"Cowslip" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... such height As from their tops the warlike Isle of Wight You in the ocean's bosom may espy, Though near two furlongs thence it lie. The pleasant way, as up those hills you climb, Is strewed o'er with marjoram and thyme, Which grows unset. The hedgerows do not want The cowslip, violet, primrose, nor a plant That freshly scents: as birch, both green and tall; Low sallows, on whose blooming bees do fall; Fair woodbines, which about the hedges twine; Smooth privet, and the sharp-sweet eglantine, With many ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... said he, "that His Majesty is out of danger: and bath permitted the Duke to tell the foreign ministers so. They have had another consultation on him; and have prescribed God knows what! Cowslip and Sal of Ammoniac, sneezing mixtures, plasters for his feet; and he is to have broth and ale to his supper. They are determined to catch hold of his disorder somehow, if not by one thing then by another. To tell the truth I think they know not at all what is the matter with him. ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... Mrs. Cowslip, you are kind; My little folks, I know, Will be so very pleased to come; Dears—tell ...
— Marigold Garden • Kate Greenaway
... child is to me, for a cowslip only! How can I be grateful enough to such a mother as this?" said Susan to herself, as she bent over her sleeping ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... flowers grow; Little girls in meadows go; Little lambs frisk with delight, And in the green grass sleep at night. Little birds sing all the day, Oh, in such a happy way! All the day the sun is bright, Little stars shine all the night. The Cowslip says to the Primrose, "How soft the little Spring wind blows!" The Daisy and the Buttercup Sing every time that they look up. For beneath the sweet blue sky They see a pretty Butterfly; The Butterfly, when he looks down, Says, "What a pretty ...
— Marigold Garden • Kate Greenaway
... may therefore be eaten alone in their proper Vehicles, or Composition with other Salleting, sprinkl'd among them; But give a more palatable Relish, being Infus'd in Vinegar; Especially those of the Clove-Gillyflower, Elder, Orange, Cowslip, Rosemary, Arch-Angel, Sage, Nasturtium Indicum, &c. Some of them are Pickl'd, and divers of them make also very pleasant and wholsome Theas, as do likewise the Wild Time, Bugloss, ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... 61. Dodecatheon, American Cowslip. Five males and one female. The males, or anthers, touch each other. The uncommon beauty of this flower occasioned Linneus to give it a name signifying the twelve heathen gods; and Dr. Mead to affix his own ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... the fields grew green in May, They sent my little pet away To pasture, where the brooks were flowing Through yellow beds of cowslip flowers, Where purple violets were growing, And scented blossoms fell in showers From off the shading chestnut-trees, And daisies nodded in the breeze: And many mates my lambkin found, As young and gay as he, And all day long they frisked ...
— The Nursery, February 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet,— With the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet! For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want And the walk that costs ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... then the cowslip's hangen flow'r A-wetted in the zunny show'r, Do grow wi' vi'lets, sweet o' smell, Bezide the wood-screen'd graegle's bell; Where drushes' aggs, wi' sky-blue shell, Do lie in mossy nest among The thorns, while they do zing their zong ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... ones, such as buttercups, sow-thistle, plantain, wormwood, chickweed, charlock, St. John's wort, violets and many others, all closely allied to our common plants of those names, but of distinct species. There was also a honey-suckle, and a tall and very pretty kind of cowslip. None of these are found in the low tropical lands, and most of them only on the tops of these high mountains. Mr. Darwin supposed them to have come there during a glacial or very cold period, when they could have spread over the tropics and, as the heat increased, gradually rose up the mountains. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... exotic in American poetry, to say nothing of the snowdrop and the daisy. Its prominence in English poetry can be understood when we remember that the plant is so abundant in England as to be almost a weed, and that it comes early and is very pretty. Cowslip and oxlip are familiar names of varieties of the same plant, and they bear so close a resemblance that it is hard to tell them apart. Hence Tennyson, in ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... Blue Eye, Plantain, and Buttercup have had the scarlet fever, but came easily through it. Huckleberry, Milkweed, and Dandelion were attacked with the whooping cough, but bore it bravely, and kept out of doors whenever the sun shone. Cowslip, during the autumn, had either the measles, or some eruption that looked very much like it, but was hardly sick a day. Poor Clover has been a good deal troubled with her second teeth, which have made her meagre in aspect and rather fractious in temper; nor, even when ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Until it happed, a-walking in the fields, He noticed all at once that plants could speak, Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him. That day the daisy had an eye indeed— Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes! We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose. But by the time youth slips a stage or two While reading prose in that tough book he wrote (Collating and emendating the same And settling on the sense most to our mind), We shut the clasps and find life's summer past. Then, ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... his friends, drink barley wine, and eat their trout or chub. They encounter milkmaids, who sing to them and give them a draft of the red cow's milk, and they never cease their praises of the angler's life, of rural contentment among the cowslip meadows, and the quiet streams of Thames, or Lea, or ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... "Gulliver's Travels" (greatly abridged, 1815), "Mother Gum" (1805), "Anecdotes of a Little Family" (1795), "Mirth without Mischief," "King Pippin," "The Daisy" (cautionary stories in verse), and the "Cowslip," its companion (with delightfully prim little rhymes that have been reprinted lately). The thirty illustrations in each are by Samuel Williams, an artist who yet awaits his due appreciation. A large ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... freshness of a country so completely carpeted with verdure; where every air breathed of the balmy pasture, and the honey-suckled hedge. I was continually coming upon some little document of poetry, in the blossomed hawthorn, the daisy, the cowslip, the primrose, or some other simple object that has received a supernatural value from the muse. The first time that I heard the song of the nightingale, I was intoxicated more by the delicious crowd of remembered associations than by the melody of its notes; and I shall never forget the ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... chamber thus: the flame o' th' taper Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids To see th' enclosed lights now canopied Under the windows, white and azure, laced With blue of Heav'ns own tinct—on her left breast A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I' th' bottom of a cowslip." ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... having nothing at all to do. She grew absolutely interested in such infinitesimal facts as the arrival of a barrel of salt sprats, the sprained ankle of Mark Milksop [a genuine surname of the time] of the garrison, the Governor's new crimson damask gown, and the solitary cowslip which his shy little girl offered to Bertram ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... Meadow Buttercup, Tall Crowfoot or Cuckoo Flower; Tall Meadow Rue; Liver-leaf, Hepatica, Liverwort or Squirrel Cup; Wood Anemone or Wind Flower; Virgin's Bower, Virginia Clematis or Old Man's Beard; Marsh Marigold, Meadow-gowan or American Cowslip; Gold-thread or Canker-root; Wild Columbine; Black Cohosh, Black Snakeroot or Tall Bugbane; White Bane-berry ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet— With, the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet! For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want, And the walk ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... will awake no throb of transport in my veins. But will it be less bright on that account? Will the lamb be saddened in the field? Will the lark be less happy in the air? The sunshine will draw the daisy from the mound under which I sleep, as carelessly as she draws the cowslip from the meadow by the riverside. The seasons have no ruth, no compunction. They care not for our petty lives. The light falls sweetly on graveyards, and on brown labourers among the hay-swaths. Were the world depopulated to-morrow, next spring would break pitilessly bright, flowers would ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the May Day of 1259, one of the brightest days of the calendar. The season was well forward, the elms and bushes had arrayed themselves in their brightest robe of green; the hedges were white and fragrant with may; the anemone, the primrose, the cowslip, and blue bell carpeted the sward of the Andredsweald; the oaks and poplars were already putting on their summer garb. The butterflies settled upon flower after flower; the bees were rejoicing in their labour; their work glowed, and the sweet ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... her four sisters, Mary, Elizabeth, Sarah, and Martha, after they quitted their school in Park-Street, Bristol, at a small neat cottage in Somersetshire, called Cowslip Green. The Misses M. some years afterward built a better house, and called it Barley Wood, on the side of a hill, about a mile from Wrington. Here they all lived, in the highest degree respected and beloved: their house the seat ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... and shallow in the cowslip marshes Floods the freshet of the April snow. Late drifts linger in the hemlock gorges, Through the brakes and mosses trickling slow Where the Mayflower, Where the painted trillium, leaf ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... you will be able to see Valentine in the morning. You had best take a little diacodion and cowslip-water, and lie upon your ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... Spring, thou darling of the year! Ilk cowslip cup shall kep a tear: [catch] Thou, Simmer, while each corny spear Shoots up its head, Thy gay green flow'ry tresses ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... many bottles," said the doctor with a humorous look in his eyes. "It wouldn't have mattered if it had been aunt's cowslip wine, but it always chose ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... stillness of the unimpassioned rock, they share also its endurance; and while the winds of departing spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its cowslip gold, far above among the mountains, the silver lichen-spots rest star-like on the stone, and the gathering orange stain upon the edge of yonder western peak reflects the sunsets of a ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... noontide recess came, And when't was over, ah, sad disgrace, The teacher, seeing an empty place, Marked "truant" against his name; While he, forgetful of book or rule, Sought only a tree to climb: For where is the boy who remembers school When the cowslip blows by the marshy And ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... them thrown at her head, as the children did at the last wedding, when a great cowslip ball hit the bride in the eye. So I told the mistress to show them how, and the other day we found them in two ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... deeper sense, Herrick has little or none. Here are no "tears from the depth of some divine despair," no probings into the tragic heart of man, no insight that goes much farther than the pathos of a cowslip on a maiden's grave. The tendrils of his verse reach up to the light, and love the warmer side of the garden wall. But the reader who does not detect the seriousness under the lightness misreads Herrick. Nearly all true ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... objects which throng our youth, we see and hear, quite as a matter of course. But what of it, if you could tell what they mean? The German Boehme, with his affinities for the abstract, never cared for plants until, one day, he noticed they could speak; that the daisy colloquized with the cowslip on SUCH themes! themes found extant in Jacob's prose. But when life's summer passes while reading prose in that tough book he wrote, getting some sense or other out of it, who helps, then, to repair our loss? Another Boehme, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... wander at will where the Works of the Lord are revealed, Little guess what joy can be got From a cowslip out ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... words of proper length and much the same phrases that had done duty for Eastlake and Sir Martin Shee. Fortunately, the amiable people included some very young people, so young that they could properly compel Kendal to go into the fields with them and make cowslip balls, and some robust girls of eighteen and twenty, who mutely demanded the pleasure of beating him at tennis every afternoon. He was able in this way to work off the depression that visited him daily with the damp odor of London art, criticism, quite ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... more properly belongs to the primrose than cowslip. The root is haumatic, and helps pains in the back. The herb is cephalic, neurotic, and arthritic. The juice or essence, with spirits of wine, stops all manner of fluxes, is excellent against palsy, gout, and pains, and distempers of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... the gay mead The daisy and cowslip appear! The flocks, as they carelessly feed, Rejoice in the spring of the year; The myrtles that shade the gay bowers, The herbage that springs from the sod, Trees, plants, cooling fruits, and sweet flowers, All rise to the praise ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... young people visited all the beautiful tents, and the great ballroom where there was to be a ball that night, and the princes whispered to the maidens that they would dance with no one else. When they had tasted the cowslip wine from the fountains and eaten lots of wonderful sweets the daffodils declared they were quite tired; so the princes put them into hammocks with little monkeys to swing them, and the happy hours wore on until ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... morning star, day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose. Hail, bounteous May! that dost inspire Mirth and youth with warm desire; Woods and groves are of thy dressing, Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing. Thus we salute thee with our early song, And welcome thee ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... circles gemm'd the freckled ground. Beside the porch, beneath the friendly screen Of two tall trees, a mossy bank was seen; And all around, amid the silvery dew, The wild-wood pansy rear'd her petals blue; And gold cups and the meadow cowslip red, Upon the ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... "The Brandywine cowslip you dropped, when you spoke to me in the lane. Then it was that you showed me the first step of ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... He said I was to take them to the cowslip meads, and not to stir from there until he came back ...
— Laugh and Play - A Collection of Original stories • Various
... is not absolutely necessary to go to England for the hawthorn. Any one who cares to go a-Maying along the banks of the Hudson, in the neighbourhood of Peekskill, will find it there. But for the primrose and the cowslip you must cross the sea; and, if you come upon such a wood as I strayed into, my last visit, you will count it worth the trip. It was literally carpeted with clumps of primroses and violets (violets that smell, too) so thickly massed together in the mossy ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... serve to remind us of certain vague longings and aspirations now proved to be as false as they were vain. Art is not an orchid: it cannot grow in the air. Unless its root can be traced as deep down as Yggdrasil, it will wither and vanish, and be forgotten as it ought to be; and as for the cowslip by the river's brim, a yellow cowslip it shall be, and nothing more; and the light that never was on sea or land shall be permanently extinguished, in the interests of common sense and economy, and (what is least inviting of all to the unregenerate mind) we shall speedily get rid of ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... at the light, The meads are dappled with the yellow hue, In daisied mantle is the mountain dight, The tender cowslip ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... never forget hearing Darwin's paper on the structure of the Cowslip and Primrose, after which even Sir Joseph Hooker compared himself to Peter Bell, ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... their endless imagery. Sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned rock, they share also its endurance; and while the winds of departing spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its cowslip gold,—far above, among the mountains, the silver lichen spots rest, star-like, on the stone: and the gathering orange stain, upon the edge of yonder western peak, reflects the sunsets ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... in white wedding favours, Scented with celestial savours— Daisies, like sweet country maidens, Wear white scolloped frills to-day; 'Neath her hat of straw the Peasant Primrose sitteth, Nor permitteth Any of her kindred present, Specially the milk-sweet cowslip, E'er to leave the tranquil shade; By the hedges, Or the edges Of some stream or grassy glade, They look upon the ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... honest scholar, no life so happy and so pleasant as the life of a well-governed angler; for when the lawyer is swallowed up with business, and the statesman is preventing or contriving plots, then we sit on cowslip-banks, hear the birds sing, and possess ourselves in as much quietness as these silent silver streams, which we now see glide so quietly by us. Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling, as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, " Doubtless God could ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... No cowslip bright, or hyacinth that clings Close to the earth, from whence it springs; Nor tulip, gay as ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... came a blooming Boy in robe of green; On his fair brow a flowery crown was seen, Where the pale Primrose with the Cowslip vied, And fragrant Violets shone in purple pride. Upon a Bull he rode, whose horns were gay With many a golden flower and budding spray. Around him every vernal Songster fled, While the Lark soar'd and whistled o'er his head. And now ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... the prone swing, Made blossom-ball or daisy-chain, arranged Her garden, sow'd her name and kept it green In living letters, told her fairy-tales, Show'd here the fairy footings on the grass, The little dells of cowslip, fairy palms, The petty marestail forest, fairy pines, Or from the tiny pitted target blew What look'd a flight of fairy arrows aim'd All at one mark, all hitting: make-believes For Edith and himself: or else he forged, But that was later, boyish histories Of battle, ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... berries on her holly, the may in her hedgerows. Are not all these bound up in our souls with each cherished line of Shakespeare and Wordsworth? do they not rouse faint echoes of Gray and Goldsmith? Even before I ever set foot in England, how I longed to behold my first cowslip, my first foxglove! And now, I have wandered through the footpaths that run obliquely across English pastures, picking meadowsweet and fritillaries, for half a lifetime, till I have learned by heart every leaf and every petal. You ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... the latter of the figures was a maritime nation, the figure was spread abroad and perpetuated. Next, in the North we see the imagination that placed a colony of trolls under every hill, a tiny creature under every "cowslip's bell," and a separate spirit in every little stream, peopling also the outer ocean with its creatures; and here the perfect idea of the Mermaid, with its various beneficent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... birds come to share the beauty with you, and their singing seems a part of the very peace and quiet of it all. The old-fashioned flowers are set out in the old-fashioned way. There are (or once were) the prim squares, each with its cowslip border, and the stiffly regular little hedgerows. One may hunt them all out now; but for so many generations have shrub and vine and plant lived together here, that a good deal of formality has been dispensed with, and across old lines bloom mingles ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... Pilgrims to settle at Plymouth. You can make your companion look up into your eyes by telling her what you know or pretend to know about Priscilla, and pretend that the Puritan maid gathered cowslips for her cowslip wine on the shores of the said "very sweet brook." This, and more chat of the same order, will suffice to hold the dear one's attention until you are pretty sure that if you say, "Shall we walk along to Pilgrim Hall and see the relics?" ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... fears are these! How oft Hath not my Asdolf boldest feats achieved And aye returned, unharmed and beautiful! Yes, beautiful, alas! like this cold flower That proudly glances on the frosty pane. Short is the violet's, short the cowslip's spring;— The frost-flowers live far longer: cold as they The beautiful should be, that it may share The splendor of the light without its heat; For else the sun of life must soon dissolve The hard, cold, shining pearls to liquid tears; And ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... green: The cowslips tall her pensioners be; In their gold coats spots you see; Those be rubies, fairy favours, In those freckles live their savours: I must go seek some dew-drops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... primrose, cowslip and daffodilly, The hare-bell blue, the crimson cullumbine, Sage, lettis, parsley, and the milke-white lilly, The rose and speckled flowre cald sops-in-wine, Fine pretie king-cups, and the yellow bootes, That growes by rivers and by ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... like a walking door-mat, with a fierce and droll countenance, and by her side a girl and boy, the one sickly and poorly clad, the other with bright inquiring eyes, striving to compensate for the want of other faculties. She was teaching them to form that delight of childhood, a cowslip ball, the other children supplying her with handfuls of the gold-coated flowers, and returning a pull of the forelock or a bobbed curtsey to her ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... none of these can claim So much goodwill as you; Their lips put not to shame Cowslip ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... castles and flower gardens on the tops of them, and the charming shapes of gold and ruby-coloured jellies. There were wonderful bonbons which even the Mayor's daughter did not have every day; and all sorts of fruits, fresh and candied. They had cowslip wine in green glasses, and elderberry wine in red, and they drank each other's health. The glasses held a thimbleful each; the Mayor's wife thought that was all the wine they ought to have. Under each child's plate there was a pretty ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip's bell I lie: There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily, shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 40 And, grasping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul for grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, 45 The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf or a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace, The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 50 And lets his illumined being o'errun ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... I call: who do ye call? The maids to catch this cowslip ball: But since these cowslips fading be, Troth, leave the flowers, and, maids, take me. Yet, if that neither you will do, Speak but the word and I'll ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... Himalayas, gentians from the Swiss Alps, and Dryas Drummondi from the Canadian Rockies for his rock garden, but he does not fail to take advantage of some of the common things near-by—even the "pale primrose" and the cowslip. ...
— Making A Rock Garden • Henry Sherman Adams
... and for close association with him. When they are seen after this manner, it is sure that the early men have set them, just as Shakespeare, at the same epoch, set violets blue and daisies pied, cowslip, rosemary "for remembrance," and other familiar dainties, in the grim foundation stones of ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... borrow Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?— A lover would not tread A cowslip on the head, Though he should dance from eve till peep of day— Nor any drooping flower Held sacred for thy bower, Wherever he may ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... 'Crinum capense' is much more fertile when crossed by a distinct species than when fertilised by its proper pollen! On the other hand, the famous Gaertner, though he took the greatest pains to cross the primrose and the cowslip, succeeded only once or twice in several years; and yet it is a well-established fact that the primrose and the cowslip are only varieties of the same kind of plant. Again, such cases as the following are well established. The female of species A, if crossed ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... appeared. Later on, Mrs. More published some Sacred Dramas, but after the death of Garrick she abandoned dramatic writing, her views leading her to take up what was called, in her day, "strict behavior," of which she now became the apostle. On her literary profits she retired to Cowslip Green, near Bristol, and later on to Barley Wood, where she was joined by her sisters, who were enabled to retire on the handsome profits of their school. But neither "strict behavior" nor anything else could weaken Hannah's hold on her day and generation: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... (now a pensioned servant, whose hair is as white as Peggy's) all over the estate, and also oft beyond it, with comfortable matters for the sick and poor. Most commonly there are a couple of stone bottles filled with cowslip, currant, ginger, or elderberry wine, slung before him over the well-worn saddle—to the carrying of which Peggy has got so accustomed, that she does not go comfortably without them. She has so fallen into the habits of old Jones, who is an inveterate gossip, (Madam having helped to make him ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... Ferny Fan, Cowslip, Hecate, Caliban, Filibuster, Jonathan,— Name them all who may, who can; For the half has not been told Of the branches I behold On the honored parent-stem, And the later ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... apink variety of which is sometimes met with, the pink cyclamen-like flower, Erythronium Dens Canis L. with its trefoil-like and spotted leaves; in shady places the Primrose, Primula acaulis All.; everywhere over the summit of the mountain the Cowslip, Primula veris; two species of Gentian, Gentiana verna and G. acaulis L.; Ophrys fusca Link, also a species of Asphodel, Asphodelus albus Willd.; Saxifraga cuneifolia; Sempervivum arachnoideum L.; and lastly, in shady dells, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... time, before the faery broods Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods, Before King Oberon's bright diadem, Sceptre, and mantle, clasp'd with dewy gem, Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip'd lawns, The ever-smitten Hermes empty left His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft: From high Olympus had he stolen light, On this side of Jove's clouds, to escape the sight 10 Of his great summoner, and made retreat Into a forest on the shores of Crete. For somewhere in that sacred ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... thrones: Sabaean Empress! in her breast, though small, Beauty and infinite sweetness sweetly dwell, Inextricable. Or dost dare prefer The Woodbine, for her fragrant summer breath? Or Primrose, who doth haunt the hours of Spring, A wood-nymph brightening places lone and green? Or Cowslip? or the virgin Violet, That nun, who, nestling in her cell of leaves, Shrinks ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... its side, and there softly leaning over it, fresh green meadows lie reposing in the settled meaning of the summer day. For this is a safer time of year than the flourish of the spring-tide, when the impulse of young warmth awaking was suddenly smitten by the bleak east wind, and cowslip and cuckoo-flower and speedwell got their bright lips browned with cold. Then, moreover, must the meads have felt the worry of scarcely knowing yet what would be demanded of them; whether to carry an exacting load of hay, or only to ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... of the Judas-tree, and several varieties of larkspur, and in low thickets are found the white adder's-tongue and the dwarf white trillium. At the West, the interesting anemone called Easter or Pasque flower, from its blossoming near Easter; and another beautiful Western flower is the American cowslip, called also the shooting-star, which is found in Pennsylvania as well as on Western prairies. The following is a list of some of the flowers of May, with the localities in which they ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... "Cowslip-tea," was No. 4's answer, laying her hand on the fat pink tea-pot; and thereupon the laughing explosion went off nearly as loudly as before, though for no accountable reason that Aunt ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... garden, stored with pease, and mint, and thyme, And rose and lilly for the sabbath morn? The sabbath bells, and their delightful chime; The gambols and wild freaks at shearing time; My hen's rich nest through long grass scarce espied; The cowslip-gathering at May's dewy prime; The swans, that, when I sought the water-side, From far to meet me came, spreading ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... that as a remedy against the dejection caused by myrrh we may apply the 'hymelsloszel' (Himmelschluessel), which is—or appears to be—Primula officinalis, the cowslip, whose bunches of fragrant yellow blossoms are to be seen in moist woods and meadows. This plant is 'warm,' and imbibes its qualities from the light. Hence it can drive away melancholy, which, says St. Hildegarde, spoils men's good manners, making them utter speech contrary to God, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... What, dead my Doue? O Piramus arise: Speake, speake. Quite dumbe? Dead, dead? A tombe Must couer thy sweet eyes. These Lilly Lips, this cherry nose, These yellow Cowslip cheekes Are gone, are gone: Louers make mone: His eyes were greene as Leekes. O Sisters three, come, come to mee, With hands as pale as Milke, Lay them in gore, since you haue shore with sheeres, his thred ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the appointed hour; "And for the Queen a fitting bower," Quoth he, "is that fair cowslip flower On Hient Hill that bloweth; {100} In all your train there's not a fay That ever went to gather may But she hath made it, in her way, The tallest there ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... was there— The wind flow'r and the primrose pale, On bank or copse, and orchis rare, And cowslip covering Wroxhall dale. ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... more, no more, since thou art dead, Shall we e'er bring coy brides to bed, No more, at yearly festivals, We cowslip balls Or chains of columbines shall make, For this or that occasion's sake. No, no! our maiden pleasures be Wrapt in thy winding-sheet ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... he said subsequently to a friend at the "Cowslip Inn." "You and me couldn't talk like that. It ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Quarts of Brandy, of Balm, of Wood-Betony, of Pellitory of the Wall, of sweet Marjoram, of Cowslip-Flowers, Rosemary-Flowers, Sage-Flowers, Marigold-Flowers, of each of these one handful bruised together; then take one Ounce of Gromwell seeds, one Ounce of sweet Fennel seeds, one Ounce of Coriander ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley
... images, and to their natural connection with the time and place to which they were assigned. In the poetry of our enlightened times, the characteristics of all seasons, soils, and climates may be blended together with much benefit to the author's fame as an original genius. The cowslip of a civic poet is always in blossom, his fern is always in full feather; he gathers the celandine, the primrose, the heath-flower, the jasmine, and the chrysanthemum all on the same day and from the same spot; ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... neighed the lordly horse, And white flocks browsed and bleated. A rich turf Of grasses brought from far o'ercrept thy bank, Spotted with the white clover. Blue-eyed girls Brought pails, and dipped them in thy crystal pool; And children, ruddy-cheeked and flaxen-haired, Gathered the glistening cowslip ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... been consuming ginger-snaps and apricots since early morning. After asking plaintively for the fiftieth time how long it would be before dinner, he finally succumbed to his weariness, and dropping his yellow head, that was like a cowslip ball, in his ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in every hour's recall, And the last cowslip in the fields we see On the same day with the first corn-poppy. Alas for hourly change! Alas for all The loves that from his hand proud youth lets fall, Even as the beads of a ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... The daisy is not a flower at all. It is a favourite trap in botanical examinations, a snare for artless young men entering the medical profession. Each of the little yellow things in the centre of the daisy is a flower in itself,—if you look at one with a lens you will find it not unlike a cowslip flower,—and the white rays outside are a great deal more than the petals they ought to be if the Innocence theory is to hold good. There is no such thing as an innocent flower; they are all so many ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... hue of his plentiful and curly hair, indistinguishable to Mary and Cynthia, now stood revealed as neither black, nor red, nor auburn, nor brown, nor golden, but just, and rather surprisingly, a plain yellow, the color of a cowslip or thereabouts. Altogether rather a rum-looking fellow! This had been Alec Naylor's first remark when the Rector of Sprotsfield pointed him out, as a possible fourth, at the golf club, and the rough justice of the description could not be denied. ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... from forgetting amid this phantasmagoria of heroes and demigods. While honoring the exploits of Cadmus and Cynoegirus, I hardly ever failed, on Sundays and Thursdays [the weekly half-holiday in French schools], to go and see if the cowslip or the yellow daffodil was making its appearance in the meadows, if the Linnet was hatching on the juniper bushes, if the Cockchafers were plopping down from the wind shaken poplars. Thus was the sacred spark kept aglow, ever brighter ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... croak upon the chimney-tops, And the strange cricket i' th' oven sings and hops, When yellow spots do on your hands appear, Be certain then you of a corse shall hear. Out upon 't, how 'tis speckled! h' 'as handled a toad sure. Cowslip water is good for the memory: Pray, buy ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... to come off, and the queen of the fairies sent six of her pages to Dooros Wood to catch fifty butterflies with golden spots on their purple wings, and fifty white without speck or spot, and fifty golden, yellow as the cowslip, to make a dress for herself, and a hundred white, without speck or spot, to make dresses for ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... ran a little west of south; just before rounding Diver's Rock its direction was near due east, so that the down tide at the turn carried them well over towards the eastern shore. That was what they wanted, as Cowslip's mill was on that side. So keeping just far enough from the shore to have the full benefit of the ebb, they fell softly and quick down the river; with a changing panorama of rocks and foliage at their side, the home promontory of Shahweetah lying in sight just north ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... lifted my wife in my arms and laid her upon it and lashed her to it with the rope. She smiled like a child, then closed her eyes. "I have gathered primroses until I am tired," she said. "I will sleep here a little in the sunshine, and when I awake I will make you a cowslip ball." ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... letters has time made! What a number have here dropped off, and left the poor surviving seven unattended! For my own part, four are all I have to take care of; and I'll be judged by you, if any man could live in less compass. Well, for the future, I'll drown all high thoughts in the Lethe of cowslip-wine; as for fame, renown, reputation, take 'em, critics! If ever I seek for immortality here, may I be damn'd, for there's not much danger in a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... education Youth of Hannah More Her accomplishments Teaches school Intimacy with great men Shines in society Wearied of it Her ridicule of fashionable gatherings called society Retirement to Cowslip Green Her patrons and friends Labors in behalf of the poor Foundation of schools Works on female education Their good influence Their leading ideas Christian education Removal to Barley Wood Views of society Her ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... marsh was a treacherous spot, and the tragic story was told of a cow who got in there and sank till nothing was visible but a pair of horns above the mud, which suffocated the unwary beast. For this reason it was called "Cowslip Marsh," the wags said, though it was generally believed to be so named for the yellow flowers which grew there in great profusion ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... scaled off the trunks of fallen trees, bearing me with it when I was least on my guard, or the trunks themselves, solid enough to all appearance, crushed to powder beneath my unwary tread. Even the stone walls deserted me. I made use of one as a bridge, one day, to reach a golden cowslip that grew temptingly in a swamp; but a treacherous stone rolled off with me, and a perfect avalanche of huge rocks followed, splashing the muddy water all over me as I sat, helplessly, buoyed up by the tall grass. I regret to ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... the bee sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On a bat's back I do fly After summer merrily: Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... time Cowslip calved, the darling choosing the one night old Burton was away and Jim down with flu. She had to hold the lantern. Straw littered in the half-lighted shed. Cowslip swinging her bald-faced head round to you, her humble, sorrowful ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... perpendicularly, the slanting light paints broad reaches of water a brilliant dazzling white, unrelieved by shadow or reflection. The green of the masses of jungle on the river banks takes to itself a paler hue than usual, and the yellow of the sandbanks changes its shade from the colour of a cowslip to that of a pale and early primrose. It was on such a white morning as this that Imam Bakar crossed slowly to meet his fate. His dug-out grounded on the sandbank, and when it had been made fast ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... cowslip Should hang its golden cup, And say, "I'm such a tiny flower, I'd better not grow up." How many a weary traveller Would miss its fragrant smell! How many a little child would grieve To lose ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... write? but then I think, And for my soul I cannot sleep a wink. I nod in company, I wake at night, Fools rush into my head, and so I write. F. You could not do a worse thing for your life. Why, if the nights seem tedious—take a wife: Or rather truly, if your point be rest, Lettuce and cowslip wine: Probatum est. But talk with Celsus, Celsus will advise Hartshorn, or something that shall close your eyes. Or, if you needs must write, write Caesar's praise, You'll gain at least a knighthood, or the bays. P. What? like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough, and ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... star, Day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and loads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose. Hail beauteous May that dost inspire Mirth, and youth, and warm desire; Woods and groves arc of thy dressing, Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing. Thus we salute thee with our early song, And welcome ...
— Two Festivals • Eliza Lee Follen
... who had gone to Cowslip lane to meet the march, were running on ahead, and shouting as they ran: "There's forty men, and sumpter-mules! and, oh, the bravest banners and attire—and the trumpets are a cloth-yard long! Make room for us, make room for ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... which one would think were securely appropriated, are often common property. Our authority for the above details—the Dictionary of English Plant-names, by James Britten and Robert Holland—tells us that Orchis mascula, the 'male orchis', is also called Cowslip, Crowsfoot, Ragwort, and Cuckoo-flower. This plant, however, seems to have suggested to the rustic mind the most varied fancies, similitudes of all kinds ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... bee sucks, there sack I; In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now, Under the blossom ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... female plant, though very abundant, is more transparent, and each granule is exactly only 2/3 of the size of the pollen of the so-called male plant. Has this been observed? I cannot help suspecting [that] the cowslip is in fact dioecious, but it may turn out all a blunder, but anyhow I will mark with sticks the so-called male and female plants and watch their seeding. It would be a fine case of gradation between an hermaphrodite and unisexual condition. Likewise a sort of case of balancement of long and ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... the last fastness and abiding-place of the unknown. Rude corduroy roads threaded the wilderness in parts, and from this Red-Sea sort of passage the lad had peered and questioned in delicious fear. Even now the man had but to shut his eyes to recall it with the senses of the boy. Cowslip, wood violet, and Jack-in-the-pulpit bloomed again, the scent of mint was in his nostrils, fairy lakes lured amidst the ferns, and the way wound through lofty halls whose wonderful pillars set foot in emerald pools and sprang in vaulting hung high with wild grape. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... below the cowslip bank, see the billow dances; There I lay, beguiling time—when I liv'd romances; Dropping pebbles in the wave, fancies ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... regretted the sad change in "hunting people" since her young days, when they "used to come in and chat with me as affable as could be." She mentioned the name of Mr. Wroughton, who partook of some of her "cowslip wine," and so much was she impressed with the visit that every small detail of it, even the year, month, day and hour, and also where he sat in her parlour, remains a treasured memory. He made a friend who will always speak of him in the highest terms, because he ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... had blown, and the rains had rained, and the sun had shone on her, indeed, and had warmed the whiteness of her limbs, but they had only given to her body and her soul a hardy, breeze-blown freshness like that of a field cowslip. ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... when the green kirtle of May time, Again o'er the hill-tops is blown, I shall walk the wild paths of the forest, And climb the steep headlands alone— Pausing not where the slopes of the meadows Are yellow with cowslip beds, Nor where, by the wall of the garden, The hollyhocks lift their bright heads. In hollows that dimple the hill-sides, Our feet till the sunset had been, Where pinks with their spikes of red blossoms, Hedged beds of blue violets in, While to the warm lip of the sunbeam The ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... We made cowslip balls sitting on the grass. The babies had never seen such things nor had imagined anything half so sweet. The Hirschwald is a little open wood of silver birches and springy turf starred with flowers, and there is a tiny stream meandering ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... light, Hushed the cowslip breath! Going, darling, in the night? Spare—oh, spare her, Death! Dying—is it so? Oh, it must not be! Can my one poor treasure go? Give her back to me, Give her back to me: Or take me too,—left alone, Now my little one is gone; Ah, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... things; perhaps it was the larks springing up from the clover in such an ecstasy of song; or perhaps it was the clasp of a baby's hand on his finger. He noticed the spring beauty round him as he had not noticed such things for many a day, stooping to pick a big, tasselled, gold-freckled cowslip, and stopping to let a newly-fledged, awkward, young bird hop clumsily out of the way, with a sort of tenderness and consideration for young ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... dreaming, sexless spirits of air and wood, to go back to his tiresome dukedom, and his petty court, and all the dull chatter and business of life. I am sure that Shakespeare thought of his art as an Ariel—that dainty, delicate spirit, out of the reach of love and desire, that slept in cowslip-bells and chased the flying summer on the bat's back, and that yet had such power to delude and bemuse the human spirit. After all, Ariel could not come near the more divine inheritance of the human heart, sorrow and crying, love and hate. ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... from bloom to bloom the bee begins With flying song, and cowslip wine he sups, Where to the warm and passing southern winds, Azaleas gently swing their yellow cups. Soon everywhere, with glory through and through, The fields will spread with every brilliant hue. But high o'er all the early floral train, Where softness ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson |
