"Lilac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... charmingly accidented, that I quickened my pace, as if about to enter a fairy region. Thick turf covered the pasture lands; the old oak and the tender sapling diversified the plain. Some clouds hung on the horizon, whose delicate lilac and fawn tints, forming a harmonizing contrast with the deep deep blue of the heavens, showed the transparency of the atmosphere, and brought healthful elevation of spirits. Even the brutes bespoke the harmony of creation; for, singular to say, we ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... the dining-room," said Winnie to Gypsy, who was standing out in the yard, remarkably interested in the lilac-bush, and under the very curious impression that people thought she wasn't crying. "I think it's real nice Joy's gone, 'cause she didn't eat up her luncheon. There's a piece of pounded cake with sugar on top. There were tarts with ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... covered with a beautiful cloth with red stripes and six large silver covers upon it, the napkins folded like a boat in the shining plates, the salt-cellar and the sealed bottles, and the large cut glasses sparkling in the sun which came over the groups of lilac ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... puff of white vapour sailed along like the feather of some gigantic bird floating in the ocean of air. These isolated clouds, which had been pearly grey in the dim light of early day, gradually took a lilac tint, which deepened into pink, and then blushed suddenly to a fiery scarlet as the red rim of the sun rose majestically over the horizon. All the heaven was filled with colour from the palest, lightest blue at the zenith to the most brilliant crimson in the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... either hand, and beside one of these at the lower terrace two ladies had paused, waiting, descrying his approach. One was gowned in deep black, sad of aspect, though serene, and very beautiful. The other wore a dress all of sheer white embroideries, with knots of brocaded lilac ribbon, festival of intimation, but her face was thin, wan, worn, tortured out of all semblance of calm or cheer. He came falteringly toward them, and stood for a moment uncertain. Then—for the scope of his cultivation did not include the ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... going on in the garden such as one only bears at fairs. Masses of starlings flitting through the air and hopping about the walks were noisily chattering as they hunted for cockchafers. There were swarms of sparrows in the lilac-bushes, which threw their tender, fragrant blossoms straight in one's face. Wherever one turned, from every direction came the note of the golden oriole and the shrill cry of the hoopoe and the red-legged falcon. At any other time I should have begun chasing dragon-flies ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... nests. Further south is Tellicherry, whence the highly appreciated cardamoms of Waima are exported. The plant (Amomum repens) which produces them is not unlike the ginger shrub in appearance, bearing small lilac-coloured flowers. Cardamoms are so indispensable in all Indian cookery that great pains ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... wheeled conveyances, which, after our escort from the ship, I thought might very well have met the returning Emissary and his wife. They made my mother get into a litter, with soft cushions and with lilac curtains blowing round it, and six girls carried her up to the house; but they seemed not to imagine my not walking, and, in fact, I could hardly have imagined it myself, after the first moment of queerness. That walk was ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... love best is the walk to Saint-Jean, for there, about a hundred yards from the town is a little wood, or rather a little half-wild cluster of hornbeams, maples, limes and lilac bushes, a bouquet that murmurs in the breeze. The very first day I discovered it, I felt its charm. I determined to make love to it; I made up my mind to know it tree by tree, to search out its humblest plants, ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... or Dame Deborah dream that the lame pedlar-woman, in the lilac print dress and white mob-cap, whom they passed in the park, and who curtsied so low as the great coach lumbered past, was the Royalist leader whom everyone was searching for; neither did they dream that Millicent, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... ever turned for comfort when rendered despondent by contemplation of the weakness of our outer walls. "Seeing that everything was all right" is how my mother would explain it. She would lay the lilac silk upon the bed, fondly soothing down its rustling undulations, lingering lovingly over its deep frosted flounces of rich Honiton. Maybe she had entered the room weary looking and depressed, but soon there would proceed from her a gentle humming as from some small ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... believe, I have secured four underskirts, three chemises, as many pairs of stockings, two under-bodies, the prayer book father gave me, "Tennyson" that Harry gave me when I was fourteen, two unmade muslins, a white mull, English grenadine trimmed with lilac, and a purple linen, and nightgown. Then, I must have Lavinia's daguerreotype, and how could I leave Will's, when perhaps he was dead? Besides, Howell's and Will Carter's were with him, and one single case did not matter. But there was Tom Barker's I would like to keep, and oh! let's take Mr. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... It was Tottie, wearing her best manners, and with a countenance from which, obviously, she had extracted, as it were, some of the rosy color worn at her earlier appearance. She had smoothed her bobbed red tresses, too, and a long motor veil of a lilac tinge made less obtrusive the decollete of ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... of the grass and the bushes nearest to the window yielded a series of useful clews. For example, Dukovski succeeded in discovering a long, dark streak, made up of spots, on the grass, which led some distance into the centre of the garden. The streak ended under one of the lilac bushes in a dark brown stain. Under this same lilac bush was found a top boot, which turned out to be the fellow of the boot already found in ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... Place, and died there in 1855, in her ninety-first year. Probably she is my most direct link with the past, for she carried down to the time of the Crimean War the habits and phraseology of Queen Charlotte's early Court. "Goold" of course she said for gold, and "yaller" for yellow, and "laylock" for lilac. She laid the stress on the second syllable of "balcony." She called her maid her "'ooman;" instead of sleeping at a place, she "lay" there, and when she consulted the doctor she spoke ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... leaf beside, What will make the Summer's glory, And the Autumn's pride. She must weave the loveliest carpets, Chequered sun and shade, Every wood must have such pathways Laid in every glade; She must hang laburnum branches On each arched bough;— And the white and purple lilac Should be waving now; She must breathe, and cold winds vanish At her breath away; And then load the air around her With the scent of May! Listen then, Oh Spring! nor linger On thy charmed way; Have ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... sides of the hall, and facing the benches for visitors, the Shaker fraternity were ranged. The hats and straight straw bonnets hung decorously upon the wall over their heads: here and there a sky-blue shawl or one of faded lilac hung beneath the headgear. Across the wide apartment it was difficult to distinguish faces. I scanned closely the sisterhood—old, withered faces most of them, with here and there one young and blooming—but no Bessie as yet. Still, they were coming in continually through the side door: she ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... of narcissus and peonies, down through Nickols' sunken garden to the two oldest of all the poplars that now seemed to be standing sentinel to prevent any raid from me on the little stone meeting house over the lilac hedge. "You dear old graybeard," I said to the one on my left, as I looked up and saw a faint feathering of silver on its branches. And as I spoke I took the old trunk into my embrace and laid my cheek against the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... cause she experienced a fleeting satisfaction that she was well and becomingly dressed. She had intended dropping in informally on Sibyl Forbes, still an outcast, in spite of her intercession, and wore a gown of dove-colored cashmere and a hat of the same shade with a long lilac feather. ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... with the rheumatics," Elspeth said, when I described one of my favourites to her. It was a spring sketch. My great-grandfather had lain face downwards on the lawn to do it. This was to bring his eyes on a level with the subject of his painting, which was this: a crocus of the exquisite shades of lilac to be seen in some varieties, just full-blown, standing up in its first beauty and freshness from its fringe of narrow silver-striped leaves. The portrait was not an opaque and polished-looking painting ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... not let Paul go on to the loggia overlooking the Grand Canal. He had noticed as they passed that some high screens of lilac-bushes had been placed in front of the wide arched openings. No fear of prying eyes from opposite houses now! And yet they were not too high to prevent those in the loggia from seeing the moon and the sky. Their feast was preparing ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... gathering clouds and the air was damp before Ruth missed the bright warmth on the piazza, and began to walk back and forth by way of keeping warm. A gravelled path led to the gate and on either side was a row of lilac bushes, the bare stalks tipped with green. A white picket fence surrounded the yard, except at the back, where the edge of the precipice made it useless. The place was small and well kept, but there were no flower beds except at the front of the house, and there ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... which steadily gave place to a heavier variety, composed of larger and more angular fragments. A swishing murmur like the wind in the tree-tops came from the great expanse. It was alabaster-white and through the small, separate chips was diffused a pale lilac coloration. The larger chunks, by their motion and exposure to wind and current, had a circle of clear water; the deep sea-blue hovering round their water-worn niches. Here and there appeared the ochreous-yellow colour of adhering ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... bring thoughts of heaven. Asters have many blue and lavender tints. None of them are muddy, or metallic, or dingy, as are too many blues and lavenders. They show the blue of a June sky, or the blue of the amethyst, or the color of the lilac of spring, together with soft lavenders, pale blues and deep indigo. Sulphur and primrose tints are the nearest yellow, but in reds they run the gamut from rosy flesh and palest apple-blossom through shell pink, peach, ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... did not then stay to hear any further. But since that we have talked a great deal about love and forgiveness; and I find I must love Ben Hunt, even though I now see poor Hector's tomb in the garden. For John went to fetch him, and we buried him under the lilac-tree, on the right hand side, just by the large sun-flower. And we cried a great deal, and made a card tomb-stone over his grave; and father gave us an old hatband and we cut it into pieces and we went as mourners. His coffin was carried by Tom Wood, the ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... is another bright and interesting addition to our floral family. The best we have are Marie de Ruyter, a pretty blue; Badenia, lavender; Golden King, a magnificent yellow; Florence, lilac blotched; Mazie, corn color; and Dawn, shell pink. Plant these bulbs in succession, three weeks apart, from April first, six inches deep, so they will stand up, and eighteen inches between rows. In this way you will have them until frost. For the house cut them when first ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... certain, that Rondelet's disciples imagined for him a monument more enduring than of marble or of brass, more graceful and more curiously wrought than all the sculptures of Torrigiano or Cellini, Baccio Bandinelli or Michael Angelo himself. For they named a lovely little lilac snapdragon, Linaria Domini Pellicerii—"Lord Pellicier's toad-flax;" and that name it will keep, we may believe, as long as winter and ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... humble or great, throughout New England; and every church-going woman picked a branch or spray of it when she left her home on Sabbath morn. To this day, on hot summer Sundays, many a staid old daughter of the Puritans may be seen entering the village meeting-house, clad in a lilac-sprigged lawn or a green-striped barege,—a scanty-skirted, surplice-waisted relic of past summers,—with a lace-bordered silk cape or a delicate, time-yellowed, purple and white cashmere scarf on her bent shoulders, wearing on her gray head a shirred-silk or leghorn bonnet, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... next enclosure did not a magnolia open its hard white flowers against the watery blue of April? And was there not, a little way down the line, a fence foamed over every May be lilac waves of wistaria? Farther still, a horse-chestnut lifted its candelabra of buff and pink blossoms above broad fans of foliage; while in the opposite yard June was sweet with the breath of a neglected syringa, which persisted in growing ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... slipping out from the over-weighted thickets of wild plum, and settled herself on her boulder with a bound. Stretching forth one of her steel-tipped pads toward the south she seemed to draw the purple distance as one draws a lady by her scarf. The thin lilac-tinted haze parted on the gorge of the Rio Grande, between the white ranges. The walls of the canon were scored with deep perpendicular gashes as though the river had ripped its way through them with its claws. Yellow pines balanced on the edge of the ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... the dazzling group gathered on the right equalled in numbers the long line marching up on the left,—and still they came. It was a luxury of color, scarcely to be described,—all flowery and dewy tints, in a setting of white and gold. There were crimson, maroon, blue, lilac, salmon, peach-blossom, mauve, Magenta, silver-gray, pearl-rose, daffodil, pale orange, purple, pea-green, sea-green, scarlet, violet, drab, and pink,—and, whether by accident or design, the succession of colors never shocked by too violent contrast. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... voice hath not a trace of sweetness It thrills one through and through, With promises of Joy in all completeness What time the skies are blue. When robins from the apple-trees are flinging Out on the air their silver shower of song,— In lilac days, when children run a-singing, No single thought shall do ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... one above the other until the historic cylinder of stone opened to the sky. In contrast to the barrenness of the gray inclosures, through the squares of the windows throbbed the blue and gold, green and lilac, of Italian ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... attractive foliage, eighteen inches or so high and broad, covered with loose clusters of pansies in the most brilliant and harmonious contrasts of color, and the most delicate blendings of rare shades, such as snow white and lilac. Unfortunately, these marvelous blossoms remain but a few weeks at most, and then there is a year's care and waiting. As with the fantastic cacti, all their blossoming energy and beauty seems to be concentrated into one brief but glorious effort. It certainly is to be hoped that the new strain, ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... garden was as high as my waist, and here and there a rose tree, standing up above the tangle, showed a pale autumn rose; and little old-fashioned chrysanthemum bushes bore their clusters of tawny and lilac flowers. Beyond, I could see a kitchen garden with the apples in the boughs, and, standing up in the midst of it, a projecting part of the house which, to my amazement, was covered ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... tumultuously into the room, Mr. Nathaniel Winkle, leading after him by the hand, the identical young lady who at Dingley Dell had worn the boots with the fur round the tops, and who, now a very pleasing compound of blushes and confusion, and lilac silk, and a smart bonnet, and a rich lace veil, looked prettier ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... and fro, or shot up long streamers toward the zenith. These streamers, or "merry dancers" as they are sometimes termed, were at times peculiarly bright. Their colour was most frequently yellowish white, sometimes greenish, and once or twice of a lilac tinge. The strength of the light was something greater than that of the moon in her quarter, and the stars were dimmed when the Aurora passed over them as if they had been covered with a ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... nest I ever saw was built beside the Crawford bridle path, on Mount Clinton, just before the path comes out of the woods at the top. It was lined with hair-moss (a species of Polytrichum) of a bright orange color, and with its four or five white, lilac-spotted eggs made so attractive a picture that I was constrained to pause a moment to look at it, even though I had three miles of a steep, rough footpath to descend, with a shower threatening to overtake me before I could reach ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... quite old enough to be picturesque; a pleasant enough dwelling, amid its green garden plot, sheltered on the north side by a dark hedge of yew, and shut from the quiet road by privet topped with lilac and laburnum. This day of early summer, fresh after rains, with a clear sky and the sun wide-gleaming over young leaf and bright blossom, with Nature's perfume wafted along every alley, about every field and lane, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... and broad sweep of lawn. Behind it a wood of tall beeches raised their naked boughs in pale, intricate tracery against the soft blue sky. The shrubs proved worth inspection, for some were rich with berries of hues that varied from crimson to lilac and the massed twigs of others formed blotches of strong colouring. The grass was dry and lighted by gleams of sunshine, the air only cold enough to make movement pleasant, and Mrs. Chudleigh felt content ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... chips in soft water until the strength is out, then add a teaspoonful of alum to a quart of the liquid; if this is not bright enough, add more alum, rinse and dry. When the dye is exhausted, it will colour a fine lilac. ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... spring! trinity sure to me you bring; Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west, And thought ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... "I was up to your folkeses house jist two or three days ago. No, there ain't many changes to speak of. The lilac bush by the kitchen window is over a foot higher, and the elm in the front yard died and had to be cut down. And yet it don't seem the same place ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... fluttering bloom avalanches, Snowdrop and silver thorn laugh baffled winter to scorn; Primrose, daffodil, cowslip, shine back to my shimmering sandals, Hyacinth host, o'er the green flash your cerulean sheen, Lilac, your perfumed lamps, light, chestnut, your clustering candles, Broom and laburnum, untold torches of tremulous gold! Therefore gold-gather again from the honeyed heath and the bean field, Snatching no instant of ease, bright, multitudinous bees! Therefore, ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... two children, the most beautiful creatures in the island. Now the whole existence of this man, who was once so happy and so much envied, is changed. The smiling cottage, that hung over the gulf like a swan over a transparent lake, is sad and desolate; the little enclosure, with its hedges of lilac and hawthorn, where joyous groups used to come and sit at the close of day, is silent and deserted. No human sound dares to trouble the mourning of this saddened solitude. Only towards evening the waves of the sea, compassionating such great misfortunes, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... cottage, having around its door a slender gallery, at whose side went down a stair. Its chimnies were stout, and walls thick, its roof pitched very steep and clipped off short at the eaves; a garden of lilac-bushes and shrubs, some of which pressed their dark green against its spotless white-wash, surrounding it in front and on one side, while on the other lay the barn-yard, with a large wooden cross in its centre, protected by a railing. Two hundred years ago such ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... the aspen-trees shone, and above was the fluttering, quivering canopy of gold tinged with green, and below clustered the asters, thick as stars in the sky, waving, nodding, swaying gracefully to each little autumn breeze, lilac-hued and lavender and pale violet, and all the ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... which present ill-defined characters, namely, the various forms of pumpkins, millet, sorghum, kidney-bean, dolichos, capsicum, and indigo. Nor does he include flowers; and several of the more anciently cultivated flowers, such as certain roses, the common Imperial lily, the tuberose, and even the lilac, are said (9/3. 'Hist. Notes' as above by Targioni-Tozzetti.) not to be known in the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... nothing to be done for the moment except return these salutations, as she could not yell an aside to Mrs Quantock, screaming out "Who is that Indian"? for if Mrs Quantock heard the Indian would hear too, but as soon as she could, she turned back towards the house again, and when once the lilac bushes were between her and the road she walked with more than her usual speed, in order to learn with the shortest possible delay from Peppino who this fresh subject of hers could be. She knew there were some Indian princes in London; perhaps it was one ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... variously shaped trees of the tropics—the tall maple arrow, surrounded by its flowering crown of yellow; the Spanish needle, with its dagger-like leaves; the quilled pimploe, a species of cactus; and numberless others, from the branches of which hung lilac and purple wreaths in rich festoons—while the sweet notes of the feathered songsters ever and anon burst forth, and here and there could be seen tiny humming-birds flitting from flower to flower, fluttering for a moment and then darting off with the speed of lightning, ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... as Christopher had passed out of sight, Cynthia came from the kitchen with an armful of wet linen and began spreading it upon some scrubby lilac bushes in a corner of the yard. After fifteen years it still made her uncomfortable to have Christopher around when she did the family washing, and when it was possible she waited to dry the clothes until he had gone back to the field. In her ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... of woodland at the edge of the suburban village. Also it took him away from his wife's talk, from her eternal planning for the garden's future. Here by the house tulip bulbs were to be put in in the fall. Later there would be a hedge of lilac bushes shutting off the house from the road. The men who lived in the other houses along the suburban street spent their Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings tinkering with motor cars. On Sunday afternoons they took their families driving, sitting up very straight and silent at the ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... Ruskin knew it. Norwood was a hill; Dulwich was a valley. "Central in each amphitheatre, the crowning glory of Herne Hill was accordingly, that, after walking along its ridge southward from London through a mile of chestnut, lilac, and apple trees, hanging over the wooden palings on each side—suddenly the trees stopped on the left, and out one came on the top of the field sloping down to the south into Dulwich valley—open field animate ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... The lilac-scented midnight was starred here and there with white blooms when May went out and June came in. Drifts of "bridal wreath" were banked against the side of the house and a sweet syringa breathed out a faint ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... quite desperate sometimes. I had so much in me to give to some one and the years were all slipping by and it became, every day, more difficult. There was a girl ... something seemed to begin between us. She was the daughter of one of the canons, dark-haired, and she used to wear a lilac-coloured dress. She was very kind; once when we were walking through the town I began to talk to her. I believe she understood, because she was very, very young—only about eighteen—and hadn't begun to laugh at me yet. She had a dimple in one cheek, very charming—but some man from ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... had not left her Fanny Hill, but why I cannot tell, for I knew how baudy books excited a woman. The night before my next attack, I wrapped up the book, directed it to her, gave a boy sixpence to deliver it, hid myself by a lilac which was in the front-garden close to the road, and saw the boy give it to her, and go off quickly as I had told him. It was just dark, and too dark inside the passage of the house to see; for Jenny stepped outside the house so as to get light, and stripped ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... that; hyacinths in early spring that flooded with waving purple the cool glens, and grassy knolls; yellow primroses that nestled in little clumps round the gnarled roots of the oak-trees; bright celandine, and blue speedwell, and irises lilac and gold. There were grey catkins on the hazels, and the foxgloves drooped with the weight of their dappled bee-haunted cells. The chestnut had its spires of white stars, and the hawthorn its pallid ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... hour I throw the casement wide, Fall on my knees beside it in the gloom, And cowering before me lies the balmy night, Wafted aloft the breath of lilac bloom. The nightingale her plaint from a near thicket sobs, I listen to the singer, share the woe— With a longing for my home within me waking, The home I looked on last so long ago! And the nightingales of home with their familiar song! And lilacs in my childhood gardens ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... short, but it would be hard to hide such small feet, and such still smaller shoes. "Il faut souffrir pour etre belle," but a quoi bon etre belle? if no one sees it. As for me, I ventured upon a lilac silk of Palmyre's, and a ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... little Susy, with her lilac pinafore in flames. She had been trying to reach something from the mantelpiece, and had climbed up on the unsteady old fender. There was no guard in front of the open fire, and the draught had drawn her pinafore towards ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... time to take one more deep breath, full of the fragrance from the lilac blossoms, before ...
— Clematis • Bertha B. Cobb
... hill streams are apt to do, and which, for several months in the year was almost as worthy of the name of river as the Merle itself. Before the house was a large grassy yard, having many rose-bushes and lilac trees scattered along the fences and the path that led to the door. There were shade trees, too. Once they had stood in regular lines along the road, and round the large garden. Some of these had been injured because of the ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... of servants made their appearance at the same time. Those intended for the princely table numbered two hundred,—two for each guest. They were the handsomest young men among the ten thousand serfs, clothed in loose white trousers and shirts of pink or lilac silk; their soft golden hair, parted in the middle, fell upon their shoulders, and a band of gold-thread about the brow prevented it from sweeping the dishes they carried. They entered the reception-room, bearing huge trays of sculptured silver, ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... space between their edge and the sea, illuminated by the sinister brilliancy of the iceblink. In an easterly direction, this belt of unclouded atmosphere was etherealized to an indescribable transparency, and up into it there gradually grew—above the dingy line of starboard ice—a forest of thin lilac peaks, so faint, so pale, that had it not been for the gem-like distinctness of their outline, one could have deemed them as unsubstantial as the spires of fairy-land. The beautiful vision proved only too transient; in one short half hour mist and cloud had blotted ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... and straight on a chair at the foot of his bed. Her flowered organdie dress was very much like the bouquet she had brought, and her floppy straw hat had a big lilac bow. She began to tell Claude about her father's several attacks of erysipelas. He listened but absently. He would never have believed that Enid, with her severe notions of decorum, would come into his room and sit with him like this. He noticed that his mother was quite as much astonished as ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... man's impression. What he saw was a billowing, filmy mass of soft stuff, and out of it there greeted him the faintest possible scent of lilac sachet powder. He closed the curtains with a deep breath of utter joy and of consternation. The two emotions were a jumble to him. The shoes, all that mass of soft stuff behind the curtains, were exquisitely feminine. The breath of perfume had come to him straight out of a woman's ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... yellow constellations shine with pale and tender glory, In the lilac-scented stillness, let us listen to Earth's story. All the flow'rs like moths a-flutter glimmer rich with dusky hues, Everywhere around us seem to fall from nowhere the sweet dews. Through the drowsy lull, the murmur, stir of leaf and sleep hum ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... a moment. "Going to play garden around the house. This is a—a lilac tree!" And he set the flower-pot down close to Bert's elbow. Bert was now busy trying to put a pasteboard chimney on his house, and did not notice. A moment later Bert's elbow hit the flower-pot and down it went on the floor, breaking into several pieces and ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope
... remember, Laura,' Dick goes on, 'I kissed you once. It was under a lilac in the Loudon Woods. I knew at the time that you were angry, and I should have apologised. ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... * * Forgive the past! Henceforth flowers shall bloom upon the surface Of your dwellings. The lilac in the spring Shall blossom, and the sweet briar shall exhale Its fragrant smell. E'en the drooping fuchsia Shall not be wanting to adorn your tombs; While the weeping willow, pointing downwards, Speaks significantly to the living, That ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... house was the canon, through which in the rainy season a stream of water gushed melodiously. The steep sides of this canon were covered with a growth of aromatic plants and shrubs, the pale blues of the wild lilac touching it here and there. Like a bit of real California, "Highcourt," as they had called the place, was a perpetual bower of bloom and fragrance and sunshine, with a broad panorama of valley, sea, and mountain to gaze upon. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... after his marriage, although I had thought it possible, not only on account of its intrinsic merits, which have not been sufficiently acknowledged, but on account of the singular fact that Mlle. Henri, the charming heroine, is married in a white muslin dress, and that her going-away dress was of lilac silk. These were the actual wedding dresses of ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... sex-lore to the elegant society ladies of the pork-packing metropolis. The Sun God, worshipped for two score centuries in India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, has a new shrine on Lake Park Avenue, and the prophet gives tea-parties at which his disciples are fed on lilac-blossoms—"the white and pinkish for males, the blue-tinted for females". He wears a long flowing robe of pale grey cashmere, faced with white, and flexible white kid shoes, and he sells his lady adorers a book called "Inner Studies", price five dollars per ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... streets of St. Mary's are her glory: they are one hundred feet wide, carpeted with a green sward smooth as a shaven lawn, lined with live-oaks and china trees. In April the latter are in full bloom, their lilac blossoms hanging in dense panicles, the green leaves flecking them just enough to afford contrast, and the sombre Spanish moss depending gracefully from every branch and limb. Great gaudy butterflies are continually hovering over them and fluttering uneasily ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... us was a large open battlefield. To each side of us were batteries which had thundered away since early morning. The result of this was that many of the enemy's shells dropped right in front of us. I remember noticing that while the smoke of our shells had a lilac color that of ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... and hides from the Hermit the glory of the sundown. But we can behold its effects on Mt. Sanneen, on the clouds above us, on the glass casements in the villages far away. The mountains in the east are mantled with etherial lilac alternating with mauve; the clouds are touched with purple and gold; the casements in the distance are scintillating with mystical carbuncles: the sun is setting in the Mediterranean,—he is waving his farewell ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... hillside garden. Through this pleasant confusion of past and present, of spring-time scattering blossoms upon the graves, of old ivy walks and iron bars imprisoning past memories, with fragrant fumes of lilac and of elder, one could picture to oneself, as in a waking dream, two figures advancing from the corner house with the ivy walls—distinct, sedate—passing under the old doorway. I could almost see ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... almost the same dress that we had seen at Tahiti—a coloured, long-sleeved, loose gown reaching to the feet. The natives here appear to affect duller colours than those we have lately been accustomed to—lilac, drab, brown, and other dark prints being the favourite tints. Whenever I stopped to look at a view, one of the girls would come behind me and throw a lei of flowers over my head, fasten it round my neck, and then run away laughing, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... expedition but fatigue, I have more confidence in my vis vitae than I had before entertained. The spring is remarkably backward. No oats sown, not much tobacco seed, and little done in the gardens. Wheat has suffered considerably. No vegetation visible yet but the red maple, weeping-willow, and lilac. Flour is said to be at eight dollars at Richmond, and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... a close application at his desk in the village school was an unheard-of consequence; and, having repeatedly smarted under the schoolmaster's ferule, not to mention his good mother's switches plucked from the big lilac bush by her door, he decided to run away to the great harbor, and ship upon some vessel bound for a ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... forming, when well polished, a blaze of the most exquisite and unrivalled tint. It is, however, more or less pale, and mixed with blue in various proportions; hence it occurs rose-red and reddish white, crimson, peach-blossom red, and lilac blue—the latter variety being named oriental amethyst. A ruby perfect both in colour and transparency, is much less common than a good diamond, and when of the weight of three or four carats, is even more valuable than that gem. The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... led Tom across a vacant lot to a small, unkempt, dingy old house at the end of the path. In the yard of this dwelling a woman was hanging clothes on a line and a number of mongrel hens were taking dust baths under some lilac bushes. The breeze wafted the fragrance of these blossoms to Tom's nostrils as he ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... brook, and floating in the cups of the water-lilies. They looked up at me from the orchard, dark and cool. They thrilled across from the hill-tops, glowing still with the glowing sky. I heard their voice by the lilac-bush. They smiled at me under the peach-trees, and where the blackberries had ripened against the southern wall. I felt them once more in the clover-smells and the new-mown hay. They swayed again in the silken tassels of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... old, god-fearing woman-person. Her face, which was wreathed in a round white goffered cap, had the smooth, yellow, waxen pallor of the statue of Our Lady, in church, and her features the severe, sober kindliness of nuns'. She was dressed in modest, stiffly-falling folds of unrumpled lilac silk, like the queens ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... fair, And bright, and gentle, but thou bring'st not her: The May-birds warble, and May breezes stir In the sweet-scented lilac boughs; But our one May—our gentlest minister Of gladness, with the beauty of her hair. Her place in our still house Is empty,—and the world is bleak ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... took a handful of BUDDING LILAC-LEAVES, and crushing them slightly between his hoofs, so as to bring out their peculiar fragrance, fastened them to the end of a long pole and held them towards the creature. Its expression changed in an instant,—it ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... but they don't separate oftener than REALLY married folks. Bill, the handsome West Indian black, married my pretty washerwoman Rosalind, and was thought rather assuming because he was asked in church and lawfully married; and she wore a handsome lilac silk gown and a white wreath and veil, and very well she looked in them. She had a child of two years old, which did not at all disconcert Bill; but he continues to be dignified, and won't let her go and wash clothes in the river, because ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... ran along the Knarborough Road. A fair number of Woodhouse young people were strolling along the pavements in their Sunday clothes. She knew them all. She knew Lizzie Bates's fox furs, and Fanny Clough's lilac costume, and Mrs. Smitham's winged hat. She knew them all. And almost inevitably the old Woodhouse feeling began to steal over her, she was glad they could not see her, she was a little ashamed of Ciccio. She wished, for the moment, Ciccio were not there. And as the ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... The flowering lilac bends its fresh, fragrant clusters over the dead man's head; the swallow again flies past; "quivit! quivit!" Now the men come with nails and hammer; the lid is placed over the corpse, whose head rests ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... full of bursting surges; and if it had not been for the palms, and the houses, and the canoes that were putting out to fish, and the colour of the cliffs and the bright dresses (lilac, red, and green) of the women that sat about the doors at work, I might have thought myself in Devonshire. A little further, we passed a garden enclosed in dry stone walls from the surrounding blackness; it seemed a wonder of fertility; hard by was the owner, a white ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Eliza replied. "Let me go and peep in, to see if he is there. But no; hush! See, here he comes! Come; we will hide behind the lilac-bush, ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... soon as I recognized him, he had disappeared behind a large lilac-bush; but I had seen what he held in the hand behind his back—it was a long unsheathed knife. The lilac-bush stood close to the summer-house. He fell flat to the ground, and though I couldn't see him, after that I knew he was wriggling his way around the bush. You would ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... fields of snow showed to what far height his proud summit soared above his fellows. Little streams of icy water trickled through close-knit, velvety sward whereon small flowers, white and gold and lilac, showed like fairy footprints. Down from the pass a chill wind, delicious and invigorating, rushed as palpably as if it were a liquid wave. In all this upper region no shelter offered to the ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Lavretsky cried after her unexpectedly. "I have a great favour to beg of your mother and you; to pay me a visit in my new abode. You know, I have had a piano sent over; Lemm is staying with me; the lilac is in flower now; you will get a breath of country air, and you can return the same day—will you consent?" Lisa looked towards her mother; Marya Dmitrievna was assuming an expression of suffering; ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... afternoon, looking at Ray Ingraham, in her striped lilac and white calico, with its plaited waist and cross-banded, machine-stitched double skirt, sitting by her shady window, beyond which, behind the garden angle, rose up the red brick wall of the bakehouse, whence came a warm, sweet smell of many new-drawn loaves,—looking around within, at the ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the cigar from his teeth and gazed at the long white ash with the air of a connoisseur. He was stretched in a long chair, high up in the terraced gardens behind the Hall. At his feet were golden mats of yellow crocuses; long borders of hyacinths—pink and purple; beds of violets; a great lilac tree, with patches of blossom here and there forcing their way into a sunlit world. The sea was blue; the sheltered air where they sat was warm and perfumed. Mr. Dunster, who was occupying the position of a favoured guest, was ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... through the beechwood that embroiders the hem of the down's cloak. There are only two colours in a beechwood after rain, lilac and green. A bank of violets is not more pure in colour than a beech trunk shining in the sun. The two colours answered one another, fainter and fainter, away and away, to the end of one's sight, and there were two cuckoos, ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... us. The sun has now risen well; the sky is a rich blue, and the tardy moon still hangs in it. Lilac tones show through the water. In the south there are a few straggling small white clouds,—like a long flight of birds. A great gray mountain shape looms up before us. We are steaming on ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... Eden stole at this point the serpent, and, as is usual, in the shape of woman. Little Eleanor, long-legged, slim, fresh as a flower in her crisp, faded pink dress, came around the corner. In one hot hand she carried, by their heads, a bunch of lilac and pink and white sweet peas. It cost her no trouble at all, and about half a minute of time, to charge the atmosphere, so full of sweet peace and rest, with a saturated solution of bitterness and disquiet. Her presence alone was a bombshell, and with ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... bird. The moon glittered with whiteness like a winter moon, and shone upon the low-roofed house until its small window-panes gleamed like silver, and one could almost see the colors of a blooming bush of lilac that grew in a sheltered angle by the kitchen door. There was an incessant sound of ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... varied, so intense, yet seemingly so evanescent!—the glittering mantle of powdered gold; the emerald green that changes to velvet black; ruby reds and luminous scarlets; dull bronze that brightens and burns like polished brass, and pale neutral tints that kindle to rose and lilac-coloured flame. And to the glory of prismatic colouring are added feather decorations, such as the racket-plumes and downy muffs of Spathura, the crest and frills of Lophornis, the sapphire gorget burning on the snow-white ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... finer. The whole surface resembled a golden-green ocean, upon which were sprinkled millions of different flowers. Through the tall, slender stems of the grass peeped light-blue, dark-blue, and lilac star-thistles; the yellow broom thrust up its pyramidal head; the parasol-shaped white flower of the false flax shimmered on high. A wheat-ear, brought God knows whence, was filling out to ripening. Amongst the roots of this luxuriant vegetation ran partridges with outstretched ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the 10c the stamps of this issue provide but little variation in shade but the 10c more than makes up for this lack in the others for it exists in almost every conceivable tint from bright red-lilac through shades of violet and brown to a brown so intense as to be catalogued as a ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... cosmetic, hairpins, combs and brushes, all carefully set out. Two artificial plaits stretch themselves languishingly upon a dark mass not unlike a large handful of horsehair. A golden hair net, combs of pale tortoise-shell and bright coral, clusters of roses, sprays of white lilac, bouquets of pale violets, await the choice of the artist or the caprice of the beauty. And yet, must I say it? amidst this luxury of wealth Madame's hair is undressed, Madame ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... arm in arm towards Ypres, to explore. An occasional shell—a hum, increasing until it became a roar, followed, a moment after, by a fearful explosion—warned them not to proceed beyond the outskirts of the town, and here it was that they came upon a large villa, with lilac budding in the garden. By mutual consent, they turned in at the tall iron gate, and entered the ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... the rest. From the End of the World they came, apparently, but while Tim had climbed the wall for his, Judy picked hers because a bird had lowered the branch into her very hand. For Uncle Felix she brought a spray of lilac; Tim brought a bit of mignonette. Eventually he had to wear ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... came with the springtime breezes from the meadow yonder! The red-headed woodpecker heard them at play, and she clambered out of the hollow maple and dodged hither and thither as if she, too, shared their merriment. Yes, and the yellow thistle-bird, whose nest was in the blooming lilac-bush, came and perched in the pear-tree and sang a little song about the dear little eggs in her cunning home. And there was a flower in the fence-corner,—a sweet, modest flower that no human eyes but the little boy's had ever seen,—and she sang a little song, too, a song about the ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... garden. In all the country-side there was no garden so lovely as his. Sweet-william grew there, and Gilly-flowers, and Shepherds'-purses, and Fair-maids of France. There were damask Roses, and yellow Roses, lilac Crocuses and gold, purple Violets and white. Columbine and Ladysmock, Marjoram and Wild Basil, the Cowslip and the Flower-de-luce, the Daffodil and the Clove-Pink bloomed or blossomed in their proper order as the months went by, one flower ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... hand on his shoulder, a hand protruding from a well tailored gray sleeve and lilac striped cuff, that caught Hamdi Bey by the epauleted shoulder and sent ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... to make my water waves and offer daily prayer!" And with this ejaculation of good-natured indignation, evidently at the memory of sundry and various poultry prods, Mrs. Silas betook herself to the house with a beautiful and serene dignity. As she went she stopped to break a sprig from a huge old lilac that was beginning to burst its brown buds and to put up half a yard of rambler that trailed across the ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... have been, to a far larger degree, a native gift. Me had a downright good nose. All his life long he enjoyed with more than ordinary keenness the odour of flowers, and would often pick a sprig of wild rose and carry it along with him in his hand, sniffing at it from time to time, and he loved the lilac, as I do after him. To ill odours he was not less sensitive, and was impatient of rats in the barn, and could smell them, among other odours, the moment the door was opened. He always had a peculiar sensitiveness ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... up, in her brougham, to the widow's door in Curzon Street. The blinds were down, and the house gave every indication that its owner was not in London. Sara, however, was admitted, and Pensee received her in a little room, hung with lilac chintz and full of porcelain, at the back of the house. Pensee, wearing a loose blue robe, seemed over-excited and sad—with that sadness which seems to fall upon the soul as snow upon water. She was reclining on the sofa, reading a worn copy of Law's Serious Call which had belonged to the late ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... hoeing in the front garden. And I and my chum helped Ma carry water to wash. She said it seemed like the longest week she ever saw, but when we brought the water, and took a plate of pickles to the hired girl that was down with the mumps, we got in the lilac bushes and waited for the curtain to rise. It wasn't long before folks began going to church and you'd a dide laughing to see them all stop in front of where Ma was washing and look at her, and then go on to where Pa was hoeing ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... asserted it. One of these was a mud-cabin with a thatched roof, that looked as if it had emigrated bodily from the bogs of Ireland. It had settled itself down into a green hollow by the roadside, and it looked as much at home with the lilac-tinted crane's-bill and yellow buttercups as if it had never lost sight of the ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... with the lady on the car platform, and then looked past her in confused surprise. A girl stood in the vestibule, clad in garments of pale lilac tint which fell about her figure in long sweeping lines, emphasizing its fine contour against the dark brown paneling. She had a large hat of the same color, and it enhanced the attractiveness of her face, which wore a friendly smile. She was obviously one of the party, though ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... purpose right above the gorge. When we raised our eyes toward the crests we stood dazzled and stupefied by what we saw. They looked red and notched like festoons of coral, for all the summits are made of porphyry; and the sky overhead seemed violet, lilac, discolored by the vicinity of these strange mountains. Lower down the granite was of scintillating gray, and under our feet it seemed rasped, pounded; we were walking over shining powder. At our right, along a long ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... relation of the different species to each other is that of armed neutrality. They are very jealous of neighbors. A few years ago I was much interested in the housebuilding of a pair of summer yellow-birds. They had chosen a very pretty site near the top of a tall white lilac, within easy eye-shot of a chamber window. A very pleasant thing it was to see their little home growing with mutual help, to watch their industrious skill interrupted only by little flirts and snatches of endearment, frugally cut short by the common-sense ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... though it is beautiful to behold. The sky these last two evenings has been like an Italian one, and for the last few days—at least the last four—without the slightest particle of cloud, and the sun blazing. With this, not a breath of air. The mountains look quite crimson and lilac, and everything glows with the setting sun. The evenings are quite a relief. Really one cannot undertake expeditions, the heat is so great. We thought of you, and wished you could be here; you ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... with the branch of the lilac which she held in her hand. She plucked off the small blossoms, and throwing them in the air, blew them about, as she danced here ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Our road first passed the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, a grand and spacious building, a mile out of Belleville, and then was bordered by orchards and rich cornfields, scattered cottages and farmhouses, with lilac bushes clustering round the doors and verandahs. Outside every farmhouse may be seen by the roadside a wooden stand, on which are placed the ample cans of milk waiting for the waggon to carry them to the cheese factories. No fear, it appears, is here entertained either of milk being stolen or ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... knew the Hapgood house. It stood close to the street, under a row of huge elms, and surrounded with clumps of purple and white lilac bushes whose topmost blossoms peeped curiously in at the chamber windows. Such houses are only found in New England, but there they abound with their broad front "stoops," the long slant of their rear roofs, where a ladder is firmly fixed, to serve in ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... sighed. Youth had been very sweet to him, all manifestations of femininity in a woman very dear. There were four long windows in the dining-room, but the roof of the verandah, the thick vines springing from pillar to pillar, the lilac-trees and willows just beyond, chastened the light in the room. Magdalena looked almost pretty, with her air of proud reserve, the roses nestling in her dark hair. Ten years ago he might have loved her, perhaps, in spite of ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... presenting a rather untidy collection, met the eye. This morning it was particularly untidy. The charts covered the table; one of them lay on the carpet; and a pot of mignonette had been overturned inside the open window scattering some of the mould. She was very busy; the open sleeves of her lilac-muslin dress were thrown back, and her delicate hands were putting the finishing touches in pencil to a plan she had been copying, from one of the maps. A few minutes more, and the pencil was ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of brass. Over knolls and through hollows the little cavalcade jogged steadily, till, mounting a gentle eminence, they wound through a grove of camphor and Flame-of-the-Forest. Above the branches rose the faded lilac shaft of an ancient pagoda, ruinously adorned with young trees and wild shrubs clinging ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... gardens with lilac and laburnum bushes, with gooseberries and currants. There were no flowers there that did not sow themselves year after year. They were damp, grubby places, but even there an imaginative child like Mary Gray could ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... tender green. It had been a hard, inclement season. Many a time, since February onward, had the too-eagerly pushing buds of trees and shrubs been nipped by cruel cold,—many a biting east wind had withered the first pale green leaves of the lilac and the hawthorn,—and the stormy caprices of a chill northern. Spring had played havoc with all the dainty woodland blossoms that should, according to the ancient 'Shepherd's Calendar' have been flowering fully ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... sombre green, begins to brighten with new life; new leaves adorn the ragged red arms of the manzanita, and among them blow thousands of little urn-shaped flowers of rose-color and white. The bright green of one lilac is almost lost in a luxuriance of sky-blue blossoms, and the white lilac looks at a distance as if drifted over with snow. The cercocarpus almost rivals the lilac in its display of white and blue, and the dark, ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... the pale green catkins; the helmets and gauntlets hanging on the wall were each adorned with a spray, and polished to the brightest; the chairs and benches were ranged round the long table, covered with a spotless cloth, and bearing in the middle a large bowl filled with oak boughs, roses, lilac, honey- suckle, and all ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his name came from the gooseberry garden without. She had grown suspicious at his long disappearance, and had leapt to the conclusion that he had climbed over the wall behind the sheltering screen of the lilac bushes; she was now engaged in energetic and rather hopeless search for him among the artichokes ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... here and there, like a gothic font, with a salamander, which modelled upon a background of crumbling stone the quick relief of its slender, allegorical body; on the bench without a back, in the shade of a lilac-tree, in that little corner of the garden which communicated, by a service door, with the Rue du Saint-Esprit, and from whose neglected soil rose, in two stages, an outcrop from the house itself and apparently a separate building, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... mottoes and inscriptions, that they were as stiff as boards, and would neither flutter nor roll up. But when Wilhelm's funeral monument was to be dedicated, she put aside Paul's banner and coat-of-arms, upon which she was engaged, and wove a wreath of wire and black and white and lilac beads, a yard and a half in diameter, on which, between laurel leaves, were Wilhelm's name and the date of his death, and the words: "Eternal gratitude." Nothing the least like it had ever been seen in Hamburg ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... is the star of Bethlehem, wide open in the sunshine and showing so purely white amidst the green, and yonder is the purple fringe-like tuft of the weird muscari. Along the banks of the stream tall lilac-purple, stock-like flowers rise proudly above the grasses. They belong to the hesperis or dame's violet, a common wild-flower in this valley. Upon my left is the abrupt stony slope of the gorge. Between ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... my memorable present-gown this day in honour of the princess royal. It is a lilac tabby. I saw the king for a minute at night, as he returned from the Castle, and he graciously admired it, calling out "Emily should see Miss Burney's gown now, and she would think her ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... profuse and luxuriant beyond description, and so real-looking, that you could almost fancy you smelt their fragrance, and heard the south wind go softly rustling in and out among the crimson roses—the branches of purple and white lilac—the floating golden-tressed laburnum boughs. Besides these, there were stately white lilies, sacred to the Virgin—hollyhocks, fraxinella, monk's-hood, pansies, primroses; every flower which blooms ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and thy fellow—when the pale stars fade At dawn, and when the glowworm lights her torch, O Beadle of the Burlington Arcade? —Who asketh why the Beautiful was made? A wan cloud drifting o'er the waste of blue, The thistledown that floats above the glade, The lilac-blooms of April—fair to view, And naught but fair are these; and ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... accepted, a berth in the gun-room. Neither Jack nor Murray had seen him, nor had they heard his name before they sailed. The next morning, after they had lost sight of the rock, when they went on deck, who should they see walking up and down, with an air of no little consequence, and having a pair of lilac kid gloves on his hands, but Bully Pigeon. Jack and Murray forgot all his bad qualities, and only thought of him as an old schoolfellow. So they went up to him, and cordially put out ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... resist temptation. One plump, brown bun, with a lovely plum right in the middle, was so fascinating it was impossible to let it alone; so Patty whipped it into her pocket, ran to the garden, and hiding behind the big lilac-bush, ate it in a great hurry. It was just out of the oven, and so hot it burned her throat, and lay like a live coal in her little stomach after it was down, making her very uncomfortable ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... any French. You must go now, Mr. Ryfe; my maid's coming back for me from the bonnet-shop. I can't be trusted, you see, over fifty yards of pavement and a crossing by myself. The maid is walking with me now behind these lilac-bushes, you know. Her name is Ryfe. She is very cross and silent; she wears a well-made coat, shiny boots, rather a good hat, and carries a nosegay as big as a chimney-sweep's—you can give it me if you like—I dare say you bought ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... man in a trance. He was barely inside my door when I began pouring out to him the story of those two remarkable visits. He made little comment on the woman's call beyond asking me whether I could describe her; and he smiled when I mentioned lilac perfume. At mention of young Fraser-Freer's preposterous request ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... went, and walked it all over again, finding, of course, many things which had escaped us the night before. We saw our first Melocactus, and our first night-blowing Cereus creeping over the rocks. We found our first tropic orchid, with white, lilac, and purple flowers on a stalk three feet high. We saw our first wild pines (Tillandsias, etc.) clinging parasitic on the boughs of strange trees, or nestling among the angular limb- like shoots of the columnar Cereus. We learnt to distinguish the poisonous Manchineel; ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Fossell, a nervous body in a cap with lilac ribbon, rose in some little fluster, and opined that it was almost time ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... still the love seemed to soften him. Into his life had come new, strange emotions. The sensuous odor of stephanotis, that had not repelled in the old life, had come to suggest a pestilence in his nostrils, made clean by the purity of lilac. As he swayed in contention, the face of Wrong fronting him became the face of Sin—repellent, abhorrent; how could he ruin her life, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... backward in exhibiting his accomplishments. The low-toned, plaintive sounding conversation of the jays with each other, not only beside the nest, but when flying together or apart, or in brief interviews in the lilac bush, pleased me especially, because it was exactly the same prattle that a pet blue jay was accustomed to address to me; and it confirmed what I had always believed from his manner, that it was his most loving and intimate expression, the tone ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... edge, swathed in a lilac silk kimona — delicate relic of school days. Her bandaged feet, crossed, dangled above the rag-rug on the floor; her slim, tanned fingers were interlaced over the book ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... another misty day, muffling the sun. The lilac-shrubs under my study window are almost in leaf. In two or three days more, I may put forth my hand and pluck a green bough. These lilacs appear to be very aged, and have lost the luxuriant foliage of ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
