"Vernal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... young girl, who as yet was in a convent for her education. She came out for the purpose of sitting for the picture. I first saw her in an apartment of one of the sumptuous palaces of Genoa. She stood before a casement that looked out upon the bay, a stream of vernal sunshine fell upon her, and shed a kind of glory round her as it lit up the rich crimson chamber. She was but sixteen years of age—and oh, how lovely! The scene broke upon me like a mere vision of spring and youth and beauty. I could have fallen down and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the snowdrops will lift their heads; Ladyday may be expected, and the pecuniary duties peculiar to that feast; in place of bonbons, trees will have an eruption of light green knobs; the whitebait season will bloom ... as if one need go on describing these vernal phenomena, when Christmas is still here, though ending, and the subject ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... few merry notes, as if to make the earliest announcement of his arrival. He is, therefore, the true harbinger of spring, and, though not the sweetest songster of the woods, has the merit of bearing to man the earliest tidings of the opening year, and of declaring the first vernal promises of Nature. As the notes of those birds that sing only in the night come with a double charm to our ears, because they are harmonized by silence and hallowed by the hour that is sacred to repose—in like manner does the Song-Sparrow delight us in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... her beauteous image back From the forgotten things of distant years, Warm, eloquent, and holy, as the balm Of flow'rs impearl'd with dew, which summer skies Diffuse around—I mark the marble brow Of polish'd symmetry, the eyes more blue Than violets in their vernal bloom, the neck Swanlike, and moulded with ethereal grace; And feel their magic influence on my mind. I will embody them, and give the stamp Of fervid genius to their various charms, Ere this last aspiration is extinct ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... the Man who with ennobling pride Beholds not his own nature? where is he Who but with deep amazement awe allied Must muse the mysteries of the human mind, The miniature of Deity. For Man the vernal clouds descending Shower down their fertilizing rain, For Man the ripen'd harvest bending Waves with soft murmur o'er the plenteous plain. He spreads the sail on high, The rude gale wafts him o'er the main; For him the winds of Heaven subservient ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... whispers use Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks, Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes, That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... fearlessness, for wind and sunshine. No wonder that at sight of it even so heartless a person as the present writer is a little touched. But why at sight of those rubicund, full-grown, eupeptic Morris-dancers on the vernal highroad? No obvious pathos was diffusing itself from them. They were Merrie England in full flower. In part, I suppose, my tears were tears of joy for the very joyousness of these men; in part, of envy for their fine simplicity; in part, of sorrow in the thought that they were a survival of ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... back! thou youthful Time, When joy and innocence were ours, When life was in its vernal prime, And redolent of sweets and flowers. Come back—and let us roam once more, Free-hearted, through life's pleasant ways, And gather garlands as of yore— Come ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... year of the earth's changes enters into the creation of the hemp. The planet has described its vast orbit ere it be grown and finished. All seasons are its servitors; all contradictions and extremes of nature meet in its making. The vernal patience of the warming soil; the long, fierce arrows of the summer heat, the long, silvery arrows of the summer rain; autumn's dead skies and sobbing winds; winter's sternest, all-tightening frosts. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... clear. This evening Mr. Thoreau is going to lecture, and will stay with us. His lecture before was so enchanting; such a revelation of nature in all its exquisite details of wood-thrushes, squirrels, sunshine, mists and shadows, fresh, vernal odors, pine-tree ocean melodies, that my ear rang with music, and I seemed to have been wandering through copse and dingle! Mr. Thoreau has risen above all his arrogance of manner, and is as gentle, simple, ruddy, and meek as all ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... a beauty in the white, sunlit landscape spread before me that compelled my glance. To some it might compare but ill with the luxuriant splendour that is of the vernal season; but to me there was a wondrously impressive charm about that solemn, silent, virginal expanse of snow, expressionless as the Sphinx, and imposing and majestic by virtue of that very lack of expression. From Fabriano, at our feet, ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... maternal hearts Must search for balm divine; But well the striplings bore their fated parts (The heavens all parts assign)— Never felt life's care or cloy. Each bloomed and died an unabated Boy; Nor dreamed what death was—thought it mere Sliding into some vernal sphere. They knew the joy, but leaped the grief, Like plants that flower ere comes the leaf— Which storms lay low in kindly doom, And kill them in their ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... in the lap of spring." Snowdrops, crocuses, and little purple grape-hyacinths are blooming at the edge of the drifts. The thorny shrubs and bushes, and spiny herbs like astragalus and cousinia, are green-stemmed but leafless, and the birds that flutter among them are still in the first rapture of vernal bliss, the gay music that follows mating and precedes nesting. Big dove-coloured partridges, beautifully marked with black and red, are running among the rocks. We are at the turn of the ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... in the autumn, and again at the season of sowing in the spring, the shepherds, the vintagers, and the people in general, were accustomed to observe certain sacred festivals, the autumnal sad, the vernal joyous. These undoubtedly grew out of the deep sympathy between man and nature over the decay and disappearance, the revival and return, of vegetation. When the hot season had withered ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... love—where did you go for your walk this morning? Even before I had started for the office you had taken flight from your room, and passed through the courtyard—yes, looking as vernal-like as a bird in spring. What rapture it gave me to see you! Ah, little Barbara, little Barbara, you must never give way to grief, for tears are of no avail, nor sorrow. I know this well—I know it of my own experience. So do you rest quietly until you have regained ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... long evening walk through the vernal Hof Gardens and by the Rhine, and thought of the beauty and splendor of the divine Julia; and sighed, and remembered that he was Mr. Nobody of Nowhere, pictor ignotus, with only one eye he could see with, and possessed of a fortune which invested in the 3 per cents would bring him in just L6 ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... leave-taking. Count Tristan approved of the journey; and, a few moments later, Maurice leaped into the coach, glancing eagerly up at a window, surrounded by a framework of jasmine vines; but no face looked forth; no hand waved a farewell and filled the vernal ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... about the approach of the vernal equinox or the seedsman's catalogue, we wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning. This is an immediate warning and apprisement that something is adrift. Three hundred and sixty-four days in the year we wake, placidly ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... wont fearlessly to alight had been changed into a disgusting expanse of farms. If geese are favored with the long lives in which fable bids us believe, some of these venerable honkers must have seen every vernal and autumnal phase of the transformation from boundless prairie to boundless corn-land. I sometimes seem to hear in the bewildering trumpetings of wild geese a cry of surprise and protest at the ruin of their former paradise. Colonel Woodruff's hired man, Pete, had ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... is to tend the Fair, Not a less pleasing, tho' less glorious care; To save the powder from too rude a gale, Nor let th' imprison'd-essences exhale; To draw fresh colours from the vernal flow'rs; 95 To steal from rainbows e'er they drop in show'rs A brighter wash; to curl their waving hairs, Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs; Nay oft, in dreams, invention we bestow, To change a Flounce, or add ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... 83. Vernal grass. Two males, two females. The other grasses have three males and two females. The flowers of this grass give the fragrant scent to hay. I am informed it is frequently viviparous, that is, that it bears ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... From the old world's divine and distant date, From the sublimer few, Down to the poet who but yester-eve Sang sweet and made us grieve, All come, assembling here in order due. And here I dwell with Poesy, my mate, With Erato and all her vernal sighs, Great Clio with her victories elate, Or pale Urania's deep and starry eyes. Oh friends, whom chance or change can never harm, Whom Death the tyrant cannot doom to die, Within whose folding soft eternal charm I love to ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... Poverty modestly stood at the gate of the palace to gather the fragments of the celestial banquet; when she observed the god of riches, inebriated with nectar, roll out of the heavenly residence, and passing into the Olympian Gardens, throw himself on a vernal bank. She seized this opportunity to become familiar with the god. The frolicsome deity honoured her with his caresses; and from this amour sprung the god of Love, who resembles his father in jollity and mirth, and his mother in his nudity. The allegory ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... particularly dedicated was stamped at times pretty visibly upon the work which was composed in his honor. The Dionysian festivals were the great carnivals of antiquity—they celebrated the returns of vernal festivity or the joyous vintage, and were in consequence the great holidays of Athens—the seasons ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... officer on the subject, What will you do out of the protection of your fleet? In the winter, if together, they are starved—if dispersed, they are taken off in detail. I am experienced in spring hopes and vernal promises: I know what ministers throw out; but at last will come your equinoctial disappointment. You have got nothing in America but stations. You have been three years teaching them the art of war—they are apt scholars; and I will venture to tell your ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... night of the Norris party, the party which is to Woodbridge what the Mardi Gras is to New Orleans, the Carnival to Rome, and what the Feast of the Ygquato Bloom was to the ancient Aztecs. It is always held on the twenty-first of March, Sunday of course excepted, and it is known as the Vernal. Not to be seen at it is too bad. Not to be invited—unlike the lupercals before mentioned it requires invitations—is a blight mercifully spared all but the most painfully outre. Of these the Coogans, who live in Center and whose connubial infelicities ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... rav'd: unhappy youth! Though passion hurried thee so far astray, Thy infant soul ador'd the God of Truth, And virtue usher'd in thy vernal day. ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... with the summer's heats, In courts the wretched lawyer toils and sweats; While smiling Nature, in her best attire, Regales each sense, and vernal joys inspire. Can he, who knows that real good should please, Barter for gold his liberty and ease?"— This Paulus preach'd:—When, entering at the door, Upon his board the client pours the ore: He grasps the ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the sun sink out of sight. Behind great banks of gray and wintry clouds, While feathery snowflakes fill the frosty air, And after quiet sleep may wake next day To see it bathe green fields with floods of light, And dry the sparkling dew from opening flowers, And hear the joyful burst of vernal song, And breathe the ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... drawing (Fig. 28), of a burrow, with its side galleries, of the Andrena vicina, reveals the economy of one of our most common forms. Quite early in spring, when the sun and vernal breezes have dried up the soil, and the fields exchange their rusty hues for the rich green verdure of May, our Andrena, tired of its idle life among the blossoms of the willow, the wild cherry, and garden flowers, ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man; Of moral evil and of good, Than ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... is nigh Where Wisdom's voice has found a listening heart. Amid the howl of more than winter storms, The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Walter's interest increased as the hour approached for their return home. Only when that was decided did he discover how much he longed to be there. For the horror and suffering of the past were a little dimmed already; he thirsted to see his woods and meadows in their vernal dress, to hear the murmur of his river, and move again among familiar voices and ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... girls to a picnic. He may think one cannot have too much of a good thing, and that he holds over the most of the boys who have only one girl, but before the picnic is over he will note the look of satisfaction on the faces of the other boys as they stray off in the vernal shade, and he will look around at his two girls as though his stomach was overloaded. We don't care how attractive the girls are, or how enterprising a boy he is, or how expansive or far-reaching a mind he has, he cannot do justice to the subject if he has two girls. There will be a ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... concluding paragraph of a short article on "Spring Flowers in the South of Europe," as a sample of Mr. Mill's popular manner, as well as for its own sake as a fine description of a matchless scene. He is describing the little mountain range of Albano, beloved of painters, and, after comparing its vernal flora with that in ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... set for their attempt was the fourteenth day before the Kalends of April, a few days before the Vernal Equinox. My gorge rose at the idea of the burning and sacking of Nuceria, even at the slaughter of our cruel guards, overseers and superintendent. The more I thought the matter over the less I liked the ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... walk up and down, and then in exhaustion sank on a chair. He opened the window and looked into the night. He could see nothing. The sky was dark with unmoving clouds, but the fresh air blew gratefully against his face, laden with the scent of the vernal country; a light rain was falling noiselessly, and the earth seemed languid and weary, accepting the moisture with little shuddering gasps ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... said the Griffin, "I never eat between the equinoxes. At the vernal and at the autumnal equinox I take a good meal, and that lasts me for half a year. I am extremely regular in my habits, and do not think it healthful to eat at odd times. But if you need food, go and get it, ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... and closely resemble each other. I am not aware that this bird ever utters a harsh note. His voice, which is one of the earliest to be heard in the spring, is associated with the early flowers and with all pleasant vernal influences. When he first arrives, he perches upon the roof of a barn or upon some still leafless tree, and pours forth his few and frequent notes with evident fervor, as if conscious of the delights that await him. These mellow notes are all the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... and summer gale, In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid, What time, where lucid Avon stray'd, 85 To him the mighty mother did unveil Her awful face: the dauntless child Stretch'd forth his little arms and smil'd. "This pencil take (she said), whose colours clear Richly paint the vernal year: 90 Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy! This can unlock the gates of joy; Of horror that, and thrilling fears, Or ope the sacred source ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... flame;—this it is, that is the true imagination. Shakspeare writes in this poem, as if he were of another planet, charming you to gaze on the movements of Venus and Adonis, as you would on the twinkling dances of two vernal butterflies. ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... three thousand feet or more, as, holding your breath, you gaze straight down the dizzy height from the projecting table rock. El Capitan on the left, the Yosemite Falls dancing down in three great leaps opposite; the Half Dome and Cloud's Rest off to the right, Vernal and Nevada Falls pouring their torrent over the cliffs at your side, the Hetchy-Hetchy Valley, the rolling plateau that stretches back to the perpetual snow and rising peaks behind you. All language falters here. Tongue can never describe, only the soul feels, the awfulness, ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... though it was long before charts were made, or the set of currents taken into account, yet voyages were for the most part accomplished with very tolerable accuracy and safety. An ample commerce grew up under Sidonian auspices. After the vernal equinox was over a fleet of white-winged ships sped forth from the many harbours of the Syrian coast, well laden with a variety of wares—Phoenician, Assyrian, Egyptian[1430]—and made for the coasts and islands of the Levant, the AEgean, the Propontis, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... again is mad with flowers, The long white silence spake, small bird by bird, Blade after blade, amid the song of showers, The grass stole back once more, and there was heard The ancient music of the vernal spheres, Half laughter and ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... equally forward. The meadows are covered with violets, and the gardens with roses: the banks by the side of the road seem one continued bed of cowslips. In plain words, Spring here indeed seems to hold her throne, and to reign in all that vernal sweetness and loveliness which is imputed to her ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... of his youth were over, and he had returned to his old home for life, there came over the settled and brooding darkness of his soul a warm ray of dawn. In some way, as naturally as one meets a fresh wind full of vernal odor and life, yet never marks the moment of its first caress, so naturally, so unmarkedly, he renewed a childish acquaintance with Violet Channing, a dweller in the same quiet valley with himself, though for long years the fine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... vernal beauty seemed but as a portal to the inner shrine, the sanctuary of Southern hospitality. Which hospitality is a separate brand and hath no rival this side the Gates of Pearl. Let all who would feel the surprise of heaven's welcome forego the luxury of a visit to a Southern ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... the world. Let P be a point upon this line. As we have seen, such point is the summit of a very wide cone described in one day by the solar rays. At the equinox this cone is converted into a plane, which, in a vertical plane, intersects the straight line A B. Between the vernal and autumnal equinoxes the sun is situated above this plane, and, consequently, the shadow of P describes the lower curves at A B. During winter, on the contrary, it is the upper curves that are described. It is easily seen ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... stretched the vast metropolis, with its wonderful sky-line sharply outlined by the bright rays of the morning sun. The Goddess of Liberty held her torch aloft as though to guide them in their venture. At the right the hills of Staten Island smiled in their vernal beauty, while at the left, white stretches of gleaming beach indicated the pleasure resorts where the people of the ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... the shore Of pure and silver shells, that lie before, Glittering in the glory of the sun; And Julio hath landed him, like one That aileth of some wild and weary pest; And Agathe is folded on his breast,— A faded flower! with all the vernal dews From its bright blossom shaken, and the hues Become as colourless as twilight air— I marvel much, that she was ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... one I liked better. Watts, he hain't no help to a body, he hain't no aggucation to speak of, an' don't never read none, an' would as soon I'd name his children John, like his ma done him. As I was sayin' there hit wus in the almanac the name 'twould of fitten the baby to a T. Vernal Esquimaux, hit said, March 21, 5:26 A.M. The baby was borned March the 21st, 'tween five an' six in the mornin'. Nex' time I wus to town I hunted up preacher Christie, but he said he couldn't onbabitize her, an' he reckoned Chatenoogy ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... from her lips the ear of reason catches deep-toned words of assurance that death is not the end of life. The hue of the butterfly's wing, "the flower of the grass," the beauty of the vernal year, these all, all teach the sublime truth that "all great endings are but great beginnings." The voice of God from the unrolled page of plainer if not diviner truth, says: "These are not dead, but sleeping—they ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... childhood's uncertain speech, that murmurs only when indigent nature prompts;—and her own parents wondered whence they came in her simplicity, when first they looked upon her kneeling in an unbidden prayer. As one mild week of vernal sunshine covers the braes with primroses, so shone with fair and fragrant feelings—unfolded, ere they knew, before her parents' eyes—the divine nature of her who, for a season, was lent to them from the skies. She learned ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... truly. Sunk is her velvet cheek; her wasted bosom Loses its fulness; e'en her slender waist Grows more attenuate; her face is wan, Her shoulders droop;—as when the vernal blasts Sear the young blossoms of the Madhavi, Blighting their bloom; so mournful is the change, Yet in its sadness, fascinating still, Inflicted by the mighty lord of love On the fair ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... necessity. And they will waste it, it is certain that they will, till education shall have become general, and much more vigorous in discipline. If through a miracle there were to come down on this country, with a sudden, delightful affluence of temporal melioration, resembling the vernal transformation from the dreariness of winter, a universal prosperity, so that all should be placed in comparative ease and plenty, it would require another miracle to prevent this benignity of heaven from turning to a dreadful mischief. ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... childhood, flowed out in graceful memories indulged of the past or the dead, of incidents when life was young and promised to be happy,—gave generous sketches of his rivals,—the high contention now hidden by the handful of earth,—hours passed fifty years ago with great authors, recalled for the vernal emotions which then they made to live and revel in the soul. And from these conversations of friendship, no man—no man, old or young—went away to remember one word of profaneness, one allusion of indelicacy, one impure ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the nursery. Ah, I remember how I loved to wake, And find him singing on the self-same bough (I know it even now) Where, since the flit of bat, In ceaseless voice he sat, Trying the spring night over, like a tune, Beneath the vernal moon; And while I listed long, Day rose, and still he sang, And all his stanchless song, As something falling unaware, Fell out of the tall trees he sang among, Fell ringing down the ringing morn, and rang,— Rang like a golden jewel down ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... the mode of culture for rice in Carolina:—It is sowed as soon as it conveniently can be after the vernal equinox, from which period until the middle, and even the last of May, is the usual time of putting it in the ground. It grows best in low marshy land, and should be sowed in furrows twelve inches asunder; it requires to be flooded, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... complained of the dryness of Protestant ritual and theology, and said that in the Middle Ages there was a unity (Einheit) which ought to be again recovered. All Europe was then one fatherland with a single faith. The period of the Arthursage was the blossoming time of romance, the vernal season of love, religion, chivalry, and—sorcery! He pleaded for the creation of a new Christian, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Sun of life and gladness, That we may see that glorious world of Thine! It shines for us in vain, while drooping sadness Enfolds us here like mist; come, Power benign, Touch our chilled hearts with vernal smile, Our wintry course do Thou beguile, Nor by the wayside ruins let us mourn, Who have th' eternal towers for our ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... 1. Sweet-scented Vernal Grass.—Small growth; yield of hay light. For pastures it is very early, and grows quickly after being cropped, and is excellent for milch-cows; grows well on almost any soil, but most naturally on high, well-drained meadows. It grows in ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... work—indeed, there are certain persons who seem to have required the stimulus of necessity to make them break through an initial indolence of nature. When Johnson found fault with Gray for having times of the year when he wrote more easily, from the vernal to the autumnal equinox, he added that a man could write at any time if he set himself doggedly to it. True, no doubt! But to write doggedly is not to court favourable conditions for artistic work. It may be a finer sight for ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... away along the bushy path, and was presently gone from sight. There is a repentance of good deeds. Bonaventure Deschamps felt it gnawing and tearing hard and harder within his bosom as he strode on through the wild vernal growth that closed in the view on every side. Soon he halted; then turned, and ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... opened their sleepy eyes and stretched their thin forms, there comes the great worldwide army of the birds, whose bright eyes peer at us from tree, thicket, and field, whose brilliant feathers and sweet songs bring summer with a leap—the height of the grand symphony, of which the vernal peeping of the frogs and the squirrels' chatter were only the first notes of ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... May the perfume that communicates to all created beings the intoxicating sense of a new creation; the sense that makes you trail your hand in the water from a boat, and loosen your hair to the breeze while your mind revives with the springtide greenery of the trees? A little plant, a species of vernal grass, is a powerful element in this veiled harmony; it cannot be worn with impunity; take into your hand its shining blade, striped green and white like a silken robe, and mysterious emotions will stir the rosebuds your modesty keeps hidden in ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... All through the vernal afternoon My other neighbour's children skate A wild Bacchantic rigadoon On rollers; nor does it abate Till dark; and then his babies cry What time I fain ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... ten sous, wholesale. The high hills of Languedoc still covered with snow. The horse-chestnut and mulberry are leafing; apple trees and peas blossoming. The first butterfly I have seen. After the vernal equinox, they are often six or eight months without rain. Many separate farm-houses, numbers of people in rags, and abundance of beggars. The mine of wheat, weighing thirty pounds, costs four livres and ten sous. Wheat bread, three sous the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. They no longer soar, and they attain only to a Shanghai and Cochin-China ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... a fine night, the air heavy with the vernal scent of fertile lands, and the deep cobalt of the heavens a glittering, star-flecked dome in a lighter space of which floated the half-disk of the growing moon. Such a moon, she bethought her, ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... List to the vernal breezes! List to the minstrels' strain! 'Tis the poet's song they are singing, And the poet ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Finding my first seed did not grow, which I easily imagined was by the drought, I sought for a moister piece of ground to make another trial in, and I dug up a piece of ground near my new bower, and sowed the rest of my seed in February, a little before the vernal equinox; and this having the rainy months of March and April to water it, sprung up very pleasantly, and yielded a very good crop; but having part of the seed left only, and not daring to sow all that I had, I had but a small quantity ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... with a sort of matlike carpeting. A strain of low music, above and around, undulated as if from invisible instruments, seeming to belong naturally to the place, just as the sound of murmuring waters belongs to a rocky landscape, or the warble of birds to vernal groves. ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... that the girls had chosen for their picnic was ideal. It was a patch of short fine grass near the edge of the cliff, with a bank for a seat. The ground was blue with the beautiful little flowers of the vernal squill, and clumps of sea-pinks, white bladder campion, and golden lady's fingers bloomed in such profusion that the place was like a wild garden. The air was soft and warm, for it was one of those beautiful afternoons in early May when ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... Tournament that Modred finds the beginning of his opportunity. The brief life of the Ideal has burned itself out, as the year, in its vernal beauty when Arthur came, is burning out in autumn. The poem is purposely autumnal, with the autumn, not of mellow fruitfulness, but of the "flying gold of the ruined woodlands" and the dank odours of decay. In that miserable season is held the Tourney of the Dead Innocence, with the ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... his belly tinged With various spots unnumbered, more than those Which paint the Theban (24) marble; horned snakes With spines contorted: like to torrid sand Ammodytes, of hue invisible: Sole of all serpents Scytale to shed In vernal frosts his slough; and thirsty Dipsas; Dread Amphisbaena with his double head Tapering; and Natrix who in bubbling fount Fuses his venom. Greedy Prester swells His foaming jaws; Pareas, head erect Furrows with tail alone his ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... their kindred in Succoth must be ready to go forth with them. There was great rejoicing among the Hebrews, who like those of their blood in the city of Rameses, had assembled in every house at a festive repast on the night of the new moon after the vernal equinox when the harvest festival usually began. The heads of the tribes had informed them that the day of liberation had arrived, and the Lord would lead ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... courting the Muse in shady bowers; waiting the call and inspiration of Genius ... of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the vernal equinox ... when we talk such language or entertain such sentiments as these, we generally rest contented with mere words, or at best entertain notions not only groundless but pernicious.' Reynolds's Works, i. 150. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... send you some verse. I accordingly send you a scrap of recent manufacture, and you will observe that instead of forwarding my epic on Sevastopol, I select something that is fitter for these present vernal love days than the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... "Things in Heaven, Ned, and Things on Earth, and Things under the Earth. The old Story, whereof you have alreadie seen many Parcels; but, you know, my Vein ne'er flows so happily as from the autumnal to the vernal Equinox. Howbeit, there is Something in the Quality of this Air would arouse the old ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... time when everything is glad, Their vernal greenery the fields renew, Each feathered songster chants with livelier tone, And lambkins leap and cloudless skies are blue, And all is gay and cheerful:—I alone Am singularly sad; Mine erstwhile happiness and calm content Yields to a sense ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... There are ten shells, thirteen inches in diameter, rising high in air. There are handfuls of smoke flecking the sky, and a prolonged, indescribable crashing, rolling, and rumbling. You have seen battle-pieces by the great painters; but the highest artistic skill cannot portray the scene. It is a vernal day, as beautiful as ever dawned. The gunboats are enveloped in flame and smoke. The unfolding clouds are slowly wafted away by the gentle breeze. Huge columns rise majestically from the mortars. A line of white—a thread-like tissue—spans the sky. It is the momentary and vanishing mark of ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... back at him and nodded once. From then on they traveled together—the thin gray woman and the big gray tom-cat. Bat learned to know the inside of more stellar bars than even most spacers visit in their lifetimes. He developed a liking for Vernal juice, drank it neat and quick, right out of a glass. And he was always at home on any table where Steena ...
— All Cats Are Gray • Andre Alice Norton
... race, ordained to keep The silent sabbath of a half year's sleep! Entom'd beneath the filmy web they lie And wait the influence of a kinder sky; When vernal sunbeams pierce the dark retreat, The heaving tomb distends with vital heat; The full formed brood, impatient of their cell, Start from their trance, and ...
— The History of Insects • Unknown
... toils, behold the aged steed Contented crop the rich enamell'd mead, Bask in the solar ray, or court the shade, As vernal suns invite, or summer heats invade! But should the horn or clarion from afar Call to the chase, or summon to the war, Roused to new vigour by the well-known sound, He spurns the earth, o'erleaps the opposing mound, Feels youthful ardour in each swelling vein, Darts through ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... to Ninety-Two! A full half-century of story! And now, our Century's end in view. May's back once more in vernal glory, And with it brings your Jubilee, (Punch came to his one year before you!) "Many Returns," Ma'am, may you see, And honoured be the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... ones bringing When Jesus comes. All praise thro' heaven ringing When Jesus comes. All beauty bright and vernal When Jesus comes. All glory ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... the Ecliptic, or apparent orbit of the sun, which they divided into 360 degrees; and quartering these to denote the seasons, they named the cardinal points the Summer and Winter Solstices, and the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes; the former referring to the longest and shortest days of the year; and the latter to the two periods when the days and nights are equal. An abbreviatory sign having been attached to each of these constellations, the great celestial belt ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... however, unsuspected reserves of vitality. He crept out into the sunshine again, basking in the vernal warmth with a sense of luxury, and entering into the gossip of the ditchers with an ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... high bushes and saplings, which served as a screen against the observations of savages passing up and down the river in their canoes. The woods were just bursting into leaf; the spring-flowers filled the air with odor, and chequered the green foliage and grass; the whole scene was full of vernal freshness, life, and beauty. The track which the Jamesons had followed was about midway between the northern and southern routes generally pursued by emigrants, and it was quite unlikely that others ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... to Nature, and the naming of specific objects," says Mr. Gosse,[36] "they substituted generalities and second-hand allusions. They no longer mentioned the gillyflower and the daffodil, but permitted themselves a general reference to Flora's vernal wreath. It was vulgar to say that the moon was rising; the gentlemanly expression was, 'Cynthia is lifting her silver horn!' Women became nymphs in this new phraseology, fruits became 'the treasures of Pomona,' a horse became 'the impatient courser.' The result of coining ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... There vernal breezes fann'd the myrtle shade, Soft odour breath'd, and beams unclouded play'd. No tyrant winter e'er despoil'd the grove, 10 Bid feather'd warblers end the note of love, Or bound the murm'ring rill in icy chains. Eternal verdure crown'd the blissful plains; No labour Earth requir'd, ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... is when the thrushes sing, When gently stirs the vernal breeze, When earth and sky proclaim the spring; When all the fields melodious ring With cuckoos' calls, when all the trees Put on their green, then art thou ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... is interrupted by a deep canon leading in a nearly southeast direction. Through this canon comes the Middle Fork, and along its banks lies our course to the great "Pi-wi-ack" (senselessly Englished as "Vernal") and the Nevada Falls. For three miles from our camp opposite the Yo-Semite Fall the canon is threaded by a trail practicable for horses. At its termination we dismounted, sent back our animals, and, strapping their loads ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... the instruction at St. Denis and the consecration at Chartres were followed on the day of the vernal equinox by a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... compliment to the brides, were celebrated after the Persian fashion, and during the vernal equinox. For at no other period, by the ancient laws of Persia, could nuptials be legally celebrated. Such an institution is redolent of the poetry and freshness of the new world, and of an attention to the voice of nature, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... The golden sunshine, vernal air, Sweet flowers and fruits, thy love declare; When forests ripen Thou art there, ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... the wind and the driving snow, or when in a calm and lucid interval of genial weather we hear him sing, if possible, more richly than before. His song reminds us of a coming season when the now dreary landscape will be clothed in a blooming garb befitting the vernal year—of the song of the Blackbird and Lark, and hosts of other tuneful throats which usher in that lovely season. Should you disturb him when singing he usually drops down and awaits your departure, though sometimes he merely retires to a neighboring ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... the mind in sleep; But breathe the vernal air! Our hours may thus improvement reap, And who has ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array, But winter, lingering, chills the lap of May; No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast, But meteors glare, and ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Their neighbours summoning, a mightier host And braver, natives of the continent, Expert, on horses mounted, to maintain Fierce fight, or if occasion bade, on foot. 60 Num'rous they came as leaves, or vernal flow'rs At day-spring. Then, by the decree of Jove, Misfortune found us. At the ships we stood Piercing each other with the brazen spear, And till the morning brighten'd into noon, Few as we were, we yet withstood ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... difference? Whence but from himself? For see the universal Race endowed With the same upright form. The sun is fixed And the infinite magnificence of heaven Fixed, within reach of every human eye; The sleepless ocean murmurs for all years; The vernal field infuses fresh delight Into all hearts. Throughout the world of sense, Even as an object is sublime or fair, That object is laid open to the view Without reserve or veil; and as a power Is salutary, or an influence sweet, Are each ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... conceives it. Larger tasks are discharged by more important spirits, and everything natural thus becomes animated by supernatural beings. Thor was the god of thunder; Freia the goddess of spring and vernal awakening; Athena inspired the minds of men. Venus and Aphrodite played their special parts, also. But such powers as these, established by the untutored mind, needed to be accounted for, and so in the more advanced religions ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... like a bird that sings At morning on a vernal bough! The springtide at the heart of things Sang as the spring knows how. And fair was she, and both were young; We knew not what made time so good; Nature with glamour-tutored tongue Spread ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... Anthoxanthum Gracila.—Sweet vernal grass. It is graceful and ornamental, and is used for edgings. Sow in spring, keeping the seed moist until ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... autumnal festival, the Sun-fte Mihrgn (which balanced the vernal Nau-roz) into Michaelmas and its goose-massacre. It was so called because it began on the 16th of Mihr, the seventh month; and lasted six days, with feasts, festivities and great rejoicings in honour of the Sun, who now begins his southing-course to gladden ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... incidents in the inner life as the growth of the grass anew, the bursting of the bud, or the soft awakening of the zephyr. Even within the house, the languors of the fire drowsing on the hearth, the broad bar of sunshine across the puncheon floor, so slowly creeping away, the sense of the vernal lengthening of the pensive afternoon, the ever-flitting shadow of the wren building under the eaves, and its iterative gladsome song breaking the fireside stillness, partook of the serene beatitude of the season and the hour. The visitor's drawling voice ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... with their vernal beauty rife, To all the Gospel preach, The Resurrection and the Life, In ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... he called twining her vernal wreath around the brows of patriot Hope. He concluded with some cautionary lines whose epithets ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... grimy cabins. So cold was the wind that it is noted in my diary with surprise, on the 12th of April, that I had worn fur cap, parkee, and muffler all day, as though it had been the dead of winter instead of three weeks past the vernal equinox. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... and sunlit chasm came a mocking, joyous hail—up through the sheer, misty gulf out of vernal depths: Cuck-oo! ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... miracle we read of is turning water into wine. This may be seen in a threefold aspect. The Sun-God changes by his life- forces the waters of winter into the rich vintage of the harvest, where the Virgin (Virgo) Mother again appears. Again, the wine becomes the blood—the life offered up on the vernal cross to strengthen, renew and make merry with new life our Earth and its people. The devil (or winter), with his powers of darkness, is defeated and man saved. The final triumph is the crucifixion in Aries, the vernal equinox, ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... the peerless panorama of Ireland's portfolio, unmatched, despite their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted prize regions, for very beauty, of bosky grove and undulating plain and luscious pastureland of vernal green, steeped in the transcendent translucent glow of our ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... that great State, and proud of it and its condition, may join in congratulating you, gentlemen, on the establishment of this "Southern Society of New York." After the long season of strife and discontent this is one of the many signs which mark the vernal equinox, and foretell the coming summer. I believe, notwithstanding the infinite disasters of the war, the overthrow of slavery, and with it all the industrial system of the South, and the needless loss and the humiliations of reconstruction—I believe that there is to-day a kinder and more ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... village across the remains of trees shortened and sliced that now looked like young saplings. Better even than just now, the sun shed on that white and red accumulation of mingled material an appearance of life and even an illusion of meditation. Its very stones seemed to feel the vernal revival. The beauty of sunshine heralded what would be, and revealed the future. The face of the watching soldier, too, shone with a glamour of reincarnation, and the smile on it was born of the springtime and of hope. His rosy cheeks and blue eyes ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... given, in L'Art de verifier les dates, of a date in which the year is reckoned from the 18th of March; but it is probable that this refers to the astronomical year, and that the 18th of March was taken for the day of the vernal equinox. In Germany, about the 11th century, it was usual to begin the year at Christmas; and this practice also prevailed at Milan, Rome and other Italian cities, in the 13th, 14th ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... within that bosom These seeds of holiness, and bid them blossom In fragrance and in beauty bright and vernal, And spring eternal. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... had set, he wept and mourned, and sadly flowed his tears. Who in this world is free from grief and tears? Then, clothed in sable garments, like one oppressed who seeks redress, he, agitated, and weeping like a vernal cloud, hastened to the grave of Layla; but, as he o'er it hung, ask not how swelled his soul with grief; while from his eyes the tears of blood incessant flowed, and from his sight and groans the people fled. Sometimes he mourned with grief so deep and sad that from his woe the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston |
