"Leafless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and at the white cottage, at the great Gulf seas smashing on the rocks below, at the far vista of sea and sky and the shore line faintly purple in the distance. His gaze turned briefly to the leafless tops of maple and alder rising out of the hollow in which his father's body lay—in a corner of the little plot that was left of all their broad acres—and came back at last to this fair daughter ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... water smooth; whereas the following morning, when we rose to depart, a fog had settled on the mountain, making movement upon it doubtful and even to a slight degree dangerous. The lake, some six miles by ten, and abounding in islets, lay smiling under the bright, wintry sun, its shores clad with leafless forests mingled with evergreens, save the barren slopes of the volcano itself; beneath the distant lava stream of which we were told seventeen hundred people lay, buried by the last eruption. The scene ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... fields, a slow song, full and solemn as a Gregorian chant. Further on, we came in sight of the singers. They were coming away from a field of dried sunflowers; walking in single file like a religious procession, and the sunflowers on their long leafless stalks, their great discs stripped of their halo of petals and their wealth of seed, were like liturgic emblems or monstrances of ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... get restless and more restless, till, throwing down my pen, I have gone out to see. For there is nothing like the sight of threshing for making one feel good—not in the sense of comfort, but at heart. There, under the pines and the already leafless elms and beech-trees, close to the great stacks, is the big, busy creature, with its small black puffing engine astern; and there, all around it, is that conglomeration of unsentimental labour which invests all the crises of farm work with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... We were now under the trees, which albeit leafless yet screened us partly from the road. He drew rein, ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... the mouth of the Potomac—a river much greater than any of them, save shipmasters and mariners, had ever seen—and into this turned the Ark and the Dove. After a few leagues of sailing up the wide stream, they came upon an islet covered with trees, leafless, for spring had hardly broken. The ships dropped anchor; the boats were lowered; the people went ashore. Here the Calverts claimed Maryland "for our Savior and for our Sovereign Lord the King of England," ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... despairing, hopeless. desfallecer weaken, swoon, fail, give way. desgarrar rend. desgracia f. misfortune, sorrow, unhappiness. desgraciado, -a unfortunate, hapless, miserable. deshacer undo, break. deshojado, -a leafless, petalless, blighted. desierto, -a deserted, lonely. desierto m. desert. desigual adj. uneven, dissimilar. deslizarse glide along, slip along. desmayado, -a faint, swooning. desmayar be discouraged, be faint, swoon. desmayo m. drooping, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... glass thy every mood painted on the surface of my face. Ah! dost thou ask me what I am? Alas! I am a target for the poisoned arrows which Love shoots at me in the form of thy beauty greater than his own. And I am like a bare and withered, leafless and frost-bitten tree, which has suddenly shot up into blossom at the coming of spring in thy form. But as for thee, why, O why dost thou regard me that live for only thee as if I were a deadly snake, and thou ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... he now turned towards the latter, accompanied by Pierre and chatting with him. One found the mildness of springtime there that February afternoon; for pale sunshine streamed between the trees, which were still leafless. It was indeed one of those first fine days which draw little green gems from the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... stopped, swallowed hard, and began again: "The trouble is he has no constitution left—nothing for a doctor to work with. It's not Arnold's fault. If he had come out to us, that time in Chicago when he wanted to—we—he could—with Mother to—" Her steady voice gave way abruptly. She cast the ravaged, leafless branch violently to the ground and stood looking down at it. There was not a fleck of color ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... sensitive in every leafless twig to spring, stood in silence and dim nightfall around a lodge. Wherever a human dwelling is set in the wilderness, it becomes, by the very humility of its proportions, a prominent and aggressive point. But this lodge of bark ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... flicker on a dead stump bobbed his little red-barred head and fluttered his yellow wings. Beneath the bridge the swift current sparkled in the sun. Over the river, on each side, rose the hills. The gray stone of the government works was visible to the right through the leafless trees: nearer, square, yellow and ugly, stood the old arsenal. A soldier, musket on shoulder, marched along the river-edge: the cape of his coat fluttered in the breeze and his slanting bayonet shone like silver. Before them lay D——, the smoke from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... and waited long at the bottom of the valley, where now the stream was brown and angry with the rains of autumn, and the weeping trees hung leafless. But though I waited at every hour of day, and far into the night, no light footstep came to meet me, no sweet voice was in the air; all was lonely, drear, and drenched with sodden desolation. It seemed as if my love was dead, and the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... narrow sandy height I watch them swiftly come and go, Or round the leafless wood, Like flurries of wind-driven snow, Revolving in perpetual ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... on the snow; Snap not from the bitter yew His leaves that live December through; Break no rosemary, bright with rime And sparkling to the cruel clime; Nor plod the winter land to look For willows in the icy brook To cast them leafless round him: bring No spray ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... to himself he felt chilled, and was leaning against a huge leafless tree. The night was moonless, and when he looked up he thought he had never seen stars so large and bright, or sky so black. The stars, too, seemed to blink down with longer intervals of darkness, and fiercer and more dazzling emergence, and something, he vaguely thought, ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... of some moments. The train rushed on, past fields desolate under patches of snow, and stark, leafless trees; over rivers dotted with cakes of grimy ice; between banks of frost-gnawed rock. The landscape in the dim January afternoon was gray and gloomy; and as day declined everything became more lorn and forbidding. Maurice turned away from the window, ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... it. It was a raw, cold, stormy evening. The clouds flew past the moon in jagged fragments, so that the churchyard, with its white crosses and stones, lay now in full light, now in dim shadow. Now and then a rush of wind rattled over the graves, roared through the leafless trees, bent the complaining bushes, and caught itself in the little eddy at the corner of the church, only to escape again over the roofs, turning the old weather vane with a sharp scream ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... silence, and Helene gazed round at the luxury of the apartment, with its curtains and chairs in black and gold, glittering like constellations. Flowers decorated mantel-shelf, piano, and tables alike, and the clear light streamed through the windows from the garden, in which could be seen the leafless trees and bare soil. The room had almost a hot-house temperature; in the fireplace one large log was glowing with intense heat. After another glance Helene recognized that the gaudy colors had a happy effect. Madame Deberle's hair was inky-black, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... from the north. The snow lay all over the ground, like soft feathers, and the hay-ricks looked as though each one wore a dunce-cap, like the dull boy in Dame Week's school over by the green. The icicles hung down by the thatch, and the little birds crouched shivering in the bare and leafless hedge-rows. ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... woods are comparatively bare and lifeless, even the Brambles and Woodbine, which straggle over the tangle of underwood being almost leafless. ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... electricity of a storm which has not yet burst. Editha sat looking out into the hot spring afternoon, with her lips parted, and panting with the intensity of the question whether she could let him go. She had decided that she could not let him stay, when she saw him at the end of the still leafless avenue, making slowly up towards the house, with his head down and his figure relaxed. She ran impatiently out on the veranda, to the edge of the steps, and imperatively demanded greater haste of him with her will before she ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... is formed of from fifteen to twenty tolerably long stalked separate carpels which inclose three to eight seeds arranged in two rows. The umbel-like peduncles are situated in the axils of the leaves or spring from the nodes of leafless branches. The flesh of the fruit is sweetish and aromatic. The flowers possess a most exquisite perfume, frequently compared with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... disturbed millions of grasshoppers as we walked. They had devoured all the fruit in the orchards about, and had even destroyed many of the trees by eating the bark, and now they were stripping the briers of foliage. In one orchard we passed, the apricot, plum, and peach-stones hung naked on their leafless trees as evidence of their ravages. It was too hot to indulge in any but the most desultory conversation. We dawdled along. A tiger-snake crossed our path. Harold procured a stick and killed it, and Stanley hung it on the top wire of a fence which was near at hand. After this we discussed ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... at such a height it could be seen remotely. It was a little gray old chapel in the midst of the barren. A clump of trees, gray too, and almost leafless, seemed like hair to it, pushed by some invisible ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... martial call to the place of holy and quiet thoughts, Tobias and Dorothy set forth, each holding a hand of little Ilbrahim, like two parents linked together by the infant of their love. On their path through the leafless woods, they were overtaken by many persons of their acquaintance, all of whom avoided them, and passed by on the other side; but a severer trial awaited their constancy when they had descended the hill, and drew near the pine-built and undecorated ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... guides usually are,) directed us by a descending path through the wood, across a rude bridge, past a maze, by a flight of roughly-formed steps, to a terrace, whence we enjoyed a picturesque prospect of great range and indescribable beauty. The woods were as yet leafless, but primroses enlivened the pathside: how touchingly is their solitude told by our poets. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... life-stream is sweeter than honey, and whose branches are drowsy through the long summer with the scent and the hum of bee and flower! Still the long line of the Canadas admits of a varied spring. When the trees are green at Lake St. Clair, they are scarcely budding at Kingston, they are leafless at Montreal, and Quebec is white with snow. Even between Montreal and Quebec, a short night's steaming, there exists a difference of ten days in the opening of the summer. But late as comes the summer to Quebec, it comes in its loveliest and most enticing form, as though it wished to atone ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... was sheeted in heavy snow, through which here and there in the pastures, a craggy bowlder lifted its face and frowned, and along the woods the stunted pines and hemlocks blackened against a background of leafless oaks and birches. A northwest wind cut shrill across the white wastes, and from the crests of the billowed drifts drove a scud of stinging particles in their faces, while the sun, as high as that of Italy, coldly blazed from a cloudless blue sky. Ezra Perkins, perched on the seat ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... of an hour they heard nothing of the huntsmen. Not a sound broke the stillness of the forest; the sun was shining through the leafless trees, and they were therefore enabled to shape their course in the direction in which they had come. Presently they heard the sound of a shot, followed by several others, and then the bay of hounds. The sound came from ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... clove light green waters that were hardly rippled by the breeze. This green sea she divided in two long curling lines that seemed to reach the shore on either hand, merging their light colour with a dark green of fields waiting for spring. The fields in their turn faded into the bluish black of leafless trees, and the trees bounded a sky of soft banks shading from blue to grey. The waters seemed almost deserted, except for a ship that now and then might meet us, stealing up on the tide and gently heeling to the breeze. Sometimes ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... scattered high walled houses and the faces seen at the windows, suggest the infinite possibilities of human life! The sound of wheels upon cobblestones, as the street begins and as the spire of the church rises over the moaning branches of its leafless elm-trees has a meaning for me now, since I have read Balzac, different from what it had before. Is that muffled figure in the rumbling cart which passes me so swiftly the country doctor or the village priest, ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... some were still inhabited by persons evidently of the poorest class. It was a dreary scene, and yet, in the worst aspect of its ruin, not so dreary as the modern town that I had just left. Here there was the brown, breezy sweep of surrounding fields for the eye to repose on—here the trees, leafless as they were, still varied the monotony of the prospect, and helped the mind to look forward to summer-time ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Glimmers gray the leafless thicket Close beside my garden gate, Where, so light, from post to picket Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate; Who, with meekly folded wing, Comes ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... its cage. Was it a strangled cry for "Help!" repeated once, twice, thrice, or was it the cold wind clanging and grinding the naked branches of the spinney? But nought living was to be seen; a bright wintry sun completely penetrated the leafless woodland. At last I came upon the warm but lifeless body of Grimjaw lying on the grass, and I hurried madly from the accursed place to where the men ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... interests; there was never any lack of conversation—whether he were down in Sloane Street, drinking tea and trying over new music with her, or walking in with Miss Girond and her to the theatre through the now almost leafless Green Park. Sometimes, when she was grown petulant and fractious, he had to scold her into good-humor; sometimes she had seriously to remonstrate with him; but it was all given and taken in good part. He was never embarrassed or ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... trumpet answered from the south, and when Nick turned, the shore was gay with men in brilliant livery. Beyond was a wood of chestnut-trees as blue and leafless as a grove of spears; and in the plain between the river and the wood stood a great palace of gray stone, with turrets, pinnacles, and battlemented walls, over the topmost tower of which a broad flag, blazoned with ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... sat watching saw, now, the line of the woods strengthen against the sky; the moon was breaking through the clouds and its light increasing minute by minute shewed the parkland clearly defined, the leafless oaks standing here and there, oaks that of a summer afternoon stood in ponds of shadow, the clumps of hazel, and away to the west the great dip, a little valley haunted by a fern-hidden river, a glen mysterious and secretive, holding in ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... in the river, suddenly there loomed on the western shores, so close that we could throw a stone and hit it, a tree that was leafless, dead as a volcanic dump; but its dead branches literally swarmed with monkeys. The light in the west had so far gone that they appeared as silent silhouettes against the sunset Their tails, which seemed to be about three feet long, and were curled at the ends, hung below the ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... Browning's) both the poets were good. The first is more or less like Stevenson in metre; it is a magical luck or skill in the mere choice of words. "Wet sands marbled with moon and cloud"—"Flits by the sea-blue bird of March"—"Leafless ribs and iron horns"—"When the long dun wolds are ribbed with snow"—in all these cases one word is the keystone of an arch which would fall into ruin without it. But there are other strong phrases that recall not Stevenson but rather their common master, Virgil—"Tears from the depths ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... which she cannot share. The same feeling took possession of me when, wandering over the ruins of the Palaces of the Caesars on a sunny February afternoon, I saw above the hoary masses of stone the rose-tinted bloom of almond-trees. Out of the gray relics of man's highest hour of pride, the leafless almond-rod blossomed as of old in the holy place of the Hebrew Tabernacle; and its miracle of colour and tenderness was like the crimson glow that lingers at sunset upon Alpine heights, telling of a glory that had ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Christmas Eve. Drip, drop, drip, falls the rain from the leafless boughs on to the sodden earth. The apology for daylight that has been doing its dull duty for the last few hours is slowly effacing itself, and the gale is celebrating the fact, and showing its joy at the closing-in of the melancholy night ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... pieces and the holes below had joined in the middle, so that, one day, the fox was able to slip in at one and out at the other. The mice gnawed at the rotten wood. There were only three or four twigs left up above and they were so thin and leafless that it was a ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... blew in strong, wintry gusts, as they passed through the leafless woods. Helen shivered with cold, in spite of the warm garments that sheltered her. The scarlet of the horizon had faded into a chill, darkening gray, and as they moved through the shadows, they were scarcely distinguishable ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... monotonous expanse, crossed by ice-bound dykes that looked black as ink, save where the last rays of the setting sun touched their iron hue with blood-red splashes. Pollard willows indicated the edge of one field, gaunt poplars marked the boundary of another, alike leafless and unbeautiful, standing darkly out against the dim grey sky. Night was hastening towards the travellers, narrowing and blotting out that level landscape, field, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... fairly begun, the grove was leafless; the boats taken out of the little lake and stored carefully away, to await the return of birds and leaves; the days grown short, dark, and cold; the "constitutionals" matters of dire necessity, but not in the least of pleasure; ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... Leafless apple-trees lined the edges of the road. The ditches were covered with ice. The dogs on the neighbouring farms barked; and Felicite, with her hands beneath her cape, her little black sabots and her basket, trotted along nimbly in the middle of the ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... able to give thanks to God when one is happy is the most rapturous, and to be able to call upon Him in the day of trouble is the most blessed, state of mind I know. Yet I believe we should only pray for the possible. The leafless tree may pray for the time of buds and blossoms; will the time come the sooner? Perhaps not, ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... himself along until he could see down into the bushes. With his gun at his shoulder, and his finger on the trigger, he gazed down into the hollow. To his surprise he could see no signs of the fugitive. The leafless boughs afforded but slight shelter, and after gazing fixedly at them for two or three minutes, he became convinced that the man was no longer there. As soon as he came to this conclusion he stood up and looked over the surrounding country. It was bleak and bare, and entirely destitute of hedges ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... countrymen, and favourites of Rome, This melancholy desert where we meet, Resembleth well young Marius' restless thoughts. Here dreadful silence, solitary caves, No chirping birds with solace singing sweetly, Are harbour'd for delight; but from the oak, Leafless and sapless through decaying age, The screech-owl chants her fatal-boding lays. Within my breast care, danger, sorrow dwell; Hope and revenge sit hammering in my heart: The baleful babes of angry Nemesis Disperse their ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... curiosity,' said she, in the same measured tone; then, after a moment, she added, 'I'm sure I never sought to ascribe some hidden motive to you. When you left my plants leafless, I was quite content to believe that you ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... lives again: The flowers that paint the field, The trees that crown the mountain's brow, And boughs and blossoms yield,— Resign the honors of their form At winter's stormy blast, And leave the naked, leafless ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... eyes sparkling, she stopped opposite a point of the island which, forming a curve at this place, was nearest to the mainland. Through the leafless branches of the willows and poplars, La Louve could see the roof of the house, where, perhaps, Martial was dying. At this sight, uttering a fearful groan, she tore off her shawl and cap, and slipping down her robe, keeping on her petticoat, she threw herself into the river, and waded until ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... that was slowly approaching. Yet they remained passive, stunned, terrified by the blow at St. Joseph. It was spring of 1649 before the warriors reached Georgian Bay. March winds had cleared the trail of snowdrifts, but the forests were still leafless. St. Ignace mission lay between Lake Simcoe and St. Louis. Approaching it one windy March night, the Iroquois had cut holes through the palisades before dawn and burst inside the walls with the yells ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... was almost as light as day, and the white sheet of snow threw back a reflection of the moonlight. Daisy gazed eagerly down the avenue, where the leafless trees rocked in the cutting wind. Unexpectedly she saw a tall man come round the corner of the house and walk swiftly down the avenue. She knew from Mrs. Morley that there was a visitor in the library, and ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... hold. The results weren't as pronounced as before, but they quite repaid me. I sold my best table to a general, which gave me a lot of confidence, but my greatest triumph was a hat-rack. It was a barren, gaunt-looking affair, like a leafless tree in winter, but it was mahogany, and it was old. Two ladies who were excitedly buying tables spied it, and exclaimed in rapture. I rose to ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... Seymour house he became conscious, from the glow of lights gleaming between the leafless branches of the trees, that something out of the common was going on inside. The house was ablaze from the basement to the roof, with every window-shade illumined. Outside the steps, and as far out as the curb, lounged groups ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... The leafless wood looks drear and sad, No birds sing now with voices glad;— But boys are romping far and wide, And o'er the ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... side-lever steam-engine, and holding the whip quietly arched over the neck of the other. The mechanical monotony of the movement seemed less in contrast than in harmony with the profound stillness of the wintry forest: the leafless branches heavy with rime frost and glittering in the sun: the deep repose of nature, broken now and then by the traversing of deer, or the flight of wild birds: highest and loudest among them the long lines of rooks: but for the greater part of the way one long deep silence, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... the fennel, hemlock, and a multitude of other forms which, though mostly ranking as herbs, attain gigantic dimensions in some species found in Africa and Kamskatka (Umbelliferae); the very singularly-shaped group of cactuses (Cactaceae), with leafless fleshy stems, which sometimes look like dry columns and sometimes are globular; the begonias (Begoniaceae); the cucumbers, melons, and vegetable marrows (Cucurbitaceae); the singularly-formed ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... itself. They are four inches in diameter, petals and sepals chocolate-brown, barred with yellow, lip large, of colour varying from rose to purple. C. Acklandiae is found at Bahia, where it grows side by side with C. amethystoglossa, also a charming species, very tall, leafless to the tip of its pseudo-bulbs. Thus the dwarf beneath is seen in all its beauty. As they cling together in great masses the pair must make a flower-bed to themselves—above, the clustered spikes of C. amethystoglossa, dusky-lilac, purple-spotted, with a lip of amethyst; upon the ground ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... dreary lump of farm-buildings, with its yard of yellow stacks. Beneath our feet the earth was iron, and the sky iron above our heads. Dark curdled clouds, "which had built up everywhere an under-roof of doleful grey," swept on before the bitter northern wind, which whistled through the low leafless hedges and rotting wattles, and crisped the dark sodden leaves of the scattered hollies, almost the only trees ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... then Down from the sunny atmosphere I stole And nestled in her bosom. There I slept From moon to moon, while in her eyes a thought Grew sweet and sweeter, deepening like the dawn, A mystical forewarning! When the stream, Breaking through leafless brambles and dead leaves, Piped shriller treble, and from chestnut-boughs The fruit dropped noiseless through the autumn night, I gave a quick, low cry, as infants do: We weep when we are born, not when we die! So was it destined; and thus came I here, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... distance was short, I did not mount, but ran with Dogger's stirrup-leather to the lodge gates, and up the long, leafless, moonlit avenue to where the white line of the Hall buildings looked on either hand on great old gardens. Here Mr. Dance dismounted and, taking me along with him, was admitted at ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this soft warm heart, once free to hold A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine, Be left more desolate, more dreary cold Than a forsaken bird's-nest fill'd with snow 'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine— Speak, that my torturing doubts their ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... masses of snow against the cold blue sky. Sant' Elmo is a wretched hamlet high on the Apennine ridge, where the Italian vegetation is already replaced by that of the North. You ride for miles through leafless chestnut woods, the scent of the soaking brown leaves filling the air, the roar of the torrent, turbid with autumn rains, rising from the precipice below; then suddenly the leafless chestnut woods are replaced, as at Vallombrosa, by a belt of black, dense fir plantations. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... cried for food, Father de Smet took down the rifle from the wall and went out with it, coming back only when he could feed the hungry. There were places where the prairie was black with buffalo, and the shy deer showed their delicate heads among the leafless willows of the Papillion. When they—the children—were cold, this young man brought in baskets of buffalo chips from the prairie and built them a fire, or he hung more skins up at the entrance to the tepees. If he wanted to cross ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... and beech woods in autumn, at the cedar in the garden and the yew tree in the churchyard. We are vividly conscious of the summer's breeze which tumbles the pears in the orchard, and the winter's storm when the leafless ribs of the wood clang and gride. As the perfect stanza lingers in our memory, our eyes are opened and we are taught to observe the marvels of nature for ourselves. Here, more than anywhere else, is he the true successor of Wordsworth, the Wordsworth of the daisy, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... face which she remembered. Count Manuel's face was of remodeled stuff: youth had gone out of it, and the month of years had etched wrinkles in it, success had hardened and caution had pinched and self-complacency had kissed it. And Niafer sighed again, as they sat reunited under leafless trees by the ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... ten o'clock. Within, all was light, life and loveliness; without, the winter wind moaned drearily through the leafless trees of the Boulevard, and the drifting sleet swept along the deserted streets. It was a wild night. Throughout all Paris seemed going forth a portentous murmur, like that mysterious moaning of the ocean, which, with mariners, is the ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... bitterly about the house; relentless in its desperate speed, it whirls by green crosses from the fir-boughs in the wood,—dry russet oak-leaves,—tiny cones from the larch, that were once rose-red with the blood of Spring, but now rattle on the leafless branches, black and bare as they. No leaf remains on any bough of the forest, no scarlet streamer of brier flaunts from the steadfast rocks that underlie all verdure, and now stand out, bleak and barren, the truths and foundations of life, when its ornate glories ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... Potomac a party of us unwittingly made our camp near the foot of a bee-tree, which next day the winds of heaven blew down, for our special delectation, at least so we read the sign. Another time, while sitting by a waterfall in the leafless April woods, I discovered a swarm in the top of a large hickory. I had the season before remarked the tree as a likely place for bees, but the screen of leaves concealed them from me. This time my former presentiment ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... beaver came the band in swift canoes. On the queen of fairy islands, on the Wita-Wst's [b] shore, Camped Wanta, on the highlands, just above the cataract's roar. Many braves were with Wanta; Ap-dta, too, was there, And the sad Anptu-spa spread the lodge with wonted care. Then above the leafless prairie leaped the fat faced, laughing moon, And the stars—the spirits fairy—walked the welkin one by one. Swift and silent in the gloaming on the waste of waters blue, Speeding downward to the foaming, shot ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... was winter, and all was changed. The trees stood bare and leafless; no birds sang in their branches; no sweet blossoms raised their heads to catch the sun's warm rays. The skies were gray and cheerless, and ever the soft white snow kept falling silently, "like the footsteps of angels ...
— The Enchanted Castle - A Book of Fairy Tales from Flowerland • Hartwell James
... consideration of the value and blessings of a temperate; and well-spent life; it induces a thoughtful reflection that a life of goodness alone insures an end of peace. The holly, the mistletoe, the ivy, the acorn shell, the leafless branch, and the fruitless vine encircle the brow-fit emblems of the period which marks an exchange of time for eternity. All the figures are rendered complete by a carved lion's foot, at the bottom of each, and above the feet is a connecting frame, to make that portion of the stand ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... time, thousands of years after its conception beneath the glacier that excavated its basin. The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in its pure depths; the winds ruffle its glassy surface, and the sun fills it with throbbing spangles, while its waves begin to lap and murmur around its leafless shores,—sun-spangles during the day and reflected stars at night its only flowers, the winds and the snow its only visitors. Meanwhile, the glacier continues to recede, and numerous rills, still ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... of snow at the back of the seat upon which she sat. Then she rose, looked at the bunch of violets still lying where she had laid them, and walked slowly away. She glanced over her shoulder at the old man sitting beneath the leafless trees at the other side of the broad avenue. He sat huddled within the high collar of his coat and heeded nothing. There was no one near to the seat that she had just vacated, and Martin was now going towards it. She hurried to the Saxon Palace, and as she passed beneath its arches ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... before the final contest dawned raw and wet. The elms in the yard drip-dripped from every leafless twig and a fine mist covered everything with tiny beads of moisture. The road to the field, trampled by many feet, was soft and slippery. Sydney, almost hidden beneath rain-coat and oil-skin hat, ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the brown thatch of the ricks, and the white cobblestones of a corner of the yard; and the blossom of pears and apples was pink and white, as if a light shower of colored snow had just fallen on the still leafless trees. Beneath the orchard branches he could see his children and Norah playing among the daffodils that grew wild in the grass; the light all about them was faintly blue and unceasingly tremulous and he stood ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... took, they saw her arms creep round his neck, saw her head fall confidingly on his breast, then silence settled upon them, and upon all nature, the gathering twilight deepening, till the last glow disappeared from the heavens above and from the circle of leafless trees which enclosed this tragedy from ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... might see another Spring I'd not plant summer flowers and wait: I'd have my crocuses at once, My leafless pink mezereons, My chill-veined snowdrops, choicer yet My white or azure violet, Leaf-nested primrose; anything To blow at ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... the shady banks, whereon large families of primroses spent their brief and lovely existence undisturbed. The hawthorn put forth delicate green leaves, and the white buds of the cherry-trees in the orchard were swelling on their leafless boughs. ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... heart beat against me; I cannot tell why I detail this trifling incident—but the scene is still before me; the snow-clad fields seen through the silvered trunks of the beeches,—the brook, in days of happiness alive with sparkling waters, now choked by ice—the leafless trees fantastically dressed in hoar frost—the shapes of summer leaves imaged by winter's frozen hand on the hard ground—the dusky sky, drear cold, and unbroken silence—while close in my bosom, my feathered nursling lay warm, and safe, speaking its ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... life. Bug and worm were working to light and warmth. Thrusting aside the mold and leaves above them, spring beauties, hepaticas, and violets lifted tender golden-green heads. The sap was flowing, and leafless trees were covered with swelling buds. Delicate mosses were creeping over every stick of decaying timber. The lichens on stone and fence were freshly painted in unending shades of gray and green. Myriads of flowers and vines were springing ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... pretty in warm weather, buried in a great kindly-clambering vine, that never bore fruit, indeed, but which covered it with luxuriant green tracery all through the months of blossom and harvest. In winter the winds found many holes in the walls of the poor little hut, and the vine was black and leafless, and the bare lands looked very bleak and drear without, and sometimes within the floor was flooded and then frozen. In winter it was hard, and the snow numbed the little white limbs of Nello, and the icicles cut the brave, untiring feet ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... able to support themselves, they send forth from the under side sprigs which, rapidly descending to the ground, take root like the banyan, and become supporting columns to the heavy branches above. So the writer has seen in Hindostan a vine which grew, almost leafless, closely entwined around the trees to the very top, whence it descended, took fresh root, and ascended the nearest adjoining tree, until it had gone on binding an entire grove in a ligneous rope. Long tendrils ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... dripping leafless woods, The stirrup touching either shoe, She rode astride as troopers do; With kirtle kilted to her knee, To which the mud splash'd wretchedly; And the wet dripp'd from every tree Upon her head and heavy hair, And ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... rose upon my balcony the morning air perfuming Was leafless all the winter time and pining for the spring; You ask me why her breath is sweet and why her cheek is blooming, It is because the sun is out ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the storied brave Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Rest thee—there is no prouder grave, Even in her own proud clime. She wore no funeral weeds for thee, Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, Like torn branch from death's leafless tree, In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb; But she remembers thee as one Long loved, and for a season gone: For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babes' first lisping tells; ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... gardens, brown roofs, gables, spires, and cupolas above the mirroring lake: seen from the railway this bitter night, the invisible terraces and streets were now pricked out by symmetrical lines and curves of sparkling lights, which glittered through the leafless boughs and seemed to encircle ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of any sort, the full, rich, luscious tones, with just a tinge of plaintiveness in them, are poured forth with spontaneous abandon. Such a song at such a time is enough to summon anybody with a musical ear out of doors under the leaden skies to where the delicious notes issue from the leafless shrubbery by the roadside. Watch the singer until the song ends, when he will quite likely descend among the dead leaves on the ground and scratch among them like any barn-yard fowl, but somehow contriving ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... make peace, my father! Most gladly would I give the blood-stained laurel For the first violet [5] of the leafless spring, Plucked in those quiet ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... life is like the autumn leaf That trembles in the moon's pale ray; Its hold is frail,—its date is brief, Restless,—and soon to pass away! Yet ere that leaf shall fall and fade, The parent tree will mourn its shade, The winds bewail the leafless tree,— But none shall ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... The snow lay thick and white upon the land in the moonlight; lamps twinkled here and there from dwellings on either side; in Eliot and Newcastle, in Portsmouth and Kittery, roofs, chimneys, and gables showed faintly in the vague light; the leafless trees clustered dark in hollows or lifted their tracery of bare boughs in higher spaces against the wintry sky. His eyes must have looked on it all, whether he saw the peaceful picture or not. Beneath many a humble roof honest ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... through a cloud of powder. I rushed joyfully to embrace him; but, as I approached him, everything seemed changing in the mist. I wished to kiss his hands, but I recoiled with mortal cold. The fingers were withered branches, my father himself a leafless tree, which the winter had covered with hoar-frost. Ah, Lucy, Lucy, my brain is full of madness and my heart of sorrow. Sing me the ballad of the lady who took only one spoonful of gruel, 'with sugar and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... moment Elinor fancied that she heard the sound of approaching wheels, and she strained her eyes to discern, through the deepening gloom, some object that might realize her hopes. "No," she sighed, "it was but the wind raving through the leafless oaks—the ticking of the old dial—the throbbing of my own heart. He will not—he ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... began to stride out the number northerly, but the sycamore did not disappear; its long bare boughs were still seen throwing out their leafless and haggard ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... other hand, when we are in a glad and overflowing mood we shall be extraordinarily responsive to Nature's appeal, and see Beauty in a rugged, leafless oak tree or a poor old woman at the corner of some mean street. And if when we are in such a mood Nature happens to be at her best and brightest, as on some spring morning, the Beauty we shall then see will be overpowering, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... off toward the village, the red tiles of which could be seen through the leafless trees, a quarter of a league off. Service was about to begin when they went through the village. The square was full of people, who immediately formed two lines to see the criminal pass. He was being followed by a crowd of excited children. Male and female peasants looked at the prisoner between ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... when the stem runs underground, suckers. The gardener imitates them in the process called layering, that is, bending down an erect branch and covering it with soil, causing it to strike root. When the connecting stem is cut, a new plant is formed. Long and leafless stolons, like those of the Strawberry are called runners. Stems creep below the ground as well as above. Probably the pupil will think of some examples. The pretty little Gold Thread is so named from the yellow running ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... indeed very lonely as he drove through the bare March fields and leafless woods on his way to town. The sky had clouded again, like his prospects, and he had the dreary sense of desolation which overwhelms a quiet, domestic man who feels that his home and all to which he clings are slipping from him. His lot was hard enough at best, ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... by Forked Pond to Maudeley. He lingered a little in the leafless woods round the cottage, now shut up, and he chose the longer path that he might actually pass the very window near which Mary had stood when she spoke those softly broken words—words from a woman's ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... very tired of the routine of this life. The bright autumn weather draws me away from study, and the brown branches of the leafless trees are more beautiful than books. We lead but one life here on earth. We must make that beautiful. And to do this, health and elasticity of mind are needful, and whatever endangers or impedes these must ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... of the spruces were long and clear-cut; the exquisite skies of early morning, blue and wind-winnowed, were over us; away to the west, beyond the brook field, was a long valley and a hill purple with firs and laced with still leafless ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and very great and beautiful, tingling with life even through its winter dress. The keen air, the crisp snow beneath their feet, the quivering stars that seemed to hang among the branches of the leafless trees, all gave them joy. They were healthily tired and heartily hungry; a good supper was just ahead of them, and beyond that a long life full of wonderful possibilities; and they were very glad ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... went and knocked them down with our riding-whips, and carried away specimens in our hats; but the survivors took no manner of notice of us, and in about ten minutes they left the trees mere skeletons, leafless and stripped of their bark, and moved across the field in a dense mass towards some fruit-trees a little way off. For days after this, when we met with travellers on the road, or stopped at the door of a cottage to get a light or something to drink, and chatted ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... through the Center, took the fork past the old library with the skeleton of its summer coat of ivy looking bare and chilly against the sunset breeze. The bit of sky he could see through the houses and leafless trees was grey and ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... had his home in the tributary stream of a neighbouring valley. So, when the snows had melted and the rime no longer touched with fairy fingerprints the tracery of the leafless boughs, and when Olwen the White-footed had come once more into the valley called after her name, Lutra forsook the broad river in which she had spent her early life, and, with her companion and a promising family, lived contented under ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... Nomentana, we came to a strange place, situate in an oasis in the wilderness, or rather in what is already the beginning of a new country—the mere mounds of tufo turning into high slopes, and a few trees (it is odd how they immediately give a soul to this soulless desert), leafless at present, serpentine along the greener grass. And there, with the russet of an oakwood behind, rises a square huddle of buildings, a tall brick watch-tower, battlemented and corbelled in the midst, and a great bay-tree at each corner. On ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... Orcon was an organic ability to thrive under almost any climatic conditions. Many of the huge, crystal clear boulders which covered the beach and the coastal plain which led to the hills, were covered with leafless flowers which had immense, leathery petals and sharp, fang-like spines. Other evidences of swift growing life showed on every hand. Ugly, jelly-like creatures oozed about the ship and everywhere else. In places the very rocks seemed ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... outlines of the shrubbery below showed black and strong. Upon the side of a near-by clump of leafless lilacs shone a faint light, as though from one of the barred windows below. The house was not quite asleep. She stilled her breath as she might, stilled her heart as she might, lest its beating should be heard. What was about to happen? Where could ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... men ploughing in a vineyard behind the camp, beyond the edge of the grove. The plough is a crooked stick of wood which scratches the surface of the earth. The vines are lying flat on the ground, still leafless, closely pruned: they look ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... the gaily illuminated snow castle through the branches of the leafless trees. The fiery star above it and the lights below shining through the ice-windows, made it ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... Then, carrying the body to the surface, he flung it scornfully over a root to await the revival of his appetite, and proceeded to calm his excitement by a long, elaborate toilet. Steely dark and cold the waters of Bitter Creek slipped by between their leafless, bushy banks. And inside the dome of the house in the alders the thick-furred muskrat colony slept luxuriously, little dreaming of the doom just ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... flora, and the thrill of delight experienced when one first encounters it in the mountain wilderness, its typical haunt, is an event to date from—its two great, glistening, fluted leaves, sometimes as large as a dinner-plate, spreading flat upon the mould, and surmounted by the slender leafless stalk, with its terminal loose raceme of ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... all the way, as he watched the still leafless trees glide along the embankment of the Saint-Germain railway. Sitting opposite him, Risler chattered, chattered without pause. He talked about the factory, about their business. They had gained forty thousand francs ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... the edge of the Serpentine, on which there lay an ethereal film of baby ice almost like frosted gauze. The leafless trees, with their decoration of filigree, suggested the North and its peculiar romance—nature trailing away into the mighty white solitudes where the Pole star ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... He still lived at the Enclos des Ternes; but on this sombre day of the last of November the little house seemed cold, and looked naked among the leafless trees. It seemed to me shrunken and diminished, like everything that we have not ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... on winter nights, while the peat fire was burning on the floor, and the wind, sweeping across Lough Eske, went wailing round the castle walls and sighing in the leafless trees, the boy would often get his father to tell him stories of the country-side. There were many strange legends treasured up in the memories of all old inhabitants of the place, wild stories of enchantments, ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... day so that Uncle Remus found it impossible to go out. The storm had begun, the old man declared, just as the chickens were crowing for day, and it had continued almost without intermission. The dark gray clouds had blotted out the sun, and the leafless limbs of the tall oaks surrendered themselves drearily to the fantastic gusts that drove the drizzle fitfully before them. The lady to whom Uncle Remus belonged had been thoughtful of the old man, and 'Tildy, the house-girl, had been commissioned to carry him his ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... great square cobbles, round the four sides of which were built the walls of the inn. Winding, somewhat crazy-looking, stone staircases ran up to the galleries from which the bedroom doors informally opened; vines, as yet leafless, wreathed the gray walls and framed the shuttered windows; before me I glimpsed a kitchen with a magnificent oaken ceiling and a medieval fireplace in which a fire roared redly; and at my right yawned what had doubtless been a stable once upon a time, but with the advent of the motor, had ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... but without rain. A white fog hung closely and thickly over the country, and lay like a clogging, woollen substance among the scattered gold and russets of the now almost leafless trees. ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... pass of God's-Help. The boatmen were singing, but not the song of Roland the Brave, which was heard of old by the weeping Hildegund, as she sat within the walls of that cloister, which now looked forth in the pale morning from amid the leafless linden trees. The dim traditions of those gray old times rose in the traveller's memory; for the ruined tower of Rolandseck was still looking down upon the Kloster Nonnenwerth, as if the sound of the funeral bell had changed the faithful Paladin to stone, and he were watching ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... she commenced with a prelude more sweetly and profoundly melancholy than even the wailing of the night wind among the leafless trees of the forest. This was followed by—an ode shall I call it?—or a hymn?—for it was not what we mean by a song. Nor was the music like any other music I had ever heard, but much more full of passion; broken, wild, plaintive, triumphant by turns, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... gown a la Cyprienne moulded her body like a sheath. Throwing a cloak over her shoulders, she led her two friends and the engraver into the garden, which Ledoux was laying out for her, but which as yet was a chaos of leafless trees and plaster. She showed them, however, Fingal's grotto, a gothic chapel with a bell, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... socialis, but is less distinctly marked, being of a duller redder tinge. He prefers remote bushy heathery fields, where his song is one of the sweetest to be heard. It is sometimes very noticeable, especially early in spring. I remember sitting one bright day in the still leafless April woods, when one of these birds struck up a few rods from me, repeating its lay at short intervals for nearly an hour. It was a perfect piece of wood-music, and was of course all the more noticeable ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... you question the young children in the sorrow, Why their tears are falling so? The old man may weep for his to-morrow Which is lost in long ago; The old tree is leafless in the forest, The old year is ending in the frost, The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest, The old hope is hardest to be lost; But the young, young children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... being mountain Floras. I fear my notes will hardly serve to distinguish much of the habitats of the Galapagos plants, but they may in some cases; most, if not all, of the green, leafy plants come from the summits of the islands, and the thin brown leafless plants come from the lower arid parts: would you be so kind as to bear this remark in mind, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... the left-hand side. So much he could make out dimly through the November darkness; and as he stood there hesitating, he thought he could see somewhere below him a few other lights burning through the masses of leafless trees through which ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... had arrived, and suddenly a great wave of mysterious expectation ran over him and filled the cup of his soul. He felt that he stood still and waited. The sense of Cuckoo, of all she felt and thought in the darkness, gradually dropped away from him, like leaves from a tree, till every branch was leafless. And this autumnal ravishment, like the ravishment of nature, was but a preparation surely ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the sight of my great-grandfather pacing slowly up and down the tiny garden at The Vine, his hands behind him, and followed sedately by Thomas. Now and then he would stop to gaze, with infinite contentment in his eyes, at the delicate blue-grey mist behind the leafless trees (which in that spring sunshine were, no doubt, of much more complex and beautiful colour to him than mere brown), or drinking in the blue of the scillas in the border with a sigh of satisfaction. When he paused, Thomas would pause; as he feasted his eyes, Thomas would ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... with sullen brow Sitt'st behind those virgins gay, Like a scorch'd and mildew'd bough, Leafless 'mid the blooms ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of social triumphs is quite fascinating, Phil, but I'll paint one to offset it. I'm going home to an old country farmhouse, once green, rather faded now, set among leafless apple orchards. There is a brook below and a December fir wood beyond, where I've heard harps swept by the fingers of rain and wind. There is a pond nearby that will be gray and brooding now. There will be two oldish ladies in the house, one tall and ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... maid had surmised aright. It was no part of Cora's plan to permit the inmates of Oakley a view of Mr. Davlin on this occasion. So the ponies were driven briskly away from the town, and when that was left behind, permitted to walk through the almost leafless woods, while Cora revealed to Lucian the extent of the fresh calamity that had befallen them in the advent of ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... clearings began to diminish, and tall woods arose on either side of the path; their solemn aspect, and the deep silence that brooded over their vast solitudes, inspiring the mind with a strange awe. Not a breath of wind stirred the leafless branches, whose huge shadows reflected upon the dazzling white covering of snow, lay so perfectly still, that it seemed as if Nature had suspended her operations, that life and motion had ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... properly called water-primrose, for it is closely related to the primrose, though its colour is certainly violet, and not pale yellow. By this time all the bladderworts have disappeared under water. In June in a pool near the inflow of the Thames at Day's Lock, opposite Dorchester, the fine leafless yellow spikes of flower were standing out of the water like orchids, while the bladders with their trapdoors were employed in catching and devouring small tadpoles. There is something quietly horrible about these carnivorous plants. Their bladders are far too small to take one ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... the rank growth of the grass-walks. The long twigs of the wall-trees, which had never been nailed up, or had been torn down by the snow and the blasts of winter, went trailing away in the moan of the fitful wind, and swung back as it sunk to a sigh. The currant and gooseberry bushes, bare and leafless, and 'shivering all for cold,' neither reminded him of the feasts of the past summer, nor gave him any hope for the next. He strode careless through it all to gain the door at the bottom. It yielded to a push, and the long grass streamed in over the threshold as he entered. He mounted by ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... hissed along the polished ice, in games Confederate, imitative of the chase 35 And woodland pleasures,—the resounding horn, The pack loud-chiming, and the hunted hare. So through the darkness and the cold we flew, And not a voice was idle; with the din Smitten, the precipices rang aloud; 40 The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron; while far-distant hills Into the tumult sent an alien sound Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars, Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west 45 The orange sky ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the floor to make Mitchelbourne afraid. He had been upon the brink of fear ever since he had seen that lonely and disquieting house; he was now caught in the full stream. He turned back. Through the open doorway, he saw the avenue of leafless trees tossing against a leaden sky. He took a step or two and then came suddenly to a halt. For all around him in the darkness he seemed to hear voices breathing and soft footsteps. He realised that his fear had overstepped his ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... he reached the top of a swelling green hill, and saw the splendid vision of Loch Tay lying beneath him—an immense plate of polished silver, its dark heathy mountains and leafless thickets of oak serving as an arabesque frame to a ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... turning away, she gazed through the window at the young maple tree as though her very soul were concentrated upon the leafless boughs. ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... winds be; High up in a leafless tree The little bird sits and wearily twits, The woods with perjury: But the cuckoo-knave sings hold his stave, (Ever the spring comes merrily) And "O poor fool!" sings he— For this is the way in the world to live, ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... advanced she began to take ocean baths, which on that genial coast are suitable almost all the year round. Going thus to nature for healing, she did not appeal in vain. Strength and grace were bestowed imperceptibly, yet surely, as spring clothes the leafless tree. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... take each other for wife and husband, and listened to their replies. Androvsky's voice sounded to him hard and cold as ice when it replied, and suddenly he thought of the storm as raging in some northern land over snowbound wastes whose scanty trees were leafless. But Domini's voice was clear, and warm as the sun that would shine again over the desert when the storm was past. The mayor, constraining himself to keep awake a little longer, gave Domini away, while Suzanne dropped tears into a pocket-handkerchief ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... he wandered, dumb Till evening, when he paused, thoroughly spent On a blind hill-top: down the gorge he went, Yielding himself up as to an embrace. The moon came out; like features of a face, A querulous fraternity of pines, Sad blackthorn clumps, leafless and grovelling vines Also came out, made gradually up The picture; ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... were all leafless, and snow-clad the ground, Sweet pleasures at home in our cottage we found; 'Round our bright blazing fire, we'd work, read, or play, And find sweet employment ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... window-sills, knocking with their strong beaks for bread, pleased him; they recalled evenings passed with Helen; she had often spoken of her love for these birds. He went to the window with bread for the peacocks, and the landscape came into his eyes: the clump of leafless trees on the left, rugged and untidy with rooks' nests; the hollow, dipping plain, melancholy of aspect now, misty, gray and brown beneath a lowering sky, dipping and then rising in a long, wide shape, and ringing the ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... perpendicular Alps, all rock, ice, and everlasting snow, towering above the clouds, and piercing to the sky; on his other hand little every-day slopes, but green as emeralds, and studded with cows and pretty cots, and life; whereas those lofty neighbours stand leafless, lifeless, inhuman, sublime. Elsewhere sweet commonplaces of nature are apt to pass unnoticed; but, fronting the grim Alps, they soothe, and even gently strike, the mind by contrast with their tremendous opposites. Such, in their way, are the two halves of this story, rightly ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... to the station was a long and particularly beautiful one. Hereward had always appreciated every inch of it. But to-day he hated it. He hated the way the yew-trees drooped, the leafless branches of the hazels, the faded, crumpled blackberry, the scattered decaying leaves. It was really a remarkable day for November—clear and frosty, with a bright blue sky and scudding white clouds. A strong north-east wind tested one's vitality. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... down quickly, and the stars shed a faint light over the tall, leafless branches. Yesterday the first snow storm of the season had come, and everything as far as eye could reach was enveloped in an icy mantle. The great level park before the castle was knee deep with snow, and the broad branches of the fir trees bent to the earth with their heavy white burden. The ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... March skies are curdling hard and high above black mountain peaks. The keen March wind is sweeping harsh and dry across a dreary sheet of bog, still red and yellow with the stains of winter frost. One brown knoll alone breaks the waste, and on it a few leafless wind-clipt oaks stretch their moss-grown arms, like giant hairy spiders, above a desolate pool which crisps and shivers in the biting breeze, while from beside its brink rises a mournful cry, and sweeps down, faint and fitful, amid the howling of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... friendship which consoled her later life; and must look round us in our own, if we would understand what were those new flowerings which had arisen, when, as she says, she had thought herself already in the last days of autumn and in a leafless garden. ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee |
