"Withered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nights old?" The Stag said, "When first I came hither, there was a plain all around me, without any trees save one oak sapling, {100} which grew up to be an oak with an hundred branches. And that oak has since perished, so that now nothing remains of it but the withered stump; and from that day to this I have been here, yet have I never heard of the man for whom you enquire. Nevertheless, being an embassy from Arthur, I will be your guide to the place where there is an animal which was formed ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... like vivid flashes of restless lightning, now gleaming, now sinking into the bosom of the cloud. Faster and faster, farther and farther whirls the cloud of spirits. Then in my dream I saw them suddenly descend, driven over the earth like the withered leaves of autumn—beaten low upon the ground and drifting on like the summer's dust—while a strong cry burst from the driven shadows: 'O God, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... house; LOT 2 on that part of the main building which had been so long shut up. Other lots were marked off on other parts of the structure, and the ivy had been torn down to make room for the inscriptions, and much of it trailed low in the dust and was withered already. Stepping in for a moment at the open gate, and looking around me with the uncomfortable air of a stranger who had no business there, I saw the auctioneer's clerk walking on the casks and telling them off for the information of a catalogue-compiler, pen ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... make more light for her work. It was long since the candles were gone. It was the only joyous moment in the day when she handled the dried everlastings that filled the basket. Always she must hurry, work more quickly, select the withered colors with more care. The wreaths for her three brothers must be beautiful, must be ready on time. ClA(C)ment and Fernand and Alphonse must be crowned, given the reward when they came home from killing wicked men to save ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... distances, by pegs, to which, for greater security, we added some boxes of provision; we fixed some hooks to the canvas at the opening in front, that we might close the entrance during the night. I sent my sons to seek some moss and withered grass, and spread it in the sun to dry, to form our beds; and while all, even little Francis, were busy with this, I constructed a sort of cooking-place, at some distance from the tent, near the river which was to supply us with fresh water. It was merely a hearth of flat ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... is on the lower steps, close to the Piazza di Spagna; but as one ascends to the last platform, before reaching the upper piazza in front of the Trinit de' Monti, a curious squat figure, with two withered and crumpled legs, spread out at right angles and clothed in long stockings, comes shuffling along on his knees and hands, which are protected by clogs. As it approaches, it turns suddenly up from its quadrupedal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... his newspaper lying on his knee, watching his girls through the big open window while they ironed and talked in Danish. The clouds of white dust that blew up the street, the gusts of hot wind that withered his vegetable garden, never disturbed his calm. His droll expression seemed to say that he had found the secret of contentment. Morning and evening he drove about in his spring wagon, distributing freshly ironed clothes, and ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... thee, Merry grasshopper, Thou art so glad and free, And as light as air; Thou hast no sorrow or tears, Thou hast no compt of years, No withered immortality, But a short youth sunny and free. Carol clearly, bound along, Soon thy joy is over, A summer of loud song, And slumbers in the clover. What hast thou to do with evil In thine hour of love and revel, In thy heat of summerpride, Pushing the thick roots aside ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... soon withered that hung o'er the wave, But some blossoms were gathered while freshly they shone, And a dew was distilled from their flowers, that gave All the fragrance of summer when summer ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... disturbed by the transfer, he besought the war office for permission to remain at Auxonne with the regiment, now known as the First. Probably the real ground of his disinclination was the fear that a residence at Valence might revive the painful emotions which time had somewhat withered. He may also have felt how discordant the radical opinions he was beginning to hold would be with those still cherished by his former friends. But the authorities were inexorable, and on June fourteenth the brothers departed, Napoleon for the first time leaving debts which he could not discharge: ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... bewildered and dazed at first, but as he began to speak the color came back freshly to his face. He could not conceive, he stammered, what had happened. He was riding with Miss Atherly, and he supposed his horse had slipped upon some withered pine needles and thrown him! A spasm of pain crossed his face suddenly, and he lifted his hand to the top of his head. Was he hurt THERE? No, but perhaps his hair, which was flowing and curly, had caught in the branches—like ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... his death Thy brothers are condemn'd, and dead by this. Looke Marcus, ah sonne Lucius looke on her: When I did name her brothers, then fresh teares Stood on her cheekes, as doth the hony dew, Vpon a gathred Lillie almost withered ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... peasants and their asses, I looked out on dark cypresses and rows of budding vegetables. But presently I found I had not bettered myself. For with the approach of midsummer the garden, being all enclosed with buildings, grew as stifling as my cell. All the green things in it withered and dried off, leaving trenches of bare red earth, across which the cypresses cast strips of shade too narrow to cool the aching heads of the nuns who sought shelter there; and I began to think sorrowfully of my former cell, where ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... (close to the door) The wind blows out of the gates of the day, The wind blows over the lonely of heart And the lonely of heart is withered away, While the faeries dance in a place apart, Shaking their milk-white feet in a ring, Tossing their milk-white arms in the air; For they hear the wind laugh, and murmur and sing Of a land where even the ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... English Literature re-enforced by exams and teas—and once more, finally, as very much in advance. But he had kept no great sense of points of contact; it not being in the nature of things at Woollett that the freshest of the buds should find herself in the same basket with the most withered of the winter apples. The child had given sharpness, above all, to his sense of the flight of time; it was but the day before yesterday that he had tripped up on her hoop, yet his experience of remarkable women—destined, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... of a doorway. She was dressed in many red, blue and yellow petticoats and waists. Beads hung from her neck and her withered arms were ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... by which it had been suspended. The very blank, however, affected him more deeply than if it had been left. Then a handkerchief was thrown over the cage, to prevent the bird from singing; it was her favourite canary. The flowers upon the mantel-shelf were withered and drooping—she had gathered them. All these circumstances,—slight in themselves, but powerful in their effect,—touched the heart of the widowed carpenter, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the Canterbury Tales; but (the technical question apart) to imagine it wanting Hugo's lyrics is easy enough. The largesse of which he was so prodigal has but an arbitrary and conventional value. Like the magician's money much has changed, almost in the act of distribution, into withered leaves; and such of it as seems minted of good metal ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... liqueur appreciatively, smiling good-humouredly, and Philip could not help regarding her with a certain admiration. Her small, sharp, subtile face, beneath its mask of smiling indifference, looked positively youthful in the judicious candle-light; only the little, bird-like, withered hands bore the stigmata of age. And he could not conceive her changing; to the last, those tell-tale hands apart, she would be comely and cynical, and would die as she had lived, secure "in the high places of laughter"—a laughter that, for all its geniality, struck him at times ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... cross of red, Points to the grave of the mighty dead; Slow moved the monk to the broad flag-stone, Which the bloody cross was traced upon: He pointed to a sacred nook: An iron bar the warrior took; And the monk made a sign with his withered hand, The grave's huge ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... but half-way down this slope, or only a little more, when in springing aside to avoid a low bush I missed footing altogether; went hurling down into night, dropped plumb upon another furze-bush—a withered one—and heard and felt it snap under me; struck the cliff-side, bruising my hip, and slid down on loose stones for another few yards. As I checked myself, sprawling, and came to a standstill, some of these stones rolled on and ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... life is hateful, why seekest thou yet to add more which shall once again all perish and fall joylessly away? why not rather make an end of life and labour? for there is nothing more that I can contrive and invent for thy delight; all things are the same for ever. Even were thy body not yet withered, nor thy limbs weary and worn, yet all things remain the same, didst thou go on to live all the generations down, nay, even more, wert thou never doomed ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... Hungary were led to faith through loyalty to their temporal monarch, their royal missioner St. Stephen. The heathen Danes reappear as the chivalrous Normans, the haughty but true sons and vassals of St. Peter. The Saracens even, who gave birth to an imposture, withered away at the end of 300 or 400 years, and had not the power, though they had the will, to persevere in their enmity to the Cross. The Tartars had both the will and the power, but they were far off from Christendom, or ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... reasonable and conveniently adapts itself to circumstances. And love—love dies. "Irreverence for the dreams of youth" soon creeps like a killing frost upon our hearts. The tender shoots and the expanding flowers are nipped and withered, and of a vine that yearned to stretch its tendrils round the world there is left but ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... reached middle age, but he looked like a dried-up little old man, with his wrinkled face, his small red eyes, and his withered hands. No one who did not know him would have taken him to be the tremendous personage he really was in Ferrara, invested with full powers to represent his sovereign master, Pope Clement the Tenth; or rather the Pope's adopted 'nephew,' who was not his nephew at all, ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... her little trunk, and rummaged in it. From somewhere far down she drew out a leather case, and with it in her hand she went over and sat by the fire. She held it without moving for a minute, and then she slowly opened it. One by one she drew out a few worthless things—a withered bunch of primroses, a couple of little scribbled notes, a paper cap from a cracker, a menu card, a handkerchief of her own that she had lent to him, and that he (just like Peter) had given back. She held them all in her hand a minute, and then ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... at the door leading out from one of the transepts, and Mr Harding passed them as they were speaking together. He was a little, withered, shambling old man, with bent shoulders, dressed in knee-breeches and long black gaiters, which hung rather loosely about his poor old legs,—rubbing his hands one over the other as he went. And yet he walked quickly; not tottering as he walked, but with an uncertain, doubtful step. The verger, as ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... the materialism of our thought about life. It is not our natural heritage from the past, for the bardic poetry shows that a heaven lay about us in the mystical childhood of our race, and a supernatural original was often divined for the great hero, or the beautiful woman. All this perception has withered away, for religion has become observance of rule and adherence to doctrine. The first steps to the goal have been made sufficient in themselves; but religion is useless unless it has a transforming power, unless it is able "to turn fishermen ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... sometimes in public, this stigmatic professor began to search for the hidden signs with unsparing scrutiny. Upon finding a mole or wart or any similar mark, they tried the 'insensibleness thereof' by inserting needles, pins, awls, or any sharp-pointed instrument; and in an old and withered crone it might not be difficult to find ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... truly prophetic. Madame de Montmorin perished on the scaffold with one of her sons; the other was drowned. Her husband was murdered in prison during the massacre of the second of September. Her eldest daughter died in the prison hospital. Her youngest daughter withered away when not yet thirty, broken-hearted by the calamities ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... but the face of the aged woman was grayer and more pallid. She did not entreat—her feeling seemed too deep for words— but with clasped hands she lifted her tear-dimmed eyes to his. Her withered bosom rose and fell in short, convulsive sobs, and it was evident that she ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... greater facility of communication with the stars he had fixed in the loftiest apartment of the house, our trio knocked at the door, which, after some hesitation, was opened by an ancient Sybil, who was presently joined by her counterpart, both "so withered and so wild in their attire," that "they looked not like inhabitants o' th' earth, and yet were on it." On the party requiring to see the Doctor, the two hags explained in a breath that the Doctor received only one visitor at a time; and while one gentleman went up stairs, the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... called her capital and the centre of her political life, Ottawa, is an Indian name which signifies 'buying and selling.' And the wanderer in this land will always be remarking an unexplained fragrance about the place-names, as from some flower which has withered, and which he does ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... could see. And there, by the smouldering embers of a bonfire, sat the old woman moaning, as I had described her, with her elbows on her knees, rocking and nursing her head, from which her long hair was looped and fell, like grey rags, about her withered fingers. ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... great city delivered to the flames: the trees growing by the river's brink, and scattered here and there over the prairie, showed like some yet standing spires, whilst here and there a tall cedar might be caught just falling; the dwarf trees and withered shrubs in front, with the flames quivering through their branches, might readily be imagined a remnant of the population fleeing from the destruction pressing on their rear, with the sullen Mississippi for their ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... onward;— For thee the last will soon be o'er. Rest thee, oh, rest thee! Flowers have withered thus before,— And, my poor heart, what wouldst thou more? ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... light. Oh! 'tis a quiet spirit-healing nook! Which all, methinks, would love; but chiefly he, The humble man, who, in his youthful years, Knew just so much of folly, as had made 15 His early manhood more securely wise! Here he might lie on fern or withered heath, While from the singing lark (that sings unseen The minstrelsy that solitude loves best), And from the sun, and from the breezy air, 20 Sweet influences trembled o'er his frame; And he, with many feelings, many ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... round again. He saw that the ghastly face was once more hidden. He heard the disconnected words reiterated, always in the same stifled wailing tones. Now and then, a half finished phrase was audible from behind the withered hands, still clasped over the face, He heard such fragments of sentences as these:—"Have pity on my wife"—"accept the remorse of many years"—"spare ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists—over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead—about ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and the whitewashed gate leading from the yard, a rabbit hops, aimlessly, his back humped up, and his white tail showing plainly amid his sombre surroundings. I can see the muscles about his nostrils twitching, as he stops now and again to nibble at a withered tuft of grass. A lonely jay flits from one tree to another; a cardinal speeds by my window, a line of color across a dark background; and one by one the dry leaves drop noiselessly down, making thicker the soft covering ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... beach is feathered with cocoas which suggest kopra—the dried meat of the split kernel. At 3.15 P.M. came Grand Lahou—Bosman's Cabo La Hoe—180 miles from Cape Palmas. The native settlements of nut-brown huts in the clearings of thick forests resemble heaps of withered leaves. The French have re-occupied a fort twenty miles up the pretty barless river, the outlet of a great lagoon; it was abandoned during the Prusso-Gallic war. Nine Bristol barques were lying off Three Towns, a place not upon the chart, and at Half-Jack, 205 miles from the Cape. Here ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... beneath. What needeth Holofernes more? The Jews, The People of God, the Jews, lament their fortune; Their souls are violated by the world; Jewry is conquered; and the crop of men Sown for the barns of God, is withered down, Like feeblest grass flat-trodden by the sun, In one short season of fear. Yea, swords and fire Can do no more destruction on this folk: A fierce untimely mowing now befits This corn incapable of sacred bread, This field unprofitable but to flame! What should ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... with her wand. His fair flesh she withered on his supple limbs, and made waste his yellow hair from off his head, and over all his limbs she cast the skin of an old man, and dimmed his two eyes, erewhile so fair. And she changed his raiment to a vile wrap and a doublet, torn garments and filthy, stained with foul smoke. ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... the menials hurried to throw open the gate, thinking that it must be some great king or queen, who would demand a banquet for supper and a stately chamber to repose in. And when they saw only a sad and anxious woman, with a torch in her hand and a wreath of withered poppies on her head, they spoke rudely, and sometimes threatened to set the dogs upon her. But nobody had seen Proserpina, nor could give Mother Ceres the least hint which way to seek her. Thus passed the night; and still she continued her search without ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... itself was not forbidding. What made an icy mouse seem to run the length of Chris's spine was the impression of enormous age in the appearance of the man confronting him. The thin lips crackled the withered and multi-wrinkled cheeks in the ghost of what had once been a smile. The nose, once hawk-like and proud and denoting strength of character and purpose, was now pinched by the ever-tightening fingers of a ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... barns or amongst the snow; she followed them into the orchards and fields; she filled, like them, her little basket with acorns that had been left after the crop was over, or ears of corn that the gleaners had neglected, or withered branches and twigs left by the wood-cutters for the poor. Her nude, or semi-nude, arms grew rough in the burning sun, and more so still in the frosts. Her pretty feet, so long as the fine season lasted, did not worry about being shod, and when November arrived with its terrors, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without Me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... Newcastle by sea, towards which I made him a small present, and he retired, seemingly resigned to his evil fortune. I have taken upon trial a Scotchman, called Archy M'Alpin, an old soldier, whose last master, a colonel, lately died at Berwick. The fellow is old and withered; but he has been recommended to me for his fidelity, by Mrs Humphreys, a very good sort of a woman, who keeps the inn at Tweedmouth, and is much respected by all ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... outside it, and the men suffered many casualties, including their general—Bulkely Johnson—whose body I saw carried back on a stretcher to the ruin of Thilloy, where crumps were bursting. It is an astonishing thing that two withered old French women stayed in the village all through the fighting. When our troops rode in these women came running forward, frightened and crying "Camarades!" as though in fear of the enemy. When our men surrounded them they were full of joy and held up their ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... unsatisfied; the wifehood without home, seclusion, or maternity; the widowhood that at last brought relief, but with it the consciousness of hopelessly wasted youth,—all this seemed to drop from her here as lightly as the winged needles or noiseless withered spray from the dim gray vault above her head. In the sovereign balm of that woodland breath her better spirit was restored; somewhere in these wholesome shades seemed to still lurk what should have been her innocent and nymph-like youth, and to come out once more and greet her. Old songs she had ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... strewn with yellow leaves. The birds had ceased their songs. The grass had withered. Rains and storms had discolored the fountain. Yet, although Nature seemed to have been engaged in contentious strife, still joy reigned supreme within the little cottage. Ragnar, the beloved husband, the darling son, had returned. Seated in the ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... from conspicuous hooks that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... crops, indeed, were prodigious, but the vintage was not profitable because the wine had a tendency to sour. Gentle rains in September prepared the ground for an untimely fertility. Trees blossomed and, though some fruits withered prematurely, cherries actually ripened. Thus the Rhinelands presented a pleasant appearance ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... souls in them quail, They are stricken and withered at heart, When in on them, sail by sail, Fierce marvels of monstrous art, Tower darkening on tower till the sea-winds cower crowds down as ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... free, possibly he would sell his farm an' go back to the city to live, an' I, to whom he had been so good an' grand, would soon be forgotten. Ah! that was a bitin' thought. It almost crazed me, now that I knew how much I loved him, to think of being left alone to grow old an' wrinkled an' withered, an' no words of comfort to cheer me up along the path walked by nobody but myself. I knew he was too great a man to plough his talents into the soil or to hide the light of his intellect in the jungles ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... more than middle-aged either. You look less. And yet you too have your sorrow that never dies. For you were fitted to be a mother of men, and you have brought into the world only a lovely flower that soon withered away, and ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... action. We desire openly to declare our belief as a denomination, so far as it can be officially represented by the American Unitarian Association, that God, moved by his own love, did raise up Jesus to aid in our redemption from sin, did by him pour a fresh flood of purifying life through the withered veins of humanity and along the corrupted channels of the world, and is, by his religion, forever sweeping the nations with regenerating gales from heaven, and visiting the hearts of men with celestial solicitations. We receive the teachings of Christ, separated from all foreign ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... brother, "'t is such a melancholy, unsightly object, when seen from any part of the Hall"—turning round on his horse to look at the rear of the Hall, which was at about two hundred yards' distance. "It looks such an old withered thing among the fresh green trees around it—'t is quite a painful contrast." Kate had gently urged on her horse while her brother was speaking, till she was close beside him. "Charles," said she, in a low whisper, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered, and men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... took up a black stone, and threw it into the forest, and out of a thicket of wild hemlock came Fever in a robe of flame. She passed through the multitude, and touched them, and each man that she touched died. The grass withered beneath ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... had, and she was duly interested, even if a trifle shy of the red brother who stared so fixedly. She entered a lodge with Bill, and listened to him make laundry arrangements in broken English with a withered old beldame whose features resembled a ham that had hung overlong in the smokehouse. Two or three blanketed bucks squatted by the fire that sent its blue smoke streaming out the apex ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... spot whence he could see the green light in the princess' room, and where, even in the broad daylight, he would be in no danger of being discovered from the opposite shore. It was a sort of cave in the rock, where he provided himself a bed of withered leaves, and lay down too tired for hunger to keep him awake. All night long he dreamed that he was ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... portion of ground completely cleared of trees and brushwood, thus enabling the sun to shine upon the old walls unhindered by foliage. The grey, crumbling stones seemed to spread its heat, and the grass at their base seemed withered and brown. Alan's curiosity was aroused, and he determined to climb the nearest tree. It was the only way to discover what the plot of ground contained, and whether there were any reasons for all the care which appeared to have been taken to give ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... words had fallen on her as withered leaves on a motionless figure of stone. If he was sensible of this change in her, he gave no sign. And after a moment he passed to the remaining ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... abstractedly to his feet. Tydomin was talking to her dead husband. She was peering into the hideous face of ivory, and fondling his violet hair. When she perceived Maskull, she hastily kissed the withered lips, and got up from her knees. Lifting the corpse with all three arms, she staggered with it to the extreme edge of the gulf and, after an instant's hesitation, allowed it to drop into the lava. It disappeared immediately without sound; a metallic splash ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... by trade - With his quips and tips On withered old lips, He married a young and a beautiful maid; The cunning old blade! Though rather decayed, He married a beautiful, ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... law, gospel, public sentiment, nor domestic affection shield her from excessive and enforced maternity, depleting alike to mother and child;—all opportunity for mental improvement, health, happiness—yea, life itself, being ruthlessly sacrificed. The weazen, weary, withered, narrow-minded wife-mother of half a dozen children—her interests all centering at her fireside, forms a painful contrast in many a household to the liberal, genial, brilliant, cultured husband in the zenith of his power, who has never given one thought to the higher life, liberty, and happiness ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... harvest in November and December, the most temperate months in all the year. The ground is not inclosed, except near towns and villages, which stand very thick. They do not mow their grass for hay as we do; but cut it either green or withered, when wanted. They sow abundance of tobacco, but know not the way to cure it and make it strong, as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... tears would dig Art out of his soul, may lavish his golden prime in pursuit of emptiness, or, striking treasure, find only fairy gold, so that when his eyes are purged of the spell of morning, he sees his hands are full of withered leaves." ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... at the flowers which bordered the garden. She had her water-vase in her hand, and she sprinkled the thirsting plants, which seemed to brighten at her approach. She bent to inhale their odor. She touched them timidly and caressingly. She felt, along their stems, if any withered leaf or creeping insect marred their beauty. And as she hovered from flower to flower, with her earnest and youthful countenance and graceful motions, you could not have imagined a fitter handmaid for the goddess ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... The withered Date Leaves present a mournful appearance, and all traces of them should be cleaned away as fast as possible, as they impede the growth of the Fall Engagement Vine. These should be well covered, and together with the more tender of the Heart Trees ...
— Cupid's Almanac and Guide to Hearticulture for This Year and Next • John Cecil Clay
... of fault, of natural law, or of supernal will, the flush that seemed to promise the dawn of an eternal day, shrinks and fades, though, with him, like the lagging skirt of the sunset in the northern west, it does not vanish, but travels on, a withered pilgrim, all the night, at the long last to rise the aureole of the eternal Aurora. And now new paths entice him—or old paths opening fresh horizons. With stronger thews and keener nerves he turns again to the visible around him. The changelessness amid change, the law amid seeming disorder, the ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... anger, and his withered cheek flushed darkly, but he restrained his feelings, and answered ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... plantation" come into view,—a row of cabins built irregularly upon the highest points straggle along the river banks. Each cabin has its little garden with its row of coleworts and its beehives, or perhaps a pumpkin or two shows its yellow sides amid the withered vines. Outside the cabins, fish-nets are hung to dry, and from within comes the sleepy drone of a spinning-wheel; about the doorstep hens are scratching, while from around the corner a cluster of little woolly heads ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... surmount the awful bounds of the spiritual world, and place before us its inhabitants in the hues and colouring of life? And why was that manifested to the eye, which could not unfold its tale to the ear?' ('Her withered lips moved fast, although no sound issued from them.') 'And wherefore should a breach be made in the laws of nature, yet its purpose ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... in a haze of heat, stretched far away into the distance, where a chain of mountains trenched upon the cloudless sky. Six months of drought had withered all the herbage. Only thistles, blue and yellow, and some thorny bushes had survived; but after the torrential winter rains the whole expanse would blossom like the rose. I traversed the plain afterwards ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... bushman could have heard them, but to those who toil in the stillness of that forest-shrouded land the silence is but the perfect blending of musical sound. There was the faintest of crisp rattles as the withered needles shook down from a twig, and then a sigh and a whisper along the dim black vault above, as though a spirit hovered above the sleeping earth. Alton heard, and knew it was not the wind, for the little breeze had paused while the river made ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... dear Jacinth,' and she felt two kind arms thrown round her, and the soft withered cheek of the old lady pressed against her own. 'This is delightful—to have you all to myself—my ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... melancholy music, in his head and heart. He gave himself up to thinking of Mary, and their walk in the wood, and the sprained ankle, and all the sayings and doings of that eventful autumn day. And then he opened his desk, and examined certain treasures therein concealed, including a withered rose-bud, a sprig of heather, a cut boot-lace, and a scrap or two of writing. Having gone through some extravagant forms of worship, not necessary to be specified, he put them away. Would ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... different lots in life. The Squire had left the university to live lustily on his paternal domains, in the vigorous enjoyment of prosperity and sunshine, and had flourished on to a hearty and florid old age; whilst the poor parson, on the contrary, had dried and withered away, among dusty tomes, in the silence and shadows of his study. Still there seemed to be a spark of almost extinguished fire, feebly glimmering in the bottom of his soul; and as the Squire hinted at a sly story of the parson and a pretty milkmaid, whom they once ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... and Catholic, ascribe it to the influence of the church, not by direct emancipatory decrees, but, following the example of God through Moses, by gradually restricting the master's power, and protecting the slave; by girdling the poison tree till it withered and fell, though, sad to say, the ruins still disfigure too much field, of the fair fields of Europe ...
— Is Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible? • Isaac Allen
... the beggar like a mummy animated by some wandering spirit into a temporary resurrection. Her light-blue eyes wandered to and fro, as if she occasionally forgot and again remembered the purpose for which her long and withered hand was searching among the miscellaneous contents of an ample old-fashioned pocket. At length she pulled out a small chip-box, and opening it, took out a handsome ring, in which was set a braid of hair, composed of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... my hand as soon as I was on the ground, and thanked me, and bade me good-night. I hope I'll never see his face again. I got into bed, and couldn't sleep for a long time; and when I examined my five guineas this morning, that I left in the table drawer the last thing, I found five withered leaves of oak—bad luck to ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... the withered tree Which age has blighted; And could she a friend to the motherless be, Then should you see To the throne Spring ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... street is the Temple of Luxor, where the curious pass under the deity-covered portal, and gaze upon the reproduced wonders of ancient Egypt. They bend over withered mummies of kings dead 5,000 years ago, and listen to music that has not been played ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... May. He tried very hard not to be jealous, but he could not help being sensitive; and so, day by day, she inflicted on him the peine forte et dure, "laying on him as much as he could bear, and more." It was sad to see how the kind old man withered and pined away; yet he never complained, and quarreled mortally with his best friend ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... Mother's room must have its weekly turn out.' How beautiful is the use of the word 'room' in the phrase, and when I pointed out to her that the tiles were still clean her answer was that she regarded the task of attending the grave not as a duty but as a privilege. Dear Sister Bridget, withered and ruddy like an apple, has worked in the community for nearly thirty years. She has been through all the early years of struggle: a struggle which has begun again—a struggle the details of which were not even told her, and which she has no curiosity ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... religious education had been neglected at home, at school, and at college. But we have no reason to think that had it been attended to, the result would have been much otherwise. The root of spiritual life did not exist in him. It never withered, because it never shot up. Thus when he applied his acute mind to a religious problem, he contemplated it with the coolness and impartiality of a geometer or chess player, his intellect operated in vacuo so to speak, untrammelled ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... provided them with amusement. He would have made the devil himself laugh. Three men were regular in their attendance at the bedside: Celestin Maloisel, a tall, thin fellow, somewhat gnarled, like the trunk of an apple-tree; Prosper Horslaville, a withered little man with a ferret nose, cunning as a fox; and Cesaire Paumelle, who never spoke, but who enjoyed Toine's society ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... social evolution had continued—if I had expanded, for instance, into a literary tourist, of sound Conservative principles— I would have seen the inside of the boss's house before I had done. But, as it happened, I withered and contracted from that point—simultaneously, mind you, with a perceptible diminution of my inherent ignorance and correlative uselessness. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Mrs. Patten, falling back in her chair, and lifting up her little withered hands, 'what 'ud Mr. Gilfil say, if he was worthy to know the changes as have come about i' the Church these last ten years? I don't understand these new sort o' doctrines. When Mr. Barton comes to see me, he talks about nothing but my sins and my need o' marcy. Now, Mr. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... for the upper part of the great Barranca de San Carlos and the country southward as far as there were Tarahumares. Everything seemed bleak and dreary. The corn was harvested, the grass looked grey, and there was a wintry feeling in the air. The sere and withered leaves rustled like paper, and as I made camp near an Indian ranch I saw loose stubble and dead leaves carried up in a whirlwind, two or three hundred feet up toward a sky as grey and sober as that of northern latitudes at that time of the year. We travelled to ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... to turn suddenly. A scream came to her lips, but it was choked off by the sudden forward rush of the old crone who roughly placed her withered hand over ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... ever blown on the haughty races and withered their roots. The prosperity of the impious has never passed to their descendants. Thrones themselves, and royal succession have failed, to effeminate and worthless princes; and the history of the crimes and excess of the great is, at the same time, the history of their misfortunes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... sitting. When he had lowered himself upon it, his face was nearly on a level with that of the old woman, who took no notice of him, but kept rocking herself to and fro and moaning. He laid his hand on hers, which, old and withered and not very clean, ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... trees which shade the desolate old house the leaves have fallen one by one, and the November rain makes mournful music as in the stillness of the night it drops upon the withered foliage, softly, slowly, as if weeping for the sorrow which has come upon the household. Matty Kennedy is dead; and in the husband's heart there is a gnawing pain, such as he never felt before; not even when Katy died; for Katy, ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... Fario was a withered little man, as ugly as though he were a blue-blooded grandee. His fiery eyes, placed very close to his nose and piercing as a gimlet, would have won him the name of a sorcerer in Naples. He seemed gentle because he was calm, quiet, and ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... were both happily governed and well peopled. Under the equator, and as far on both sides of it as the sun moves, there lay vast deserts that were parched with the perpetual heat of the sun; the soil was withered, all things looked dismally, and all places were either quite uninhabited, or abounded with wild beasts and serpents, and some few men, that were neither less wild nor less cruel than the beasts themselves. But, ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... over by the time we gained the top of the hill. All the gold had withered out of the sky, and the balloon had disappeared. Whither? I ask myself; caught up into the seventh heaven? or come safely to land somewhere in that blue uneven distance, into which the roadway dipped and melted before our eyes? Probably the aeronauts were already ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... withered grass often seen in lawns and meadows, caused by some fungi below the surface, but popularly ascribed in superstitious times to fairies dancing in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... gates, mounted the drive, and set her foot upon the broad-flagged terrace, the night had come completely; the palace front was thick with lighted windows; and along the balustrade, the lamp on every twentieth baluster shone clear. A few withered tracks of sunset, amber and glow-worm green, still lingered in the western sky; and she paused once again to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... willing to restore her, if her father would come and demand her on the mountain. Peter de Cabinam, on being informed of this, ascended the mountain to the lake, and, in the name of God, demanded his daughter; when, a tall, thin, withered figure, with wandering eyes, and almost bereft of understanding, was wafted to him in a blast of wind. After some time, the person, who had been employed as the vehicle of the spirits, also returned, when he related ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... of the trouble, and there stood a little withered old man by the track, with his arms folded close up under his chin; he was dressed mostly in calico patches; and half a dozen corks, suspended on bits of string from the brim of his hat, dangled before ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... man's cheeks as he lapsed into silence once more, and the Young Comrade gently pressed one of the withered and knotted hands to his lips and went ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo
... expressed the gravity which Mrs. Maldon would wish, and also the affectionate condescension of youth towards age, and of health towards infirmity. And as almost unconsciously she exulted in her own youth, and strength, delicate little poniards of tragic grief for Mrs. Maldon's helpless and withered senility seemed to stab through that personal pride. The shiny, veined right hand of the old woman emerged from under the bedclothes and closed with hot, fragile grasp ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... his footing; he fell, and rolled over and over down the deck stupidly, inertly, without making the slightest effort to save himself, without uttering the least cry; he brought up suddenly against the rail, with a great jar, the shock of his soft, withered body against the hard wood sounding like the sodden impact of a bundle of damp clothes. There was a cry; they thought him killed—Vandover had seen his head gashed against a sharp angle of iron—but he jumped up with sudden agility, clambering up ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... unlocked the door, We found him dead upon the floor; The rings had dropped from his withered hands, His teeth were like bones in the Desert sands; Still clutching his treasures he had died; And as he lay there, he appeared A statue of gold with a silver beard, His arms outstretched as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... transplanted from my own green, native valley, into the heart of a great city; when my early home was levelled to the ground, and when its flowers were withered, never to bloom any more, I felt as if I had come amongst grim walls to wither too, and had been uprooted from the light and life of my youth that I might die. The birds that wailed around me in their prison cages, seemed to weep for the hawthorn and alder trees that were ...
— Jemmy Stubbins, or The Nailer Boy - Illustrations Of The Law Of Kindness • Unknown Author
... step, and lo, the mountain has been leveled and the way lies open. Learn, then, to will strongly and decisively; thus fix your floating life and leave it no longer to be carried hither and thither, like a withered leaf, by every wind that blows. An undecided man is like the turnstile at a fair, which is in everybody's way but ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... one—chill for that Southern clime. The dew upon the withered grass of the grave turf is almost congealed into hoar frost, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... an enraged lion, there suddenly entered, unceremoniously, into the assembly a beardless youth of noble but sickly aspect, arrayed in tattered garments, for misfortune had changed his original situation, and poverty had withered the freshness of his opening youth. He made the customary obeisance to the governor, who returned his salute, and said, "Who art thou, boy? what hast thou to say, and wherefore hast thou intruded thyself into the company of princes, as if thou wert invited? who art thou, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the individual, withered and changed, and Carlyle's hopes rested finally on strength alone, just as George Eliot's thoughts centred on the influence human beings exercised on each other, and there is extraordinary beauty in this idea. How striking is her conception of the good we all receive from even the simplest ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... and Gappy. The little creature flings the pretty polished arms round the old man's neck, presses the dark red lips on his withered cheek, surrounds the venerable head with a halo of powder beaten out of his wig by her caresses; and eyes Mr. George the while, as much as to say, There, sir! should you not like me to do as much ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... down a bent, withered piece of sapling that hung over the dresser. "If this isn't the stick Lou Sandberg ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... to find the most perfect fruit on a withered, half-dead tree, as to find the most able brain in a withered, half-dead body. The blood is the life of the brain, and unless a HEALTHY body supplies HEALTHY blood the ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... clefts, though it abounds in crater-rows. The intricate network of rills on the west of Triesnecker, when observed with a low power, reminds one of the wrinkles on the rind of an orange or on the skin of a withered apple. Gruithuisen, describing the rill-traversed region between Agrippa and Hyginus, says that "it has quite the look of a Dutch canal map." In the subjoined catalogue many detailed examples will be given relating to the ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... it had mistaken its mission and its relation to the earth! So it is with people who lament the position in which Providence has placed them. In vain the old tree tried to rise: its branches withered, its leaves dropped one by one away, and rustled on the lawn. It found, to its sorrow, that it was not made for the air, and that the once despised earth from which it drew its nourishment was its true parent and source ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... to Mrs. Mullen sat old Adam Doolittle, his hand behind his left ear, his withered old lips moving as if he were repeating the words of the sermon. From time to time he shook his head as though he disagreed with a sentence, and then his lips worked more rapidly, and an obstinate, argumentative look appeared in ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... learned, and takes considerably less snuff (or rather brushes it off his coat more often) than the Director of the Archives. I forgot to jot down (and I feel I must jot down, in the vain belief that some day these scraps will help, like a withered twig of olive or a three-wicked Tuscan lamp on my table, to bring to my mind, in that hateful Babylon of Berlin, these happy Italian days)—I forgot to record that I am lodging in the house of a dealer in antiquities. My window looks up the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... my father. Perhaps this is your truth? Then I am not afraid of it, but I feel very sad and very embittered. Mariet, if you sharpened my knife and said: 'Go and kill that man'—it may be that I would not have cared to kill him. 'What is the use of cutting down a withered tree?'—I would have said. But now—farewell, Mariet! Well, bind me and ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... our thoughts and feelings as in exposing how and why we thought or felt in this or that fashion. In such analysis they seemed to touch the primal sources of life. They desired to dig about the tree of humanity and to describe all the windings of its roots and fibres—not much caring whether they withered the tree for a time—rather than to describe and sing its outward beauty, its varied foliage, and its ruddy fruit. And this liking to investigate the hidden inwardness of motives—which many persons, weary of self-contemplation, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... stood looking at the other, until no sound came from the woods whither the Pioneers had gone. Then at last, slowly and with no roughness, as the terror-stricken impostor shrank and withered, he ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... was dismayed, and lay for a long time thinking of what he had best do with himself. All before him was blank darkness, as black as the darkest night you ever saw. He reached out his hand to get some fruit to eat, but only one or two withered apples remained on the table. Was he to starve to death? Suddenly he noticed that the tinkling music of the fountain had ceased. He hastily groped his way to it, and he found in the place of the dancing, running stream ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... charity But's happier than I; for I have known The luscious sweets of plenty; every night Have slept with soft content about my head, And never waked, but to a joyful morning: Yet now must fall, like a full ear of corn, Whoso blossom 'scaped, yet's withered in the ripenin. ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... with its basrelief and withered garlands. The story of his burial, and of the discovery of his real tomb, is fresh in the memory of every one. But the 'little cupola, more neat than solemn,' of which Lord Byron speaks, will continue ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... major as I said that, and was half sorry I had made the poor jest. And I saw him smile, in one corner of his mouth, as I said I had been "wounded." It was the corner furthest from me, but I saw it. And it was a dry smile, a withered smile. I could guess ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... a withered Reichsland! (imperial territory.) From Calais to Antwerp, Flanders, Limburg, Brabant, to behind the line of the Meuse forts, Prussian! (German Princes no longer haggle, German tribes no longer envy one ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... After following the range three miles, we at last found out a place to cross it. Although this is not half the height of James range, we encountered far more difficulty; the scrub was very dense, a great quantity having withered and fallen down: we could scarcely get the horses to face it. Our course was also intercepted by deep, perpendicular ravines, which we were obliged to round after a great deal of trouble, having our saddlebags torn to pieces, and our skin ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... throwing their soul into the balance to sink the scale to the level of their lusts, can hope for no deliverance here or hereafter. As they have sown, so shall they reap and reap, even when the poppy flowers of passion have withered in their hands, and their harvest is but bitter tares, garnered ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... heading apart to their several starting-points. At five minutes before midnight, to the tick of their synchronized watches, each began to glide through the tall grass. But it was late September. The grass was dry. Old briar-veins dragged at brittle stalks. Shimmering whispers of withered leaves echoed to the smallest touch; and when the men were still some two hundred yards from the cabin the sharp ears of a dog caught the rumor of all these tiny sounds,—and ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... he was yet but forty years old, he gave this humorously exaggerated account of his physical failings due to his nervous strain: "I began The Nation young, handsome, and fascinating, and am now withered and somewhat broken, rheumatism gaining on me rapidly, my complexion ruined, as also my figure, ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... live!" cried the Tree, rejoicingly, and spread its branches far out; but, alas! they were all withered and yellow, and it lay in the corner among nettles and weeds. The tinsel star was still upon it, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... was so withered and bowed with age," wrote George W. Julian, of Indiana, who was among the spectators, "that in contrast with the towering form of Mr. Lincoln he seemed little more than ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... the landlord and his wife assured me, with equal firmness and sympathy, that there was not another cot or pair of blankets in the house. I believed them, and was sinking into despair when Sandy M'Kaye appeared on the scene as my angel of deliverance. Sandy was a small, withered, wiry man, dressed in rusty gray, with an immense white collar thrusting out its points on either side of his chin, and a black stock climbing over the top of it. I guessed from his speech that he had once lived in the lowlands. He had hoped to be engaged as a ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... shrivelled, and disappeared, when a great expanse of sky, forest and river lies before the enraptured vision, with every twig and branch, every stump and hollow in the ground, every undulation and hillock of withered grass, showing as clearly cut and sharply defined as in winter, while the air is frequently warmer than in June and a singular mellow haze fills all the forest paths. Now can be closely seen the different ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... sightseer. One day you go by chance to S. Francesco al Prato, a beautiful and spacious church in a wilderness of Piazza, built in 1294. And there suddenly you come upon the little flowers of St. Francis, faded and fallen—here a brown rose, there a withered petal; here a lily broken short, there a nosegay drooped and dead: and you realise that here you are face to face with something real which has passed away, and so it is with joy you hurry out into the sun, which will always shine with splendour and life, the one thing perhaps that, if these dead ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... delay From northern Strymon blew the thwarting blast— Mother of famine fell, That holds men wand'ring still Far from the haven where they fain would be!— And pitiless did waste Each ship and cable, rotting on the sea, And, doubling with delay each weary hour, Withered with hope deferred th' ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... "has a great deal to do with it. The days of kings and queens are dead, they have married each other for generations and have produced offspring like—William of Germany. Class assumptions of superiority are withered branches on the tree of civilization. Mary is as good ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... moreover, enwrapt in an exquisite sense of the strange. The thought of nature still remained, but her character seemed to have undergone modification, there was a weird symmetry, a thrilling uniformity, a wizard propriety in these her works. Not a dead branch—not a withered leaf—not a stray pebble—not a patch of the brown earth was anywhere visible. The crystal water welled up against the clean granite, or the unblemished moss, with a sharpness of outline that delighted while ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... at last. Speech shook him like a flame: "Yea, though thou plucked the stars from out the sky, Each lovely one would be a withered shame — Each thou couldst find or name — To this fire-hearted ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... a chair and shaded his eyes with his hand. The Dean noticed the strains of gray in his curly hair, and that aspect, as of something withered and wayworn, which had invaded the man's whole personality, balanced, indeed, by an intellectual dignity and distinction which had never been so commanding. It was as though the stern and constant wrestle of the mind had burned away all lesser things—the old, easy grace, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her. He was far too quiet and dignified and unlike himself. She could have managed the old vain Gilbert. A scoffing laugh, and he would have withered. But this new Gilbert, who looked at her with such a curious, exalted expression—what was ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... the right to speak. I have dared: I have gone through: I have not fallen withered in the fire: I have come at last out beyond, to the back ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... dry-eyed horror upon the body of this withered old man whom she had loved, and the thin thread of life within her all but snapped. It had come; the premonition of disaster had been fulfilled; the last of her blood had been sacrificed to the mercilessly glittering diamonds—father, brother and now him! Mr. Wynne's face went white, and ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... Before the day was out I think she knew; but she would not speak of it, nor would I. For why should we call false sorrow upon that bright hour? Was not the world before us, the awakening glory of Ken's Island at our feet? Just as in the dark days all Nature had withered and bent before the death-giving vapours, so now did Nature answer the sun's appeal; and every freshet bubbling over, every wood alive with the music of the birds, the meadows green and golden, the hills all capped with their summer glory, she proclaimed the ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... on, she took courage to open the door, and with her brothers got as far as the peat-stack at the cottage side, and among them they managed to carry within doors as many peats as would keep up the fire for a week. She examined the potatoes, which were buried among withered ferns; but as there were not many, only brought in enough for a day, afraid of heat ...
— The Old Castle and Other Stories • Anonymous
... wood, or working in the field, she runs to the river and hides herself among the reeds for the day, so as not to be seen by men. She covers her head carefully with her blanket that the sun may not shine on it and shrivel her up into a withered skeleton, as would result from exposure to the sun's beams. After dark she returns to her home and is secluded" in a hut for some time.[65] During her seclusion, which lasts for about a fortnight, neither she nor the girls who wait upon her may ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... destroyed the mechanical and commercial industry of Spain; the overthrow of the feudal power and privileges of the nobility, and the establishment of despotism in the crown, checked the growth of civil freedom, as the introduction of the Inquisition induced religious bigotry, and withered mental independence and intellectual cultivation. Nor is Mrs. George disposed to allow weight to the excuse, urged in favor of Isabella upon such facts as undeniably tell against her. The Spaniards of the age, she says, were not so bigoted; the Kings of Aragon, supported ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... remarkable amity and union. A large balete stands in the patio [i.e., inner court] of our house in Manila, near the regular entrance. In the year 1602, in the month of April or May, I saw it all withered, with its leaves falling. Thinking that it was dying I was greatly grieved, for I did not wish to lose so fine a tree. My sorrow was increased when I saw it next day almost without a leaf; and I showed it to our procurator, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... human sympathy each little homestead with its belt of firs against the winter's storms, and its stackyard where the corn had been gathered safe; the ploughman and his horses cutting brown ribbons in the bare stubble; dark squares where the potato stalks have withered to the ground, and women are raising the roots, and here and there a few cattle still out in the fields. His eye fell on the great wood through which he had rambled in August, now one blaze of colour, rich green and light yellow, with patches of fiery red and dark purple. God seemed ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... virtue a dream. Dust we are and to dust return, groveling meanwhile as best we may, amid the wreck of our illusions. It costs me something to admit the failure of the Great Experiment, its horrible and tragic failure! To lose a hand, an eye, a limb, to be withered by disease, one can replace, repair, renew; but an ideal, a system of philosophy, ingrained into one's very life! It is this that scars and ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... star feels the sun and falters, Touched to death by diviner eyes— As on the old gods' untended altars The old lire of withered worship dies— ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne |
