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Waxen   Listen
adjective
Waxen  adj.  
1.
Made of wax. "The female bee, that... builds her waxen cells."
2.
Covered with wax; waxed; as, a waxen tablet.
3.
Resembling wax; waxy; hence, soft; yielding. "Men have marble, women waxen, minds."
Waxen chatterer (Zool.), the Bohemian chatterer.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Waxen" Quotes from Famous Books



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

... strode up to the dying child, took the clammy hands in his, and said in a tone of bitter anguish, "Charlie, don't you know papa? Wouldn't you speak one little word to papa?" But it was too late, the shadows that never deceive flitted over the pale beauty of the marble brow, the waxen lid closed over the once bright and laughing eye, and the cold grave for its rest had ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

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

... altogether without importance, we may note that even the frailty of the material operates to some extent in disgusting us with wax-work. A higher temperature of the atmosphere, it strikes us too forcibly, would dispose the waxen figures to melt; and in colder seasons the horny fist of a jolly boatswain would 'pun[5] them into shivers' like so many ship-biscuits. The grandeur of permanence and durability transfers itself or its expression from the material to the impression of the artifice which moulds it, and ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... lake over which they were travelling were hills covered with harsh pine, that pricked funereally up to the boulder-broken snows. Above that was a stormy and fantastic sea of mountains baring many a fierce peak-fang to the hollow heavens. The sky was a waxen grey, cold as a corpse-light. The snow was an immaculate shroud, unmarked by track of bird or beast. Death-sealed the land lay in its silent vastitude, in ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... perfect composure. Her fine eyes blazed, but otherwise her face might have been a waxen mask. With her, in this scene, was all the tragic dignity; with ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

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

... inexpressible triumph. Then the colour ebbed away again from cheeks and lips, a film seemed to gather over the still open eyes, the death-rattle sounded in the patient's throat, he gasped once, as if for breath, and then a look of perfect, ineffable peace settled upon the waxen features. Nugent's gallant soul had gone forth to join the ranks of the ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

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

... the roof of the house, and peeped into the chimney. A nice, cosy beehive it made, filled to the throat with waxen cells. ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May

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

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

... and dismayed in the first row behind the chairs, fingering an empty purse. She had been in the rooms ten minutes, and she had lost twenty louis. Her last coup had been successful, but a bland old lady, with the white hair and waxen face of sainted motherhood, had swept up her winnings so unconcernedly that Zora's brain began to swim. As she felt too strange and shy to expostulate she stood fingering her ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... it was said these persons practiced was that of making a waxen image of the king, and then, after connecting it with him in some mysterious and magical way by certain charms and incantations, melting it away by degrees before a slow fire, by which means the king himself, as was supposed, would be caused to pine and wither ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

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

... man's lips had ceased to move; his eyes had closed; he lay back in the deep seat, inert, looking half-dead, very pale and waxen in the face. For what seemed a long time he sat thus, motionless and almost without signs of life, while the two stood side by side before him. Mary glanced once at Beaumaroy; his lips were apart in ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... bread and some cheese. Two pages and three gentlemen were waiting upon him, and Mad Noll, the jester, stood at the head of the bed, now and then jingling his bawble and passing some quaint jest upon the chance of making his master smile. Upon a table near by were some dozen or so waxen tapers struck upon as many spiked candlesticks of silver-gilt, and illuminating that end of the room with their bright twinkling flames. One of the gentlemen was in the act of serving the Earl with a goblet ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... influence of Rossetti; but they are already differentiated from the elder master's style by their more facile though less intensely felt elaboration of imaginative detail. Many are pen-and-ink drawings on vellum, exquisitely finished, of which the "Waxen Image" is one of the earliest and best examples; it is dated 1856. Although subject, medium and manner derive from Rossetti's inspiration, it is not the hand of a pupil merely, but of a potential master. This was recognized by Rossetti himself, who before long avowed that he had nothing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... her eyes, thoroughly justified by the little fellow's death in the following March, calling to the end for "Papa! papa!" My brother and I were allowed to see him just before he was placed in his coffin; I can see him still, so white and beautiful, with a black spot in the middle of the fair waxen forehead, and I remember the deadly cold which startled me when I was told to kiss my little brother. It was the first time that I had touched Death. That black spot made a curious impression on me, and long afterwards, ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

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

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

... the performer, was a plump young man, with black whiskers, and his hair in oily ringlets, such as may be seen in the model wigs presented on smiling, waxen dandies, in Mr. Rose's front window at Dollington. He bowed and smiled in the most unexceptionable of white chokers and the dapperest of dress coats, and drew off the whitest imaginable pair of kid gloves, when he sat down to the piano, subsiding in a sort of bow upon the music-stool, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Fairyland, and it is never safe to meddle with toys that have come straight from Fairyland. For all that, the Prince crept into the nursery that very same night, when everyone in the palace was asleep, and prepared to have his revenge on the waxen Lady Emmelina. There she sat in all her magnificence on the nursery table, with both her gloves tightly buttoned, and both her pointed toes turned upwards. The very sight of her annoyed the jealous little Prince. He pattered across the floor on his bare feet, and seized the Lady Emmelina by ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp

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

... systematically practising upon the credulity of his dupes, the professed master of this ill-omened art frequently resorted to assassination by poison or dagger in the accomplishment of his schemes. Sorcery by means of waxen images was particularly in vogue. Thus, the Queen of Navarre, the sister of Francis the First, in her singular collection of tales, the "Heptameron," gives a circumstantial account of the mode in which her own life ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... cat without the tail stealing out at daybreak, had been—what Gammer said—a witch, weaving overnight her spell about poor Margery? He knew how it would have been; he had heard whispers about these things before; the dying embers on the hearth, the little waxen figure laid to melt thereon, the witch-woman weaving the charm about—now swifter, faster circling—with passes of ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin

... black spangled shoulder, and the roseate light died slowly from the sweet, smiling face—the smile itself seemed slowly freezing—as the still dilated eyes followed the graceful movements of the couple, slowly, harmoniously winding and reversing about the waxen floor. Even at the Point she had never seen more beautiful dancing. Even when her stanchest friend, Mrs. Blake, pounced upon her with fond, anxious, welcoming words, and Mrs. Ray, seeing it all, broke from her partner's encircling arm, and sped to add her greeting, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... for arbutus, my dear, my dear, The pink waxen blossoms are waking, I hear; We'll gather an armful of fragrant wild cheer. Come for arbutus, my dear, my dear, Come for arbutus, my dear. Come for ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... sense the most acute * For she had proffered what did not besuit), 'Unless thou stroke as man should swive his wife * Blame not when horns thy brow shall incornute! Thy wand seems waxen, to a limpo grown, * And more I palm ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... changes are complete, the potato becomes a loose, farinaceous mass, or "mealy." When, however, the liquid portion is not wholly absorbed, and the cells are but imperfectly separated, the potato appears waxen, watery, or soggy. In a mealy state the potato is easily digested; but when waxy or water-soaked, it is exceedingly trying to ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... band lights sparkling under the canopy, the moonlight glinting on the smooth surface of the dancing floor that an indulgent post commander had had placed there. Half a dozen young garrison girls, arm in arm and by twos, were strolling about its waxen face awaiting the next piece; and some of them had been importuning the leader, for at the moment, soft and rippling, sweet and thrilling, quick and witching, the exquisite opening strains of "Puckwudjies" ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... the dazzling blue of the delicate little flower of the same species (G. verna ); while the white blossoms of the grass of Parnassus, and the frailer white of the dryade a huit petales, and the modest waxen flowers of the Azalea procumbens and the airelle ponctuee (Vaccineum vitis idaea), tempered and set off the prevailing blue. There were groves, too, rather lower down, of Alpine roses (the first I had come across that year), not the fringed or the green-backed species which botanists ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... were afraid they would not get back in time, and all the insects that are so gay with their humming and booming had disappeared under leaves and stones and grasses. Elinor saw a bee burrowing deep in the waxen trumpet of a foxglove, as if taking shelter, as she walked quickly past. The Hills—there were two middle-aged sisters of them, with an old mother, too old for such diversion as the inspection of wedding-clothes, ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... cried the enraged governor, drawing his sword; "I am no waxen-hearted Hambledon, to be cajoled by your beauty. Declare where Wallace is concealed, or ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... kiss upon her cheek. Once his kisses had left a red waxen stamp; she was callous to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... it. Those hundreds and thousands of degraded human beings locked up in the noisome prisons by indifferent generals, procureurs, inspectors, rose up in his imagination; he remembered the strange, free old man accusing the officials, and therefore considered mad, and among the corpses the beautiful, waxen face of Kryltzoff, who had died in anger. And again the question as to whether he was mad or those who considered they were in their right minds while they committed all these deeds stood before him with renewed force ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... me up to it—at first I saw only the flowers, pale snowdrops and blue violets with green leaves; then I saw a sweet waxen face with ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme

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

... early in the cold morning, a little girl stood ankle-deep in the new-fallen snow in front of the grand house where Lily De Koven with her twelve waxen children lived. ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... Reidmar the Ancient begat me; and now was he waxen old, And a covetous man and a king; and he bade, and I built him a hall, And a golden glorious house; and thereto his sons did he call, And he bade them be evil and wise, that his will through them might be wrought. Then he gave unto Fafnir my brother the soul that feareth nought, And the brow ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... nose, but not the less authentic; and in his old age he had made haste to look at the first sheets of that fine Homer which was among the early glories of the Florentine press. But he had not, for all that, neglected to hang up a waxen image or double of himself under the protection of the Madonna Annunziata, or to do penance for his sins in large gifts to the shrines of saints whose lives had not been modelled on the study of the classics; ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... that we owe such stately caricatures as Blanche Ingram and all the high-born, ill-bred company who gather in Thornfield Hall, like a group fresh from Madame Tussaud's ingenious workshop, and against whose waxen unreality Jane Eyre and Rochester, alive to their very finger-tips, contrast like twin sparks of fire. It was her lack of humor, too, which beguiled her into asserting that the forty "wicked, sophistical and immoral French novels" which found their way down to lonely Haworth ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... vouchsafed-us the healing or the boy." The simpleton then had good wine and comfits brought in, and did the honours to the godfather and his companion in such sort as their occasions did most demand. He then ushered them forth of the house, commending them to God; and without delay had the waxen image made, and directed it to be set up with the others in front of the statue of St. Ambrose, not, be it ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... stranger, Alfred Stevens, had had most followers. All were anxious to know him—the young, in particular, maidens and men; and the grave old dames would have given their last remaining teeth, bone or waxen, to have heard him discourse. There was so much sense and solemnity in his profound, devout looks! he has been made known to them all; he has shaken hands with many. But he has exchanged the speech of sympathy and feeling with but one ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... fingers interlaced, they strolled along with short steps immersed in the hungry and gluttonous tenderness of Eros and Psyche as they lie at length on the nuptial couch in the Farnesina. The close embrace of their gaze fused them into a single being like a waxen group. Philip, leaning against a tree, looked upon them as they passed, stopped, went on and disappeared in the dark. And his heart was full of pity for the ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland

... were reading verses together. Outside the balustrade, Boileau with a pitchfork was preventing seven or eight bad poets from entering, to the amusement and approval of Racine, who was already inside, and of La Fontaine, who was invited to come forward. The likeness of these little waxen images is said to have been perfect, and there can hardly be fancied a relic of that fine society which would be more valuable to us in re-establishing its social character. We know not what became of it in the next generation. No doubt, the wax grew dusty, and the figures lost ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... song Below her pale and waxen face, The water-nymph is dancing by Lifting smooth arms with mournful grace, A stainless white dream she floats on While ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various

... imposing. The first objects to attract attention in this public haunt were life-size wax-figures of two men fighting a duel. One of the figures represented Burr with an aimed pistol in hand, the other Hamilton staggering forward mortally wounded. To Arlington Burr remarked as they passed by the waxen show: ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... at his heels. The two passed through a dark passage-way, and another door, and then, lo and behold! all was changed; for they had come suddenly into such a place as the young man would not have believed could be in such a house, had he not seen it with his own eyes. Thousands of waxen tapers lit the place as bright as day—a great oval room, floored with mosaic of a thousand bright colors and strange figures, and hung with tapestries of silks and satins and gold and silver. The ceiling was painted to represent the ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle

... with a big, beneficent God above the blue, and to love all mankind—not harbouring an angry thought or an ill feeling! He looked into the kind eyes beside him and felt that he should like to be a saint or a minister—not a lawyer, which might be wicked after all. Then he remembered the waxen-faced, choleric clergyman of the church his stepmother attended, but he put the memory away. No, he would not be like that; he would not preach fire and brimstone from a white-pine pulpit. He would be large and just and merciful like God; and Juliet Burwell would come to hear him preach, looking ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... Republican officers, uneasy in mind, questioned each other's thoughts as they awaited the result of this extraordinary scene. In a moment the forks remained inactive in every hand, silence reigned, and every eye was turned to the Gars. A frightful anger showed upon his face, which turned waxen in tone. He leaned towards the guest from whom the rocket had started and said, in a voice that seemed muffled in crape, "Death of my soul! count, is ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... here mayst thou not abide, for if they found thee, surely they would put thee to the dreadful death—ay, to the death by the waxen cloth. Nay, I will hide thee, and, when the funeral rites of the holy Amenemhat have been performed, we will fly hence, and cover us from the eyes of men till these sorrows are forgotten. La! la! it is a sad world, and full of trouble as the Nile mud is full ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... and golden, grew duller than Saturnian lead. And now those eyes shone less and less frequently upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild eyes blazed with a too—too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of the grave, and the blue veins upon the lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the gentle emotion. I saw that she must die—and I struggled desperately in spirit with the grim Azrael. And the struggles of the passionate wife ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... of tongues, the merry laughter, the flashing of bright eyes, and the gleam of snowy shoulders, the good-humored repartees caught as the various couples circled swiftly past, the quick, musical gliding of flying feet over the waxen floor, the continuous whirl of the intoxicating waltz, and over all the inspiring strains of Strauss, caused my heart to bound, and brought with it an ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... of this world. She has lived among horrors till she is become "native and endowed unto that element". She speaks the dialect of despair, her tongue has a snatch of Tartarus and the souls in bale.—What are "Luke's iron crown", the brazen bull of Perillus, Procrustes' bed, to the waxen images which counterfeit death, to the wild masque of madmen, the tomb-maker, the bellman, the living person's dirge, the mortification by degrees! To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul to the quick, to lay ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... her waxen doll one day, And banged it round and round, Then tore its legs and arms away, And threw ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various

... born immediately after the duel, and on the waxen brow of the baby was a crimson stain, slight but significant, which two fingers might have covered. Was this the token of retribution—the threat of vengeance? The gossips' tongues wagged busily. Some said it was Cain's brand, "the iniquity of the fathers visited on the children;" ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... her hair and it hung from her head straight and a little stiff, almost like the hair of an Indian woman. She had washed her face, too, free of all cosmetics and her pallor was almost waxen. She wore a dressing gown of green silk. Her discarded black frock lay upon ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... died if the other did, and that any damage suffered by one was also sustained by its inseparable associate. Sometimes the relation was founded on clearly intelligible grounds, like a resemblance between the thing and the being, as where, to kill an enemy, one pierced a waxen figure supposed to represent him. Or a contact, even merely passing by, was believed to have created indestructible affinities, for instance where the garments of an absent person were operated upon. ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... as they appeared, a new arrival was ushered through the main entrance, followed by porters carrying luggage. He brushed past Francis so closely that the latter looked into his face, half attracted and half repelled by the waxen-like complexion, the piercing eyes, and the dignified carriage of the man whose arrival seemed to be creating some stir in the hotel. A reception clerk and a deputy manager had already hastened forward. The newcomer waved them ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... how to meet my sometimes comical disposition with merry jests; and I remember many pleasant hours which we spent together when he invited me, with mock solemnity, to a /tete-a-tete/ supper, where, with some dignity, by the light of waxen candles, we ate what they call a council-hare, which had run into his kitchen as a perquisite of his place, and, with many jokes in the manner of Behrisch, were pleased to season the meat and heighten the spirit of the wine. That this excellent ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

... of the sick ward all round, indeed, I have little doubt that the large majority would give their vote for Dickens. His pathos, it is true, is too much for them. Their hearts are as waxen as though Mrs. Jarley herself had made them. They are just in the condition to be melted by 'Little Nell,' and overcome by the death of Paul Dombey. They read 'David Copperfield' with avidity, but are careful to avoid the catastrophe of Dora and even the demise of her four-footed favourite. ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... to be kind and courteous to the gentleman, and to feed him with apricots, dewberries, purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries. Then they were to steal the honey-bags from bumble bees for his service, and to crop their waxen thighs, and light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes, to show her love to bed; and further, to pluck the wings from butterflies, to fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes. By Puck's mistake, the love juice was laid in absence of the fair ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... singe for sorewe that y se When y with wypinge bihold upon the tre, Ant se Jhesu the suete ys hert blod for-lete For the love of me; Ys woundes waxen wete, thei wepen, still and mete, Marie reweth me." ANON.: Bucke's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... and looked down at the fallen Medical Officer. His face was waxen, and he looked ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... in the conservatory were alone. A Chinese lantern, swung high up above, shed down a soft radiance upon them. Tall camellia bushes, covered with waxen blossoms and cool shiny leaves, were behind them; banks of long-fronded, feathery ferns framed them in like a picture. Maurice's handsome figure stood up tall and strong amongst the greenery; the dress of the woman he was with lay in ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... Maggie coolly pulled off her long boots and stockings, and comfortably opposed to the fire two very pretty feet and ankles, whose delicate purity was slightly blue-bleached by confinement in the tepid sea-water. The contrast of their waxen whiteness with her blue woolen skirt, and with even the skin of her sunburnt hands and wrists, apparently amused her, and she sat for some moments with her elbows on her knees, her skirts slightly raised, contemplating them, ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

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

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

... where to make your market. Mr. FARNOL, very wisely, plumps for America; and the new story is a thing of millionaires, crooks, graft and the like. But don't go supposing for one moment that these regrettable surroundings have in the smallest degree impaired the exquisite and waxen bloom of our author's sympathetic characters. Far from it. Of the young and oh-so-good-looking millionaire (weary of pleasures and palaces, too weary even to dismiss his preposterous and farcical butler—lacking, in effect, the definite object); of the heroine's young brother, crook ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various

... thrilled with delight. She was a fairy queen who thus graciously smiled on him and chattered blithely as they searched for mayflowers in the fresh spring sunshine. He thought it a wonderful thing that it had so chanced. It overjoyed him to give the choicest dusters he found into her slim, waxen little fingers, and watch her eyes grow round with pleasure in them. When the sun began to lower over the beeches she had gone home with her arms full of arbutus, but she had turned at the edge of the pineland and waved her hand ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... aggravated by the actual crimes of treason and sacrilege. [49] Such vain terrors disturbed the peace of society, and the happiness of individuals; and the harmless flame which insensibly melted a waxen image, might derive a powerful and pernicious energy from the affrighted fancy of the person whom it was maliciously designed to represent. [50] From the infusion of those herbs, which were supposed to possess a supernatural influence, it was an easy step to the use of more substantial ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... whatever character, be they tumuli along the Baltic, fossil skulls and graven bones from the caves of France, the flint implements, pottery, and mummies of Egypt, tablets and bas-reliefs from Mesopotamia, coins and sculptures of Greece and Rome, or inscriptions, waxen tablets, parchment rolls, and papyri of a relatively late period of classical antiquity. If at one time the monuments of Greece and Rome claimed the almost undisputed attention of the archaeologist, that time has long ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... waxen mask, supported on the arm of the chair, remained motionless and gazed with gloomy ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... for New York in a day or two, and to the delight of Flo and Do they were left out of the trunks for Clara to play with on the way, her own waxen Blanche Marie Annabel being too ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... purpose in coming is to see certain old waxen effigies that are here. [In its original form this essay had the good fortune to accompany two very romantic drawings by William Nicholson—one of Queen Elizabeth's effigy, the other of Charles II.'s.] ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... of the day following, when he glided up the sunny Terrebonne towards the parish seat. The shores of the stream have many beauties, but the Acadian's eyes were alert to any thing but them. The deep green, waxen-leaved casino hedges; the hedges of Cherokee rose, and sometimes of rose and casino mingled; the fields of corn and sugar-cane; the quaint, railed, floating bridges lying across the lazy bayou; the orange-groves of aged, giant trees, their dark green boughs grown ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... up the blind, whilst Van Helsing went towards the bed. This time he did not start as he looked on the poor face with the same awful, waxen pallor as before. He wore a look of stern ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... the beechwood by the stream at Macugnaga, mixed with garnet-coloured columbines and fragrant white narcissus, which the people of the villages call 'Angiolini.' There, too, is Solomon's seal, with waxen bells and leaves expanded like the wings of hovering butterflies. But these lists of flowers are tiresome and cold; it would be better to draw the portrait of one which is particularly fascinating. I think that botanists have called it Saxifraga cotyledon; yet, in spite of its long name, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... Ongentheow, That Scylding of battle, the bed-mate behalsed. Then was unto Hrothgar the war-speed given, Such worship of war that his kin and well-willers Well hearken'd his will till the younglings were waxen, A kin-host a many. Then into his mind ran That he would be building for him now a hall-house, That men should be making a mead-hall more mighty Than the children of ages had ever heard tell of: 70 And there ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous

... and cheerless, Jim the newsboy dying lay On a rough but clean straw pallet, at the fading of the day; Scant the furniture about him but bright flowers were in the room, Crimson phloxes, waxen lilies, roses laden with perfume. On a table by the bedside open at a well-worn page, Where the mother had been reading lay a Bible stained by age, Now he could not hear the verses; he was flighty, and she wept With her arms around her youngest, who ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... Sea Company had been established in 1710 by Harley himself, and was going along quietly and soberly enough for the time; but the example of the Mississippi Company was too strong for it. The South Sea Company, too, made to itself waxen wings, and prepared to fly above the clouds. The directors offered to relieve the State of its debt on condition of obtaining a monopoly of the South Sea trade. The nation was to take shares in the company in the first instance, and to deal with the company, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... waxen dolls, and china dolls, And dollies made of gum, Some are small, And some are tall, Some talk and some ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... you something; but meanwhile speak to Benvenuto, and let him also make a model; he can then execute the better of the two designs.' Federigo Ginori came to me and told me what he wanted, adding thereto how Michel Agnolo had praised me, and how he had suggested I should make a waxen model while he undertook to supply a sketch. The words of that great man so heartened me, that I set myself to work at once with eagerness upon the model; and when I had finished it, a painter who ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... himself, and he only performed the required ceremony in the first and seventh years of his pontificate. Standing unmitred, he prayed: "O God,... we humbly beseech thee that thou wilt bless these waxen forms, figured with the image of an innocent lamb,... that, at the touch and sight of them, the faithful may break forth into praises, and that the crash of hailstorms, the blast of hurricanes, the violence of tempests, the fury ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... no speculation in the eye. In all the draperies, the figures, and the faces, in the lovers and the tyrants, the Bacchanals and the Furies, there is the same marble chillness and deadness. Most of the characters of the French stage resemble the waxen gentlemen and ladies in the window of a perfumer, rouged, curled, and bedizened, but fixed in such stiff attitudes, and staring with eyes expressive of such utter unmeaningness, that they cannot produce an illusion for a single moment. In the English ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Mr. Trego, who was with us but a minute ago?" asked Meeker, aghast as he gazed at the waxen ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

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

... a double reason for wishing to see Kalora married. While she remained at home he knew that he would be second in authority. There is an occidental misapprehension to the effect that every woman beyond the borders of the Levant is a languorous and waxen lily, floating in a milk-warm pool of idleness. It is true that the women of a household live in certain apartments set aside as a "harem." But "harem" literally means "forbidden"—that is, forbidden to the public, nothing more. Every villa at ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... metal in place by means of little claws of wax around its entire circumference, attaching them to the walls of the cells which surrounded it. Then they set to work to make three or four cells in the upper part of the disc, attaching them to these waxen claws. Each of these new cells was more or less unfinished at the top, so as to leave material wherewith to fasten it to the next cell, but below on the piece of tin was always three very clear, and precise angles ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... magnificent wax doll, no doubt long the object of unrequited attachment to many a little Avoncestrian, a creature of beauteous and unmeaning face, limpid eyes, hair that could be brushed, and all her members waxen, as far as could be seen below the provisional habiliment of pink paper that enveloped her. Little Rose's complexion became crimson, and she did not utter a word, while her aunt, colouring almost as much, laughed and asked ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... murderous intention is very clear. First they performed incantations to raise a storm to wreck the Queen's ship on her way to Scotland, and the storm which actually arose very nearly effected their purpose. As it failed, however, they betook themselves to the accredited method of melting a waxen image, but they were also ready to use poisons, which were to their minds the most virulent that ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... Come on, my bulchin;[404] come on, my fat ox:[405] Come, porkling, come on; come, pretty twattox.[406] Why, will it not be? yet faster, a cur'sy![407] This gentleman of late is waxen so pursy, As at every land's-end he seeketh to rest him. How think ye? hath not Tenacity trimly ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... extraordinary fairness, nor the rich gold of his hair, nor the blue of his dazzling eyes. The first impression was that he was too beautiful for a man, that he had a woman's beauty, that he had the waxen beauty of a doll; but the firm, decisive lines of the mouth and chin, the overhanging brows, and the luxuriance of his amber moustache, spoke more sternly. Gradually one perceived that beneath the girlish mask, beneath the contours and the complexion incomparably delicate, there ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

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

... struck ten when upon the bridge appeared a man in a light summer coat, of about the same age as the young scientist. His face was pale, of waxen color, without the slightest natural red in his cheeks; his particularly prominent nose indicated his Jewish extraction; his forehead was high and large, his head was strongly developed. He walked straight over to the man who was ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein

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

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

... of Malmsbury calls it a golden style in which was a maucus of gold. "In Alfred's Preface it is called an AEstel of fifty macuses."—V. Asser a Wise, 86 to 175; but the meaning of that word is uncertain. The stylus properly speaking was a small instrument formerly used for writing on waxen tablets, and made of iron or bone, see Archaeologia, vol. ii. p. 75. But waxen tablets were out of use in Alfred's time. The AEstel or style was most probably an instrument used by the scribes of the monasteries, if it was not actually a pen. ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... them into a neat but rather painful little parlour. The walls were decorated with photographs of deceased relatives in oval frames, and encased in glass there was a floral wreath made of hair of different shades and one of white, waxen-looking flowers, with a vaguely mortuary suggestion in their arrangement. There was a basket of wax fruit under a shade on the centre table, a silver ice-water pitcher on a salver, and two photograph albums whose binding ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... heavy rugs which responded with a waxen sheen to the mystic light of the candles, and they were of the sombre hues of the China that passed its zenith many centuries ago. They served to give this place a solemn air ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... thinking, as the general stood there looking at the waxen image of his friend, what a stormy life he himself has passed; how little real tranquillity he can ever have enjoyed, and wondering whether he will be permitted to finish his presidential days in peace, which, according to rumour, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... head hung down, and her long hair in stooping Conceal'd her features better than a veil; And one hand o'er the ottoman lay drooping, White, waxen, and as alabaster pale: Would that I were a painter! to be grouping All that a poet drags into detail O that my words were colours! but their tints May serve perhaps as outlines or ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... a rigid form, stretched out under a white counterpane. All that showed of the face above the bushy whiskers was as waxen looking as if death had already touched it, but the sunken eyes half open, showed that they were still in the mysterious hold of what old Jeremy called a "living death." It was a sight which neither of them could put out of their minds for ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

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

... the purest, coldest, most impersonal monument on earth, looked as gray as the sky, but its outlines were as sharp as at noonday. North often watched it from the window of his Committee Room; he had seen it rosy with the mists of sunset, as dark as granite under stormy skies, as waxen as death. Normally, it was white and pure and inspiring, never companionable, but helpful in its cold and ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... Benvenuto is a man who does not need other people's sketches, as your Excellency will be very well able to judge when you shall see his model." I set hand to the work, and made a drawing for the reliquary, well adapted to contain the sacred phial. Then I made a little waxen model of the cover. This was a seated Christ, supporting his great cross aloft with the left hand, while he seemed to lean against it, and with the fingers of his right hand he appeared to be opening the wound in his side. When it was finished, it pleased the Duke so much that he heaped ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

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

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

... of evening more congenial to Eveline's taste, than the profusion of her aunt's solid refection. When the boards and tresses, on which the viands had been served, were withdrawn from the apartment, the menials, under direction of the steward, proceeded to light several long waxen torches, one of which was graduated for the purpose of marking the passing time, and dividing it into portions. These were announced by means of brazen balls, suspended by threads from the torch, the spaces betwixt them being calculated to occupy ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

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

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

... Morland, lustily English, a Cotman, a Cuyp—cows in twilight—a Reynolds, faded but exquisitely genteel. A lovely little harpsichord—meditating on Scarlatti—stood in one angle, a harp, tied with most delicate ribands of ivory satin powdered with pimpernels, in another. Many waxen candles shed a tender and unostentatious radiance above their careful grease-catchers. Upon pretty tables lay neat books by Fanny Burney, Beatrice Harraden, Mary Wilkins, and Max Beerbohm, also the poems of Lord Byron and of Lord de Tabley. Near the hearth ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens



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



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