"Feathery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is very cold, the clouds turn to snow instead of rain. The feathery flakes fall slowly through the air and form a soft white mantle over the earth. Those that fall on lofty mountains form great banks which may not entirely melt and turn to water until late ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... refreshing. Not a ripple stirs the water, save that caused by the paddles of the Indian crew. Clumps of the light and exquisitely graceful assai-palm shoot up everywhere on either side from the denser forest. Here and there the drooping bamboo dips its feathery branches into the water, covered sometimes to their very tips with the purple of convolvuli; yellow bignonias carry their golden clusters to the very summits of some of the more lofty trees; while white-flowering myrtles and orange-coloured mallows border the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... the ground in a crouching position. He seemed to be smothering in a mass of black cinders that rose up in a feathery cloud all about him. ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... make up for things missed or half seen? Still, impressions are wonderful; and I shan't forget the bluebell colour of distant hills, the silver-gray of rocks, and the diamond-dazzle of water glimpsed between feathery tree branches, or the jewelled gleam of wild flowers scattered by the roadside, and the pale flame of mulleins straight and tall as lighted ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... will tell you what you want to know. There is no curse on you. The Temple of the Monkey was either a coincidence or a part of the trick; the trick was the trick of a white man. There is only one weapon that will bring blood with that mere feathery touch: a razor held by a white man. There is one way of making a common room full of invisible, overpowering poison: turning on the gas—the crime of a white man. And there is only one kind of club that can be thrown out of a window, turn in ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... good tower or spire to relieve and dignify it. In front there are several pointed windows, a small circular hole above for birds' nests, two doorways with a window between them, a central surmounting gable, and a couple of feathery-headed perforated turrets, one being used as a chimney, and the other as a belfry. There is only a single bell at the church, and it is pulled industriously on Sundays by a devoted youth, who takes his stand in a boxed-off ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... done by hand. Men and donkeys carry the grain to smooth, hard ground spaces, where it is threshed by a heavy roller stone drawn by a donkey or an ox or by men, and several times I saw it drawn by women. Then it is winnowed by being pitched into the air for the wind to drive out the feathery chaff. The methods vividly illustrate the first Psalm and other Bible references— gleaning, muzzling "the ox when he treadeth out the corn,'' the threshing floor and "the chaff which ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... sweet music made by its rippling waters, as they rush rapidly along the shallow channel, fretting at the rocks that obstruct its course, and racing toward a precipice, down which it plunges, some thirty or forty feet, forming a light, feathery cascade; and then, as if exhausted by the leap, creeping sluggishly its little distance toward the broad Hudson. The white spray, churned out by the friction against the air, and flung perpetually upwards, suggested to our sires a name for this miniature Niagara; and, without any regard ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... woods With the flowers to play. The flowers they plucked They cast on the ground For others, and those For still others they found. Flower-guided it was That they came as they ran On something that lay In the shape of a man. The snow must have made The feathery bed When this one fell On the sleep of the dead. But the snow was gone A long time ago, And the body he wore Nigh gone with the snow. The fairies drew near And keenly espied A ring on his hand And a chain at his side. They knelt in the leaves And eerily played With the glittering things, ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... find that the Turnerian promontories and banks are always simply right, and that in all respects; that their gradated curvatures, and nodding cliffs, and redundant sequence of folded glen and feathery glade, are, in all their seemingly fanciful beauty, literally the most downright plain speaking that has as yet been uttered about hills; and differ from all antecedent work, not in being ideal, but in being, so to speak, pictorial ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... dinner four of us set out. This first excursion was quite a solemn affair; so much depended on it. The weather was of the very best, calm with brilliant sunshine, and a few light, feathery clouds in the beautiful, pale blue sky. There was warmth in the air which could be felt, even on this immense ice-field. Seals were lying along the ice-foot as far as the eye could reach — great, fat mountains of flesh; food enough to last us ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... of it she began to long secretly for Starker's Millinery Saloons. In the saloon you walked looking beautiful through a flowery and a feathery grove of hats. You had nothing to do but to try hats on and to sell them, and each sale was a personal triumph for the seller. Violet knew she could sell more hats than any other of the girls at Starker's; she knew she had ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... with gilded arms and silken cushions. The walls were set with carvings and perforated work. Here hung bars of musical bells; there stood great jars and vases; everywhere were fantastic furnishings of silks and costly metals. Feathery green bamboos grew in dragon pots. In the corners ...
— Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth
... have few plants of more interest than this; its beautiful feathery bloom is but little inferior to the plumage of the celebrated Bird of Paradise. It is frequently worn in ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... for a few spasmodic moments. But it seemed needless and impertinent to toil, when noiselessly and without any show of energy the water was bearing us on, over rich reflections of illumined cloud and blue sky, and shadows of feathery birches, bearing us on so quietly that our passage did not shatter any fair image, but only drew it out upon the tremors of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... islands is greatly increased by the date-palm, with its gracefully curved fronds and refreshing light green color, near the bottom of the picture, and the lofty palmyra towering far above, and casting its feathery foliage against a cloudless sky. It being winter, we had the strange coloring on the banks which many parts of African landscape assume. The country adjacent to the river is rocky and undulating, abounding in elephants and all ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... highly skim With wheeling flight the water's brim; Wave in blue sky his silver sail Aloft, and frolic with the gale, Or sink again his breast to lave, And float upon the foaming wave. Oft o'er his form your eyes may roam, Nor know him from the feathery foam, Nor 'mid the rolling waves, your ear On ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... Soon the east end of the priory chapel was visible, basking in the broad light of the harvest moon, then riding up full and unclouded towards her zenith. Buttress and oriel were weltering in her beam, and the feathery pinnacles sprang out sharp and clear into the blue sky. The shadows were thrown back in masses deep and unbroken, more huge in proportion to the unknown depths through which the eye could ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... thy table-plains through bristling rows of giant aloes, whose sparkling juice cheers me on my path. I stand upon the limits of eternal snow, crushing the Alpine lichen under my heel; while down in the deep barranca, far down below, I behold the feathery fronds of the palm, the wax-like foliage of the orange, the broad shining leaves of the pothos, of arums, and bananas! O that I could again look with living eye on these bright pictures, that even thus palely outlined ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... this very dog breasted the blast before a sledge in the Wellington Channel.[202] Look at that wondrous sloth, organised for a life in a Brazilian forest—those two restless Polar bears; and though last, not least, those wonders of the great deep, "the sea-anemones," the exquisite red and white "feathery" tentacles of the long cylindrical-twisted serpulae, and marvellously-transparent streaked shrimps, all leg, and feeler, and eye, and "nose"—in the salt-water tanks in the Vivarium.—A. ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... day, when the beds have ceased To cater for your daily feast, You'll see—the after growth is fair— A green and feathery forest there, And "here," you'll say, "is what shall cheer My palate in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... highest peaks soared in a transparency of amethystine light beneath a blue sky traced with filaments of windy cloud. Some storm must have disturbed the atmosphere in Italy, for fan-shaped mists frothed out around the sun, and curled themselves above the mountains in fine feathery wreaths, melting imperceptibly into air, until, when we had risen above the cembras, the sky was ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... in her lap, either a sickly pup or a grieving-eyed mother dog whose babies had been taken away from her. Such tiny creatures, even the mother dogs— those little Blenheim spaniels! Snub-nosed, round-headed with long silky flopping ears, soft curly coats and feathery tails. Felice liked the yellow and white ones, and always reached for them, but her grandfather coolly "weeded them out," as Zeb expressed it, because the Trenton ideal was a ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... of which are injurious to crops, are commonly thought to feed on clothes and carpets. The true carpet and clothes moths are minute species, which flutter noiselessly about our apartments. Their narrow, feathery wings are edged with long silken fringes, and almost the slightest touch ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... and still a youth, being but forty years of age, vide his ears. His height was ten feet at the shoulder, and would the mem-sahib note the perfect slope of the back down to the beautiful, long, feathery tail. Also the massive chest and head, with the prominent lump between the eyes so bright and kind, and full of knowledge. Notice also the deep barrel, and short, so very short, hind legs, the heaviness of the trunk, the plump cheeks which would indeed ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... on the opposite bank of the river, a shallow and stony bedded back-water meeting it at its junction with the main stream. Down this back-water in July the heavy cart-horses drag the sweet-scented haywains knee deep and axle deep in water, leaving feathery wisps of hay hanging from the willows, and clinging to the tall rushes upon either hand, the waggoner bravely astride the leader, while haymakers and children are seated on top of the load, not a little nervous in mid-stream, and clinging tightly when the horses are struggling ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... very slowly, a sprig of southernwood in his hand; then after going by he stopped and turned, and approaching me in a shy manner and without saying a word offered me the little pale green feathery spray. I took it and thanked him, and we entered into conversation, when I discovered that his little mind was as bright and beautiful as his little person. He loved the flowers, both garden and wild, but above everything he loved the birds; ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... least cold, nor sleepy! She felt as happy and light-hearted as possible, and she wished it was morning, that she might get up. Yet the moment she laid her little brown curly head on the pillow, she fell asleep; and it seemed to her that just as she dropped off a soft feathery wing brushed her cheek gently and a tiny ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... the ranks of charred trunks cast only thin strips of shade, while a scorching sun poured down an almost intolerable heat into the deep valley. The ground was ankle-deep in dust and charcoal, and, as they floundered through it, feathery ash rose in clouds. Their clothing grew crusted with it, and it worked through and irritated their heated skin; while every now and then one of them was compelled to stop and splutter. Their throats, as Grenfell remarked, certainly felt very much like ash-heaps. None of them ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... Missouri—was probably the highest mountain in the world. It is four hundred and thirteen feet high. It still looms in my memory with undiminished grandeur. I can still see the trees and bushes growing smaller and smaller as I followed them up its huge slant with my eye, till they became a feathery fringe on the distant summit. This symmetrical Pyramid of Cheops—this solid mountain of stone reared by the patient hands of men—this mighty tomb of a forgotten monarch—dwarfs my cherished mountain. For it is four hundred and eighty feet high. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rock-cod, pigfish, and blackfish may be caught as quickly as they can be hauled out. I look to the sea birds and the turtles to afford our principal source of revenue. Trinidad is the breeding-place of almost the entire feathery population of the South Atlantic Ocean. The exportation of guano alone should make my little country prosperous. Turtles visit the island to deposit eggs, and at certain seasons the beach is literally alive with them. The only drawback to my projected kingdom is the ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... shades. There are, however, some distinct features of the landscape. Conspicuous on every hillside are the groves 'where the mango apples grow,' their mass of dense rounded foliage looking not unlike our maples, and giving a pleasant sense of home to the northern sojourner. The feathery bamboo, most gigantic of grasses, runs in plumy lines across the country. Around the negro cottages, here and there, rise groups of the cocoanut palms, giving, more than anything else, a tropical character to the landscape. On a distant eminence may perhaps ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... beauty of the scene which drew an exclamation from them both. At a little distance rose a knoll, covered with short grass and fading golden-rod, and with its base laved by a crystal stream of some width, and upon the knoll, shaded by a couple of magnificent maples, and covered with the pale and feathery bloom of the wild clematis, stood a small, rude hut. Smoke rose from its crazy chimney, and upon the strip of greensward before the door rolled a little, half-naked child—a white child. As the travelers ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... until the stars appear. In Greece we are dreamers in that subtle atmosphere, and in Egypt visionaries under the spell of an ethereal loveliness where the filigree patterning of white dome and minaret and interlacing palm and feathery pepper tree leaves little wonder in the mind that the ornamentation of their architecture is so ravishing in ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... with little knolls of heather, growing green, in preparation for its richer autumn tints. The pale spring sunlight began to grow more mellow in its light at this afternoon hour; it glinted on the little gurgling stream, lighted up the feathery birch glade, and lay in golden patches on the opposite bank, where Grace noticed some cattle begin to gather on the heathery knolls, as if they had come to enjoy the last hour of bright sunshine. Perhaps some little cottages may be sheltered ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... cold gray sky of the morning, and through the partially-frosted window-panes I love to watch the gradual beginning of the storm. A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere. These are not ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stratus clouds in the morning, and snow was falling in large crystals. Our socks and finnesko, hung out to dry, were covered with most beautiful feathery crystals. In the warm weather one gets fairly saturated with perspiration on the march, and foot-gear is always wet, except the outside covering which is as a rule more or less frozen according to existing temperature. On camping at night I shift to night foot-gear as soon ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... wall—a breeze laden with the scent I always associated with Wynne's cottage, the scent of geraniums. I raised myself on my elbows, and gazed over the geraniums on the window-sill at the blue sky, which was as free of clouds as though it were an Italian one, save that a little feathery cloud of a palish gold was slowly ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... But the fields were fresh with the tall young grass of the new year, the buttercups flaunted themselves gaily, careless of the pitiless night, rejoicing in the sunshine, as before they had rejoiced in the enlivening rain. The pleasant rain-drops still lingered on the daisies. The feathery ball of the dandelion, carried by the breeze, floated past like a symbol of the life of man—a random thing, resistless to the merest breath, with no mission but to spread its seed upon the fertile earth, so that things like unto it should spring up in the succeeding summer, and ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... was crisp, pure, and exhilarating. The fir trees and shrubs gave out a delicious perfume, and their waving tops seemed to beckon us on. The sky was deep blue, with here and there a feathery cloud gliding lazily over its surface. The bright sunlight made our hearts bound and filled our bodies with vigour, and as we stood there on the edge of the unknown and silent world we had come so far to see, our hopes were high, and one and ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... all the most delicate and exquisite shades of pink known to nature. Komatsu guided them about the city with a kind of pleased and gratified delight as if he were showing his own property. Sometimes he stood up and pointed to the feathery tops of carefully nurtured cherry trees, glimpses of which could be seen over the high walls ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... vegetation. In an hour we were breathing the moist warm air of the tropics and riding across a wide valley as level as a floor. The long stretches of rank grass, far higher than our heads, were broken by groves of feathery bamboos, banana palms, and splendid ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... among its branches sprang great sea-fans, delicate as lace-work, and showing, in striking contrast to the pure white of the coral, the most vivid reds, greens, and royal purple. These, and masses of feathery seaweeds, waved to and fro in the water as though stirred by a light breeze, and among them darted and played fish as brilliant in coloring as tropical birds. The boat seemed suspended in midair above fairy-land, and even ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... spacious valley it was, lying between two hills of about equal height: the hill they had come down was a little steeper than the hill they were about to go up. Joseph noticed the shadows that fell from the cliffs and those that the tall feathery trees, growing out of the scrub, cast over the sunny bottom of the valley, a water-course probably in the rainy season; and he enjoyed the little puffing winds that came and went, and the insects that ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... model for the Gattamelata charger. This is unlikely, and it was more probably used in some procession, being ridden by a huge emblematic figure. It is improbable that Donatello should have done more than sketch the design; but the head of the horse is admirable, with the feathery ears and bushy topknot which one finds in the Venice quadriga, on Gattamelata's steed, and on the colossal bronze head of a horse now preserved in the Naples Museum. This used to be considered an antique, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... when Robert and Shargar must return to Rothieden. A keen autumnal wind was blowing far-off feathery clouds across a sky of pale blue; the cold freshened the spirits of the boys, and tightened their nerves and muscles, till they were like bow-strings. No doubt the winter was coming, but the sun, although ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... and lichens, green, sulphur, and amber, stud the copper floor of needles, where the feathery ground-pine runs aimlessly to and fro along the ground, spelling out broken words of half-forgotten charms. There are checker-berries on the outskirts of the wood, where the partridge (he is a ruffed grouse really) dines, and by the deserted logging-roads toadstools of all colours sprout on the ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... by a deep dyke, and leading down over a rushy tract to the reed-grown banks of the river. The view over the many miles of marshland, with the blue mountains rising up behind and the silvery gleam of the river, was superb. The brown, quivering, feathery reeds made a glorious foreground for the amber and vivid green of the banks farther on; and the gorgeous sky effects of rolling clouds, glinting sun, and patches of bluest heaven were like the beginning of one of ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... sullen, it was yet a distinct invitation, and they entered. Rita had made this room over in her own way, much to Elizabeth's inconvenience. The chintz curtains were almost covered with little flags, emblems, feathery grasses, and the like, pinned here and there in picturesque confusion. A large Cuban flag draped the mantelpiece, and portraits of the Cuban leaders adorned the walls. Over the dressing-table was the great scarlet fan which had played such a conspicuous part in the drama of "Cuba ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... course of the river, and had gradually descended from the higher grounds to the immediate banks, which here spread out into a small meadow on each side. There were not now many flowers, but Saffy was pulling stalks of feathery-headed grasses, while Mark was walking quietly along by the brink of the stream, stopping every now and then to look into it. The bank was covered with long grass hanging over, here and there a bush of rushes amongst it, and in parts was a little undermined. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... on an oblong scale; corolla none; stamens 8-12, with brown anthers: fertile flowers sessile, solitary, or several on a common peduncle from the season's shoots; calyx hairy, 4-lobed, with 4 small petals at the sinuses; styles 2, short; stigmas 2, large, feathery, diverging, ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... love for decorations arose, he would deck his roofs as nature had decked hers, till the gray sheets of the cathedral slates should stand out amid pinnacles and turrets rich with foliage, as the gray mountain-sides stood out amid knolls of feathery birch and ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... says Virginia, "came the dreaded snow. Around the camp-fires under the trees great feathery flakes came whirling down. The air was so full of them that one could see objects only a few feet away. The Indians knew we were doomed and one of them wrapped his blanket about him and stood all night under a tree. We children slept soundly on our cold bed of snow, ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... found himself in a comparatively clear space, where the confused tracery of sunlight fell through the branches and the foliage overhead, and lay on the stream that shone in an easy curve like a bright sword-blade dropped amongst the long and feathery grass. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... year; the trees showed gay sprigs of green already, the air was wonderfully mild and balmy, and in the exhilarating blue of the sky feathery white cloudlets were floating, whose course one was fain to follow with sweet dreams and fancies. It was a sin to stay indoors on such a lovely afternoon, Malvine declared, and so proposed that they should ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... below! That is the shadow of his greatness. It is a pitiable thought that one of the fruits of his genius is that it has made his holy retreat fashionable. The villas rise in rows along the edges of the clear lakes, under the craggy fell-sides, where the feathery ashes root among the mimic precipices. A stream of chattering, vacuous, indifferent tourists pours listlessly along the road from table-d'hote to table-d'hote. The turbid outflow of the vulgar world seems a ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... round the head, so that they looked quite splendid in their garlands of green stems and golden flowers. But the eldest among them gathered carefully the faded flowers, on the stem of which was grouped together the seed, in the form of a white feathery coronal. These loose, airy wool-flowers are very beautiful, and look like fine snowy feathers or down. The children held them to their mouths, and tried to blow away the whole coronal with one puff of the breath. They had been told by their grandmothers that who ever did so would ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... singled out a quarry from among the carrion crew. It was curious to see the efforts of the two birds to get above each other; one to make the fatal swoop, the other to avoid it. Now they crossed athwart a bright feathery cloud, and now they were against the clear blue sky. I confess, being no sportsman, I was more interested for the poor bird that was striving for its life, than for the hawk that was playing the part of a ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... of Rorie's home-coming; but no rakish horse came swinging round the curve of the carriage-drive. The flying snow drifted past the window; the winter sky looked blue and clear between the brief showers, the tall feathery fir-trees and straight slim cypresses stood up against the afternoon light, and Vixen gazed at them with angry eyes, full of resentment against ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... in unison at the return to amity, and then fell silent, looking into the fire, watching the blue spurt of the flames, the feathery curls of ash ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... blossoming Ankolas; and Jamvus (blackberry trees) and Patalas and Kunjakas and Atimuktas; and Karaviras and Parijatas and numerous other kinds of trees always adorned with flowers and fruits and alive with feathery creatures of various species. And those verdant groves always resounded with the notes of maddened peacocks and Kokilas (blackbirds). And there were various pleasure-houses, bright as mirrors, and numerous bowers of creepers, and charming and artificial hillocks, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... It seemed as if one of Helbesmer's raised maps lay at my feet. I could see deep valleys intersecting each other in every direction, precipices like low walls, lakes reduced to ponds, rivers abbreviated into streams. On my right were numberless glaciers and innumerable peaks, some plumed with feathery clouds of smoke. The undulating surface of these endless mountains, crested with sheets of snow, reminded one of a stormy sea. If I looked westward, there the ocean lay spread out in all its magnificence, like a mere continuation of those flock-like summits. ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... walk in Gibraltar was in search of a palm-tree. After threading the whole length of the town, I found two small ones in a garden, in the bottom of the old moat. The sun was shining, and his rays seemed to fall with double warmth on their feathery crests. Three brown Spaniards, bare-armed, were drawing water with a pole and bucket, and filling the little channels which conveyed it to the distant vegetables. The sea glittered blue below; an Indian fig-tree shaded me; but, on the rock behind, an aloe ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... intended to produce rain by imitating the drenching which it gives. An Epiphany song from Imbros connects the blessing of rain with the Baptism of Christ, and another tells how at the river Jordan "a dove came down, white and feathery, and with its wings opened; it sent rain down on the Lord, and again it rained and rained on our Lady, and again it rained and rained on ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... which it was usually fed, either to demand some sweet reward for its obedience, or to express its attachment by a profusion of innocent caresses. The evening, as we said, was fine; not a cloud could be seen, except a pile of feathery flakes that hung far up at the western gate of heaven; the stillness was profound; no breathing even of the gentlest zephyr, could be felt; the river beside them, which was here pretty deep, seemed motionless; not a leaf of the trees ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... wall that divided the garden from the canal and the low houses on the other side, showing its dark plume sharp and clear against the sunlit sky; but when the morning and the evening breezes blew in spring and summer, it swayed lazily, and the feathery top waved from side to side, and bent to the caressing air like a live thing. Ortensia loved the tree better than anything else in the garden; even better than the beautiful Greek Ariadne, which her uncle had himself brought from Crete in one of ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... a mountain which contains an immense cavern. Here the cock-of-the-rock is plentiful. He is about the size of a fantail pigeon, his colour a bright orange and his wings and tail appear as though fringed; his head is ornamented with a superb double-feathery crest edged with purple. He passes the day amid gloomy damps and silence, and only issues out for food a short time at sunrise and sunset. He is of the gallinaceous tribe. The South- American Spaniards call him "Gallo del Rio Negro" ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... may be of such a kind as to give rise to the happiest, the purest feelings—and such was this.... He and I sat in the Moss house. Never saw the glen more beautiful; the birch glittering in the sun and waving its feathery boughs; the burn murmuring more gently than usual; the wood-pigeons answering one another from tree to tree. Had not courage to be ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... silver. She shone and glistened. Like a great bird, she flung out tilting wings. The sun kissed them and turned them into flashing mirrors. Behind her the German shells burst in white puffs of smoke, feathery, delicate, as innocent-looking as the tips of ostrich-plumes. The biplane ran before them and seemed to play with them as children race up the beach laughing at the pursuing waves. The biplane darted left, darted right, climbed unseen aerial trails, tobogganed down vast ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... plucking handfuls of lycopodium, which was growing green and feathery on one side of the marble frieze on which she was sitting; in so doing, a fragment of white marble, which had been overgrown in the luxuriant green, appeared to view. It was that frequent object in the Italian soil,—a portion of an old Roman tombstone. Agnes bent over, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... old time to pass, With his diamond oar, and his boat of glass; A feathery dart from his store he drew, And shouted, while far and swift it flew, ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... trod with one shoe on the top of the other. He had not expected this; he felt that no further progress was within the bounds of possibility. For some half minute he stood, his back to the door, his face turned to the illimitable region of drifts and feathery air, unable to conceive how to go forward and without a thought of turning back. When his pulses were surging and tingling with the discomfort of her gaze, he heard the door shut sharply. Perhaps she thought that he was shamming and was ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... hour the feathery foliage of the cocoanut palms could be made out, and the old sailor judged it time to ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... is a very tall young Englishman. The sheet is drawn very tight over his chest; his face is flushed and he is breathing rapidly, in short jerks. At first you do not see that he, too, is not more than a boy, for he is so big and tall, and a little brown feathery beard has begun to curl about ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... the landscape, reacting on the dangerous softness of his mood, bent his nature toward her like a flame driven by the wind. Around them the red-topped orchard grass faded to pale rose in the twilight, and beyond the crumbling rail fence miles of feathery broomsedge swept to the pines that stood straight and black against the western horizon. Impressions of the hour and the scene, of colour and sound, were blended in the allurement which Nature proffered ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... are popping hither and thither, pheasants are flying over your head, squirrels are scampering up and down trees, there are sounds of many feathery songsters in the branches: while if you pause awhile, you may catch the distant murmur of the sea—certainly you can feel its breezes; and you seem to get the beauty of the Highlands, the grandeur ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... gate our junior ensign languidly dusted a speck of snuff from his wristband, and indicated the roof of our hut, which was visible above the feathery river willows. So we proceeded thither, I resigning my horse to the soldier, Mount, who had been holding him, and who was now detailed to act as soldier-servant to ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... cloudy one afternoon, and Harry had been standing by the window watching the street cars. Suddenly the air grew thick, and he could scarcely see the houses opposite. Something white and feathery fell slowly down and rested on the window ledge. Then it disappeared. But more and more of the little flakes came, until there was quite a ridge ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous
... had brought him was delicious: hot biscuits of feathery lightness, three wide slices of ham, a bowl of scrambled eggs, a pot of coffee, some preserved raspberries, and ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... widely spreading branches twice pinnate, the lower pinnules more or less pinnatifid. Sporangia borne in a continuous line along the lower margin of the ultimate divisions whose reflexed edges form the indusium. (Greek, pteron, a wing, the feathery fronds suggesting ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... imitates, he begins to understand. Let him imitate the airy flight of the bird, and he enters partially into bird life. Let the little girl personate the hen with her feathery brood of chickens, and her own maternal instinct is quickened, as she guards and guides the wayward motion of the little flock. Let the child play the carpenter, the wheelwright, the wood-sawyer, the farmer, and his intelligence is immediately awakened; he ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... beauty finds delight in these mountains from the first daintiness of spring on through the glorious blaze of wonder that is fall in the Blue Ridge. Beginning with the tan fluff of the beeches, the red flowering of maples, the feathery white blooms of the "sarvis," on through the redbud's gaiety and the white dogwood's stark purity, all is loveliness. The enchantment continues in the flame of azaleas, which is followed by the waxy pink of the laurel and the superb glory of the ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... in the quiet night the snow was falling softly, silently—wrapping the sleeping earth in a pure, unsullied winding-sheet, and covering the church steeples with its feathery flakes. Hush! hush! how silently, yet how quickly, the snow showers fell. Slowly the hours passed by. Morning stealing in swept back the clouds of night and darkness, and the sun, peeping through with his warm, genial ray, shone down with a light which grew ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... shimmering haze that veiled the mystic eastern space came a big black horse bearing a rider. Swinging wide, to avoid the feathery dust that lay at the base of a huge sand dune, the black horse loped, making no sound, and seeming to glide forward without effort. Like a somber, gigantic ghost the animal moved, heroic of mold, embodying the spirit of the country, seeming to bear the sinister ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... isolation. The spring lavished all her glory on these enchanted plains, which have earned the name of the blessed and happy country, campagna felite. The orange trees were covered with sweet white blossoms, the cherries laden with ruby fruit, the olives with young emerald leaves, the pomegranate feathery with red bells; the wild mulberry, the evergreen laurel, all the strong budding vegetation, needing no help from man to flourish in this spot privileged by Nature, made one great garden, here and there interrupted ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... remarkable to be seen. In front rose up the feathery hand of an elm, then the shuttered windows across the court, the roof, and above that the morning sky, a little heavy and dusky as before a storm; but no ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... so as day—for everything was covered with the deep snow which had been falling silently ever since the evening before. The window was in a square recess; the old strange little panes of glass had been replaced by those which gave more light. A little distance off, the feathery branches of a larch waved softly to and fro in the scarcely perceptible night-breeze. Poor old larch! the time had been when it had stood in a pleasant lawn, with the tender grass creeping caressingly up to its very trunk; but now the lawn was divided into yards and squalid ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a winding path between banked masses of softly radiant blooms, groups of feathery ferns whose plumes were starred with fragrant white and blue flowerets, slender creepers swinging from the branches of the strangely trunked trees, bearing along their threads orchid-like blossoms both delicately frail ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... friendships and unanimities of nature, as when the lichen on the trees takes the form of their leaves. In the most stupendous scenes you will see delicate and fragile features, as slight wreaths of vapor, dewlines, feathery sprays, which suggest a high refinement, a noble blood and breeding, as it were. It is not hard to account for elves and fairies; they represent this light grace, this ethereal gentility. Bring a spray from the wood, or a crystal from the brook, and place it on your mantel, and your household ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... specially fit to be a Sabbath-day posy. These traditions are softened by the influence of years into simply idealizing, in the mind of every country-bred New Englander, the peculiar refreshing scent of the southernwood as a typical Sabbath-day fragrance. Half a century ago, the pretty feathery pale-green shrub grew in every country door-yard, humble or great, throughout New England; and every church-going woman picked a branch or spray of it when she left her home on Sabbath morn. To this day, on hot summer Sundays, many a staid old daughter ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Hanoi in the early morning light we struck across a wide fertile plain, beautifully cultivated; fields of rice alternating with maize stretched away to a wall of feathery bamboo broken by stately palms and glossy mangoes. After a little the country became more broken, rolling near by, mountainous in the distance. The vegetation, dense and tropical, hemmed in the line on both sides, but here and there charming trails led away through the ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... speed until the chapel came into view, its grey walls glistening in the morning light, a clump of feathery rowan trees beside it; at its back a mighty rock, flung down in bygone centuries from the mountain which towered behind it. From a deep cleft in this rock sprang a young oak, dipping its fresh green to the roof of the chapel; all ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... was a beautiful one, through rocks and brushwood, mountain ash bushes showing their coral berries amid their feathery leaves, golden and white stars of stonecrop studding every coign of vantage, and in more level spots the waxy bell-heather beginning to come into blossom. Still it was rather over praise to call it as smooth as the carefully-levelled and ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as the greedy creatures pass it by untouched. School-girls and botanists break down the golden-rods and asters, and pull up the gerardias and ladies'-tresses; but neither school-girl nor collector often troubles the thistle. It opens its gorgeous blossoms and ripens its feathery fruit unmolested. Truly it is a great thing to wear an ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... the shortest way. He preferred to take that pleasant bridle-path through Maudesley Park, that delicious grassy arcade where the overarching branches of the old elms made a shadowy twilight, only broken now and then by sudden patches of yellow sunshine; where the feathery ferns trembled with every low whisper of the autumn breeze: where there was a faint perfume of pine wood; where every here and there, between the lower branches of the trees, there was a blue glimmer of still ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... deeply as it is possible for human beings to love. Through the rich and beautiful woods of the park, over the sunny lawns and grassy savannas—where the wild deer, nested in the tall fern, raising its dark eyes and antlered head to gaze above the feathery green at the passers by—Wilton and Laura wandered on, pouring forth the tale of affection into each other's hearts, gazing in each other's eyes, and seeming, through that clear window lighted up with ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... thicket of bamboo by its side, waving its willow-like sprays in the wind; a pair of mango-trees near, hung with fruit just ripening and reddish blossoms just opening, and a cocoa-tree or two lifting high above the rest its immense feathery leaves and its ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... above my head, The prairie green below, And flickering o'er the tufted grass The shifting shadows go, Vague-sailing, where the feathery clouds Fleck white the tranquil skies, Black javelins darting where aloft The whirring ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... was impossible to see beyond. In the center was a fountain, dropping in a sparkling shower into a marble basin; around it spread a well-ordered carpet of flowers, of all the colours, as it seemed, of the rainbow; along the walls were cocoa palms, banana trees, and the feathery bamboo; white cockatoos sailed across from palm to palm; the air was heavy with a warm odour of moist earth and blossoms. The whole party drew a deep breath of pleasure. The dark place from which they had come ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... are quaint, quiet nooks tucked away at the end of leafy lanes; still streams overhung with feathery foliage; gray rocks lichen-covered; low-ground meadows, knee-deep in lush grass; restful, lazy lakes dotted with pond-lilies; great, wide-spreading trees, their arms uplifted in song, their ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the foliage, except where the scarlet shoots of the ironwood tree (Mesua ferrea) seem, like flowers in their blood-red hue. Here the broad leaves of the wild plantains (Musa textilis) penetrate the soil among the broken rocks; and in moist spots the graceful bamboo flourishes in groups, whose feathery foliage waves like the plumes of the ostrich.[1] It is at these elevations that the sameness of the scenery is diversified by the grassy patenas before alluded to[2], which, in their aspect, though not their extent, may be called the Savannahs of Ceylon. Here peaches, cherries, and other ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... clothes were damp. Little beads of moisture were upon his face. But below, where the Atlantic billows came thundering in upon a rock-strewn coast, the sun, slowly gathering strength, seemed to be rolling aside the feathery grey clouds. Downwards, split with great ravines, the road now sloped abruptly to a little plateau of farmland, on the seaward edge of which stood the ruins of a grey castle. Dotted here and there about ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the secretary, swept off his feet by this torrent of uncommon and mystical language, and passing a moist hand through his feathery hair. He was not entirely ignorant, of course, of the alleged use of sound in the various systems of so-called magic that have influenced the minds of imaginative men during the history of the world. He had heard, more or less vaguely, perhaps, but still with ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... on as falcons hover. I beat the reedy fens as I trampled past. I heard the mournful loon In the marsh beneath the moon. And then — with feathery thunder — the bird of my desire Broke from the cover Flashing silver fire. High up among the stars I saw his pinions spire. The pale clouds gazed aghast As my falcon stoopt upon him, and ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... vantage, he was, as well as his blinking eyes would allow, gazing out over the rails at the fast-falling flakes of feathery snow that were quickly covering up the metals and permanent way with a mantle of white; when, all at once, without a "by your leave," or seeing or hearing anyone approach, his attention was summarily brought back to the present by the strange announcement of the shrill little ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... and he seemed to be but a brown cur with a dingy, matted coat; and I could wish that he had turned out to be of no account, for the look in his eyes took hold upon my heart; but I rubbed him well in the brook, and now see the full, feathery tail and silky ears. He is a dog ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... days and nights the frost has penetrated the earth several inches deep. The snow-storm of to-day is as severe as most storms experienced in the North. The wind has howled from the north-west, burdened with its cold, feathery flakes, which to-night lie at least twelve inches deep in places undisturbed. It is such a storm as our suffering pickets, and indeed our entire army, ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... now within a few feet of each other. A hen ran across the road before one of them. A feathery seed-vessel, wafted from a wayside tree, fell at the feet of the other. And, unheeding this irony of nature, the two opponents came nearer, erect and rigid, looked in each ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... gold was over. Save when there was a heavy snowstorm, the Graniteville stage traveled over the mountains, as usual; but no highwayman molested it. It would have been a practical impossibility for a robber to have made off with booty. The snow was light and feathery, and the drifts were often twenty-five feet deep. The web-footed snow-shoes of New England could not be used with advantage in such snow, so recourse was had to skis. But it was difficult to manage these upon the steep trails of the canons, ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... the crouched and expectant kitten this time, but so that the whole red rain floated tenderly down upon her upturned face and into the folds of the white kerchief crossed upon her breast. She waited for the last feathery petal. Her hidden lover saw it lodge in the little hollow at the base of her bare, curved throat. He ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... as a banner, that men may know, To dare the generations, burn, and blow Out on; the wind of Time, shining and streaming.... These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... possessed him, before his eye singled out the spot in the deer's neck which his bullet must pierce. But he found his operations further delayed; for the animal suddenly lifted its head, scattered feathery spray from its horns and hoofs, and retired a ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... prison Thy song is uprisen, Thou'rt singing away to the feathery cloud, In the blueness of morn, Over fields of green corn, With a song sweet and trilling, and rural ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... leaves now turning yellow. The third species grows between the others as to elevation; its leaves, then orange-colored, are strikingly pitted and reticulated. Another alpine shrub, a species of sericocarpus, covered with handsome heads of feathery achenia, beautiful dwarf echiverias with flocks of purple flowers pricked into their bright grass-green, cushion-like bosses of moss-like foliage, and a fine forget-me-not reach to the summit. I may also mention a large mertensia, ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... up from her couch on the deep, Where through the dim night hours, she pillows her sleep, I start from my slumbers, and hie me away Where the white torrent dashes its feathery spray,— I quaff the fresh stream as it bursts from the hill,— I pluck the fresh flowers that spring by the rill,— I watch the gray clouds as they curl round the peak That rises high over them, barren and bleak; And I think how the worldling ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... and in the drawing-room ready to receive her little friends, by half-past two; and very nice she looked in her light-blue merino frock, with its pretty embroideries, her long golden hair curled in the feathery ringlets Susan was so proud of making, her sleeves looped up with new bracelets, and a little embroidered handkerchief just peeping out of ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... swaying branches in every direction and forming beautiful shade trees. Now and then we crossed water-courses, where the banks were carpeted with short green grass and bordered with acacia-bushes covered with feathery leaves and a profusion of yellow ball-shaped flowers that perfumed the air with their fragrance. The view up and down these winding flower-bordered streams was lovely. We rode for miles over this monotonous country, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... Louis and the Quai des Orfevres, and, keeping still to the left bank of the Seine, did not cross until they came to the Pont Royal. From the bridge they could see far down the river and the lights of Paris on both sides of the water. A feathery sprinkling of snow, which had fallen in the afternoon, lay over everything; but the rack of clouds which had brought it had blown away, and the night was frosty and starlit. A tremulous excitement and unrest seemed to be in ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... Henry Lennox's side. Here, at this bed of thyme, he began to speak of what she must not think of now. Her eyes were on that late-blowing rose as she was trying to answer; and she had caught the idea of the vivid beauty of the feathery leaves of the carrots in the very middle of his last sentence. Only a fortnight ago And all so changed! Where was he now? In London,—going through the old round; dining with the old Harley Street set, or with gayer young friends of his own. Even ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... criminal was allowed to hang for some hours after the execution. It had commenced storming in the earlier part of the evening, and when those whose business it was to inter the remains arrived at the spot, they found them enwrapped in a soft white shroud of feathery snowflakes, as if pitying nature had tried to hide from the offended face of Heaven the cruel deed which ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... well-known cliff after another, as they came in sight, and was between Kettle Island and the main, when a slight dampness in the air caused me to turn my face to the eastward, and I saw coming in from the sea, preceded by an advance guard of feathery mist, a dense bank of fog. It swept in, blotting out sea, shore, everything but the view a few feet around the boat. Fortunately knowing the place, and guided by the sound of the surf, I soon neared the wet, brown rocks at the inner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... chant!—Ho, I call to thee, son Born to Latona, Dispenser of boding, on gold-gleaming throne Midmost of earth who art sitting:—thine ears shall be pierced with my moan! Thy Delos doth hate thee, thy bay-boughs abhor thee, By the palm-tree of feathery frondage that rose Where in sacred travail Latona bore thee In Zeus's garden close." [Footnote: Euripid. Ion, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... pleasure of the successful creator in his mind as he thought over the last situation of his making. The smouldering patches of red on the crumbling logs shrank smaller and smaller as the close-set little points of fire died out, and the feathery ash-flakes fell in a soft ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... was sitting, rigid and erect in his chair. In appearance Mr. Scogan was like one of those extinct bird-lizards of the Tertiary. His nose was beaked, his dark eye had the shining quickness of a robin's. But there was nothing soft or gracious or feathery about him. The skin of his wrinkled brown face had a dry and scaly look; his hands were the hands of a crocodile. His movements were marked by the lizard's disconcertingly abrupt clockwork speed; his speech was thin, fluty, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... in the show ring. A perfect Clydesdale should figure as one of the most elegant of the terrier breed; his lovely silken coat, the golden brown hue of his face fringe, paws and legs, his well pricked and feathery ear, and his generally smart appearance should combine to form a picture ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... Christmas eve in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and through the streets of Nuremberg came drifting a feathery snow that heaped itself in fantastic patterns on the projecting windows and fretted stone balconies of the quaint and crowded houses. It was not an honest and single-minded snow-storm, such as would seek ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... by Mr. Dawes were not similar. He denies that he had seen seeds floating in the air. There had been little wind, and that had come from the sea, where seeds would not be likely to have origin. The objects that he had seen were round and sharply defined, and with none of the feathery appearance of thistledown. He then quotes from a letter from C.B. Chalmers, F.R.A.S., who had seen a similar stream, a procession, or migration, except that some of the bodies were more elongated—or ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... though, were caught by a wreath of feathery moss with little blue forget-me-nots peeping out of it here and there, and when she was asked which she liked best, she decidedly picked out that one. To her great delight her granny's taste agreed with her, and the wreath and the hat and a piece of white ribbon ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... between them some bulrushes and great bunches of bullpolls. This coarse grass forms tufts or cushions, on which snakes often coil in the sunshine. Yet though so rough, in June the bullpoll sends up tall slender stalks with graceful feathery heads, reed-like, surrounded with long ribbons of grass. In the ditches hereabout, and beside the brook itself, the meadow-sweet scents the air; the country-folk call it 'meadow-soot.' And in those ditches are numerous coarse stems and ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... come, ye creature? Each of you Is perfect as an angel; wings and eyes Stupendous in their beauty—gorgeous dyes In feathery fields of purple and of blue! Would God I saw a moment as ye do! I would become a molecule in size, Rest with you, hum with you, or slanting rise Along your one dear sunbeam, could I view The pearly secret which each tiny fly, Each tiny fly that hums and bobs and stirs, Hides in its little ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... riot began at three o'clock in the afternoon of a day as fair as was ever selected for a deed of darkness. The sky was clear, except for a few light clouds that floated, white and feathery, high in air, like distant islands in a sapphire sea. A salt-laden breeze from the ocean a few miles away lent a crisp ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... to that very dark House where Cancer the Crab lies so still that you might think he was asleep if you did not see the ceaseless play and winnowing motion of the feathery branches round his mouth. That movement never ceases. It is like the eating of a smothered fire into rotten timber in that it is noiseless ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... fall of snow had come in the night. The whole landscape was covered by fleecy down—soft and white as it used to be when I first saw it on the hills of New England. No wind had moved it; it lay as it fell, like a white mantle thrown lightly over the world. Great feathery flakes filled the air and gently descended upon the earth, like that beautiful Spirit that made the plains of Judea bright two thousand years ago. It seemed a fitting emblem of that nature which covered the unloveliness ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... were able to breathe freely now; we could enjoy the great tapering deodars that rose in ranks on the hillsides, the snow-clad needles of ramping rock that bounded the view to north and south, the feathery bamboo-jungle that fringed and half-obscured the mountain torrent, whose cool music—alas, fallaciously cool—was borne to us through the dense screen of waving foliage. Lady Meadowcroft was so delighted at having got clear away from those murderous and saintly Tibetans that ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... watching the desert panorama roll back and away, beneath them. Afar, two or three little oases showed feathery-tufted palms standing up like delicate carvings against the remote purple spaces or against the tawny, seamed desolation that burned as with raw colors of fires primeval. Here, there, patches of stunted tamarisk bushes were visible. A moving line of dust showed where ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... stoop. The former delicacy of his complexion had gone—the sickly paleness of it was all that remained. His thin flaxen mustaches were no longer pragmatically waxed and twisted into a curl: their weak feathery ends hung meekly pendent over the querulous corners of his mouth. If the ten or twelve weeks since his marriage had been counted by his locks, they might have reckoned as ten or twelve years. He stood at the window mechanically picking leaves from a pot of heath placed in front of it, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... it came into the pond,—a hundred feet from side to side,—bordered with flags and rushes and feathery meadow grasses. The real channel meandered in sweeping curves from bank to bank, and the water, except in the swifter current, was filled with an amazing quantity of some aquatic moss. The woods came straggling down on either shore. ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... beneath the bridge, alone broke the silence. Looking back past the bridge, Gilbert caught a glimpse of the valley, with its fairy windings, where he had met his first patient and the princess in the milkmaid costume. The pond lay like a colored mirror in its frame of feathery willows. As he advanced the trees disappeared, and his footfall was muffled in the soft sawdust. The sweet, clean scent of the newly sawn lumber mingled with the cool breath of ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... rocks the Psyche "appears in the balcony of her boudoir, in the rays of the caressing sun; lying on the cloudy softness of an incomparable eider-down." She awaits the visit of the spouse, "the gentle Bombyx," who, for the ceremony, "has donned his feathery plumes and his mantle of black velvet." "If he is late in coming, the female grows impatient; then she herself makes the advances, and sets forth in search ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... feathery tree-ferns waving languid fronds in a breeze that came from beyond them. The telescope seemed to be pointing at a gentle slope, and those tree-ferns cut off a farther view, but there was an impenetrable ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... emitted a gush of liquid, royal purple in hue, which stains the sea with an impenetrable dye for yards around. The colour, which is delightfully gorgeous, mingles with the water in jets and curling feathery sprays, enchanting the beholder with unique and ever-changing shapes until a glorious cloud is created and he forgets the ugliness and forgives the humility of the originator in the enjoyment of an artistic treat. If the cloud which Jupiter assumed was of the imperial tone and of the fascinating ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... give it time enough to work in and variations enough to work upon—natural selection has come to the rescue of the unhappy plant by leaving it a little hole at the top of the shell, out of which it can push its feathery green head without difficulty. Everybody knows that if you look at the sharp end of a coco-nut you will see three little brown pits or depressions on its surface. Most people also know that two of these are firmly stopped up (for ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... the evening the girls went over to the Meads to practice Easter hymns; but I sat at home and made a cross, eighteen inches long, of cedar and white lilies. This Southern cedar is the most exquisite thing; it is so feathery ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... his thin, white hand, on which the blue veins stood out so plainly, on Tom's great brown fist, and smiled at him; and then looked out of the window again, as if he couldn't bear to lose a moment of the sunset, into the tops of the great feathery elms, round which the rooks were circling and clanging, returning in flocks from their evening's foraging parties. The elms rustled, the sparrows in the ivy just outside the window chirped and fluttered about, quarrelling, and making it up again; the rooks, young and old, talked in chorus, and the ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... Points Api and Datu. The bay, as far as we have seen, is free from danger; the beach is lined by a feathery row of beautiful casuarinas, and behind is a tangled jungle, without fine timber; game is plentiful, from the traces we saw on the sand; hogs in great numbers; troops of monkeys, and the print of an animal with cleft hoofs, either a large deer, tapir, or cow. We saw no game save a tribe of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Broad avenues of feathery pepper trees, long driveways between shadowy rows of the soldierly eucalyptus, wide lawns and gigantic palms of the southern isles, weaving pampas grass, gay as the plumes of romance, jasmine, orange-bloom, and roses everywhere. Over all is the eternal sunshine ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... neighbours. She had no relations living, but she never went short of food, for the fishers and the farm people, and even the pitmen, took care to give her shelter and enough to eat. She was mostly bare-headed, but in September, when the cotton-grass grew feathery, she liked to make herself a head-dress out of the grey plumes. When her Sunday hat, as she called it, was on, she was fond of putting the red fronds of the dying bracken into her belt, and with those adornments she ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... morning service, and Patty laid down her book with a sigh and went and stood by the open window. The outside world was a shimmering green and yellow, the trees showed a feathery fringe against the sky, and the breeze was redolent ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... were about to despair, our head Krooman drew the captain's attention to the westward and said the breeze was coming. We saw no signs of it, but his quick eye had noticed light feathery clouds rising to the westward, a sure indication of the coming breeze. Soon we could see the glassy surface ruffled at different points as the breeze danced over it, coming on like an advancing line of skirmishers; and as we felt its first gentle movement ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... under the very shadow of forests where roam in all their savage freedom herds of wild cattle and their wilder masters; and out from the rocks and boulders of the most rugged spots rise clusters of the graceful umbrella palm, with a foliage, fern-like and feathery, of the loveliest emerald, and a cone expanding like a lady's fan. The odor of English cowslips mingles with the spicy aroma of tropical fruits, and the perpetual snow of-lofty peaks is reflected on fields of golden maize and on meadows that gleam and glitter in the bright sunlight as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... had but two little wings, And were a little feathery bird, To you I'd fly, my dear! But thoughts like these are idle ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... great May flies, large as swifts, had their aerial cloudy dances over the vast everglades and ancient forests of ferns; and when, on some dark night, a brilliant Will-o'-the-wisp rose and floated above the feathery foliage, drawn in myriads to its light, they revolved about it in an immense mystical wheel, misty-white, glistening, and touched with prismatic colour. Floating fire and wheel were visible only to the stars, and the wakeful eyes of giant scaly monsters lying quiescent in the black ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson |
