"Wreathe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dioica).—Vine-like leaves wreathe round in the hedges, and the pale, whitish flowers give place to graceful clusters of ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... man stirs in his long repose. They wend their way past the haunts of life, Father and daughter, grandmother, wife, To deck with candle and deathless cross, The house which holds their dearest loss. I, who stand on the crest of the hill, Watch how beneath me, busied still, The sad folk wreathe each grave with flowers. Awhile the veil of the twilight hours Falls softly, softly, over the hill, Shadows the cross:- creeps on until Swiftly upon us is flung the dark. Then, as if lit by a sudden spark, Each grave ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... perfect models of design, the most naturally adapted for decorative art—the gaudy leonine beauty of the one and the precious loveliness of the other giving to the artist the most entire and perfect joy. And so with you: let there be no flower in your meadows that does not wreathe its tendrils around your pillows, no little leaf in your Titan forests that does not lend its form to design, no curving spray of wild rose or brier that does not live for ever in carven arch or window or marble, ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... gondola—let Zorzi wreathe A mesh of water weeds about 210 Its prow, as if he unaware Had struck some quay or bridge-foot stair! That I may throw a paper out As you and he go underneath. There's Zanze's vigilant taper; safe are we. Only one minute more to-night with me? Resume your past self of a month ago! Be ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... That all my friends were yours, and all were good; Three generations come when one I call, And the fair grandame, youngest of them all, In her own Florida who found and sips The fount that fled from Ponce's longing lips. How bright they rise and wreathe my hearthstone round, Divine my thoughts, reply without a sound, And with them many a shape that memory sees, As dear as they, but crowned with aureoles these! 50 What wonder if, with protest in my thought, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... not all our songs, O friend, Will make death clear or make life durable. Howbeit with rose and ivy and wild vine And with wild notes about this dust of thine At least I fill the place where white dreams dwell And wreathe an ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the long file of sonneteers There shall be some who will not sing in vain, And he, their Prince, shall rank among my peers,[307] And Love shall be his torment; but his grief Shall make an immortality of tears, And Italy shall hail him as the Chief Of Poet-lovers, and his higher song Of Freedom wreathe him with as green a leaf. But in a farther age shall rise along The banks of Po two greater still than he; The World which smiled on him shall do them wrong Till they are ashes, and repose with me. The first will make an epoch with his lyre, 110 And fill the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... love my husband with all the strength there is in me to love. I hope your wife will love you as well," she added with another smile, a different one, which was exceedingly aggravating to the young man. No other lips could wreathe so with such a mingling of softness and strength, love, and—yes, happiness. Captain Knowlton had seen smiles like that upon those lips once, long ago; never a brighter or more confident ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... hath sent a man to hasten thy cousin back to here,' he said at last, after his eyes had steadily surveyed her face. She sat back in her chair, and the strip of sewing fell to wreathe, white and red and green, round ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... this Name I sing, and breathe A fresh, mysterious air. By this I innocently wreathe ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... horizontal enlargement, by having the corners of the mouth curved upward. Let him write and draw "as funny as he can"; there are dull talking and melancholy pictures in abundance to counterbalance his pleasantry. Let him amuse the children, relax with jocosity the sternness of adults, and wreathe into smiles the wrinkles of old age. Let him, in a word, be a Merry Andrew,—the patron and promoter of frolicsomeness. To be only this is nothing to his discredit; and to esteem him for being only this is not to pay ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... wreathe in my raven hair jewels the rarest That ever illumined the brow of a queen, I should think the least one that were wanting, the fairest, And pout at their lustre in petulant spleen. Tho' the diamond should lighten there, regal ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the flowers of sweet perfume I'll gather for my cousin,—By all the wreaths of myrtle-bloom I'll wreathe her by the dozen,—I call upon that image there To pity my immense despair, And ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... looked, and shivered, she beheld that even there the two phantoms of humanity were not alone. Dim monster-forms that that disordered chaos alone could engender, the first reptile Colossal race that wreathe and crawl through the earliest stratum of a world labouring into life, coiled in the oozing matter or hovered through the meteorous vapours. But these the two seekers seemed not to heed; their gaze was fixed intent upon an object in the farthest space. With the eyes of the spirit, Viola followed ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... my dream the corn Shook under English skies; To wreathe with silvery song the morn I saw the laverock rise; And I saw the Dead by a snow-white thorn, Touched with the blush of a mounting morn, Singing in paradise; And a seraph blew on a golden horn; And I ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... a new way. A story in Ovid will give you the necessary hints. The young Bacchus must be seated in a ship, his head bound with clusters of grapes, and a spear entwined with vine-leaves in his hand: dark-berried ivy must wind about the masts and sails, the oars must be thyrsi, and flowers must wreathe themselves about the poop; leopards and tigers must be crouching before him, and dolphins must be sporting round. But I want to have the fair-haired Ariadne with him, made immortal with her golden crown—that is not in Ovid's story, but ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... wreathe and twine and dance, And wealth and splendor shrivel up before their swift advance. Before their devastating breath the stricken people flee. "Mine, mine your treasures are!" cried Death, and laughs in fiendish glee. Into that vortex of red ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... unities. These passionate tones, always seeking for and surging into each other, are plastic pearls on the string of rhythm, whose proportions may be indefinitely varied at the will of the fond hand which would wreathe them into strands of symmetrical beauty; while words, the vehicles of antagonistic thought, frequently refuse to conform to the requisitions of feeling, are often obstinate and wilful, will not be remodelled, and hard, in their self-sufficiency, refuse to bear any stamp save that of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... superhuman effort of will, he compelled his tottering knees to carry him forward, his sole thought being that he must keep upright until he had fulfilled his errand. When Heideck inquired sympathetically after the nature of his wound, he even attempted to wreathe his pale lips, quivering with pain, into a smile, for in spite of his seventeen years he felt himself at this moment quite a man and a soldier, to whom it was an honour and a delight to die for his country. But his heroic will was stronger than his body, wounded ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... at the same season, they can load their hands and baskets with nothing that compares with our trailing arbutus, or, later in the season, with our azaleas; and, when their boys go fishing or boating in summer, they can wreathe themselves with nothing that ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... ballot-boxes; only reverence for Worth, abhorrence of Unworth. It is the way with all barbarians. Thus Mr. Sale informs me, the old Arab Tribes would gather in liveliest gaudeamus, and sing, and kindle bonfires, and wreathe crowns of honour, and solemnly thank the gods that, in their Tribe too, a Poet had shown himself. As indeed they well might; for what usefuler, I say not nobler and heavenlier thing could the gods, doing their very kindest, send to any Tribe or Nation, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... the swarm of her dreams buzzed too loudly, when her thoughts stopped, she would go to her piano and let her hands fall lightly on the keys, at random, and play softly to wreathe the mirage of life about with the subdued ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... notes of my lament, and the tones of his sorrow wail through the green boughs today, though he has been lying now these two hundred years in England's Sleeping Palace, among silent kings and queens. Fair and fresh and always young is my lost maiden, and "beautiful exceedingly." Her habit was to wreathe her garland with the May, and everywhere she found most hearty welcome; but May has come and gone, and June is still missing. I look longingly afar, but there is no flutter of her gossamer robes over the distant hills. No white cloud ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... chambers moving lights And busy shapes proclaim the toilet's rites; From room to room the ready handmaids hie, Some skilled to wreathe the headdress tastefully, Or hang the veil, in negligence of shade, O'er the warm blushes ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... jewel for a lady's ear, And Mr. Walpole's pretty dear. He laughs and cries with mirth or spleen; He does not speak, but thinks, 'tis plain. One knows his little Guai's as well As if he'd little words to tell. Coil'd in a heap, a plumy wreathe, He sleeps, you hardly hear him breathe. Then he's so nice, who ever saw A drop that sullied his sofa? His bended leg!-what's this but sense?- Points out his little exigence. He looks and points, and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... children, round a snow-white ram,[180] There wreathe his venerable horns with flowers; While peaceful as if still an unweaned lamb, The patriarch of the flock all gently cowers His sober head, majestically tame, Or eats from out the palm, or playful lowers His brow, as if in act to butt, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... forever Keeps its secret, answering never. But the grim old blade shall blossom on this mild Memorial Day; I will wreathe its hilt with roses For the soldier who reposes Somewhere 'neath the Southern grasses in his garb of ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... in troops into the sea, like cattle on a summer's day. There they stand, for all the world like their neighbours ashore; only the salt water sobbing between them instead of the quiet earth, and clots of sea-pink blooming on their sides instead of heather; and the great sea-conger to wreathe about the base of them instead of the poisonous viper of the land. On calm days you can go wandering between them in a boat for hours, echoes following you about the labyrinth; but when the sea is up, Heaven help the man that ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... leads through sorrow To a bright morrow He sought the breath: But which can give The power to live— Whose word alone Can melt the stone, Bid tumult cease, And all be peace! He sought not now To wreathe his brow With laurel bough. He sought no more To gather store Of earthly lore, Nor vainly strove To share the love Of heaven above, With aught below That earth can show The smile forsook His cheek—his look Was cold and sad; And even the glad Return of morn, When the ripe corn Waves ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... said, that, if a grape-vine be planted in the neighborhood of a well, its roots, running silently underground, wreathe themselves in a net-work around the cold, clear waters, and the vine's putting on outward greenness and unwonted clusters and fruit is all that tells where every root and fibre of its being has been silently stealing. So those loves are ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... Youth's steps aright, The Love that blessed its careless hours— Shall they not strengthen for the fight, Then wreathe the Victor's brow with flowers? Yes! and ere from these scenes I go, I've learned what all must come to know— Earth's wisdom is but empty show— "The child ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... in her beloved manuscript. That story, the first-fruits of her young genius, must surely make her purse bulky, and must wreathe her little brow with laurels. That story, too, was to refund poor Poppy the money she had lent, and was to enable Jasmine to live in ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... great is the charm of the pursuit, that the epigaea is really the one wild-flower for which our country-people have a hearty passion. Every village child knows its best haunts, and watches for it eagerly in the spring; boys wreathe their hats with it, girls twine it in their hair, and the cottage-windows ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... nearer sun, a rose of light arises, To clothe my glens with richer clouds of flowers, To paint my clouds with ever new surprises And wreathe with mist ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... and the far-famed barley-corn, To wreathe with bursting wheat-ears that outshine the saffron morn; We'll crown it with a glowing heart, and pledge our fertile land, The ploughshare of old England, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... amid cheering by ourselves and those we left behind. One thousand happier boys than we never started on a journey. We were going home. That was enough to wreathe the skies with glory, and fill the world with sweetness and light. The wintry sun had something of geniality and warmth, the landscape lost some of its repulsiveness, the dreary palmettos had less of that hideousness which made us regard them as very fitting emblems of treason. We even began to feel ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... heart grew chilly, and she knew that it was death. The boy did not notice the change; but when her hand lay cold in his, he looked up with fear. He saw her beautiful eyes looking heavenward, and those smiles which wreathe the lips of the young after death—the sunset ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... has also its vegetation. Its walls are covered with varied plants, which wind along its cornices and wreathe its plinths; they blossom round the oriels, brightening or deepening in the light; they twine through the nerves of the vaulted arch; like the liane of the cedars, they embrace the tall minarets of the heaven-seeking spire, mounting into the blue depths of ether; they bind the clustering shafts ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sweet perfume, Shall wreathe with bloom each terraced wall, And, scattered through the leafy gloom Of olive-groves and laurels tall, Shall many a marble nymph and faun Grow lovelier ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... celestial peace Walketh a gardener in meekness clad; Fair are the flowers that wreathe his dewy locks, And his mysterious eyes ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... speech opened in a quiet, clear, and common-sense way, none expecting more than a good, average effort. But before the speaker had proceeded far, his sentences began to grow intense, and the blood began to shoot upward in deep, livid lines along the neck and face, and wreathe his forehead. All eyes were turned upon him, and each hearer began to feel the kindlings of a strange inspiration. But the speaker was lost to everything except his theme. He dashed on from one burning thought to another, carrying his audience with him, in such storms of eloquence as had never ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... (adjective), humid, moist, damp, dank, sodden, soggy. Wet (verb), moisten, dampen, soak, imbrue, saturate, drench Whim, caprice, vagary, fancy, freak, whimsey, crotchet. Wind, breeze, gust, blast, flaw, gale, squall, flurry. Wind, coil, twist, twine, wreathe. Winding, tortuous, serpentine, sinuous, meandering. Wonderful, marvelous, phenomenal, miraculous. Workman, laborer, artisan, artificer, mechanic, craftsman. Write, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... But the palms grow so close together that their fronds mingle into an almost unbroken roof, through which the sun can scarcely peep, and every air that enters there has the heat charmed out of it, and as it wanders among the broad, aromatic leaves of the betel vines which wreathe the pillars of that fairy hall, it is softened with balmy moisture, and laden with fragrance and scent to woo your senses in perfect tune with the tinkling music of the water and the enchanting beauty of ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... their snowy flocks shall shepherds lead By Babel's silver stream and fertile mead; Or peasant girls at summer's eve repair, To wreathe with wilding flowers their flowing hair; Or pour their plaintive ditties to the wave, That rolls its sullen murmurs o'er thy grave. The wandering Arab there no rest shall find, But, starting, listen ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... Christmas day, Wreathe the holly, twine the bay, Light and life and joy is He— The Babe, the Son, The ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... of crimson velvet, embr. with the ragged staffe in a wreathe of goulde, with my Lo. posie "DROYTE ET LOYALL" written in the same, and the letters R. L. in clothe of goulde, being garnished with lace, fringe, buttons, and tassels of gold, silver, and crimson silck, lyned with crimson taff., being in length 1 ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... woman's lot who, year by year, Sees, one by one, her beauties disappear; As Time, grown weary of her heart-drawn sighs, Impatiently begins to "dim her eyes!" Herself compelled, in life's uncertain gloamings, To wreathe her wrinkled brow with well saved "combings"— Reduced, with rouge, lipsalve, and pearly grey, To "make up" for lost ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... Cypres, but of all other the moste noble Citrus, wherof the Romaines made great deintie. Affrike hath also many sondrie beastes, and Dragones that lye in awaite for the beastes, and when thei se time, so bewrappe and wreathe them aboute, that takyng fro theim the vse of their ioynctes, thei wearie them and kille theim. There are Elephantes, Lyons, Bugles, Pardales, Roes, and Apes, in some places beyonde nombre. There are also Chamelopardales and Rhizes, like vnto Bulles. Herodote writeth, that there ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... EVIL SPIRITS. Rise! rise, spectres and phantoms! Hover near him! Head them and lead them on, thou, the yesterday-buried idol, the shadow of the dead love of the Poet! Bathe thyself anew in the vapors of the ideal realm; wreathe thy mouldering brow with the fair buds of spring; and float on before him, thou, once the beloved of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... wide-flung door Stand mute as men of wood. Gleams like a pool the ballroom floor— A burnished solitude. A hundred waxen tapers shine From silver sconces; softly pine 'Cello, fiddle, mandoline, To music deftly wooed— And dancers in cambric, satin, silk, With glancing hair and cheeks like milk, Wreathe, curtsey, intertwine. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... I'll wreathe around him—he shall breathe My life instead of air; In glowing sunbeams o'er his head My visionary hands I'll spread, And ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... the beauteous train implore 'Midst earth's forsaken scenes once more to bide? Then shall the shepherd sing in every bower, And Love with garlands wreathe the ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... out into the air, and then suddenly look round at her with most fascinating humility; and, then, in a moment, a dark shade would pass over his countenance, and he would look like one possessed, and his lips wreathe in a sinister artificial smile, and his wild eyes glare through and through her with such cunning understanding of himself and her, that, for the first time in her life, she quailed and felt frightened, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... daughters, in Eve's own loving land. The woman-dealer has found among the mountains that perfection in a living form which Praxiteles scarcely realized, when inspired fancy wrought out its ideal in marble. Silken scarfs, as richly coloured and as airy as the rainbow, wreathe her round, from the snowy breast to the finely rounded limbs half buried in billowy cushions; the attitude is the very poetry of repose, languid it may be, but glowing life thrills beneath that flower-soft exterior, from the varying cheek and flashing eye, to the henna-dyed ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... mathematical mind, but only the habitual use of clear terms and close connections. To employ in argument the forms of Whately's Logic would render it probable that you are juvenile and certain that you are tedious; wreathe the chain with roses. The more you have studied foreign languages, the more you will be disposed to keep Ollendorff in the background: the proper result of such acquirements is visible in a finer ear for words; so that Goethe said, the man who had studied but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... uncomely and our features not the prettiest, our spirits may be beautiful. And this inward beauty always shines through. A beautiful heart will flash out in the eye. A lovely soul will glow in the face. A sweet spirit will tune the voice, wreathe the countenance in charms. Oh, there is a power in interior beauty that melts ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... concerned, but, luckily, not difficult of accomplishment. A little chatter about the weather, the merest small change of conversation, especially if that conversation was held between Michael and his father, was sufficient to wreathe her in smiles, and she would, according to habit, break in with some wrecking remark, that entailed starting this talk all afresh. But when she left the room a glowering silence would fall; Lord Ashbridge would pick up a book ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... would care. Yes, he was sure Hirschvogel would care. Had he not decked it all summer long with alpine roses and edelweiss and heaths and made it sweet with thyme and honeysuckle and great garden lilies? Had he ever forgotten when Santa Claus came to make it its crown of holly and ivy and wreathe it all around? ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... oft is seene in warlicke field: Then sets she forth, how with her weapon dredd She smote the ground, the which streight foorth did yield 325 A fruitfull olyve tree, with berries spredd, That all the gods admir'd; then all the storie She compast with a wreathe of olyves ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... "if it were approved, I could mould a little waxen image of our Lord for the altar, and wreathe ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... gaily and gleefully among the maples, oaks, and vines which line and wreathe its banks; rivalling in song the wild birds that linger in the cool ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... earth a lyreless dawn shall know; No moon shall move unharped to her pale home; No midnight wreathe its chain of choric glow But answering eye flash rhythmic to the dome. No path shall lie too deep in forest gloam For the blithe singer's tread; no winds fore'er Blow lute-lorn barks o'er unawakened foam; Nor hidden isle sleep so enwaved but there Shall touch and land ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... steps or phases of still loftier progress. Verily, it is an astonishing world! Change rising above change—cycle growing out of cycle, in majestic progression—each new one ever widening, like the circles that wreathe from a spark of flame, enlarging as they ascend, finally to become lost in the empyrean! And if all that we see, from earth to sun, and from sun to universal star-work—that wherein we best behold images of eternity, immortality and God—if ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... rising, of throwing in a word or keeping silence. Though habitually collected, watchful as the sentinel on whom the safety of others depends and who looks for danger, there were moments when smiles would wreathe her lips and betray the happy nature buried beneath the saddened bearing that was the outcome of her life. Her gift of attraction was mysterious. Instead of inspiring the gallant attentions which other women seek, she made men dream, letting them see ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... the month of May in the year of our Lord 1052. Few were the boys, and few the lasses, who overslept themselves on the first of that buxom month. Long ere the dawn, the crowds had sought mead and woodland, to cut poles and wreathe flowers. Many a mead then lay fair and green beyond the village of Charing, and behind the isle of Thorney, (amidst the brakes and briars of which were then rising fast and fair the Hall and Abbey of Westminster;) many ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stronger" (435. 278, 279); flowers and plants are sometimes associated with ill-luck and death. In Westphalia and Thuringia the superstition prevails that "any child less than a year old, who is permitted to wreathe himself with flowers, will soon die." In the region about Cockermouth, in the county of Cumberland, England, the red campion (Lychnis diurna) is known as "mother-die," the belief being that, if children gather it, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... fear feat grease heap hear heat increase knead lead leaf leak lean least leave meat meal mean neat near peas (pease) peal peace peach please preach reach read reap rear reason repeat scream seam seat season seal speak steam streak stream tea team tear tease teach veal weave weak wheat wreath (wreathe) year yeast ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... no beauty, thou, my child, Save as filled with inward grace; Save a spirit, undefiled, Warm thy heart and wreathe thy face. ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... laurus, a vegetable dedicated to Apollo, and formerly defoliated to wreathe the brows of victors and such poets as had influence at ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... a disadvantage that they have not a saint or hero to crown in effigy as well as a traitor to burn in effigy. I admit that popular Protestantism has become too purely negative for people to wreathe in flowers the statue of Mr. Kensit or even of Dr. Clifford. I do not disguise my preference for popular Catholicism; which still has statues that can be wreathed in flowers. I wish our national feast of fireworks revolved round something positive and popular. I wish the beauty of a Catherine ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... science was first brought in, in its slave's costume, with all its native glories shorn, and its eyes put out 'to make sport' for the Tudor—perilous sport!—these first rude essays of a learning not yet master of its unwonted tools, not yet taught how to wear its fetters gracefully, and wreathe them over and make immortal glories of them—still clanking its irons. There is nothing here to detain any criticism not yet instructed in the secret of this Art Union. But the faults are faults of ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... a mass of naked savages, all struggling to get at him. The death song, which is the song of the oven, was raised, and his expostulations could no longer be heard. But so cunningly did he twine and wreathe his body about his captor's that the death blow could not be struck. Erirola smiled, and the ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... enfeeble them by dissipation. The demands of Truth are severe. She has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that which is so indispensable in Song is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood which, as nearly as possible, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... bird, farewell! and be it thine To thrill the blue air with thy song; But fame will wreathe this brow of mine, If I am right, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... heartfelt thanksgivings for thy free and happy lot ascend to the azure battlements of heaven. Beneath your gaze lie valleys whence rise the morning mists as do the clouds from the richly-perfumed censer, and float over the bosom of the plain ere they wreathe the mountain side; all the bushes sing, every leaf is shining to welcome the glorious sun as he rises majestically over that high dark range, and the bright blue dome of day is revealed in ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... the three brides were assembled for a sweet review after the quiet double marriage at Edgemere, which caused General Wragge's rugged face to wreathe in honest smiles ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... last time we shall meet— Raise your white brow, and wreathe your raven hair, And fill with music sweet the summer air; Not this again shall draw me to your ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... pour through thy spirit Music and might; I wreathe thy pale forehead With halos of light; Though blind, I can show thee Blest forms from above, Floating far through the spaces Of infinite love, Which the angels in heaven and men on the earth Call Beauty. I've sought since the day of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... him and the sunset but a few men clinging to planks and a shot-torn black flag floating on the waves like a rag of seaweed. For rest he would steer to small islands, where singing birds would fly out of woods and perch on the rigging, and brown men would come and run aloft and wreathe the masts with flowers, and shy women with long, loose, black hair would steal out and offer palm-wine in conches, while he smiled aloofly and was gracious. It would not matter where he sailed; at no port in the world would sorrow wait ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... brightness, to the 'squire so dear; This polish'd hardness, that reflects the peer: This arch absurd, that wit and fool delights, This mess, toss'd up of Hockley-hole and White's; Where dukes and butchers join to wreathe my crown, At once the Bear and Fiddle of the Town. "O born in sin, and forth in folly brought! Works damn'd, or to be damn'd; (your father's fault.) Go, purify'd by flames, ascend the sky, My better and more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... would stroll among the rare beds of plants, and culling fresh chaplets for her head, wreathe herself a fragrant garland, ever finding some familiar scent that recalled her far off home in all its freshness. Wearied of this she wandered among the jasper fountains, and watched the play of those waters, the soft and rippling music of which she might not hear, or still further on in the many ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... to the approaching crisis, the interests of the two Powers pointed to opposite courses of action. What France needed was time. It was her policy to put off a rupture, wreathe her face in diplomatic smiles, and pose in an attitude of peace and good faith, while increasing her navy, reinforcing her garrisons in America, and strengthening her positions there. It was the policy of England to attack at once, and tear up the young encroachments while they were ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... portrait of the children's own mother, placed there and wreathed in Christmas greens by Mrs. McAlister's own hands. Old Susan had told her that it had stood there in past years, and, that afternoon, the doctor had come in, to find her bending over to wreathe it with ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... To fix midst gods thy yet unchosen reign— Wilt thou o'er cities fix thy guardian sway, While earth and all her realms thy nod obey? The world's vast orb shall own thy genial power, Giver of fruits, fair sun, and favouring shower; Before thy altar grateful nations bow, And with maternal myrtle wreathe thy brow; O'er boundless ocean shall thy power prevail, Thee her sole lord the world of waters hail, Rule where the sea remotest Thule laves, While Tethys dowers thy bride with all ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... their immediate reappearance. But minute passed after minute and there was no sign of them. That narrow gully appeared to have swallowed them up. And then with a curious gulp and start he saw a little grey cloud wreathe itself slowly from among the rocks and drift in a long, hazy shred over the desert. In an instant he had torn Scott ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... flung her up in the air. She too was caught by the spirit of the thing, and waving her hand above her head she joined in his shout of triumph, and let him drag her along to a corner of the Moon-street where a seller of garlands offered her wares for sale. There she let him wreathe her with ivy, she stuck a laurel wreath on his head, twisted a streamer of ivy round his neck and breast, and laughed loudly as she flung a large silver coin into the flower-woman's lap and clung tightly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and railways, or any thing the fancy of the young architect may dictate; and here is Noah's ark, in miniature, containing himself and family, and many animals. Countless other toys are distributed among my young friends, which make their bright eyes sparkle, and wreathe their lips with smiles. ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... transcription of it. But as a sculptor toils over a single vein till it is perfect, the poet may linger over a word or phrase, and so long as the pulse seems to beat beneath his fingers, no one has a right to accuse him of artificiality. Sometimes, indeed, he is awkward, and when he tries to wreathe his thoughts together, they wither like field flowers under his hot touch. Or, in his zeal, he may fashion for his forms an embroidered robe of such richness that like heavy brocade it disguises the form which it should express. In fact, poets are apt to have an affection, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... I "invented" for grotesque effect, but I always saw Mr. Gladstone without them, for to me his head has never been, as some suppose, a mere block around which to wreathe a fantastic ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... to wreathe thy tomb, One tear: so far, so far am I From what to me and thee was home, And where in all men's fantasy, Butchered, ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... prayer to snatch from harsh captivity The virtuous doom'd—teach but to praise—admire— Forbid to catch one spark of generous fire? The godlike wish of genius, man to bless, With rank and wealth still leaguing to oppress! Oh! when shall glory wreathe bright virtue's claim, And both to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... for the defence of ladies until they enter into difficulties and are shorn of them at a blow, bare as dairymaids), all the body-guard of a young gentlewoman, the drawing-room sylphides, which bear her train, which wreathe her hair, which modulate her voice and tone her complexion, which are arrows and shield to awe the creature man, forbade her utterance of what she felt, on pain of instant fulfilment of their oft-repeated threat of late to leave her to the last remnant of a protecting sprite. She could ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... grave of sadness Ne'er let it be the birth of madness No! banish from our board to night The revelries of rude delight To Scythians leave these wild excesses Ours be the joy that soothes and blesses! And while the temperate bowl we wreathe In concert let our voices breathe Beguiling every hour along With harmony of soul ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots, Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots; Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue, Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fell delusion that overpowered my soul, And blame not me, thy husband; 'tis the curse Of him in whom the power of darkness reigns, That he mistakes the gifts of those he loves For deadly evils. Even though a friend Should wreathe a garland on a blind man's brow, Will he not cast it ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... Wreathe thy brows in amaracus' Fragrant blossom; an aureat Veil be round thee; approach, in all Joy, approach with a luminous Foot, a sandal of ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... twining grasses verdant wreathe Above her silent grave; The rose and violet over all Their purest blossoms wave; Unbidden from their fountains fall The tender tides of tears; A sorrow winds among the days, And chains the ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... unshamed, by each indignant bust, The midnight orgies of promiscuous lust!— Go, lead mankind to Virtue's holy shrine, With morals mend them, and with arts refine, Or lift, with golden characters unfurl'd, The flag of peace, and still a warring world!— —So shall with pious hands immortal Fame Wreathe all her laurels round thy honour'd name, High o'er thy tomb with chissel bold engrave, "THE TRULY NOBLE ARE ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... wreathe thy brow, And I shall fancy that I see, In the bright eye that laughs below, The dark grape on its parent tree. 'Tis but a whim—but, oh! entwine Thy brow with this green ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... alone of all the rest She most esteemed, for he had brought her flowers, To wreathe her tresses and make manifest His sympathy for her, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... There were a thousand knights with weapons well furnished, and all the others to wit guarded well their ships. Then spake Merlin, and discoursed with the knights: "Knights, ye are strong, these stones are great and long, ye must go nigh, and forcibly take hold of them; ye must wreathe them fast with strong sail-ropes, shove and heave with utmost strength trees great and long, that are exceeding strong, and go ye to one stone, all clean, and come again with strength, if ye may it stir." But Merlin ...
— Brut • Layamon
... flower, attaching it to the central virga. This stalk is always twisted once and a half round, as if somebody had been trying to wring the blossom off; and the name of the family, in Proserpina, will therefore be 'Contorta'[49] in Latin, and 'Wreathe-wort' in English. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... he had beheld her, had listened to the sound of her voice, had looked into her eyes. And the glance of those sweet eyes had been responsive; and his ear could detect a subtile note in the tones of her voice. Sweet Lilith! the spells she had begun to wreathe around him, so unconsciously to herself, so unconsciously to him, when first they talked together, were drawn, woven, more thoroughly now. And in his strange, new revivification—the return of strength and health and spirits—he rejoiced that it was so, and laughed, and defied circumstances, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... Wreathe the steed and lead him— For the charge he led Touched and turned the cypress Into amaranths for the head Of Philip, king of riders, Who raised them from the dead. The camp (at dawning lost), By eve, recovered—forced, Rang with laughter of the host ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... devoted to him. He goes, her heart follows him; he comes back, she meets him with smiles; his tears flow not unobserved, they are dried by her hand, and his smiles beam again in hers; for him she gathers flowers, to wreathe around his brow, to strew in his path. He has his own fireside, friends devoted to him, and, counts as his relations all those who have none of their own. He loves, he is beloved; he can make people feel happy, he ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... sniffed the savour of the hissing bacon—ah!—as if he liked it; and when he poured the boiling water in the tea-pot, looked lovingly down into the depths of that snug cauldron, and suffered the fragrant steam to curl about his nose, and wreathe his head and face in a thick cloud. However, for all this, he neither ate nor drank, except at the very beginning, a mere morsel for form's sake, which he appeared to eat with infinite relish, but declared ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... thing whereof the sight No errant yet can boast? Thou hast this torrent but to ford, And, lifting up, alone, The elephant of stone Upon its margin shored, Upbear it to the mountain's brow, Round which, aloft before thee now, The misty chaplets wreathe— Not stopping once to breathe." One knight, whose nostrils bled, Betokening courage fled, Cried out, 'What if that current's sweep Not only rapid be, but deep! And grant it cross'd,—pray, why encumber One's arms with that unwieldy lumber, An elephant of stone? Perhaps the artist may have done ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... an opposite import. Among the Roman world of quality it was currently affirmed that the true merit of having subdued the east belonged to Lucullus, and that Pompeius had only gone thither to supplant Lucullus and to wreathe around his own brow the laurels which another hand had plucked. Both statements were totally erroneous: it was not Pompeius but Glabrio that was sent to Asia to relieve Lucullus, and, bravely as Lucullus had fought, it was a fact that, when Pompeius took the supreme command, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... always for the noblest martyr, My countrymen, ye forge The crown of gold nor wreathe the laurel; One protestant ye count as moral, Neglect another. Take the quarrel Extant between myself and CARTER (Henchman ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... ever forgot or deserted them. A mother's prayers always follow her prodigal children. Go, gather the brightest and purest flowers that bend and wave in the winds of heaven, the roses and lilies, the green vine and immortelles, wreathe them in a garland, and with this crown the brow of the truest of all earthly friends—Mother! Another reason I give for my safe keeping in that hour of darkness and despair: In the city of Atchison, on a bed of pain and anguish, lay my true, devoted ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... even in the summer mood of San Francisco; and sometimes she went up into the tower of the Belmont house and watched the long clouds of dust roll symmetrically down the streets of the city's valleys; or the delicate white mist ride through the Golden Gate to wreathe itself about the cross on Calvary, then creep down the bare brown cone to press close about the tombs on Lone Mountain; then onward until all the city was gone under a white swinging ocean; except the points ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the easy way. Straight it stretches and climbs to where Fame is waiting with garlands gay To wreathe the fighter who clambers there. There's applause in plenty and gold's red gleam For the man who plays on the ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... darkness over me The fourhanded mole shall scrape, Plant thou no dusky cypresstree, Nor wreathe thy cap with doleful crape, But pledge me in ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... within their bosom hide Their rose of love still fresh and fair, And walk in silence, satisfied To keep its folded fragrance rare. And some—who bear a flag unfurled— Wreathe with their rose the flag they bear, And sing their banner for the world, And for ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... special marks: first, you have learned, like Sir Proteus, to wreathe your arms, like a malecontent; to relish a love-song, like a robin-redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his A B C; to weep, like a young 20 wench that had buried her grandam; to fast, like one that takes diet; ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... He comes, who was stricken down Doing the word of our will. Hush! Let him have his state, Give him his soldier's crown. The grists of trade can wait Their grinding at the mill, But he cannot wait for his honor, now the trumpet has been blown; Wreathe pride now for his granite brow, lay love ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... the right of the line, and whose insignia bespoke him to be the commanding officer, General Harero. He sat upon his horse like a statue, with a calm but determined expression upon his features, while a stern smile might be observed to wreathe his lips for an instant at the report of the guns ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... oft, O wife," said Sigurd, "is a war-king clad the best When the peril quickens before him, and on either hand is doubt; Thus men wreathe round the beaker whence the wine shall be soon poured out. But hope thou not overmuch, for the end is not today; And fear thou little indeed, for not long shall the sword delay: But speak, O daughter of Giuki, for thy lips scarce held the word Ere thou sawest the gleam of my hauberk and ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... taboo set up by professionals and puritans, if we have the courage to walk past it as Christian walked between the lions; no real tyranny we could not overthrow, if it were worth while, with a push; no need at all for us to 'wreathe our sword in myrtle boughs.' What tyranny exists has grown up through the quite well-meaning labours of quite well-meaning men: and, as I started this lecture by saying, I have never heard any serious reason given why we should not ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... gray, with wrinkled surface, in the likeness of a wasp's nest, was the match-box. "There," said the stranger, pushing over the cigar-stand, "help yourself, and I will touch you off," taking a match. "Nothing like tobacco," he added, when the fumes of the cigar began to wreathe, glancing from the smoker to the pottery, "I will have a Virginia tobacco-plant set over my grave beside the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville |
