"Primrose" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the primrose tribe (Primula Auricula), very popular in Europe, but little grown in America on account of the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... Florentine scrolled iron opened suddenly upon a blaze of yellow in all the shades from the orange velvet of the wallflower through the shaded saffron of azalias and a dozen tints of tulip to the palest primrose and jonquil. ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... of Pompeii are no longer wonders, and people go to see them with something of the same spirit in which the citizens of London saunter to Primrose hill. It was a beggarly little place from the beginning; and the true wonder is, how it could ever have found inhabitants, or how the inhabitants could ever have found room to eat, drink, and sleep in. But Herculaneum is of a higher rank. If the Neapolitan Government had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... womanly triumphs dogged even her working hours. She was sixteen years old, and devoted her youth and beauty to buttonholes. In the East End, where a spade is a spade, a buttonhole is a buttonhole, and not a primrose or a pansy. There are two kinds of buttonhole—the coarse for slop goods and the fine for gentlemanly wear. Becky concentrated herself on superior buttonholes, which are worked with fine twist. She stitched them in her father's workshop, which was ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Weever. And in the year 1749, some unknown poet, soliloquising upon the top of Primrose Hill, bursts out into the following rapturous musing at the sight of "the old ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... "Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, The periwinkle trailed its leaves; And 'tis my faith that every flower ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... poignant sting of sex appeal had come home to her for the first time. Wherefore in this frank child of the wilderness had been born a shy shame, a vague trembling for herself that marked a change. At sunrise she had been still treading gayly the primrose path of childhood; at sunset she had entered upon her ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... to the level floor where the river loitered in loops and curves. The sun was just topping the eastern hills; the heads of the trees were dark against a primrose sky. ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... position would have preferred the primrose path of dalliance to the steep heights of duty; but Lord Arthur was too conscientious to set pleasure above principle. There was more than mere passion in his love; and Sybil was to him a symbol of all that is good and noble. For a moment he had a natural ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansie freakt with ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... the roots of such wild plants as he himself thought pretty, or such as he found (one can hardly tell how) were considered by better judges to be worthy of a place in the parterre. The different orchises, for instance, the white and lilac primrose, the golden oxslip, the lily of the valley, the chequered fritillary, which blows so freely along the banks of the Kennett, and the purple campanula which covers with equal profusion the meadows of the Thames, all found their way to Phoebe's flower-plats. ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... till I felt as if all the threshing-machines in the county were about my head, lecturing me all the time on the profanity of flying against Scripture by trying to alter one's hair from what Providence had made it. Nothing would do; her soap only turned it into shades of lemon and primrose. I was fain to let her shave my head as if I had a brain fever; and I was so horribly ashamed for years after, that I don't think I have set foot in Long Street since ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... began Miss Dulcie, growing radiant at the thrilling question, 'I have been thinking of making up my art needlework tunic—the pale green, you know, with garlands of passion flowers, worked in crewels—over a petticoat of the faintest primrose.' ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... is fine to be a bachelor when one is young; but when the years multiply, when there are no new junkets and old ones grow stale, when scenes change, when friends drop out one by one, when a younger generation usurps the primrose path of dalliance, ah! the world becomes a dreary place. The old bachelor is the loneliest ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... to do. The city must be skirted, the hill of Arkaban gained, and already a faint primrose streak in the eastern ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... begin to show their buds; the long withy ends of the branches to turn green; when the wild strawberry, and other herbage of the sheltered woodlands, put forth their tender and tinted leaves, and the daisy and the primrose peep from under the hedges. At this time there is a general bustle among the feathered tribes; an incessant fluttering about, and a cheerful chirping, indicative, like the germination of the vegetable world, of the reviving life and fecundity of ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... May Day of 1259, one of the brightest days of the calendar. The season was well forward, the elms and bushes had arrayed themselves in their brightest robe of green; the hedges were white and fragrant with may; the anemone, the primrose, the cowslip, and blue bell carpeted the sward of the Andredsweald; the oaks and poplars were already putting on their summer garb. The butterflies settled upon flower after flower; the bees were rejoicing ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... English women find time to study national questions, to organize "Primrose" and "Liberal Leagues," and to vote on municipal affairs. Miss Helen Taylor and other cultivated women have been elected members of the London school board, and ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... life is young and pleasure new, Ah! why the shades of Death explore? Better, ere May's sweet prime is o'er, The primrose path of joy pursue: The torch, the lamps' sepulchral fire, Their paleness on your charms impress, And glaring on your loveliness, Death mocks what living eyes desire. Approach! the music of your tread No longer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... remembered, from the American-bred Milton Droleen, out of the Queen of County Antrim, Breda Muddler, which royal bitch, as every one who is familiar with the stud book knows, goes back as far as the almost mythical Spuds, with along the way no primrose dallyings with black-and-tan Killeney Boys and Welsh nondescripts. And did not Biddy trace to Erin, mother and star of the breed, through a long descendant out of Breda Mixer, herself an ancestress of Breda Muddler? Nor could be omitted from the purple record ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... and wild, Each plant or flower, the mountain's child. Here eglantine embalmed the air, Hawthorn and hazel mingled there; 215 The primrose pale and violet flower, Found in each cliff a narrow bower; Fox-glove and night-shade, side by side, Emblems of punishment and pride, Grouped their dark hues with every stain 220 The weather-beaten crags retain. With boughs that quaked at every breath, Grey birch and aspen wept beneath; ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... hands a primrose wreath enwove, With fingers deft, and eyes with tears bedimmed: No lovelier face the painter's art e'er limned, No poet's thought e'er told of ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... the yellow buds of light Far flickering beyond the snows, As leaning o'er the shadowy white Morn glimmered like a pale primrose. ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... contemptuously, "not much o' mountains. Why, that one over yonder don't look much bigger than Primrose Hill." ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... not know—was it yesterday I saw you, cool and sweet in your soft primrose gown? or was it long ago before the shadows fell? Ah, love—your eyes! your hair! And always in the darkness the sound of your voice—the touch of ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... exotic, almost artificial, in songs which, under an English aspect and dress, are yet so manifestly the product of other skies. They affect us like translations; the very fauna and flora are alien, remote; the dog's-tooth violet is but an ill substitute for the rathe primrose, nor can we ever believe that the wood-robin sings as sweetly in April as the English thrush. ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... conversation on novels and novel-writing, and I ventured to say: "How is it that not one of the English novelists has ever drawn any high or adequate character of the clergyman? Walter Scott never gave us anything beyond the respectable official. Goldsmith's Dr. Primrose is a good man, the best we have in your English fiction, but odd and amusing rather than otherwise. Then Dickens has given us Chadband and Stiggins, and you Charles Honeyman. Can you not conceive," I went on to say, "that a man, without any chance of worldly ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... loosening the clay when it pressed too heavily upon their fragile roots; and at night she joined the elves in their merry dance upon the greensward. She was not alone in the great forest; near her were many of her sister fairies, all old friends and playmates. There was the Fairy Primrose in a gown of pale yellow, and Cowslip, who wore a robe of the same colour, but of a deeper shade. There was the graceful Bluebell, and the wild Anemone, the delicate Woodsorrel, and the Yellow Kingcup. The Fairy ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... bottles marked ammonia, bottles with bulbs and sprays, cases of razors, festoons of strops—all these stood or lay on shelves at my elbow as I proceeded to wash my hands and face with a piece of yellow primrose soap that by some chance was among the welter of expensive brands. No luck with our women, observe. I certainly had had no luck with Gladys. But he, he, to whom women ran as though he were a necromancer, as though he had the secret of some spell ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... all through the Winter had been sleeping in the ground heard the birds, but they were drowsy, and longed to sleep on. At last the snowdrops came up and looked shiveringly about; and a primrose leaf peeped through the ground, and died of cold. Then some violets opened their blue eyes, and, hidden beneath the tangle of the wood, listened to the twittering of the birds. The little ragged boy came by; he saw the tender flowers, and, stooping down, gathered them one ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... the Cathedral Choristers, darted off to find Mrs. Daventry, the sister of "our Mrs. Leith"; Mr. Dickinson gently, but decisively, took the music case from Rosamund's hand with an "I'll carry that home for you"; a thin man, like an early primrose obliged by some inadvertence of spring to work for its living, sidled up and begged for the name of "your most beautiful and chaste second encore for our local paper, the 'Welsley Whisperer'"; and Mrs. Dickinson in a pearl ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... but to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweets— With the sky above my head And the grass beneath my feet; For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel Before I knew the woes of want, And the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... destruction, the rocks of Biarritz are very barren in sea-beasts and sea-weeds. But there is one remarkable exception, where the pools worn in a hard limestone are filled with what seem at first sight beds of china-asters, of all loveliest colours—primrose, sea-green, dove, purple, crimson, pink, ash-grey. They are all prickly sea-eggs (presumably the Echinus lividus, which is found in similar places in the west of Ireland), each buried for life in a cup-shaped hole which he has excavated in ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... "Like the nosegay which a traveller sends us from some land to which we shall never go again, come and let me breathe from the far country of your adolescence the scent of those flowers of spring among which I also used to wander, many years ago. Come with the primrose, with the canon's beard, with the gold-cup; come with the stone-crop, whereof are posies made, pledges of love, in the Balzacian flora, come with that flower of the Resurrection morning, the Easter daisy, come with ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... it was peculiar!" she exclaimed. "Her Christian name is Primrose, if you can call such a name Christian. I almost died when I heard it first. She's a queer blossom, Primmie is, a little too much tar in her upper riggin', as father used to say, but faithful and willin' as a person could be. I put up with her tongue and her—queerness ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... in minstrels, for he was a genius at capitalizing the enthusiasm of the theater-going public. Just at this time he was launching the greatest of all his traveling enterprises. To meet the competition of the newly formed Barlow, Wilson, Primrose and West minstrels he decided to merge all his white minstrel companies into the Haverly Mastodons. It was to include forty star performers, more than had ever before been assembled in a minstrel organization. So proud was Haverly of this total that the advertising slogan of the company, ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... old-fashioned cook, on the subject of a few new dishes, and I helped to entertain some of those strange aboriginal creatures called "the county." But the announcement one afternoon, that we were to spend the next in driving ten miles to attend a Primrose League Fete in the private grounds of a local magnate, proved too much for me. Shall you be surprised to hear that on the following morning I received an urgent telegram recalling me to town? My hostess was, or affected to be, overwhelmned that by my sudden ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... many times, old darling, and I really can't believe it. The Premier's very silly. Everybody knows that. But he's still got just a faint idea of the few things the country won't stand. And you are one of them, you truly are. You don't go down even with the Primrose League, and they simply worship at the ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... the glory of the day, And mine the primrose in the lowly shade: Mine? ah, not mine! amisse I mine did say: Not mine, but His which mine awhile her made; 235 Mine to be-his, with him to live for ay. O that so faire a flowre so soon should fade, And through untimely ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... floor of red tiles; three windows from the ceiling down to the ground, opening on a balcony, and flanked by the perpendicular folds of the dark hangings. The stateliness of ancient days lingered between the four high, smooth walls, tinted a delicate primrose-colour; and Mrs. Gould, with her little head and shining coils of hair, sitting in a cloud of muslin and lace before a slender mahogany table, resembled a fairy posed lightly before dainty philtres dispensed out of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... go maying You find the primrose still, And find the windflower playing With every wind at will, But ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... more will weep, The primrose's pale cheek to deck; The dew no more will sleep, Nuzzled in the lily's neck. Much rather would it tremble here, And leave them both to ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... willing to join him in some outward, ceremonial expression of that sentiment, if he can suggest one that shall not be ridiculously inadequate. What about kneeling through the C Minor Symphony? That seems to me about as near as we can get. Or I will go with him to Primrose Hill some fine morning (like the Persian Ambassador fabled by Charles Lamb) and worship the Sun, chanting to him William Watson's ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... together, and they gave him the sele of the day. So he went along the highway a little till he came to a place where was a footbridge over into the meadow. He crossed thereby and went swiftly till he reached a rising ground grown over with hazel-trees; there he sat down among the rabbit-holes, the primrose and wild-garlic blooming about him, and three blackbirds answering one another from the edges of the coppice. Straightway when he had looked and seen none coming he broke the threads that were wound ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... capense' is much more fertile when crossed by a distinct species than when fertilised by its proper pollen! On the other hand, the famous Gaertner, though he took the greatest pains to cross the primrose and the cowslip, succeeded only once or twice in several years; and yet it is a well-established fact that the primrose and the cowslip are only varieties of the same kind of plant. Again, such cases as the following are well established. The ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... the eve of Good Friday. Within the modest parlour of No. 13 Primrose Terrace a little man, wearing a gray felt hat and a red neck-tie, stood admiring himself in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece. Such a state of things anywhere else would have had no significance whatever; but circumstances proverbially alter cases. At ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... date, succeeded in combining, without inflicting more pain on the beholders than a beneficent Creator—so far as we can judge by his own system of color—intended the cultivated eye to suffer. Example—as the old writers used to say—one lady fired the air in primrose satin, with red-velvet trimming. This mild mixture re-appeared on her head in a primrose hat with a red feather. A gold chain, so big that it would have done for a felon instead of a fool, encircled her neck, and was weighted with innumerable ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... bouquet of them. Carlo came with us and sat on the back-seat. His collar was stuck full of primroses, and small bunches were tied on to the tufts on his back and at the end of his tail. I wore a buttonhole of primroses, and carried a huge primrose wreath to be placed round the bust of LORD BEACONSFIELD, which stands in the hall of the Club. The coachman and horses too were all tricked out with bunches. TOLLAND and CHORKLE, and all the leaders of the Party, met us at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... most part, little else than a narrow strip of untilled field, separated by blackberry hedges from the better-cared-for meadows on each side of it: growing more weeds, therefore, than they, and perhaps in spring a primrose or two—white archangel—daisies plenty, and purple thistles in autumn. A slender rivulet, boasting little of its brightness, for there are no springs at Dulwich, yet fed purely enough by the rain and morning dew, here trickled—there loitered—through the long grass beneath ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... vegetable-marrow seeds, as they are not grown here, and people try and make boiled cucumbers take their place; but boiled cucumbers are nasty things, and I don't see why marrows should not do here perfectly well. These, and primrose-roots, are the English contributions to my garden. I brought over the roots in a tin box last time I came from England, and am anxious to see whether they will consent to live here. Certain it ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... methe* *mead Or hoard of apples, laid in hay or heath. Wincing* she was as is a jolly colt, *skittish Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt. A brooch she bare upon her low collere, As broad as is the boss of a bucklere. Her shoon were laced on her legges high; She was a primerole,* a piggesnie , *primrose For any lord t' have ligging* in his bed, *lying Or yet for ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... beauty came also, and returned no more. This, where the white rose-bush grows untended, was the young daughter of a squire in far-off days: too young to have known the pangs of love or the sweet desire of Death, save that, in primrose time, he always paints himself so fair. I have thought the inscription must have been borrowed from another grave, in some yard shaded by yews and silent under the cawing of the rooks; perhaps, from its stiffness, translated from a stately Latin verse. This it is, snatched not too ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... on prairies and among mountains, far from the habitations of men, that man is most readily terrified before nature, and not on the three-mile primrose way from a railway accident to a house-party. But for a moment cold terror struck at Aladdin like a serpent, and the marrow in his bones froze. Before he could succeed in reducing this awful feeling to one of acute anxiety alone, he had to talk to ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... some distance from home, and the sun had a good deal of power on sunny days now. The mud was all gone by this time; in its place a thick groundwork of dust. Winter frost was replaced by soft spring air; but that gave a chance for the lane odours to come out—not the fragrance of hawthorn and primrose, by any means. Nor any such pleasant sight to be seen. Poor, straggling, forlorn houses; broken fences, or no courtyards at all; thick dust, and no footway; garbage, and ashes, and bones, but never ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... streams vegetation gets very luxurious, and among the thick undergrowth are found some lovely ferns, broad-leaved plants, and flowers of every hue, all alike nearly scentless. Here is no odorous breath of violet or honeysuckle, no delicate perfume of primrose or sweetbriar, only a musty, dank, earthy smell which gets more and more pronounced as the mists rise along with the deadly vapours of the night. Sleeping in these forests is very unhealthy. There is ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... a movement of her chin towards the primrose wreath which Mrs White had added at the last moment to the ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... Primrose in the Vicar of Wakefield (ch. 20), after describing these disputations, says:—'In this manner I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... man, started with a fixed idea that a regatta differed from a Primrose Fete, if at all, then only in being non-political. He could not get it out of his head that public speeches were of the essence of the festivity; and when, with all the tact at my command, I insisted on aquatics, he countered me by proposing to invite down a lecturer from the Navy League! As he ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... rhyming dictionary. When the verse maker once gets the habit of referring to its pages there is more hope for the amateur popular song writer than for him. Better to think half an hour and get the right word one's self than to tread the primrose path of the rhyming dictionary. It has one use, nevertheless, which is perhaps allowable. There are certain words, such as "chimney," "scarf," "crimson," "window," "widow," and others which have no rhyme. To ascertain whether a word belongs to this class or not the dictionary ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... plaintive night-song of the golden-crown—the three notes of poignant beauty and mystery that were linked indissolubly with the summer twilights of Kon Klayu. Out over the reefs the sun had gone down splendidly into the sea. Broad ribbons of clear jade streaked the primrose of the sky. Beneath, bands of amethyst, amber and rose merged slowly into a flame of crimson, and while the violet dusk crept over the sea, the stars came out. Blowing across the bare brown reefs the night wind brought the scent ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... primrose and violet to spend for you Their smell and hue, And the bold, trembling anemone awhile to spare Her flowers starry fair; Or the flushed wild apple and yet sweeter thorn Their sweetness to keep Longer than any fire-bosomed flower born ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... that broad highway eons before. On leaving Hell, presumedly forever to carry on their work among men, they had done a mighty good job of the original construction. But time had worked its ravages with the primrose-lined path, and it was not surprising that on starting his sabbatical leave, Nick had ordered his chief engineer to repair the road as a first step in his ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... sting Of sudden fear lest he should find the lady, And mischief follow, shot me up the stairs. I met him at the top, quiet as at first; The fire had faded from his eyes; the child Held in her tiny hand a lady's glove Of delicate primrose. When he reached the hall, He turned him to the porter, who had scarce Recovered what poor wits he had, and saying, "The count Lamballa waited on lord Seaford," Turned him again, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... snowdrop's face betrays no gloom, And the primrose pants in its heedless push, Though the myrtle asks if it's worth the fight This year with frost and rime To venture one more time On delicate leaves and buttons of white From the selfsame bough as at last year's prime, And never ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... will try this little joke on a score of people, by the time the twentieth is arrived at he will then discover why the happiest quartette of youngsters in the immediate vicinity of Primrose Hill ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... somber little hall, then found herself in a very large room draped with ivory colored cretonne patterned with butterflies in vivid shades. The furniture was ivory colored wood, and the carpet gray, with clusters of wild flowers, primrose, poppies, cornflowers and buttercups. ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... set off for some hours yet, sir—the horses must have rest. I believe—but am not sure—that somebody got up very early this morning to make that pie. I told them I had left some friends in distress; and Primrose and I—did what we could. I realized this morning what must be the position of a Commissary ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... by the bank, The primrose down the brae; The hawthorn's budding in the glen, And milk-white is the slae: The meanest hind in fair Scotland May rove their sweets amang; But I, the Queen of a' Scotland, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... road, overhung with trees, at whose roots grew clusters of large primrose leaves, showing what a lovely walk it must be in spring; then higher, till all this vegetation ceased, leaving only the short grass cropped by the sheep, the purple thistles, and the furze-bushes, yellow and cheerful all the year round. They ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... beech-tree I sat down, when I was last this way a-fishing; and the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to have a friendly contention with an echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow tree near to the brow of that primrose-hill. There I sat viewing the silver streams glide silently towards their centre, the tempestuous sea; yet sometimes opposed by rugged roots and pebble-stones, which broke their waves, and turned them into foam; and sometimes I beguiled time by viewing the harmless lambs; some leaping securely in ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... comfortings. Across a dark verdureless field will blow a wind through the heart of the winter which will wake in the patient mind not a memory merely, but a prophecy of the spring, with a glimmer of crocus, or snow-drop, or primrose; and across the waste of tired endeavour will a gentle hope, coming he knows not whence, breathe springlike upon the heart of the man around whom life looks desolate and dreary. Well do I remember a friend of mine telling me once—he was then a labourer in the field of literature, who had ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... miry lane Still we pound and pant in vain; Still with earthy foot we chase Waning pinion, fainting face; Still, with grey hair, we stumble on Till - behold! - the vision gone! Where has fleeting beauty led? To the doorway of the dead! qy. omit? [Life is gone, but life was gay: We have come the primrose way!] ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... took part in a Conservative garden party at Aston Manor, at which his opponents paid him the compliment of raising a serious riot. He gave constant attention to the party organization, which had fallen into considerable disorder after 1880, and was an active promoter of the Primrose League, which owed its origin to the happy inspiration of one of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... a painter is that he can't paint every detail of things as they are in nature. A primrose, when you first see it, is just a little yellow spot. When you hold it in your hand you find it made up of petals round a tiny centre with little things in it. If you take a magnifying glass you can see all its details multiplied. If you put a tiny bit ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... believes he has found the answer to this difficulty. Outside of his botanical garden an American species of Evening Primrose had run wild. In looking over a number of these plants he found, every here and there, certain peculiar members of the species. They differed noticeably to the practiced eye from the rest of the group. When they were planted and crossed with each other, and the resulting ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... And with fine fingers cropt full feateously The tender stalks on high. Of every sort which in that meadow grew They gather'd some; the violet, pallid blue, The little daisy that at evening closes, The virgin lily and the primrose true: With store of vermeil roses, To deck their bridegrooms' posies Against the bridal day, which was not long: Sweet Thames! run softly, till ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... views, but a good neighbor, a kind father, a worthy citizen, a fond husband, and a consistent member of his church. He improved his farm, paid his debts, and kept his faith. He had no sentiment about things and was quite unconscious of the beauties of nature over which we make such an ado. "The primrose by the river's brim" would not have been seen by him at all. This is true of most farmers; the plough and the hoe and the scythe do not develop their aesthetic sensibilities; then, too, in the old religious view the beauties of this world ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, The periwinkle trail'd its wreathes; And 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... are without number, and bright and various indeed to behold. As a father's tinkling bell brings the children together, so the snowdrop bells call forth all the other flowers. First and foremost comes the primrose, and cowslips—Heaven's keys as we call them—open the gates to all the other children of the Spring. "Come forth, come forth!" the returning birds shout from out the bushes, and silver-grey catkins sprout on every twig. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sake, marks it off once for all from the photographic or 'plain' realism of Crabbe. But it is also clearly distinct from the no less poetic realism of Wordsworth. Wordsworth's mind is conservative and traditional; his inspiration is static; he glorifies the primrose on the river brink by seeing its transience in the light of something far more deeply interfused which does not change nor pass away. Romance, in a high sense, lies about his greatest poetry. But it is a romance rooted in memory, not in hope—the 'glory of the grass and splendour ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... eye. These beds of moss are the greenest and brightest of the winter's colours. Besides these there are ale-hoof, or ground-ivy leaves (not the ivy that climbs trees), violet leaves, celandine mars, primrose mars, foxglove mars, teazle mars, and barren strawberry leaves, all green in the midst of winter. One tiny white flower of barren strawberry has ventured to bloom. Round about the lower end of each maple stick, just at the ground, is ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... la Primrose.—Take a pound of veal cutlet; cut it up into small cutlets the size of a dollar, and perfectly round. Put two ounces of butter (which has been first melted to let the curd separate) into a saucepan, with ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... telling the truth," said the fairy. "Your mother is sick and poor, and you want to help her. Now look at this, Lisbeth," she continued, giving the child a blossom from her basket like those upon her head, "this is a primrose. Take it, and as you walk along follow the primrose blossoms until you come to the ...
— The Enchanted Castle - A Book of Fairy Tales from Flowerland • Hartwell James
... clear and green, became dim and purple; the blue went out of the waters of the lake, they became the hue of steel touched with iridescence of gold; and above the hills, vapour that had before been almost invisible in the sky, now hung in upright layers of purple mist, blossoming into primrose yellow on the lower edges. A few moments more and grey bloom, such as one sees on purple fruit, was on these vast hangings of cloud that grouped themselves more largely, and gold flames burned on their fringes. Behind them there were great empty reaches of lambent blue, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... out some of these trains of thought in gathering together what I have to say about field herbage; but I must say briefly here that the great sign, to the Greeks, of the coming of spring in the pastures, was not, as with us, in the primrose, but in the various flowers of the asphodel tribe (of which I will give you some separate account presently); therefore it is that the earth answers with crocus flame to the cloud on Ida; and the power of Athena in eternal life is written by the light ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... have a bank of Dendrobiums, so densely clothed in bloom that the leaves are unnoticed. Lovely beyond all to my taste, if, indeed, one may make a comparison, is D. luteolum, with flowers of palest, tenderest primrose, rarely seen unhappily, for it will not reconcile itself to our treatment. Then again a bank of Cattleyas, of Vandas, of miscellaneous genera. The pathway is hedged on one side with Begonia coralina, an unimproved species ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... Aunt: On Friday we dined at Mr. Tufnell's, who married last spring the daughter of Lord Rosebery, Lady Anne Primrose, a very "nice person," to use the favorite English term of praise. . . . Sir John Hobhouse was of our party and he told us so much of Byron, who was his intimate friend, as you will remember from his Life, that we stayed ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... their latest wish fulfilled. Flowers grew upon the turf that covered them, and there was the earliest primrose seen, and the latest violet. Many a fond youth and trusting maiden have visited their lowly tomb, and many a tear, fresh from the heart, has dropped upon the sod ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... well-known golden glow and R. nitida var. Autumn Sun, growing five feet high. It bears attractive primrose yellow flowers. The giant purple coneflower, often classed as a rudbeckia, is really an Echinacea, growing three or more feet tall, bearing reddish purple flowers and is very attractive in groups bordering ...
— Making a Garden of Perennials • W. C. Egan
... but to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet— With, the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet! For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want, And the walk ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... in the cause, and the next day the conspirators made a trip to the florist's shop. They were dismayed but not discouraged by the exorbitant price of flowers; they scornfully dismissed the florist's suggestion of a "neat" little primrose plant—they were equally disdainful of carnations. Patricia favored roses, and when the florist offered them a bargain in some rather wilted Lady Ursulas, she wanted to buy them and put them in salt and water overnight, to revive ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... he has a grudge against it. His attitude to Peter Grim is one of devotion. He actually told me that it was very sad that Peter had now grown too old to catch mice. Again, he always brings me the first primrose and spares no pains to find it. Such little acts argue a kindly nature. But against them, you have to set his unreasoning dislike of human beings and a certain—shall I say ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... was an unmatured green valley tonight, where Venus bloomed like a solitary primrose; and on the dark hills of Heaven the stars were like daisies. He turned his back on the little town and set off up the hill again, while the wind slipped through the hedge beside him in and out of the blackthorn boughs, lisping, whispering, snuffling, sniffing, like a small inquisitive ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... been the solemn fool with face awry That I have gathered in my ecstasy. You are only a vulgar primrose I ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... been exposing Lord Beaconsfield's nonsense about the "Three Profits" of agricultural land, to a turbulent meeting in a chapel or a barn (for the use of the schoolroom was denied to the Liberal candidate). As we drove through the primrose-studded lanes, or past the village green, the bell was ringing from the grey tower of the Parish Church, and summoning the villagers to the daily Evensong of Holy Week. The contrast was too violent to be ignored; and yet, for a citizen who took his citizenship seriously, the meeting was ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... rich. It was white all over, with the exception of its tail; and that, for about an inch or so at the tip, was covered with black silky hair. On some parts of the body, too, the white was tinged with a primrose yellow; but this tinge is not found in all animals of this species, as some individuals are pure white. Of course it was now in its winter "robes"; but in the summer it changes to a colour that does not differ much from that of the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... a subtle memory Of those sweet tremulous days of rain and sun, When April laughed between her tears to see The early primrose with shy footsteps run From the gnarled oak-tree roots till all the wold, Spite of its brown and trampled leaves, grew bright with ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... dreadfully neglectful of your papa's advice, Lotta," she said, in a complaining tone. "Do you like pink roses with mauve areophane, Diana? I do not. Look at that primrose tulle, with dead ivy-leaves and scarlet berries, in the barouche. I dare say you have not taken your glass of old port this morning, Charlotte, and have only yourself to thank if ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... of the primulas is purple, but white, yellow, blue, and pink are also found. The P. denticulata has purple to bright sapphire blue flowers, and great stretches of country are almost blue with the lovely heads of this primrose. Miles of country can be seen literally covered with P. obtusifolia, which has purple flowers and a strong metallic smell. P. Kingii is a lovely plant with flowers of such a dark claret colour that they are almost black. And perhaps the most striking primula is P. Elwesiana, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... Freeborn, Yankee, Anacostia, Jacob Bell, Satellite, Primrose, and Currituck, convoyed the transports up and down the river, and the Jacob Bell covered the landing at Carter's Creek. These vessels of the Potomac flotilla were under the command of ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... the American wife content to be merely ornamental. Throughout the political career of her husband she was his helpmate, and as an officer of the Primrose League, as an editor of the Anglo-Saxon Review, as, for many hot, weary months in Durban Harbor, the head of the hospital ship Maine, she has shown an acute mind and real executive power. At the polls many votes that would not respond to the ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... and her eyes in the shadow of a momentary gravity were the eyes of a woman and not of a child. She raised them to look out at the evening sky, indigo blue against the lamplit interior, or faintly primrose in the west, and wondered for the thousandth time why it was still such an effort to Val to refer to his brief military experience. Soft country noises came in, peaceful and soothing: the short shrill shriek of a bat, the rustle of a branch of rose-leaves moving like a hand ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... the theatre and the dance; Primrose the path I would be wending; For me the roses ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... you come with me into a marvellous land wherein is music, where heads are covered with primrose hair and bodies are white as snow? There is no "mine" or "thine" there; white are teeth, and black are eyebrows, and cheeks are the hue of the foxglove, and eyes the hue of blackbirds' eggs.... We see everything on every side, yet no man seeth us. Though pleasant ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... Hannam, Captain Richard Stanton. Captain Martin Frobisher, Vice-Admiral, a man of great experience in seafaring actions, who had carried the chief charge of many ships himself, in sundry voyages before, being now shipped in the Primrose; Captain Francis Knolles, Rear-Admiral in the galleon Leicester; Master Thomas Venner, captain in the Elizabeth Bonadventure, under the General; Master Edward Winter, captain in the Aid; Master Christopher Carlile, the Lieutenant-General, captain of the Tiger; Henry ...
— Drake's Great Armada • Walter Biggs
... gentlemen. Of the ladies one was young, perhaps nineteen, and one close upon forty. The younger was the parson's daughter Elizabeth, otherwise Betty Ives. Her father, Mr. Ives, was bringing her home from Newbury, where she had spent the last six months with her aunt, Mrs. Primrose, seeing something of the gay world ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... were thinking of making wills, and eating porridge, and waiting for the Dark Policeman to come and arrest them for loitering, he was left a magnificent piece of property like Tralee; and he had all the sources of pleasure open to a young man walking the primrose path. He was living right up to the last. Both his wives were gray-headed when they died—it turned them gray to live with him; both had died before they were fifty; and here he was the sole owner of a wonderful young head, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the remand prison, was brought to trial, or unless Burchill was arrested. Consequently, Triffitt was not expected to make up a half or a whole column of recent and sensational Herapath news every morning. And so he gladly took this Sunday for a return to the primrose paths. He and Carver met their sweethearts; they took them to the Albert Hall Sunday afternoon concert—nothing better offering in the middle of winter—they went to tea at the sweethearts' lodgings; later in the evening they carried them off to the ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... domestic joys; of burning logs on the hearth and lighted candles, and a dear slender figure moving about the room. He used to rehearse to himself little meetings and partings; look at the roofs of the Dower House against the primrose sky as he rode up the fields homewards; identify her window, dark now as she was away; and long for Christmas when she would be back again. The only shadow over these delightful pictures was the uncertainty as to the future. ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... lived for years in India. I used to be very kind to you when we were children, and why should I alter from it now? I remember when you tumbled in the path down there, and your knee was bleeding, and I tied it up with a dock leaf and my handkerchief. Can you remember? It was primrose time." ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... late Rev. Dr. Primrose (of Wakefield, vicar) wrote me a little note from his country living this morning, and the kind fellow had the precaution to write "No thorn" upon the envelope, so that, ere I broke the seal, my mind might be relieved of any anxiety lest ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Alfred Tennyson "Wouldn't You Like to Know" John Godfrey Saxe "Sing Heigh-ho" Charles Kingsley The Golden Fish George Arnold The Courtin' James Russell Lowell L'Eau Dormante Thomas Bailey Aldrich A Primrose Dame Gleeson White If James Jeffrey Roche Don't James Jeffrey Roche An Irish Love-Song Robert Underwood Johnson Growing Old Walter Learned Time's Revenge Walter Learned In Explanation Walter Learned Omnia Vincit Alfred Cochrane A Pastoral Norman Gale A Rose ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... put such thoughts from him—he had made his choice long ago, and it was not the primrose-path. Perhaps he was over-sensitive, acutely aware of himself as a strange creature with no cuffs, and with hardly any soles to his shoes. And all the time of these women was taken up by the arrival of packages ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... It was a very long time since we had spent a day out of London, and I said, on being coaxed back to calmness, that I wanted 'to go into the country'. Like the dying Falstaff, I babbled of green fields. My Father, after a little reflection, proposed to take me to Primrose Hill. I had never heard of the place, and names have always appealed directly to my imagination. I was in the highest degree delighted, and could hardly restrain my impatience. As soon as possible we set forth westward, my hand in my Father's, with the liveliest anticipations. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... at the early flies; at the flower-garden, dark and dewy; at the black wall of forest beyond, in which the magpies were beginning to pipe cheerily; at the blessed dawn which was behind and above it, shooting long rays of primrose and crimson half-way up the zenith; hearing the sleepy ceaseless crawling of the river over the shingle bars; hearing the booming of the cattle-herds far over the plain; hearing the chirrup of the grasshopper among the raspberries, the chirr of the cicada among ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Jews—with the tragedy of his race pictured on his furrowed face, a face like an ancient weather-worn statue on whose countenance grief has petrified—has summed up the character of Disraeli as no other man ever has or can. I will not rob the reader by quoting from "The Primrose Sphinx"—that gem of letters must ever stand together without subtraction of a word. It belongs to the realm of the lapidary, and its facets can not be transferred. Yet when Mr. Zangwill refers to the Mephistophelian curl of Lord Beaconsfield's lip, the word is used advisedly. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Shoes The Emperor's New Clothes Adapted from Hans Christian Andersen How Primrose Went to ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... only her voice that interested me!" he exclaimed aloud. "She's probably like the rest of them." The nettle of one woman's fickleness had stung so deeply when he first took to the primrose path of love that he had never gone farther along the road leading to the solving of life's enigma, and now the overgrowth of other interests had almost obliterated ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... commemorate what is historically known as the "Titus Oates Plot" in 1678, one of the most prominent incidents being the murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, who is here shown (Fig. 11), carried on a horse, the day after his murder, to Primrose Hill, where the body was put into a ditch, the carrying on the horse and the discovery in the ditch being shown as coincident. They were produced, probably, as one of the means of inflaming the public mind against the Roman Catholics, which led to the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... doth the primrose, fall, At once the Spring's pride, and its funeral. Such easy sweets get off still in their prime, And stay not here to wear the soil of time; While coarser flow'rs, which none would miss, if past, To scorching Summers ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... the saint who lies within it! There are many good and true saints in the calendar, but San Carlo Borromeo has—if I may quote Mrs. Primrose on such a subject—'my warm heart.' A charitable doctor to the sick, a munificent friend to the poor, and this, not in any spirit of blind bigotry, but as the bold opponent of enormous abuses in the Romish church, I honour ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... of Morn," was warming into magnificent purple, and the amber rays of the yet unrisen sun were shooting up, streamer-like, with intervals between, through the parting clouds, as they broke away with a passing shower, that fell like a veil of silver gauze between us and the first primrose-coloured ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... child of Friends, or Quakers. The author tells Primrose's experiences among very strict Quakers, and then among ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... which we now perceive the culmination in impressionistic tales and pictures—that voluntary aversion of the eye from all speciously strong and beautiful effects—that disinterested love of dulness which has set so many Peter Bells to paint the river-side primrose. It was then chosen for its proximity to Paris. And for the same cause, and by the force of tradition, the painter of to-day continues to inhabit and to paint it. There is in France scenery incomparable for romance ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his left arm flung round the splintered stump to steady himself, proceeded to wave his coat energetically. Luckily for the pair in distress, they were to the westward of the approaching ship, with the evening sky, in which still lingered a pale primrose glow, behind them, and against this background their figures and that of the boat stood out black as silhouettes cut in ebony. It is possible that, even with this advantage, they might have escaped notice, had not Phil thought of ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... mirror-like discs of the scuttles in the walls of the pilot-house gradually underwent a subtle change of colour—from deepest black, through an infinite variety of shades of grey, to a pure, rich blue which, in its turn, merged into a delicate primrose hue, while the incandescent lamp in the dome-like roof of the structure as gradually lost its radiance until it became a mere white-hot thread in the growing flood of cold morning light. Meanwhile the moment arrived for a further ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... desas skirts the serrated cliffs of Gedeh's northward side, though tree-ferns growing in thousands afford shelter from the daily showers. The sudden passion of tropical rain dies away, leaving an atmosphere of unearthly transparency. Gedeh, carved in amethyst, leans against a primrose sky, streaked by the puff of white smoke from the crater. Villagers returning from work brighten the road with patches of scarlet and yellow; children, clad only in necklaces of red seeds and silver bangles, running about amid ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... brown-bolled cotton plants, among the fodder-stacks, and in the forest that stretched from the main road up the mountain-side. It was the season in which the rugged landscape appeared most brilliant; when the kalmia bloomed, the gentian, the primrose, the yellow daisy, the woodbine, and the golden-disked aster still lingered in sunny spots. It was the season in which the leaves of the maple were as ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... admit that his attentions to her had not been very marked. But now the news was abroad that he was engaged to a girl in his own circle; one whose mother had not yet extended any greater recognition to Mrs. Polkington than an invitation to a Primrose League Fete. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... lyric poets the cuckoo is "companion of the spring," "darling of the spring;" coming with the daisy, and the primrose, and the blossoming sweet-pea. Where the sound came from I could not tell; it puzzled Wordsworth, with younger eyes than ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the gate, in the spring freshness. The grass in the fields was beginning to grow up, the hedges were sprouting with tender greens and reds, the polished stems of the celandine were opening to the sunshine in the banks, with here and there a primrose. Birds were singing all round, and a lark overhead—most delightful pleasures to those so long shut up in a town. It was the side of a hill, where the fields were cut out into most curious forms, probably to suit the winding of a little brook or ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she was already seated in her box, looking radiantly beautiful. She was attired in some soft, sheeny, clinging primrose stuff, and the brigand's jewels I had given her through Guido's hands, flashed brilliantly on her uncovered neck and arms. She greeted me with her usual child-like enthusiasm as I entered, bearing the customary offering—a costly bouquet, set in a holder of ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Doctor Johnson is said to have been very fond of it; this, if true, accounts for the doctor's disposition. A helping of it weighs two pounds before you eat it and ten pounds afterward. The kidney is its predominating influence. The favorite flower of the English is not the primrose. It is the kidney. Wherever you go, among the restaurants, there is always somebody operating on a steamed ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... be surprised to find, though we venture not to affirm, that its delicate fabrication owed more to her than superintendence. Then the ale, and the cyder with rosemary in the bowl, were incomparable potations; and to the gooseberry wine, which would have filled Mrs. Primrose with envy, was added the more generous warmth of port which, in the Squire's younger days, had been the talk of the country, and which had now lost none of its attributes, save "the original brightness" ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... yellow primrose on the river's brim is getting to look to us Reubs like a holiday edition de luxe of the Language of Flowers with ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry |
