"Mellowing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sliding panel in the wall near the chapel had been pushed back, and the mellow music of Dr. Tallis pealed softly in, giving a sweet and melodious background, scarcely perceived consciously by either of them, and yet probably mellowing and softening their modes of expression during the whole ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... generally in September or early October, when we used to thresh out a few bushels of the new crop of rye to be taken to the grist-mill for a fresh supply of flour! How often we paused in our work to munch apples that had been mellowing in the haymow by our side, and look out through the big doorway upon the sunlit meadows and hill-slopes! The sound of the flail is heard in the old barn no more, but in its stead the scratching of a pen and ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... who in children see their heirs, Have numberless, diverging cares! Less pure for them affection glows,— Less of intrinsic joy bestows, Less mellowing, less enlivening, flows! Oh! such not even could divine A moment's tenderness like mine! Had he been destin'd to a throne, His little darling self alone, Bereft of station, grandeur, aught But life and virtue, love and thought, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... speak to her, your dearest, her one fault, The tenderness, not yours, that could not kill, Give me it: I will give it her. He said: At first her eye with slow dilation rolled Dry flame, she listening; after sank and sank And, into mournful twilight mellowing, dwelt Full on the child; she took it: 'Pretty bud! Lily of the vale! half opened bell of the woods! Sole comfort of my dark hour, when a world Of traitorous friend and broken system made No purple in the distance, mystery, Pledge of a love not to be ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... had steered clear of all awkward topics, taking for granted that we were going on. Charles got less cautious as he got surer, and moreover, as I could not but observe, he was mellowing somewhat under the brandy he was drinking. Princes commonly have no judgment of men, having never the need of noting their humours in order to mould them to their will. So now Charles bluntly attacked the Colonel again on the ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... put 'em in here," says Mr. Glentworthy, laconically, lighting his lamp. "I hope to get old Saddlerock in here. Give him such a mellowing!" He turns his light, and the shadows play, spectre-like, along a low, wet aisle, hung on each side with rusty bolts and locks, revealing the doors of cells. An ominous stillness is broken by the dull clank of chains, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... culture system, coffee was bought by the government, and held in godowns from two to three years, until it had become mellow with age. In late years, this system has been abandoned; and the planters now sell their product as they please, and in most cases without mellowing, excepting as they age during the long sea voyage from Batavia to destination. Before the advent of large fleets of steamers in the East Indian trade, the coffee was brought to America in sailing vessels that required from three to four months for the trip. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... hams," cried Braid-Beard, "we veteran old smokers grow browner and browner; hugely do we admire to see our jolly noses and pipe-bowls mellowing together." ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... and accurate men of the University of Oxford"[O] were to be met with at Tew, we may further hope that Earle there watched the social mellowing of the "downright scholar whose mind was too much taken up with his mind,"[P] and strove to carry out his own recommendation, "practising him in men, and brushing ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... That is excluded by the lower hills which hem the Magra. The upper valley is beautiful, with verdant lawns and purple hill-sides breaking down into thick chestnut woods, through which we wound at a rapid pace for nearly an hour. The leaves were still green, mellowing to golden; but the fruit was ripe and heavy, ready at all points to fall. In the still October air the husks above our heads would loosen, and the brown nuts rustle through the foliage, and with a dull short thud, like drops of thunder-rain, break down upon the sod. At the foot of this ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... vineyards undulating beneath, and a monk or two ascending or descending the steps, and three or four picture-postcard hawkers gambling in a corner, and lizards on the wall. Here it is good to be in the late afternoon, when the light is mellowing; and if you want tea there is a little loggia a few yards down this narrow steep path where it may be found. How many beautiful villas in which one could be happy sunning oneself among the lizards lie ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... the summer arise in joy, Or the summer fruits appear? Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy, Or bless the mellowing year, When the ...
— Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience • William Blake
... honoured our mess the other night. Under the mellowing influence of our Curried Bully he unbent somewhat and encouraged the Ancient on his pet subject. Under the influence of the latter's theories he unbent still further. He discoursed upon the true inwardness of the military method ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... benevolent would have been terminated in a ripe old age by a dissolution equally gradual and calm. But how unsearchable are the workings of Providence! The peaceful and retired seclusion amid which the honoured evening of Dr Haynes' life was mellowing to its close was destined to be disturbed, nay, shattered, by a tragedy as appalling as it was unexpected. The morning of the ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... rain, Against the casement's tinkling pane; The sounds that drive wild deer, and fox, To shelter in the brake and rocks, Are warnings which the shepherd ask To dismal and to dangerous task. Oft he looks forth, and hopes, in vain, The blast may sink in mellowing rain; Till, dark above, and white below, Decided drives the flaky snow, And forth the hardy swain must go. Long, with dejected look and whine, To leave the hearth his dogs repine; Whistling and cheering them to aid, Around his back he wreathes the plaid: ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... orchard, where all things seemed drowsy—where the only spectators were the mellowing apples that reddened the boughs above her, and her sole auditors the brown partridges that nestled in the tall grass, and the shy cicadae ambushed under the clover leaves—her pent-up pain and disappointment bubbled over in a ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... former violence. There are also traces of declining powers, a greater tendency to digression, a lack of concentration and vigour, and even of dexterity of language. But the change is due in all probability not merely to advance in years nor to the calming and mellowing influence of old age, but also to a change that was gradually passing over the Roman world. The material for savage satire was appreciably less. Evil in its worst forms had triumphed under Domitian. With Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian virtue began slowly and uncertainly to reclaim ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... for all ills of the mind, and enjoined him to partake. The man exhibited no timidity in accepting the invitation, for having taken two or three swallows, he smacked his lips in approval, and said, he already felt it mellowing his temper. He then searched in his wallet, and finding some crusts and a ham bone, threw them to his dog, who generously shared them with his companion, the pig. This done, we took seats by the roadside, while the drover began, in brief, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... by his name. It may smell too much of mortality and antiquity for this fast-living and forward-looking age; for it is not only a monument of the past, but an exponent of its spirit. We can look back at it, through the mellowing mist of centuries, with curiosity not unmixed with admiration; but we should turn with aversion from such a work, coming from the hands of an artist of our own day. We think, and with some reason, that we do not need its teachings; for we are freed from the thraldom that gave edge to its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... boat forth from Aigina fare, sweet song of mine, and bear abroad the news, how that Lampon's son, the strong-limbed Pytheas, hath won at Nemea the pankratiast's crown, while on his cheeks he showeth not as yet the vine-bloom's mother, mellowing midsummer. ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... places in the landscape are brought out; the earth is quickened in spots and streaks; you can see at a glance where man and nature have dealt the most kindly with it. The warm, moist places, the places that have had the wash of some building or of the road, or have been subjected to some special mellowing influence, how quickly the turf awakens there and shows the tender green! See what the landscape would be, how much earlier spring would come to it, if every square yard of it was alike moist and fertile. ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... Dryden be. So when the faithful pencil has design'd Some bright Idea of the master's mind, 485 Where a new world leaps out at his command, And ready Nature waits upon his hand; When the ripe colours soften and unite, And sweetly melt into just shade and light; When mellowing years their full perfection give, 490 And each bold figure just begins to live, The treach'rous colours the fair art betray, And all the ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... of this without doubt the Holy Spirit was brooding in unusual measure over this man, reviving early memory, bringing to his remembrance all things of other days, deepening impressions, bringing old facts into new perspective, giving clearer vision, mellowing and maturing both mind and heart into fresh plastic openness to further truth. And so we have this little book with its Hebrew ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... poor fellow neither understood women nor was understood by them. He accepted Kedzie's blow with resignation. He helped her down the step, his hand mellowing her arm and finding ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... your Beulah wants you." As I placed my hand upon Bob's heart and felt its beats grow stronger, as I listened to Beulah Sands's childish voice, joyously confident, as it called upon the one thing left of her old world, some of my terror passed. In its place came a great mellowing sense of God's marvellous wisdom. I thought gratefully of my mother's always ready argument that the law of all laws, of God and nature, is that of compensation. I had allowed Bob's head to sink until it rested in Beulah's lap, and from his calm ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... visitations; but the harp Was soon defrauded, and the banded host Of harmony dispersed in straggling sounds, And lastly utter silence! "Be it so; Why think of any thing but present good?" [H] 100 So, like a home-bound labourer I pursued My way beneath the mellowing sun, that shed Mild influence; nor left in me one wish Again to bend the Sabbath of that time To a servile yoke. What need of many words? 105 A pleasant loitering journey, through three days Continued, brought me to my hermitage, [I] I spare to tell ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... what he had lived through during these last few days, the mellowing influence of his struggles during the night watches. Nothing could have ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... to Deane's arrival Harris had been occupied from dawn till dark with the details of the new work. The wagons had made a week's trip to the railroad to freight in more implements and supplies. A hundred acres of plowed ground lay mellowing under the sun. Five miles back up the slope of the hills two men worked in a valley of lodgepole pine, felling, trimming and peeling sets of matched logs for the cabins that must be erected on each filing. The cowhands were out working the range in pairs, branding late-dropped ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... the fields and farm-houses and roads lay a pictured map. About a mile and a half to the south rose the mountain where Nancy Vawse lived, craggy and bare; but the leafless trees and stern, jagged rocks were wrapped in the haze; and through this the sun, now near the setting, threw his mellowing rays, touching every slope and ridge with a rich, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... gold of the sun was mellowing the grey stone of the terrace and enriching the green of the weeds thrusting themselves into life between the uneven flags when she reached Stornham, and passing through the house found Lady Anstruthers sitting there. In sustenance ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... crystalline quality on the flat stretches of the plains, was again sparkling and heady in the clean hill country. It stirred the pulses like some rare vintage, some subtle distillation of sun-warmed fruit that had been mellowing ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... all its youngest hues, Shoots through the mellowing meads delightedly; Air the fresh herbage scents with nectar-dews; Livelier the choral music fills the sky; Youth grows more young, and Age its youth renews, In that field-banquet of the ear and eye; Spring flies—lo, seeds where once the flowers have blush'd And ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... such force that a hollow larger, but shaped as a hen's egg, is worked out; usually this is six or more inches below the surface. So compactly is the earth forced back, that fall rains, winter's alternate freezing and thawing, always a mellowing process, and spring downpours do not break up the big ball, often larger than a quart bowl, that surrounds the case of the pupa. It has been thought by some and recorded, that this ball is held in place by spinning or an acid ejected by the caterpillar. ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... is a night sun in the empires of the Columbia and the Puget Sea. No nights in the world can be more clear, lustrous, and splendid than those of the mellowing autumn in the valleys of Mount Saint Helens, Mount Hood, and the Columbia. The moon rises over the crystal peaks and domes like a living glory, and mounts the deep sky amid the pale stars like a royal torch-bearer ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... marching home In comely order to the regal dome. There when arrived, on thrones around him placed, His sons and grandsons the wide circle graced. To these the hospitable sage, in sign Of social welcome, mix'd the racy wine (Late from the mellowing cask restored to light, By ten long years refined, and rosy bright). To Pallas high the foaming bowl he crown'd, And sprinkled large libations on the ground. Each drinks a full oblivion of his cares, And to the gifts of balmy sleep repairs. Deep in a rich alcove the prince ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... and ruddy pippins, and yellow William pears had gone their rounds—all home produce—and had been admired and praised, and the Squire's full voice was mellowing after his second glass of port, when the butler came in with a letter on a salver, and carried it, with muffled footfall and solemn visage, as of one who entrusted with the delivery of a death-warrant, straight to ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... trained To guard from danger's shoals which are unknown Except to those who long the chart have scanned? My predecessor who first ruled these Isles Did loud proclaim in optimistic tones The Philippines for Filipinos are, And so high expectations did arouse Which Time with all its mellowing pow'r did Dissapoint; and so at last Approval's Smile slowly did wane, and bitterest frown, Conceived from discontent, usurped its place. Alas! Am I to be the pliant tool To work a policy from chaos born? And on its failure, if perchance it fails, Will ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... residence in New York had been spent in the room where she now sat; a basement room with low ceiling, and faded olive-tinted walls. The furniture was limited to an old-fashioned square table of mahogany, rich with that colour which comes only from the mellowing touch of age, and polished until it reflected the goblet of white and crimson phlox, which Regina had placed in the centre; a few chairs, some swinging shelves filled with books, and a couch or lounge covered with pink and white chintz, whereon lay a pillow with a ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... honest embodiment of a sincere idea—the idea of "freedom to worship God;" and it was adapted to the uses which it was designed to serve. It stood upon a hill, a square box with square windows cut in its sides—grim without and grim within, save as the mellowing seasons toned down its ruder aspects, and green grass and waving boughs framed it as if it were a picture. Within, the high pulpit, surmounted by a sounding-board, towered over the square-backed pews, facing a congregation kept ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... past, and the constant and almost imperceptible influence of her most excellent system of public worship, as indicated in the Book of Common Prayer, silently but effectively issues, in moulding and mellowing good Christian character. She teaches not only through the prayer book, but by the yearly round of feast, festival and fast, of which, like a great panorama the acts and incidents in the life of her Lord are constantly set forth before those who have ears to hear and eyes to see. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... addition to the pleasanter, less serious literature about Hawaii... A record of the recollections of the first eighteen years of a boy's life, in Hawaii, where that life was ushered into being. They are told after the mellowing lapse of half a century, which has been very full of satisfying labors in an ennobling profession... Pure boyhood recollections, unadulterated by later visits to the scenes in which they had their birth"—The ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... not yet stripped for the long day's race to the west. The eastern skies still gleamed through a faery haze with the soft iridescence of a young ormer shell, the tender pinks and greens and golds of the new day's birth-chamber mellowing upwards into the glorious blue of a ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... ought to spring it until after we've had refreshments. Food has such a mellowing effect on human nature. It's all a question of tact, though. If I were you, I'd talk to them in an intimate sort of way instead of lingering too much on the historic value. Better straighten Malcolm, over yonder; he looks ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... apple trees only helped to reveal the sumptuous wealth of their luscious fruit. For it was apple time in the land! The evanescent harvest apples were long since gone, the snows were past their best, the pippins were mellowing under the sharp persuasion of the nippy, frosty nights and the brave gallantry of the sunny days. In this ancient warfare between the frosty nights and the gallant sunny days the apples ripened rapidly; and ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... tender, Are the musings of an hour, When the mellowing scenes around us Give to Memory magic power; Thought recalls those scenes long parted, Life epitomized appears, Moments then reflect a lifetime Reaching ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... little concern with the story of his son's life. He sailed over many seas, he visited many lands, mellowing by contact with many peoples the unyielding temper of his race. The possibility of failure never once entered into his mind. The Thayers always had succeeded, for they always had worked. In consequence, he took it quite as a matter of course that, at twenty-three, he should be commander of the ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... a feeler and a thinker; over his emotions and his reflections spread a mellowing of melancholy; more than a mellowing: in trouble and bereavement it became a cloud. He did not know much about Lucy Snowe; what he knew, he did not very accurately comprehend: indeed his misconceptions of my character often made me smile; but ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the more impervious the package containing tea is to the air, the more perfectly the finer qualities of the tea are preserved. If there is a necessity for ripening or mellowing by time, air should be rigidly excluded during ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... passed that night, with great swayings of trees, and dash of broad raindrops, and piled up broken masses of fleecy white clouds, tossed about by the rough, exultant September wind. Bright days followed, mellowing with each one to sunnier, calmer perfection. Moore passed them in his own room. That night had torn away all the disguises that he had put upon his heart. He knew now that he loved this woman—knew it with such a bitter sense ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... convince any farmer that the best means of permanently deepening and mellowing the soil is by thorough drainage, to afford a ready exit for all surplus moisture. Let him take in spring, while wet, a quantity of his hardest soil,—such as it is almost impossible to plow in summer,—such as presents a baked and ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... corner of Eighth street, while she went down to Mitchell's and met De Forest, poor De Forest! but, "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." After dinner De Forest ordered up his horses, and the happy pair, rendered extremely sentimental by the mellowing influence of the wine, started on their homeward journey. They stopped at a wayside inn a few miles out of the city, had a mint julep, and then proceeded on their way home, both very happy, and De Forest ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... exerts a mellowing influence, and leads to the observation and love of nature, while historical pictures stimulate research, and nerve the mind to deeds of heroism ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... under the mellowing influence of some excellent Roederer, Charles began to expand again, and grew lively and anecdotal. The poet had made us all laugh not a little with various capital stories of London literary society—at least two of them, I think, new ones; and Charles ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... the cabin, so disastrously begun, finished, under the mellowing influence of wine and woman, in excellent feeling and with some hilarity. Mamie, in a plush Gainsborough hat and a gown of wine-coloured silk, sat, an apparent queen, among her rude surroundings and companions. The dusky litter of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... belle France" were before me—and it is "la belle France," however inferior to parts of England in rural beauty—the large tracts of waving yellow corn, undulating like a sea in the morning breeze—the interminable reaches of forest, upon which the shadows played and flitted, deepening the effect and mellowing the mass, as we see them in Ruysdael's pictures—while now and then some tall-gabled, antiquated chateau, with its mutilated terrace and dowager-like air of bye-gone grandeur, would peep forth at the end of some long avenue of lime trees, all having their own features ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... sensibility and reason! true delicacy of mind! may I unblamed presume to investigate thy nature, and trace to its covert the mild charm, that mellowing each harsh feature of a character, renders what would otherwise only inspire cold admiration—lovely! Thou that smoothest the wrinkles of wisdom, and softenest the tone of the more sublime virtues till they all melt into humanity! thou that spreadest the ethereal cloud that surrounding ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... ideal by which he judged men and things, insensible to gentler and humbler influences. He compares his soul to a high, bare craig, without any crannies in which flowers may lurk, untouched by the mellowing influences of sun and shower. His sister came with her softening influence, and sowed in it the needed flowers, and touched it ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... my letters and records and spread them before Ida Mary on the old square table, and with the sweat dripping down our faces from the heat of the lamp we eagerly devoured their contents. Huey Dunn's plan of mellowing, or rotting the soil, was not yet ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... call, not a song; A command, not a prayer; No mellowing moonlight, but dawn, Frail, fanciful, and fair In the east of my dream and desire. At the portal of unending desire, Draped in diaphanous dreams, With a whispered word of fire That quivers and gleams Through the clouds of my longing. Longings poignant with pains and tears Enfold, ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... Georges de Bocherville and Jumieges, and were highly interested and pleased by both.—Oh! that the Vandals would leave the abbey of Jumieges, even in its present state of dilapidation! In a few years, with the mellowing tints of time, and the ornament of a little ivy and vegetation, it would be one of the most picturesque and beautiful ruins in Europe; but, alas! it is in vain to hope it. Cotman's representations of Jumieges and Andelys will now be ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... Mr. Loveday also tapped a hogshead of fine cider that he had had mellowing in the house for several months, having bought it of an honest down-country man, who did not colour, for any special occasion like the present. It had been pressed from fruit judiciously chosen by an old hand—Horner and ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... ceased mellowing out the favorite medley which begins with "Casta Diva" and runs over into the lovely cadences of "Gentle Annie"; and the abrupt transition from that mournful strain to a light cotillon air warned four hundred holiday-people ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... recalled in fancy old, youthful Christmases, and pledged mentally many an old friend, and my melancholy was mellowing into a low, sad undertone, when, just as I was raising a glass of wine to my lips, I was startled by a picture at the window-pane. It was a pale, wild, haggard face, in a great cloud of black hair, pressed against the glass. As I looked it vanished. With a strange thrill at my heart, which my lips ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... this autumn was principally occupied in enlarging and preparing his Satire for the press; and with the view, perhaps, of mellowing his own judgment of its merits, by keeping it some time before his eyes in a printed form,[99] he had proofs taken off from the manuscript by his former publisher at Newark. It is somewhat remarkable, that, excited as he was by the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... temperament, could have been more attractive. The subdued twilight of that northern clime reigned over the face of nature, softening and mellowing all objects, but in no way obscuring them. The light was not so bright as that of the day, and yet it partook in no way of the characteristics of night. It was more like the warm light of the dawn of a summer day in the south, just before the sun rises up from below the horizon in refulgent ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the pots filling the sills. Nor did he even care for the great bars of sunlight that fell in golden splendour across his bed, causing the old dog to wink, and sneeze, and smile beneath their mellowing beams. No, these were nothing to him; indeed, they never had been—he had lived for years oblivious alike to tree ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... the shadow of divorce on her pathway, but it is only the warm, restful shadow of a ripening and mellowing sorrow. Do not fear to have Millie walk ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... alike all political questions, or, as much as possible, individual histories among the English community. It is already so long ago since we lived in that lovely place, that events, trials, joys, and the usual vicissitudes of life, are wrapt in that mellowing haze of the past, which, while it dims the vividness of feeling, throws a robe of charity over all, and perhaps causes actors and actions to assume a more true proportion to one another than when we walked amongst them. I have, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... age dwelt upon the feelings of the Klosterheimers. Terror and superstitious dread predominated undoubtedly in the total impression; but the gentle virtues exhibited by a series of princes, who had made this their favorite residence, naturally enough terminated in mellowing the sternness of such associations into a religious awe, not without its own peculiar attractions. But, at present, under the harsh and repulsive character of the reigning prince, everything took a new color from his un-genial habits. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... neighborly meadows and wooded slopes, with the brook winding between; this friendly road with its ancient stone walls, all but concealed now by a mass of ferns or brake on one side, and on the other by a tangle of tall grass, goldenrod, purple-plumed Joe Pye weed, wild grape with big mellowing clusters, wild clematis in full bloom. New England in summer-time! What other land is like it? Our brook, our farm, here in the land of our fathers! There were a warmth, a glow, a poetry in the thought that cannot be put down in words—something to us new and wonderful, ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... thou read'st, think what a love was mine, That made me venture on a theme, that none Can know thee, and not feel a hopeless one. Thou art most fair, though sorrow's chastening wing Hath past, and left its shadow on thy brow, And solemn thoughts are gently mellowing The splendour of thy beauty's summer now. Thou art most fair! but thine is loveliness That dwells not only on the lip, or eye; Thy beauty, is thy pure heart's holiness; Thy grace, thy lofty spirit's majesty. While thus I gaze on thee, and watch thee glide, Like ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... out for the ungainly mountain boy all the rare quality and bouquet of his seasoned personal charm. It was a vintage distilled from experience and humanity. It had met the ancient requirement for the mellowing and perfecting of good Madeira, that it shall "voyage twice around the world's circumference," and it was a thing reserved for ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... O ye Laurels, and once more Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear, I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude, And with forc'd fingers rude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due: For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer: Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew Himself to sing, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... arisen to house the well-to-do. Our interest in Cairo, therefore, is centred in the native quarters, where miles of streets and alleys, rich in Arabesque buildings, are untouched except by the mellowing ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... and her heart grow hot and bitter within her at the memory of her wrongs, she resolutely fought for composure; no matter now what he had been or done, that life was dead. She had her boys, the sunsets and sunrises, the mellowing beauty of the year. She had her books, and above all her memories. And in these memories she found much to blame in herself, but much to pity, too. A rudderless little bark, she had been set adrift in so inviting, so welcoming a sea ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... together with me canst thou rest thee Here on the verdant leaves; for us there are mellowing apples, Chestnuts soft to the touch, and clouted cream in abundance; And the high roofs now of the villages smoke in the distance, And from the lofty mountains are falling larger ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... chastening, abashing, strengthening him against temptation, shielding him from evil, ministering to his self-respect, medicining his weariness, peopling his solitude, winning him from sordid prizes, enlivening his monotonous days with mirth, or fancy, or wit, flashing heaven upon his earth, and mellowing it for all spiritual fertility,—there is the element of marriage. Wherever woman pays reverence to man,—wherever any woman rejoices in the strength of any man, feels it to be God's agent, upholding her weakness, confirming her purpose, and crowning her power,—wherever he reveals himself to her, ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... that the hard-fighting commander is usually a cool, resolute, resourceful man, for whom it is a matter of plain duty to fight his ship till he is fairly beaten, and to report the result briefly, whatever it may be, to his superiors. One can observe the mellowing influence upon Thackeray of the atmosphere of past times and the afterglow of heroic deeds; for in Denis Duval there is no trace of the scorching satire which pursues us in The Newcomes; nor does he once pause to moralise, or to enlarge upon the innumerable hypocrisies of modern society. It ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... long to be a crown-like, shadowy flower. For, by his songs, and joy in ancient tales, He showed the seed lay hidden in his heart, A safe sure treasure, hidden even from him, And notwithstanding mellowing all his spring; Until, like sunshine with its genial power, Came the fair maiden's face: the seed awoke. I need not follow him through many days; Nor tell the joys that rose around his path, Ministering pleasure for his labour's meed; Nor how each morning was ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... all things; and passing away is passing on from strength to strength, from glory to glory. Spring has its growth, summer its fruitage, and autumn its festive in-gathering. The spring of eager preparation waxes into the summer of noble work; mellowing in its turn into the serene autumn, the golden-brown haze of October, when the soul may robe itself in jubilant drapery, awaiting the welcome command, "Come up higher," where mortality shall be swallowed up ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... warmer tinge than snow,—living white, intermixed with living green. The hills and hollows beyond the Cold Spring copiously shaded, principally with oaks of good growth, and some walnut-trees, with the rich sun brightening in the midst of the open spaces, and mellowing and fading into the shade,—and single trees, with their cool spot of shade, in the waste of sun: quite a picture of beauty, gently picturesque. The surface of the land is so varied, with woodland mingled, that the eye cannot reach far away, except now and then in vistas perhaps across ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Their dark robes dripping with the heavy dew. Sorceress of the ebon throne! Thy power the Pixies own, 80 When round thy raven brow Heaven's lucent roses glow, And clouds in watery colours drest Float in light drapery o'er thy sable vest: What time the pale moon sheds a softer day 85 Mellowing the woods beneath its pensive beam: For mid the quivering light 'tis ours to play, Aye dancing to the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... nearly an hour since sunset, but the twilight still lingers in softened radiance, mellowing the mountain-scenery. The camp-wagons are drawn up on a low pebbly shelf at the foot of the hills, and the kindled fire has set a great carbuncle in the standing pool. A spring branch oozes out of the rocky turf, and flows down to meet a shallow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... Though there his altars are no more divine. Descending fast the mountain shadows kiss Thy glorious gulf, unconquered Salamis! 1180 Their azure arches through the long expanse More deeply purpled met his mellowing glance, And tenderest tints, along their summits driven, Mark his gay course, and own the hues of Heaven; Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep, Behind his Delphian cliff ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Love obeyed: What if, when Rachel gave her hand, 'twas one Embrown'd by Winter's ice and Summer's sun ? What if, in Reuben's hair the female eye Usurping grey among the black could spy? What if, in both, life's bloomy flush was lost, And their full autumn felt the mellowing frost? Yet time, who blow'd the rose of youth away, Had left the vigorous stem without decay; Like those tall elms in Farmer Frankford's ground, They'll grow no more,—but all their growth is sound; By time confirm'd and rooted in the land, The storms ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... to come in. She sat down on the big boulder where Reeves had fallen asleep. Beyond stretched the gleaming blue waters, mellowing into a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... well as the Americans themselves the extraordinarily intellectual high spirits of Mark Twain, a writer whose genius goes on mellowing, ripening, widening, and improving at an age when another man would have written himself out. His gravity in narrating the most preposterous tale, his sympathy with every one of his absurdest characters, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... quite decide whether he is still sincere in all he says about them. Time, I suspect, is mellowing his judgment.' ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... the hunger to get; Happiness is the hunger to give. True happiness must ever have the tinge of sorrow outlived, the sense of pain softened by the mellowing years, the chastening of loss that in the wondrous mystery of time transmutes our suffering into love and sympathy ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... the orchard Mellowing one by one; Strawberries upturning Soft cheeks to the sun; Roses faint with sweetness, Lilies fair of face, Drowsy scents and murmurs Haunting every place; Lengths of golden sunshine, Moonlight bright as day,— Don't you think ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... and aspect I had ceased to note an hour ago, I saw a hamlet and a spire. All the valley at my right hand was full of pasture- fields, and cornfields, and wood; and a glittering stream ran zig-zag through the varied shades of green, the mellowing grain, the sombre woodland, the clear and sunny lea. Recalled by the rumbling of wheels to the road before me, I saw a heavily-laden waggon labouring up the hill, and not far beyond were two cows and their drover. Human life and human labour were near. I must struggle ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... speaks "About his bonnie Eve; but what says Kate?" "O Adam had not Max's soul,' she said; "And these wild woods and plains are fairer far "Than Eden's self. O bounteous mothers they! "Beck'ning pale starvelings with their fresh, green hands, "And with their ashes mellowing the earth, "That she may yield her increase willingly. "I would not change these wild and rocking woods, "Dotted by little homes of unbark'd trees, "Where dwell the fleers from the waves of want,— "For ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... Bruce entered, and with him was Leslie Winton. They brought the breath of spring mellowing into summer, freighted with emanations of real love, touched and tinctured with joy so habitual it had become spontaneous on the part of Leslie Winton, and this morning contagious with Douglas Bruce. Mickey stood silent, watched them closely, and listened. So in ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... had deepened the reserve of a nature at all times undemonstrative. It had hardened a will that was already of an iron quality. It had deepened and broadened a fine understanding of human nature, and finally it had succeeded in mellowing a tolerance that had always been his. For him those bitter moments had proved to be the cleansing fires which had produced ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... was not listening. He had heard Nolan air his views before. He was a trifle acid, was Nolan. He needed mellowing, a woman in his life. But Nolan had loved once, and the girl had died. With the curious constancy of the Irish, he had ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in these outbursts. On him too Silchester exerted a mellowing influence, and he gained from his sojourn there much of what he might have carried away from Oxford; he recaptured the charm of that June day when in the shade of the oak-tree he had watched a College cricket match, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... loft at the top of his house, where still in the old beams stuck the rusty old nails upon which he hung up his violins. And I saw out upon the north the wide blue sky, just mellowing to rich purple, and flecked here and there with orange streaks prophetic of sunset. Whenever Stradivarius looked up from his work, if he looked north, his eye fell on the old towers of S. Marcellino and S. Antonio; if he looked west, the Cathedral, ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... out, were resting themselves by sitting on the slanting cables of neighboring ships. Perched naked thus,—balancing in the sun, against the blue of sky or water, their slender bodies took such orange from the mellowing light as to seem made of some self-luminous ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... the gliding serpent crawls; The bog's green harper, thawing from his sleep, Twangs a hoarse note and tries a shortened leap; On floating rails that face the softening noons The still shy turtles range their dark platoons, Or, toiling aimless o'er the mellowing fields, Trail through the grass ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... his life. London society, as I have also implied, opened itself to him in ever-widening circles, or, as it would be truer to say, drew him more and more deeply into its whirl; and even before the mellowing kindness of his nature had infused warmth into the least substantial of his social relations, the imaginative curiosity of the poet—for a while the natural ambition of the man—found satisfaction in it. For a short time, indeed, he entered into the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... to see in it an acquired habit. In an art that can leave no one to practise it in the future unless that one be perfect at the outset, of what avail are happy chances, atavistic tendencies, the mellowing hand of time? But the grey caterpillar, sacrificed one day, may be succeeded on another day by a green, yellow or striped caterpillar. There you have discernment, which is quite capable of recognizing the regulation prey under ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... they call it in those parts, though a dene is really a tract of sand, while these breaks in the land are green and thickly treed—through which a narrow, rock-encumbered stream ran murmuring to the sea. Very picturesque in its old-worldness it looked in the mellowing light; the very place, I thought, which a bookman and an antiquary, such as I had heard the late owner to be, would delight to store ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... live longer. Youth is the critical period with religions, as with animals and plants and nations. Through that period Mormonism is passing with flattering success. That such a lusty juvenile will, by favor of the mellowing effect imposed on all creeds by early years of toil, trouble and experience, reach a middle age of presentable decency, is not a more unlikely supposition than the worthy Vermont clergyman would have pronounced, half a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... of the mining-camp and out upon the mesa, he found a corn-husk wrapper and his bag of dry tobacco and deftly rolled a cigarette, doing it with one hand, cow-boy fashion. When the cigarette was lighted, the horseman ahead was a mere khaki-colored dot, rising and falling in the mellowing distance. ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... was only a few yards distant, and they seated themselves on a broad, flat stone, beneath a cluster of pomegranate and figs. The evening was beautifully clear, the soft light which still lingered in the west mellowing every object, and the balmy southern breeze, fresh from "old ocean's bosom," rustling musically amidst the branches above. As if to enhance the sweetness of the hour, and win the mourners from their sad thoughts, the soothing tones of the vesper bells floated afar on the evening air; distance ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... was careful, though, not to mention his hopes until near midnight, when Gallito's normally harsh mood was greatly softened not only by winning the final game, which Jose invariably permitted now, but also by the mellowing influence of his bland, old cognac. Then Gallito would embark on an argument, determined to convince Jose of the wild folly ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... lovelorn, the careworn, and the sorrow-stricken were supplied with brimming goblets of Lethe; and it was shrewdly conjectured that a certain golden vase, from which only the more distinguished guests were invited to partake, contained nectar that had been mellowing ever since the days of classical mythology. The cloth being removed, the company, as usual, grew eloquent over their liquor and delivered themselves of a succession of brilliant speeches,—the task of reporting which we resign to the ...
— A Select Party (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... apples and citrons, and "every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food," with all their variety of colour and tint, according to their season, sometimes all aglow with blossoms, sometimes golden and ruddy with fruit, and sometimes russet with the mellowing tints of autumn. Beyond the city the water conveys its wealth by seven rivers to shady gardens and thirsty fields; and, as far as cultivation extends, two or three splendid crops during the same year reward the industry of the husbandman. ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... melody, merged into one vast harmony. Rasping voices lifted themselves in song. No laughter, no shouting—only the sounds of men whose memories are more sensitive than their feelings, who live in the past or the future, never in the present. Evening was fluttering gently down, mellowing line ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... warriors in the days of Castilian knighthood and glory. What enchantment hangs about these rude battlements, "rich with the spoils of time!" In looking back upon the ancient days it is fortunate that the mellowing influence of time dims the vision, and we see down the long vista of years as through a softening twilight, else we should behold such harshness as would arouse more of ire than of admiration. The olden time, like the landscape, appears best ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... I loitered in the golden time Long after the loved nightingale had ceased To pour his passionate impulse over plains Of shivering corn, now ripened into wealth; When sunset-coloured fruit in orchard crofts Hung slowly mellowing under azure noons; And, hushed in darkened leaves, the dreaming air Swelled gently to a whispering sound, and died. With joy I wandered on from knoll to knoll And lost in marvel, drank the lisping winds, The fairy winds that lisped me all was good. Nor ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... bagpipes playing snatches of different tunes. There were snores that beggar description, that seemed to express every temperament and every passion of the human soul. I cannot forget one a couple of berths off, which seemed to rise above the mediocrity of snores, mellowing into a tenderness like the dying strains of an echo, and renewing its regular periods with a highbred dignity which Nature had clearly not assumed. Another broke away from the harsh notes around in soft diapasons, and with a mellifluous soprano which I instinctively knew must belong ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... Clues, that was then deacon convener, and a man of great potency in his way, and possessed of an influence in the town-council of which he was well worthy, being a person of good discernment, and well versed in matters appertaining to the guildry. Mr Clues, as we were mellowing over the toddy bowl, said, that by and by the council would be looking to me to fill up the first gap that might happen therein; and Dr Swapkirk, the then minister, who had officiated on the occasion, observed, that it was a thing that, in ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... sweep down and cross the road, and then would come a stretch of checkered shade on the yellow earth, and the lifting, expectant sound of high wind in top branches. And sometimes, in the heart of such an arm of woodland, the old horse's hoofs would echo hollow on the warped and mellowing boards of a tiny bridge, and there would be a momentary slip and gurgle of water underneath, on down through the ferns. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... shall Dryden be So when the faithful pencil has designed Some bright idea of the master's mind Where a new world leaps out at his command And ready nature waits upon his hand When the ripe colors soften and unite And sweetly melt into just shade and light When mellowing years their full perfection give And each bold figure just begins to live The treacherous colors the fair art betray And all the bright ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... chill was gone from the air, and the last bit of frozen earth and muck from the deepest and blackest swamps, North, south, east and west the wilderness world was a glory of bursting life, of springtime mellowing into summer. Ridge upon ridge of yellows and greens and blacks swept away into the unknown distances like the billows of a vast sea; and between them lay the valleys and swamps, the lakes and waterways, glad with the rippling song of running waters, the ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... his creed more decidedly, perhaps, than any of the Professors. He had the firm fibre of a theological athlete, and lived to be old without ever mellowing, I think, into a kind of half-heterodoxy, as old ministers of stern creed are said to do now and then,—just as old doctors grow to be sparing of the more exasperating drugs in their later days. He had manipulated the mysteries of the Infinite so long and so exhaustively, that he would have ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a few minutes to study and form his own opinion as to Lady Bridget's setting. She was a woman who, whatever her surroundings, must always impress them with her personality. This bush parlour was original in its simplicity. Walls lined with unvarnished wood which was mellowing already to a soft golden brown. Boards bare, but for a few rugs and skins. A fine piece of tappa from the Solomons, of barbaric design in black and orange, made the centre of an arrangement of South Sea Island and aboriginal weapons. Divans heaped ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... followed the life and work of this great historic character through the slow unfolding out of the depths of the past; the development from the springtime of youth into the fruitful summer of maturity; the mellowing into the richness and beauty of autumn; the coming at last into the snowy spotlessness of serene ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... curious and attractive, yet also what an unreal, fascination the term "highway" connotes! And how interesting for its own sake is a highway! Should the day be a fine one (though chilly) in mellowing autumn, press closer your travelling cloak, and draw down your cap over your ears, and snuggle cosily, comfortably into a corner of the britchka before a last shiver shall course through your limbs, and the ensuing warmth shall put to flight the autumnal cold and damp. As ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... more, O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year, Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due; For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. He must not float upon his watery ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... any other beautiful thing or fine feeling can be lost. The flower may fade, the tree may shed its leaf, the work of art may perish, the great poem may be forgotten; the lovely ancient building, with all the grace of tradition and memory, all the sweet mellowing of outline and detail, may be dismantled or restored; yet the beauty is not in the passing form, but in the spirit that expresses itself in the form on the one hand—the great, subtle, tender, powerful spirit that is for ever working and creating and producing—and, on the other hand, it lies ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... What they will of their future. Maurice, for my sake And your own, put them out of your thoughts. All too brief And too broad is this life to be ruined by grief Over one human atom. Like mellowing rain, Which enriches the soil of the soul and the brain, Should the sorrow of youth be; and not like the breath Of the cyclone, which carries destruction and death. Come, Maurice, let philosophy lift you above The gloom and despair of unfortunate ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... influence of the welcome shower; and as it becomes more rich and extensive, all nature seems to rise up and rejoice. The birds chirp merrily among the foliage; the flowers raise their drooping heads, and the thirsty ground drinks in with eager haste the mellowing rains. All day long, perhaps, does the rain continue to fall, until the earth is fully moistened and "enriched with vegetable life." At length, towards evening, the sun peeps out from among the broken clouds, and lights up, by his sudden radiance, the lovely scene. Myriads of rain-drops sparkle ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... automatically. Only when one has become a senior may he, without losing caste, recognize a freshman as a youth of promise, and admit that a sophomore is not half bad. Such disinterested criticism is tolerated because it is evidently the result of the mellowing ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... idealist naturally turns. Their motor-cars, their aeroplanes, their steam yachts will awaken terror and respect in every corner of the globe. Their handsome doings will fill the papers. They will patronize the arts and literature, while at the same time mellowing them by eliminating that too urgent insistence upon contemporary fact which makes so much of what is done to-day harsh and displeasing. The middle-class tradition will be continued by a class of stewards, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... interest in the fair sex, owning plainly that he had a "heart of Wax, Soft, and Soon mellowing," though he was careful on every page to make everything seem perfectly straight and proper for the suspicious perusal of his English wife; but any nineteenth-century reader can read between the lines. His famous long-winded eulogies of the Boston ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... surprised when the small plotter came back to take the chair recently vacated by his father, he was generous enough not to show it. The huge sense of relief was still with him, and its mellowing influence made him smile leniently when she said: "I want to be reasoned with, Evan. I have just let your father persuade me that a certain thing he is about to do is perfectly safe, when I am afraid ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... men grew softer and softer as the two Indians listened to the song of their departing friends, mellowing down and becoming more harmonious and more plaintive as the distance increased, and the boats grew smaller and smaller, until they were lost in the blaze of light that now bathed both water and sky in the eastern horizon, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... 'Great'. Its architecture usually corresponds with the simplicity of its name. Plain almost to ugliness, yet not without some degree of severe dignity, stand these old barn-like structures of brick—occasionally of stone; bearing the mellowing touch of time, surrounded by a little overshadowed graveyard, they often add a peculiar quaintness and solemnity to the scene. Mrs. Gaskell has described one such in her novel Ruth, and admirers of her art should know well that her own grave lies beside the little sanctuary ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... to such perfection as mortals might breathe after the regeneration of the earth. The grain had been gathered in, but the unfallen fruit still weighed down the orchards, and absorbed the sunlight for its mellowing juices. The first press of the harvest season was over, the second had not yet begun; for one precious moment man and nature paused together, and surveyed the long ascent by which the year had climbed to these high table-lands of peace—not ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... lovelier in my earliest visions seemed The paradise of our first parents, filled With countless angels whose celestial light Thrilled the sweet foliage like a gush of song. Look how the long and level landscape gleams, And with a gradual pace goes mellowing up Into the blue. The very ground we tread Seems flooded with the tender hue of heaven; An azure lawn is all about our feet, And sprinkled with a thousand gleaming flowers, Like lovely ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... amplest means of indulgence in them, is, no doubt, doing for other frailties, and will come at last to the one in hand, leaving it an object of admiring and compassionate retrospect to an enlightened posterity. There are people, however, too impatient to wait for such results from the mellowing influence of progressive civilisation. Such a consideration suggests to me that I may be treading on dangerous ground—dangerous, I mean, to the frail but amiable class to whom my exposition is devoted. Natural misgivings arise in one who professes to call attention to a special type of human ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... My will, but Thine be done" - So spake the Son. Be this our charm, mellowing Earth's ruder noise Of griefs and joys: That we may cling for ever to Thy breast In ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... chairman happens to be a pretty old stager like myself, there may be journalists in such a distinguished company as this who will look at him with the moistened eye of emotional reminiscence and murmur: "Ah, it was upon that man I fleshed my maiden pen!" [Laughter.] Thoughts like these shed the mellowing influence of time over the volumes of press cuttings which no actor's library is without. I have heard of public men who say they never read the newspapers. That remark has been attributed to a bishop, and perhaps there are kinds of abstinence ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... called old, Those other eyes look back to catch a trace Of what was once their own unshadowed grace. But here in our dear poet both are blended— Ripe age begun, yet golden youth not ended;— Even as his song the willowy scent of spring Doth blend with autumn's tender mellowing, And mixes praise with satire, tears with fun, In strains that ever delicately run; So musical and wise, page after page, The sage a minstrel grows, the bard a sage. The dew of youth fills yet his late-sprung flowers, And ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... too. Far otherwise was it with Ryecroft, which represents, as it were, the summa of Gissing's habitual meditation, aesthetic feeling and sombre emotional experience. Not that it is a pessimistic work,—quite the contrary, it represents the mellowing influences, the increase of faith in simple, unsophisticated English girlhood and womanhood, in domestic pursuits, in innocent children, in rural homeliness and honest Wessex landscape, which began to operate about 1896, and ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... them turn to the accounts of Boccaccio, De Foe, and Browne. The vast annihilation that has swallowed all things—the voiceless solitude of the once busy earth—the lonely state of singleness which hems me in, has deprived even such details of their stinging reality, and mellowing the lurid tints of past anguish with poetic hues, I am able to escape from the mosaic of circumstance, by perceiving and reflecting back the grouping and combined ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... of ripe grapes, on the other hand, has already the form of wine; for its sweet taste evidences a mellowing change, which is its completion by natural heat (as it is said in the "Meteorologica," iv, 3, not far from the beginning), and for that reason this Sacrament can be fulfilled ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... far away from London, with a bank of many-tinted trees on one side, and out beyond a range of low hills, purple in the evening light. In the sky was a rosy sunset glow, melted above into saffron color, and this was reflected in the water, gilding and mellowing the foreground of sedge and water lilies. But what made the picture specially charming was that the artist had really caught the peculiar solemn stillness of evening; merely to look at that quiet, peaceful river brought a feeling of hush and calmness. It seemed a strange picture ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... whisky slowly, remarking that he knew the brand, "Peach-flavoured, sir. Very good, does credit to Penhallow's taste. As Mr. Clay once remarked, the mellowing ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Your well-known and conspicuous liberality has put you in the pleasant position of being able to number your friends amongst all classes of society. And to you, Mr. Vigeland, I have to offer this book of Family Devotions, printed on vellum and handsomely bound, to grace your study table. The mellowing influence of time has led you to take an earnest view of life; your zeal in carrying out your daily duties has, for a long period of years, been purified and enobled by thoughts of higher and holier things. ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... fought them; he hated them; they made him appear unto himself weak, even effeminate! His abhorrence of sentimentalism had been among the strongest of his life-characteristics; and yet, though he could not define it, a mellowing something seemed to be acting upon him that dull, bitterly cold winter morning, that shed a soft glow throughout his mental chambers, that seemed to touch gently the hard, rugged things of thought that lay within, and soften away their sharp outlines. He might not know what lay so heavily upon ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... daintiest flowers, because the Muse Had made his throat a well-spring of sweet song. Happy Cometas, this sweet lot was thine! Thee the chest prisoned, for thee the honey-bees Toiled, as thou slavedst out the mellowing year: And oh hadst thou been numbered with the quick In my day! I had led thy pretty goats About the hill-side, listening to thy voice: While thou hadst lain thee down 'neath oak or ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... enlargement of his artistic apprehensiveness and scope that is of far greater value to him. We do not mean to imply that Mr. James lacks what is called knowledge of the world. On the contrary, he has a great deal of it, but it has not in him degenerated into worldliness, and a mellowing haze of imagination ransoms the edges of things from the hardness of over-near familiarity. He shows on analysis that rare combination of qualities which results in a man of the world, whose contact with it kindles instead of dampening the ardor of his fancy. He is thus excellently fitted for ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... indissolubly fused—and the result of such just treatment of whatever lowly themes or characters we can but love and loyally approve with all our human hearts. Such masters necessarily are rare, and such ripe perfecting as is here attained may be in part the mellowing result of age and long observation, though it can be based upon the wisest, purest spirit of the man as well ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... halted on the rising ground, and one of them, at least, gazed anxiously into the purple shadows now mellowing the gray monotony of the plateau. The point where the Du Vallon left the main road was invisible from where they stood. Marigny had laid his plans with skill, so his humorous treatment of their plight was not marred by any lurking fear of the ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... with another bow, to take his chances with me. And thus we walked onward, the horse following close, now and then "nosing" his master's shoulder to show his preference and his loyalty. The season was mellowing and the old gentleman was airily dressed in white, low shoes neatly polished and a Panama hat. He was delighted, he said, to hear that I was getting along so well with the school, and he knew that I would be of vast good to the community. "I have heard of the Aimes conspiracy," said ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... of the imitative use of language. In national literatures many a passage, poetry or prose, is heightened in effect by assonance, alliteration, a certain movement or rhythm of phrase. Subtle suggestion slides in sound through the ear and falls with mellowing cadence into the heart. Soothed senses murmur their own music to the mind; the lullaby lilt of the lay swells full the linked ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark |
