lay like a mantle over mesquite and sand and cactus. The canyons of distant mountain showed deep and full of lilac haze. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... can be compounded, we should be limited in hue and shade to the seven spectral colors; the wealth and beauty of color in nature, art, and commerce would be unknown; the flowers with their thousands of hues would have a poverty of color undreamed of; art would lose its magenta, its lilac, its olive, its lavender, and would have to work its wonders with the spectral colors alone. By compounding various colors in different proportions, new colors can be formed to give freshness and variety. ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... occupant of the bench. At his feet grew a bed of daffodils and jonquils which Sarah Macomber had planted when she came, a hopeful bride, to that house. Each year they sprouted and bloomed and now, long after Sarah's hopes had ceased to sprout, they continued to flourish. Beside the cherry tree grew a lilac bush. Beyond the picket fence was the dusty sidewalk and beyond that the dustier, rutted road. And beyond the road and along it upon both sides were the houses and barns and the few shops of Bayport village, Bayport as it ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... The great fire crackled in the grate, the hooded hawks slept upon their perches, the rough deer-hounds with expectant eyes crouched upon the tiled floor; close at the elbows of the guests stood the dapper little lilac-coated pages; the laugh and jest circled round and all was harmony and comfort. Little they recked of the brushwood men who crouched in their rags along the fringe of the forest and looked with wild and haggard eyes at the rich, warm glow which shot a golden bar of light ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... strips of loose grape vine bark, and similar materials, and lined with fine grasses and fibrous roots. The eggs are three to five in number, glossy white, thickly spotted with various shades of rich, reddish brown and lilac; some specimens however have a greenish tinge, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... eyes went into a dream, began to crawl softly, like a rope-walker, up one of his fingers, with a frail, half-frightened hold, while, high up, over the walls of the garden the poplars were discreetly swaying to the southern wind, and the lilac-bushes were carelessly tossing this way and that their fragrance, as altar-boys swing their censers in the hushed chancel,—but ah! ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... railway station upon his left hand he set his face west where the waste heaved out before him dark against a blaze of light from the sky. The sun was setting and a great glory of gold, fretted with lilac and crimson, burned over the distant earth, while here and there the light caught crystals of quartz in the granite boulders and flashed up from the ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... The Pall Mall Gazette:—"I began yesterday by swimming in a sunlit sea, continued it by motoring through a hundred miles of lilac and gorse, and ended it listening to the most perfect concert programme at Queen's Hall that I have ever heard.... Was it not a happy day?" The answer, Filson, is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... Basset or Dame Deborah dream that the lame pedlar-woman, in the lilac print dress and white mob-cap, whom they passed in the park, and who curtsied so low as the great coach lumbered past, was the Royalist leader whom everyone was searching for; neither did they dream ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... flashing waters, "leaving his mountains to follow Prince Charlie;" Chrianean, where the eagles sometimes sat; the sunsets when the sky was "crimson, golden red, and blue," and the hills "looked purple and lilac," till the hues grew softer and the outlines dimmer. Prince Albert, an ardent admirer of natural scenery, was in ecstasy with the mountain landscape. But her Majesty has already permitted her people to share in the halcyon days ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... broad sweep of lawn. Behind it a wood of tall beeches raised their naked boughs in pale, intricate tracery against the soft blue sky. The shrubs proved worth inspection, for some were rich with berries of hues that varied from crimson to lilac and the massed twigs of others formed blotches of strong colouring. The grass was dry and lighted by gleams of sunshine, the air only cold enough to make movement pleasant, and Mrs. Chudleigh felt content as she paced a sheltered walk with Colonel Challoner, ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... of my patience? my sunny mildness? Then, as the recollection of the velvet-gown and mob-cap episode recurs to me, I repent me, and, crossing the road, pick up again my harmless catkins and snow-drops, and rearrange them. I have hardly finished wiping the mire from the tender, lilac-veined snow-drop petals, before I hear his voice in the distance, in conversation with some one. Clearly, Delilah is coming to see the last of him! I expect that she mostly escorts them to the gate. In my present frame of mind, it would be physically impossible for me to salute her with the bland ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... the feverfew and stocks, The guelder-rose and hollyhocks; Outside my trellised porch a tree Of lilac ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... but remarkably handsome perennial, producing lilac-purple flowers with yellow stamens in July and August. It will grow in ordinary soil, and may be increased by division. Height, ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... unstaggered. "Don't you think the apple-sauce they serve over there is execrable? I rather like that mulberry-leaf tunic effect, dear; but, of course, the real fig goods are not to be had over there. Come over behind this lilac-bush while the gentlemen split a celery tonic. I think the caterpillar-holes have made your dress open a little in ...
— Options • O. Henry
... fluid. A complicated system of wires connected the mouths of the bottles with handles, which were grasped by the patients. After the latter had waited for a while in expectant silence, Mesmer would appear, wearing a coat of lilac silk, and carrying a magician's wand, which he manipulated in a graceful and mysterious manner. Then, discarding the wand, he passed his hands over the bodies of the patients for a considerable time, "until the magnetized person was ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... fancy the richest sunset you have ever witnessed, and that would be inferior, from the inevitable defect of its fleeting character. Here the tints, sometimes vivid, sometimes shadowed down, were always equally fair: light blue heights, streaked, perhaps, with scarlet and shaded off to lilac or purple; a cleft of bright orange; a broad peach-coloured expanse, veined in delicate circles and wavy lines of exquisite grace; sometimes yellow and purple stripes; sometimes an isolated steep of every hue flaming in the sun, and then, like ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... any number of instances. They are not unlike a field of teasels in blossom—there are the thorny points of this strange plant, and the delicate and exceedingly beautiful blossom beside, resting on the very points of a hundred lances, with their lovely lilac bloom. Those who have lived where teasels grow will understand this illustration. We doubt not it will seem very pointed and proper to Neal. It must be remembered that the teasel is a very useful article in dressing cloth, immense cards of them being set in machinery ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... little household; and then she gave herself to the garden. It was an unmitigated wilderness. The roses had grown into irregular, wide-spreading shrubs, with waving, flaunting branches; yet sweet with their burden of blushing flowers. Lilac bushes had passed all bounds, and took up room most graspingly. Hawthorn and eglantine, roses of Sharon and stocky syringas, and other bushes and climbers, had entwined and confused their sprays and branches, till in places they formed an impenetrable ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... washed clothes in a large 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," ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... symphony is charming. It recalls the fairy-like brilliance of the moors at sunset, when the sun, slipping behind a western hill, streams in level rays on to an opposite crest, gilding with pale gold the fawn-coloured faded grass; tangled in the film of lilac seeding grasses, spread, like the bloom on a grape, over all the heath; sparkling on the crisp edges of the heather blooms, pure white, wild-rose colour, shell-tinted, purple; emphasising every grey-green spur of the ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Saw you never lilac blossoms, Or acacia white and red, Waving brightly in the sunshine, On the tall trees over head? HYMNS FOR ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Wildney seize his hand, and whisper, "This way; all serene;" following, he groped his way in the dark to the end of the room, where Wildney, shoving aside a green baize curtain, noiselessly opened a door, which at once led them into a little garden. There they both crouched down under a lilac tree beside the house, and ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... by it, like all of everything had been scoured as bright as the bottom of a tin pan. And the shadders was soft and thick and velvety and laid kind of brownish-greeney on the grass. I flopped down in the shadder of some lilac bushes and wondered which was Martha's window. I knowed she would be in bed long ago, but—— Well, I was jest plumb foolish that night, and I couldn't of kept away fur any money. That moonlight had got into ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... series of useful clews. For example, Dukovski succeeded in discovering a long, dark streak, made up of spots, on the grass, which led some distance into the center of the garden. The streak ended under one of the lilac bushes in a dark brown stain. Under this same lilac bush was found a top boot, which turned out to be the fellow of the boot already ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... to the most secluded corner of the garden. There, in a thicket of lime-trees and old bushes of black currant, elder, snowball-tree, and lilac, there stood a tumble-down green summer-house, blackened with age. Its walls were of lattice-work, but there was still a roof which could give shelter. God knows when this summer-house was built. There was a tradition that it had been put up some fifty years before by a retired colonel called ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... A lilac blossom will give you a pretty example of the expansion of the petals of a quatrefoil above the edge of the cup or tube; but I must get back to ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... A widow should wear crape with a bonnet having a small border of white. The veil should be long, and worn over the face for three months, after which a shorter veil may be worn for a year, and then the face may be exposed. After six months white and lilac may be used, and ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... the church and monastery, we climbed to the summit of the bluff, and beheld the inlet in all its length and depth, from the open, sunny expanse of the lake to the dark strait below us, where the overhanging trees of the opposite cliffs almost touched above the water. The honeyed bitter of lilac and apple blossoms in the garden below steeped the air; and as I inhaled the scent, and beheld the rich green crowns of the oaks which grew at the base of the rocks, I appreciated the wisdom of Sergius and Herrmann that led them to pick out this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... yon lilac fair, Wi' purple blossoms to the spring; And I a bird to shelter there, When wearied ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... of the window. Little windows, and the lilac and green of the garden were reflected in ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... gentle mother by the door caresses still her lilac blooms, And as we wander back once more we seem to smell the old perfumes, We seem to live again the joys that once were ours so long ago When we were little girls and boys, with all the charms ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... standing by the bed in a pretty lilac silk wrapper, her hair tucked away under a little lace cap. Joanna wore her dressing-gown of turkey-red flannel, and her hair hung down her back in two great rough plaits. For a moment she stared disapprovingly at her sister, whom she thought looked "French," then she suddenly felt ashamed of ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... some white lace for you. Can't you use it on some of your clothes? I don't know anything about such things: maybe it isn't pretty enough, but I thought perhaps it would do for that lilac silk ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... a fine spring evening. The lilac was in bloom, the hedges and trees were clothed in their early green, and all things seemed full of promise. Even Mr. Carlyle's heart was rejoicing in the prospect opened to it; he was sure he should like a public life; but in ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... sinking into it, with her billows of lilac muslin and her rich brown hair against the background of green vines. "Aren't you going ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... town, front doors became back doors, kitchens looked out on the street, and the windows of living-rooms and dining-rooms faced the sea. But there were two seasons when the rocky and ignored gardens of the town were ablaze with beauty—in the lilac month of the spring, and in the dahlia ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... country, in summer weather, as hot as the Italian climate I had lately left. I have never seen so many birds and flowers in my garden. Liszt was playing the piano on the ground floor, and the nightingales, intoxicated with music and sunshine, were singing madly in the lilac-trees around." ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... and people in it she had known and lived with, and turn her face to meet new things and new people. Nothing would be familiar to her in that strange world, not even tea-cups with blue rims like these she was washing up for the last time. Everything new, down to the two lilac prints, made longer than ever before, lying at the bottom of the new black box. It was wonderful to think of, and very confusing to the mind. There would even be a new baby to look after. But when Biddy reached this point she smiled securely, for she had no fears about the baby, ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... attractive house. Its front of bright clean red brick was perhaps too near the street; but the garden, whose tall lilac and syringa bushes waved over the top of the high wall, must, he thought, run back some way, and from the west windows there must be a ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... "I was up to your folkeses house jist two or three days ago. No, there ain't many changes to speak of. The lilac bush by the kitchen window is over a foot higher, and the elm in the front yard died and had to be cut down. And yet it don't seem the same place that it used ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... the quarrying of the rockery began in earnest. By 4.15 A.M. they had most of it littered over the drive, but had struck some granite boulders which defied even the crowbars. A further conference was then held, but at this point Edward made a dramatic appearance, clad in lilac pyjamas, odd boots and a kimono of the Aunt's, which he had worn as King Alfred in some charades the night before, and in the darkness had donned in mistake for his dressing-gown. His address was impassioned and moving, but had no effect ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various |
