"Feathery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fairy forests fring'd the evening sky. So Scotia's Queen, as slowly dawn'd the day,' [d] Rose on her couch, and gaz'd her soul away. Her eyes had bless'd the beacon's glimmering height, That faintly tipt the feathery surge with light; But now the morn with orient hues pourtray'd Each castled cliff, and brown monastic shade: All touch'd the talisman's resistless spring, And lo, what busy tribes were instant on the wing! Thus kindred objects kindred thoughts inspire, As summer-clouds flash ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... sulphur and amber, Scarlet, and flame, and green, While five-foot apes did scramble and clamber, In the feathery-tufted treen. ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... from the cairns and silicon-bronze inscribed tablets they'd left on oxygen-type worlds over a twelve-hundred-light-year range in space, and the only thing to be deduced about the Plumies themselves came from the decorative, formalized symbols like feathery plumes which were found on all their bronze tablets. The name "Plumies" came ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... beauty of the scene which drew an exclamation from them both. At a little distance rose a knoll, covered with short grass and fading golden-rod, and with its base laved by a crystal stream of some width, and upon the knoll, shaded by a couple of magnificent maples, and covered with the pale and feathery bloom of the wild clematis, stood a small, rude hut. Smoke rose from its crazy chimney, and upon the strip of greensward before the door rolled a little, half-naked child—a white child. As the travelers stared in amazement, a woman's voice rang out, freshly and sweetly, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... ground in a crouching position. He seemed to be smothering in a mass of black cinders that rose up in a feathery cloud all about him. He could ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... summit; the heavy green and bossy forms of the sycamores lower down; broken here and there by a solitary terebinth or ilex tree, of a deeper green and a wider spread; till the eye fell below on the maritime plain, edged with the white seaboard and the sandy hillocks; with here and there feathery palm-trees, either isolated or in groups—motionless and distinct ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... weathered her, just before she hove in stays, I had heard a shrill voice sing out, "Take good aim, men—Fire"; but now each cannon in thunder shot forth its glance of flame, without a word being uttered, as she kept away to bring them to bear in succession, while the long feathery cloud of whirling white smoke that shrouded her sides from stem to stem, was sparkling brilliantly throughout with crackling musketry, for all the world like fire—flies in a bank of night fog from the hills, until the breeze ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Carpenter to follow him along a winding path, paved with white marble slabs, and bordered with gaily-hued flowers. Suddenly they emerged upon a lovely sward of the brightest green, in the centre of which a fountain played, sending its fine feathery ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... way through them, would have reached at last a sort of rocky niche, fancifully arranged as a grotto. Besides the masses of ivy, iris and gladiolus, that had been carefully planted long ago in the interstices of the rock, it was draped with a profusion of graceful wild vines and feathery ferns, which half-veiled the marble statue, representing some mythological divinity, that still stood in this lonely retreat. It must have been intended for Flora or Pomona, but now there were tufts of repulsive, venomous-looking mushrooms in the pretty, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... feathery cloud, like a woolbag, and a threatening cloud too, for as it sunk lower it increased in size, and concealed within was a "fohn," fearful in its violence should it break loose. This journey, with its ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... joy stick. Detached, feathery clouds spread across the sky, and he was climbing for them. Paula looked behind at him, and he pointed. He saw her seem to stiffen upon sight of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... my way eastward on foot, across Union Square. The snow had been falling all night and was still sifting down in big, flowery flakes. The trees under their soft, feathery burdens looked like those that grow only in a child's picture-book. The slat-benches were covered with soft white blankets that were as yet undisturbed, for the habitual bench tramp was not abroad so early in ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... feathery foliage of the cocoanut palms could be made out, and the old sailor judged it time to take to ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the bottom of branching coral, as beautiful as frosted silver. From among its branches sprang great sea-fans, delicate as lace-work, and showing, in striking contrast to the pure white of the coral, the most vivid reds, greens, and royal purple. These, and masses of feathery seaweeds, waved to and fro in the water as though stirred by a light breeze, and among them darted and played fish as brilliant in coloring as tropical birds. The boat seemed suspended in midair above fairy-land, and even the children gazed down over its sides in silence, for fear lest by speaking ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... particularly assiduous in the pursuit of Hobbema, with the result that his best work is in our country. Holland has nothing of his to compare with the "Avenue at Middelharnis," one of the gems of our National Gallery. And his feathery trees may be studied at the Wallace Collection in ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... climbing high and the shade of the pepper tree was grateful. The spring murmured for a few feet beyond the last quivering shadow of the feathery leaves, then was swallowed abruptly by the burning sand. Enoch lifted his tired eyes. Far on every side lay the uneven, rock strewn desert floor, dotted with cactus and greasewood. To the east, vivid against the blue sky, rose a solitary mountain peak, a true purple in color, capped with snow. ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... likeness of that which we behold and admire. Even in outward, material things we sometimes see the working of this law. There is a gorgeous sunset. Come out of the dingy house, and gaze on the scene. The western sky is ablaze with purple and crimson and gold. The radiant clouds stretch out in feathery, fantastic forms, like angels' wings; or pile themselves up in solid blocks of glory, like celestial mountains; or shape themselves into golden ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... blossoming Ankolas; and Jamvus (blackberry trees) and Patalas and Kunjakas and Atimuktas; and Karaviras and Parijatas and numerous other kinds of trees always adorned with flowers and fruits and alive with feathery creatures of various species. And those verdant groves always resounded with the notes of maddened peacocks and Kokilas (blackbirds). And there were various pleasure-houses, bright as mirrors, and numerous bowers of creepers, and charming and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... And dim receding valleys, hid before By interposing trees, lay visible Through the bare grove, and my familiar haunts Seemed new to me. Nor was I slow to come Among them, when the clouds, from their still skirts, Had shaken down on earth the feathery snow, And all was white. The pure keen air abroad, Albeit it breathed no scent of herb, nor heard Love-call of bird, nor merry hum of bee, Was not the air of death. Bright mosses crept Over the spotted trunks, and the close buds, That lay along the boughs, instinct with life, Patient, and ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... was not at all dreamlike, but perfectly clear and solid-looking in the candle-light. He saw the hairy body, and the short feathery antennae, the jointed legs, even a place where the down was rubbed from the wing. He suddenly felt angry with himself for being afraid of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... rotten and moss-grown, over a dry water-course, where straggling willows stretched out from the bank and trailed their long, feathery ends a yard or so above the level of the weeds and grasses that carpeted the sandy bed of it, and along its edge—once built as a protection for the heedless or unwary, but now a ruin and a wreck—a moss-grown wall with a narrow, ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... A few feathery flakes began falling now, and there was the promise of more in the clouds overhead, and in the sighing of ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... one, through rocks and brushwood, mountain ash bushes showing their coral berries amid their feathery leaves, golden and white stars of stonecrop studding every coign of vantage, and in more level spots the waxy bell-heather beginning to come into blossom. Still it was rather over praise to call it as smooth as the carefully-levelled ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... soo-oo-ook; the clucking whip-poor-wills, that chanted from the bare flat pasture rocks; the chickadees that came into the orchard and about the great loose farm woodpile, in February, with their odd little minor refrain of cic-a-da-da-da-da, mere feathery mites of ceaseless activity that somehow did not freeze, at ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... two figures appeared on foot on the brow of the road, which sloped down toward the Homestead, through a feathery range of graceful locusts. They were too far off to be distinctly made out, but it was to be inferred that they were travellers from a distance, for one of them held against the light some sort of travelling bag or portmanteau; one of them ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... longevity of some of the founders of the family, for Annaeus seems to be connected with annus, a year, and Seneca with senex, an old man. The common English composite plant ragwort is called senecio from the white and feathery pappus or appendage of its seeds; and similarly, Isidore says that the first Seneca was so named because "he ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... an' cattle an' horses,' But the young horse just wiggled and wiggled,"—I could hear my daughter suiting the action to the word upon her audience's knee,—"and pwesently his halter was off! Then out he rushed, kicking up the nimble snow with his feathery heels, and—what?" ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... first discovered in the Rip Van Winkle country. The wild ginger with its two large leaves and its queer little blossoms close to the ground is another delight to the saunterer along the rocky slopes, where the feathery shad-bush—the aronia of Whittier—with its wealth of snowy blossoms and the wild plum not far away, with its masses of pure white, are inspirations to clean and sweet lives, calling to mind the lines ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... across the slant of the flower-spangled meadow to the bench, just within the fringe of the pines. It proved to be flat, and from the edge of it down the hill seeped a little spring marked by the feathery bracken. We entered a cool green place, peopled with shadows and the rare, considered notes of soft-voiced birds. Just over our threshold, as it were, was the sunlit, chirpy, buzzing, bright-coloured, busy world. Overhead a wind of many voices ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... which would have been behind it if it had been longer, accessible, Mr Wegg sits down on a box in front of the fire, and inhales a warm and comfortable smell which is not the smell of the shop. 'For that,' Mr Wegg inwardly decides, as he takes a corrective sniff or two, 'is musty, leathery, feathery, cellary, gluey, gummy, and,' with another sniff, 'as it might be, strong ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... all delightful and I said so. Janet loved me for it, just as she detested poor Esther because Esther had said so much shade was unhygienic and had objected to sleeping on a feather bed. Now, I glory in feather-beds, and the more unhygienic and feathery they are the more I glory. Janet says it is such a comfort to see me eat; she had been so afraid I would be like Miss Haythorne, who wouldn't eat anything but fruit and hot water for breakfast and ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... beheld a more strangely assorted group than the one which now walked along the road, through pretty green fields and past groves of feathery pepper-trees and fragrant mimosa. Polychrome, her beautiful gauzy robes floating around her like a rainbow cloud, went first, dancing back and forth and darting now here to pluck a wild-flower or there to watch ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... herself lying in a narrow iron bed, drawn close beside a window, through which she could see clouds of great, feathery snow-flakes swirling lazily, softly downwards; and not remembering where she was or how she came to be there, she murmured half aloud, "The angels seem to be shedding their feathers ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... subject she had relinquished for sleep. Mademoiselle touched a feathery finger at her hair and hood during ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... top with the incomparable orange blossoms, afforded delight to the eye, and notwithstanding the heat, kept us cool, for as we rode we could pluck and eat. Tree ferns twenty and thirty feet high waved their feathery fronds in the gentle breeze, and wild pineapples growing at our feet loaded ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... he also found out that the sturdy farmer sedately sucking his pipe in a corner, and now and then throwing in an unexpected and random comment on whatever happened to be the topic of conversation, was known as "Feathery" Joltram, though why "Feathery" did not seem very clear, unless the term was, as it appeared to be, an adaptation of "father" or "feyther" Joltram. Matt Peke explained that old "Feathery" was a highly respected character ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... in an awful voice, and even in that moment she appreciated with an added pang the feathery beauty of a slice of Barnet's sponge-cake in the grimy fist ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... most of the nicer women are very chary of talk, they have to be drawn out, a hint of opposition makes them start back or prevaricate, and I see them afterwards with their husbands, pretty silken furry feathery jewelled silences. All their suppression doesn't keep them orthodox, it only makes them furtive and crumpled and creased in their minds—in just the way that things get crumpled and creased if they are always being shoved back into ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... thy silent shine With my soul's sacred wine, And heap thy marble floors As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores In leafy islands walled with madrepores And lapped in Orient seas, When all their feathery palm toss, plume-like, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... seen seeds floating in the air. There had been little wind, and that had come from the sea, where seeds would not be likely to have origin. The objects that he had seen were round and sharply defined, and with none of the feathery appearance of thistledown. He then quotes from a letter from C.B. Chalmers, F.R.A.S., who had seen a similar stream, a procession, or migration, except that some of the bodies were more elongated—or lean and ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... an old man sitting by a table, looking smallish in his big chair. He was already an invalid, and his hair and beard were both white; not like snow, for snow is cold and heavy, but like something feathery, or even fierce; rather they were white like the white thistledown. I came up quite close to him; he looked at me as he put out his frail hand, and I saw of a sudden that his eyes were startlingly young. He was the one great man of the old world whom I have met who was not ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... says Virginia, "came the dreaded snow. Around the camp-fires under the trees great feathery flakes came whirling down. The air was so full of them that one could see objects only a few feet away. The Indians knew we were doomed and one of them wrapped his blanket about him and stood all night under a tree. ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... hand, on which the blue veins stood out so plainly, on Tom's great brown fist, and smiled at him; and then looked out of the window again, as if he couldn't bear to lose a moment of the sunset, into the tops of the great feathery elms, round which the rooks were circling and clanging, returning in flocks from their evening's foraging parties. The elms rustled, the sparrows in the ivy just outside the window chirped and fluttered about, quarrelling, and making it up again; the rooks, young and old, talked in chorus, and the ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... brick work of a past style of architecture. Near the shore and back behind the chapel and houses, reared themselves here and there the slender stems of palm and cocoa-nut trees, with their graceful tufts of feathery foliage waving at top; other trees of various kinds were mingled among them. Figures were seen moving about, in the medium attire worn by their oarsman. It was a pretty scene; cheerful and home-like, ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... suited her, and many an hour had she whiled away upon the broken rocks, watching the flecks of sunlight as they came struggling down through the overhanging trees, listening to the plaintive murmur of the stream, or gazing with delight upon the fringed, feathery falls which hung from the heights above like some long, white, gauzy ribbon. Richard, on the contrary, had never visited them before, and he only consented to do so now from a desire to gratify Edith, who acted as his escort in place of Victor. Holding fast to her hand he slowly descended the winding ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... hazy east, And the light of the kindling morn increased. The pale-faced stars fled one by one, And hid in the vast from the rising sun. From woods and waters and welkin soon Fled the hovering mists of the vanished moon. The young robins chirped in their feathery beds, The loon's song shrilled like a winding horn, And the green hills lifted their dewy heads To greet the god of the rising morn. She reached the rim of the rolling prairie— The boundless ocean of solitude; She hid ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... sun had cleared the feathery tops Of the fir-thicket on the eastward hill, His horses leaned and laboured. His great hands Held both the reins and plough-stilts: he was proud; Proud with a ploughman's pride; nobler, may be, Than statesman's, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... grass all inwrought with blossoms that filled the air with fragrance. Over his head, tall trees gently shook their glistening, shadowy leaves, while sweet voiced birds of rare and wondrous plumage flitted from bough to bough. Across a sky of deepest blue, fleets of fairy cloud ships, light as feathery down, floated—floated—drifting lazily, as though, piloted only by the wind, their pilot slept. All about him, as he walked, multitudes of sunlight and shadow fairies danced gaily hand in hand. And over the shimmering surface of the Sea a thousand thousand fairy waves ...
— The Uncrowned King • Harold Bell Wright
... trees of earth, but the glorified forests of All-Father Odin's paradise, the celestial city of Asgaard. No living forms of vegetation are so lovely. Tropical palms, the tree-ferns of Penang, the lotus of Indian rivers, the feathery bamboo, the arrowy areca—what are they beside these marvellous growths of winter, these shining sprays of pearl, ivory and opal, gleaming in the soft orange ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... the gay little drawing-room, all buff and dull rose, in the charming French style, and full of sweet spring flowers in bowls and square jars of Majolica ware. The height of the appartement made it delightfully airy and bright, and through the western windows I glimpsed the feathery tips of the delicate new green of the trees. A small grand piano stood near an open window and a gorgeous length of Chinese embroidery on the opposite wall was reflected in a tall, narrow mirror that doubled the apparent size of the room and gave a pleasant depth and ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... offering their dying children to God in the very hour of their mature beauty. Crimsons and purples, oranges, golds, yellows, browns, greens, and scarlet dye the trees; gathered sheaves and golden pumpkins, marguerites, feathery golden rods, and bright blue gorse are on every field. Have we not, in very truth, a country for which a patriot should gladly die, and the devout heart never cease to quiver in prayer that God may ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... starting-out of an old, respectable family in any new ebullition of fancy and fashion is like a dandelion going to seed. You have not only the airy, fairy globe; but every feathery particle thereof bears a germ which will cause similar feather bubbles all over the country; and thus old, respectable grass-plots become, in time, half dandelion. It is to be observed that, in all questions of life and fashion, "the world and the flesh," to say nothing of the third partner ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... built on a peninsula, and peeps of water make the horizon of almost every street) are dotted with fishing craft or scudding curlews; the public squares are everlastingly verdant with the tall fern-palm, the feathery mimosa, the myrtle, and the silvery ash, which only recalls the summer the better for its suggestive appearance of having been recently blown over with dust; the gaze inland is repaid with the sight of hills brown by distance, of sheets ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... white shiny stuff, and he has very white feathery wings. His face is smiling. He has eyes like mother's, and ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... not winter trees, such as he had left behind him in the garden of Jeanne's house—bare and leafless, or if covered at all, covered only with their Christmas dress of snow and icicles—these trees were clothed with the loveliest foliage, fresh and green and feathery, which no winter's storms or nipping frosts had ever come near to blight. And in the little space between the door where Hugh stood and these wonderful trees was drawn up, as if awaiting him, the prettiest, queerest, most delicious little carriage that ever was ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... twisted the folds of his waist-cloth closer round him, and looked forth upon the morning. The rising sun was turning into gold and bronze the ripening paddy fields close at hand, glorifying the reed roofs of the native huts under the feathery palms, and gilding the distant belt of jungle, stretching ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Niralda, from which a narrow-gauge railway branched off to the north from the main line through Eastern Bengal. At an early hour next morning he took his seat in the one first-class carriage of the toy train, which journeyed through typical Bengal scenery by mud-banked rice-fields, groves of tall, feathery bamboos and hamlets of pretty palm-thatched huts, their roofs hidden by the broad green leaves of sprawling creepers. Soon across the sky to the north a dark, blurred line rose, stretching out of sight east and west. ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... nicknamed the peasant's clock, its flowers opening very early in the morning; while its feathery seed-tufts have long been in requisition ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... the way along a path winding among almond and peach trees in full bloom, in the shadow of the weird eucalyptus and the feathery pepper tree. Then with a little word of pleasure he hurried forward. Conyngham caught sight of a black dress and a black mantilla, of fair golden hair, and a fan upraised against the ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... announcing peace and good-will to mankind. How delightfully the imagination, when wrought upon by these moral influences, turns everything to melody and beauty! The very crowing of the cock, heard sometimes in the profound repose of the country, "telling the night-watches to his feathery dames," was thought by the common people to announce the approach of ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... beside it so artfully that they were quite concealed. The protector did not appear to resent the close company of the fish, which remained perfectly motionless. In a few seconds the Synapta began to extrude its feathery gills, which had been partly retracted on disturbance. I counted the gills, and while my forefinger indicated the sixth, a little fish, not previously noticed, appeared at the focus and edged off to the margin of the pool, now and ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... walked down the street until they came to a certain vacant lot intersected by a foot-path between tall, feathery grasses and goldenrod and asters and milkweed. They entered the foot-path, and swarms of little butterflies rose around them, and once in ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... into the old square-plotted garden, which ran up to the orchard trees. She soon found a moss-rose bush from which she selected a bud, round which the soft feathery envelope was just beginning to curl back. Then she went round by the edge of the brook which keeps damp one side of the orchard, where she found some single stems of forget-me-nots, shining in the dusk like beaded turquoise. She pulled some from the bottom of the half-dry ditch, ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... Islands with the virgin forest stretchin' down to the edge of the water, and cool green shadders layin' on the velvet and mossy sward as you could see as you looked into the green aisles. And all sorts of trees with different foliage, some loose and feathery, some with shinin' leaves, glitterin' where the rain had washed 'em the night before; some towerin' up towards the heavens, shakin' their heads at the sun; some droopin' down as if weighted with their ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... of Scotland there are trees on which grow white shells, which ripen, and then, opening, drop little living geese into the waves below. Gerard himself avers that from Guernsey and Jersey he brought home with him to London shells, like limpets, containing little feathery objects, "which, no doubt, were the fowls called Barnacles." It is almost needless to say that these objects really were the plumose and flexible cirri which the barnacles throw out to catch their food with, and which lie, like a tiny feather-brush, just ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... The feathery white moon never let the sky grow dark; all night the chestnut blossoms were white in the green; dim was the cow-parsley in ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... side of the river, the desert crouched like a lion who flings back his head with a shake of yellow mane, before he stoops to drink. And in the midst of the stream rose Elephantine Island, with its crown of feathery palms, its breastwork of Roman ruins (a medal of fame for the kings it gave to Egypt) and its undying lullaby sung by ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... wild soul waited on as falcons hover. I beat the reedy fens as I trampled past. I heard the mournful loon In the marsh beneath the moon. And then — with feathery thunder — the bird of my desire Broke from the cover Flashing silver fire. High up among the stars I saw his pinions spire. The pale clouds gazed aghast As my falcon stoopt upon him, and gript and ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... our star of Arcady, Or Tyrian Cynosure. 2. Bro: Or if our eyes Be barr'd that happines, might we but hear The folded flocks pen'd in their watled cotes, Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops, Or whistle from the Lodge, or village cock Count the night watches to his feathery Dames, 'Twould be som solace yet, som little chearing In this close dungeon of innumerous bowes. But O that haples virgin our lost sister 350 Where may she wander now, whether betake her From the chill dew, amongst rude burrs and thistles? ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... on me by this natural phenomenon. My delight and surprise were as boundless as if the heavy gray sky had let down a shower of pond lilies and white roses, instead of snow-flakes. It happened to be a half-holiday, so I had nothing to do but watch the feathery crystals whirling hither and thither through the air. I stood by the sitting-room window gazing at the wonder until twilight shut out the ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... continued into the daylight till cascades came leaping and plunging from everywhere into the canyon. Two of these opposite our camp were exceedingly beautiful. One was about two feet wide and the other five. For one thousand feet they made a clear plunge, then vanished in spray, feathery and beautiful. These rain cascades are a delightful feature of the country and some day will be famous. Soon Millecrag Bend, marking the end of Cataract Canyon, came in sight. The walls were only broken ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... beneath them. The waving tree-tops appeared soft and feathery from above, but the three boys knew that unless they could avoid the trees their doom was sealed. The open space in which Jacques was trying to effect ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... varnish in Mrs General's voice, varnish in Mrs General's touch, an atmosphere of varnish round Mrs General's figure. Mrs General's dreams ought to have been varnished—if she had any—lying asleep in the arms of the good Saint Bernard, with the feathery ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... summer months rolled on, October harvested the corn, November came with shortening days, Passed by in mist and rain,—was gone,— Yet still he came not; winter's snow In feathery vesture clothed the trees, Or, iceclad in a jewelled glow, They sparkled in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... rich and glossy brown. All down the sides the poplars and delicate birches, pale yellow, but sometimes flushing into orange and red, stood shimmering in the golden light, while here and there the broad-spreading, feathery sumachs made great splashes of brilliant crimson upon the yellow and gold. Down in the bottom stood the cedars and the balsams, still green. We stood some moments silently gazing into this tangle of interlacing boughs and shimmering leaves, ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... possible, and she wished it was morning, that she might get up. Yet the moment she laid her little brown curly head on the pillow, she fell asleep; and it seemed to her that just as she dropped off a soft feathery wing brushed her cheek gently and a tiny "Cuckoo" ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... the dog crawling noiselessly forward, trembled and froze, and Siward, far to left, wheeled at the muffled and almost noiseless rise. For an instant the slanting barrels wavered, grew motionless; but only a stray sunbeam glinting struck a flash of cold fire from the muzzle, only the feathery whirring whisper broke the silence of suspense. Then far away over sunny tree tops a big grouse sailed up, rocketing into the sky on slanted wings, breasting the height of green; dipped, glided downward with bowed wings stiffened, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... call the bee-bird;[1] that bird-like insect, which flutters in the hottest days over the sweetest flowers, inserting its long proboscis into the small tube of the jessamine, and hovering over the scarlet blossoms of the geranium, whose bright colour seems reflected on its own feathery breast; that insect which seems so thoroughly a creature of the air, never at rest; always, even when feeding, self-poised, and self-supported, and whose wings in their ceaseless motion, have a sound so deep, so full, so lulling, so musical. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... a Ladas, Rhesus' chariot yok'd to snowy coursers, Add each feathery sandal, every flying Power, ask fleetness of all the winds of heaven, 20 Mine, Camerius, and to me devoted; Yet with drudgery sorely spent ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... up like the blackened pillars of a burning city, and behind them the glow of a conflagration blazed high up to the heavens. Beams of violet and gold slipped and sparkled between the boughs, and danced among the thorny twigs, the white racemes of flowers, and the tufts of leaves with their feathery leaflets; the clouds above were fired with tints more pure and tender than those of the roses with which Cleopatra had decked herself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Grey looked out of his bedroom window on the last day of that weary year, he found a snow-white world, and the feathery flakes still falling. Five times that day he swept his steps and shoveled his path—mute invitations to possible donors; but the path remained white and smooth in untrodden purity, and the doorbell was ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... solid woe. Comes then the thought of better things, When we were men, and we were kings. Men are we now, and still there rolls A monarch's blood in all our souls! A warrior's fire is in our hearts, Our hands are strong in feathery darts; And let us die as they have died Who are the Indian's boast and pride! Nor creep to graves, in flying west, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... soft bright glory of the Texan moon. They rode for days over a prairie studded with islands of fine trees, the grass smooth as a park, and beautiful with blue salvias and columbines, with yellow coronella and small starry pinks, and near the numerous creeks the white feathery tufts of the fragrant meadow-sweet. It looked like miles and miles of green rumpled velvet, full of dainty crinklings, mottled with pale maroon, and ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... for some one. A pleasant place this to wait in. So dark, so hemmed in with trees, and the road so little used; spring was early here, and the boughs were getting quite dense already. How pleasant to see the broad red moon go up behind the feathery branches, and listen to the evensong of the thrush, just departing to roost, and leaving the field clear for the woodlark all night. There were a few sounds from the village, a lowing of cows, and the noise of the boys at play; but they were ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... the tones of the great rug. Her bare arms—long, and tapering to lithe wrists and hands—were clasped by dull-gold bracelets of twisted serpents. Over shapely shoulders, the flesh of which looked white and young, there was thrown a wrap like feathery snow, from under which drooped down over the girlish bosom a necklace that seemed of pearl. The face was fair, its pallor tinged with red at lips, and rose on cheeks. The eyes, luminous and steady, shone out through heavy dark lashes, from under brows of black, and seemed, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... negative, he kissed Marcia and made her drink wine that some one brought. Barbarous cries that she must not hear or understand came to his ears, and he knew that their pursuers were wheeling in discomfited flight. The circle of soldiers stood back. Something cold and feathery fell upon his upturned face and turned to moisture. He saw a tall man with features of wonderful beauty regarding them kindly and in silence; his white paludamentum was heavily fringed with purple, and Sergius recognized him now,—Marcus ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... its deep and dark foliage defying the sun's rays; the guava, growing at its feet, like an infant of the same family; the mammee—or abricot de St. Domingue—with its rich green fruit hanging in clusters, and a foliage rivalling the mango; the dark and feathery tamarind; the light and graceful indigo; the slow-growing arrowroot, with its palmy and feathery leaves spreading like a tender rampart round its precious fruit; boundless fields of the rich sugar-cane; acres of the luscious pine apple; ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the bare promontory on which the feathery trees had once been so familiar a sight; for they had something else to look at. Anyone seeing the Squire now would have shifted his opinion about where to find the lunatic in that crowd. It was plain in a flash that the change had fallen on him like a thunderbolt; that ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... 225 But as a boy, who looks alike on all, That misty hair, that fine Undine-like mien,[13] Tremulous as down to feeling's faintest call;— Ah, dear old homestead! count it to thy fame That thither many times the Painter came;— 230 One elm yet bears his name, a feathery ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... and spread and roosted within; and it would have tasked a landscape gardener to say where policy ended and unpolicied nature began. My lord had been led by the influence of Mr. Sheriff Scott into a considerable design of planting; many acres were accordingly set out with fir, and the little feathery besoms gave a false scale and lent a strange air of a toy-shop to the moors. A great, rooty sweetness of bogs was in the air, and at all seasons an infinite melancholy piping of hill birds. Standing so high and with so little shelter, it was a cold, exposed house, splashed by showers, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his bold form, And bares a brave breast to the lightning and storm, While palm, bay, and laurel, in classical glee, Chase tulip, magnolia, and fragrant fringe-tree; And sturdy horse-chestnut for centuries hath given Its feathery blossom and branches ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... petals and tossed them up with an elf-like daintiness, not at the crouched and expectant kitten this time, but so that the whole red rain floated tenderly down upon her upturned face and into the folds of the white kerchief crossed upon her breast. She waited for the last feathery petal. Her hidden lover saw it lodge in the little hollow at the base of her bare, curved throat. ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... supper, it will have to be," smiled this gentled Miss Theodosia. "I've got to get up my strength! No tea-and-toast-and-jam supper to-night." She heated her gridiron smoking hot and broiled a bit of steak. She tossed together little feathery biscuit and made coffee, fragrant and strong. Momently, Miss Theodosia's strength "got up." She moved about the kitchen briskly—when had she launched out upon a night's work ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... different from the day before; the street lamps burned more brightly, the air was more transparent, the carriages rumbled with a deeper note, and with the fresh, light, frosty air a feeling stirred in the soul akin to the white, youthful, feathery snow. "Against my will an unknown force," hummed the medical student in his agreeable tenor, "has led me to these ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... fruit and light and shade, Look where the young Rose-apple glows; What loaded boughs the Mango shows; See, waving in the western wind The light leaves of the Tamarind, And mark that giant Peepul through The feathery clump of tall bamboo.(369) Look, on the level lands above, Delighting in successful love In sweet enjoyment many a pair Of heavenly minstrels revels there, While overhanging boughs support Their swords and mantles as they sport: Then see that pleasant shelter where Play ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... all housed and supper ended, they gathered in the great parlors, which Alfaretta's capable hands had adorned with masses of golden-rod, of scarlet woodbine and snowy wreaths of seeding clematis—feathery and quite "too graceful for words," as Dorothy declared, lovingly hugging Alfaretta who lingered by the door, a new shyness upon her, yet longing to be beside these other girls and lads no ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... swallowed them, and in the open patches I saw young silver-birches that made me think of running children arrested in mid-play. They stood outlined very tenderly against the sky; their slender forms still quivered; their feathery hair fell earthwards as they drew themselves together, bending their wayward little heads before the approaching night. Behind them, framed by the darker pines into a glowing frieze, the west still burned with the last fires of the sunset; I could see the heather, ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... I looked for my beautiful pink-coloured lady, but I looked in vain. Instead, a dog of a bright sky-blue, with a yellow ribbon round its neck, sat in the sun on the dyer's doorstep. Yet, could I be mistaken? That nose, those ears, that feathery tail, those bright ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... heavily-grated, unglazed window high in the wall, with a stone screen before it, so that the sky could be only seen by stooping low and looking up. There was a small chimney, heavily barred across, a few feet within. There was a heap of old feathery wood-ashes on the hearth. There was a stool, and table, and a straw bed. There were the four blackened walls, and a rusted iron ring in one ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... pure, and exhilarating. The fir trees and shrubs gave out a delicious perfume, and their waving tops seemed to beckon us on. The sky was deep blue, with here and there a feathery cloud gliding lazily over its surface. The bright sunlight made our hearts bound and filled our bodies with vigour, and as we stood there on the edge of the unknown and silent world we had come so far to see, our hopes were high, and one and all we were ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... were no real ones in the neighbourhood. Often chestnut-trees in full glory of white blossom, as if blazing with fairy candles, lined our way for miles. There was snow of hawthorne too—"May," our two men called it—and ranks of little feathery white trees, such as I knew no name for, looking like a procession of brides, or young girls going to their first communion. Then, to brighten the white land with colour, there were clumps of lilac, clouds of rose-pink apple ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... day, for as we drove in a taxi up Parliament Street streams of vehicles full of happy people were returning from the Derby, including costers' donkey carts in which the girls were carrying huge boughs of May blossom, and the boys were wearing the girls' feathery hats, and at the top of their lusty lungs they were waking the echoes of the stately avenue with ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... in its spring glory. They lunched in a little inclosure, rosy with the pink and white magnolia blossoms, where the uncut grass was already ankle-deep and the rose-bushes almost hid the gray stone wall with the feathery abundance of their first pale green leaves. From a remark of the girl's that perhaps this was the very spot where Marie Antoinette had once gathered about her gay court of pseudo-milkmaids, they fell into a discussion of that queen's pretty pastoral fancy. Harrison showed ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... Indian goes with prayer thoughts to the water. His bath is a sacrament. He cuts the long supple willow withes that grow on the banks of the stream, enters the sharpened end into the soil, bends and ties the feathery tops into an arch; over the arches thus made he throws his blankets; meanwhile, gathered stones have been heated in the burning fire. These stones glowing white with heat are placed in a tiny pit underneath the covering of this booth, now to be called his sweat bath. ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... dressed, and in the drawing-room ready to receive her little friends, by half-past two; and very nice she looked in her light-blue merino frock, with its pretty embroideries, her long golden hair curled in the feathery ringlets Susan was so proud of making, her sleeves looped up with new bracelets, and a little embroidered handkerchief just peeping out of ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... softly he reached out his hand and the little bird did not stir. "Peet-weet! peet-weet!" it cried. Suddenly with a quick movement he clutched it. For a moment he thought that he felt it in his fingers, all feathery and soft and warm, and then the voice of the Counterpane Fairy cried, "Take care! you're rumpling ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... have been called into life by a more potent sun. The lily of the valley, in thick beds, poured out the delicious sweetness of its little cups; spikes of a pale-green orchis emitted a rich cinnamon odor; anemones, geraniums, sigillarias, and a feathery flower, white, freckled with purple, grew in profusion. The top of the island, five or six acres in extent, was a slanting plane, looking to the south, whence it received the direct rays of the sun. It was an enchanting picture of woodland bloom, lighted with sprinkled sunshine, in the cold blue ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... of the barriere swung its sign of the As de Pique where feathery palms once had waved above mosques of snowy gleam, with marble domes and jeweled arabesques, and the hush of prayer under columned aisles. "Here are sold wine, liquor and tobacco," was written where once verses of the Koran had been blazoned by reverent ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the desolating flame raged fearfully and wild, It did not reach the Virgin Queen, it did not reach the Child; It did not reach the feathery screen before her face that shone, Nor injure in a farthing's worth the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... THE INK RESISTING QUALITY OF PAPER.— Draw a heavy ink line across the sheet. If the paper is poorly sized, a feathery edge will appear, caused by spreading of the ink. Slack-sized paper will be penetrated by the ink, which will plainly appear on the reverse side of ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... he reproduces, ranging fine From least to longest feathery plumes aline, Thus imitating birds, that on the air With balanced wings are poised in ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of a wall or the hollow of a tree, I overlook the children's gardens and playgrounds. I have an eye to several schools, and I fancy (though I may be wrong) that I should look well seated on the top of an easel—just above the black-board, with a piece of chalk in my feathery foot. ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... they seem to look with conscious pride towards the windings of the great rough chasm, where every available spot has been seized on as a homestead for some form of vegetation. All the great, dark rock masses that interfere with easy progress along the lowest depth, were surrounded by a feathery setting of blooming white agaratum; and each turn in the winding course reveals new charms of rock and verdure with their varying lights and shadows until the crowning glory is reached at the Natural ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... topmost ridge of Tinnaburra. The very fragrance of the air told him, as he drew it in through his nostrils, that he was far from the works of men. Food he could not think of while every bone and muscle in his great body ached from weariness. By the edge of the rock was a sandy hollow, over which a feathery shrub drooped three or four of its graceful branches at a height of three feet from the ground. Finn eyed this inviting spot steadily for two or three minutes, while his aching sides continued to heave, and his long tongue ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... planted under the very shadow of forests where roam in all their savage freedom herds of wild cattle and their wilder masters; and out from the rocks and boulders of the most rugged spots rise clusters of the graceful umbrella palm, with a foliage, fern-like and feathery, of the loveliest emerald, and a cone expanding like a lady's fan. The odor of English cowslips mingles with the spicy aroma of tropical fruits, and the perpetual snow of-lofty peaks is reflected on fields of golden maize and on meadows ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... carelessly wished that there were Red Indians in England—and there had been. The word brought back memories of last summer holidays and everyone groaned; they thought of the white house with the beautiful tangled garden—late roses, asters, marigold, sweet mignonette, and feathery asparagus—of the wilderness which someone had once meant to make into an orchard, but which was now, as Father said, 'five acres of thistles haunted by the ghosts of baby cherry-trees'. They thought of the view across the valley, where the ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... her wanderings, and with hands full of her treasures, she threw herself down on a bed of dry moss that carpeted the top of a high bank of rock which overlooked the river winding away beneath, while overhead, through the feathery sprays of the long, straggling pine boughs, the slanting sunbeams flickered on ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... in the rays of the caressing sun; lying on the cloudy softness of an incomparable eider-down." She awaits the visit of the spouse, "the gentle Bombyx," who, for the ceremony, "has donned his feathery plumes and his mantle of black velvet." "If he is late in coming, the female grows impatient; then she herself makes the advances, and sets forth in ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... imitates, he begins to understand. Let him imitate the airy flight of the bird, and he enters partially into bird life. Let the little girl personate the hen with her feathery brood of chickens, and her own maternal instinct is quickened, as she guards and guides the wayward motion of the little flock. Let the child play the carpenter, the wheelwright, the wood-sawyer, the farmer, and his intelligence is immediately awakened; he will see the force, the meaning, ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... itself as the greedy creatures pass it by untouched. School-girls and botanists break down the golden-rods and asters, and pull up the gerardias and ladies'-tresses; but neither school-girl nor collector often troubles the thistle. It opens its gorgeous blossoms and ripens its feathery fruit unmolested. Truly it is a great thing to wear ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... one of the loveliest routes. At times we were close to the sea, and one day during a storm it seemed as though the waves would reach the train. Farther on we travelled through plains covered with orange trees, olives, and feathery palms, while at night the numerous seaports twinkled with lights, and stars came out in the deep blue sky. But I watched the fairy picture fade away from my eyes without any regret—my heart was ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... greatness. It is a pitiable thought that one of the fruits of his genius is that it has made his holy retreat fashionable. The villas rise in rows along the edges of the clear lakes, under the craggy fell-sides, where the feathery ashes root among the mimic precipices. A stream of chattering, vacuous, indifferent tourists pours listlessly along the road from table-d'hote to table-d'hote. The turbid outflow of the vulgar world seems a profanation of these august haunts. One hopes despairingly that something ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... confronted us with no sound or sign of life. Above, and at this close distance blotting out half the sky over our heads, towered the huge cone of Lakalatcha with scarred and blackened flanks. It was in one of its querulous moods. The feathery white plume of steam, woven by the wind into soft, fantastic shapes, no longer capped the crater; its place had been usurped by thick, dark fumes of smoke swirling sullenly about. In the fading light I marked the red, malignant glow of a fissure newly broken out in the side of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Holly Tree Inn,' as some of the cheap eating-houses for poor people are called in the city, as my holly bush grows at its foot for a sign. You can be the landlady, and feed your feathery customers every day, till the hard times are over," said Mrs. Minot, glad to see the child's enjoyment of the outer world from which she had been ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... swept off his feet by this torrent of uncommon and mystical language, and passing a moist hand through his feathery hair. He was not entirely ignorant, of course, of the alleged use of sound in the various systems of so-called magic that have influenced the minds of imaginative men during the history of the world. He had heard, more or less vaguely, perhaps, ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... the feathery bloom, and the girls made it into bunches, while Terry, who had come with them, whuffed at the chipmunks ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... past me very slowly, a sprig of southernwood in his hand; then after going by he stopped and turned, and approaching me in a shy manner and without saying a word offered me the little pale green feathery spray. I took it and thanked him, and we entered into conversation, when I discovered that his little mind was as bright and beautiful as his little person. He loved the flowers, both garden and wild, but above ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... at the mirror opposite, and arranged the long sprays of feathery flowers that were mingled ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... so to speak, the simplest stretches of sward and clumps of trees, and long clear vistas across still ponds, with distances whose accents are pricked out with white houses and yellow cows and placid fishers and ferrymen in red caps, seen in glimpses through curtains of sparse, feathery leafage—or peoples woodland openings with nymphs and fawns, silhouetted against the sunset glow, or dancing in the cool gray of dusk. A man of no reading, having only the elements of an education in the general sense of the term, ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... were very extravagant and foolish," rejoined Daisy lightly. "I didn't mean quite in that way, Blake. You at least are past the age for such feathery nonsense, or should be. I was—aeons and ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... it grew well, although such grass was not at all common in that part of the country: upon other parts of the same farm, the grass was sown every year along with the corn. Oh the summer days, with the hot sun drawing the odours from the feathery larches and the white-stemmed birches, when, getting out of the water, I would lie in the warm soft grass, where now and then the tenderest little breeze would creep over my skin, until the sun baking me more than was pleasant, I would rouse myself ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... was yet only five and a half years old, she had tried many times in her life, without success, to make the slat cage the home of some feathery pet. Snipes and plover, orioles and ovenbirds, bobolinks and meadow-larks, all had lived in it by turns for a few days. But the snipes and plover had gone into a decline, the orioles and ovenbirds had grown thin and unkempt, ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... the ageing gold of the gorse, while below, the lake lay like roughened silver in its mountain cup, and on the sides of Nab Scar, below the screes, the bronze of the oaks ran in and out among the feathery green of the larch plantations, or the flowering grass of the hay-meadows dropping to the lake. The most spiritual moment of the mountain spring was over. This was earth in her moment of ferment, rushing towards the ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... slavered like a mad dog! It steamed and hissed, with angry spurts and flashes! In a second it had grown bigger than a small snowbank, and whiter. It surged, and boiled, and walloped, and overflowed, and sputtered—sent off feathery flakes like down from a shot swan! The froth poured creaming over his face, and got into his eyes. It was the most ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... the most delicate and exquisite shades of pink known to nature. Komatsu guided them about the city with a kind of pleased and gratified delight as if he were showing his own property. Sometimes he stood up and pointed to the feathery tops of carefully nurtured cherry trees, glimpses of which could be seen over the high walls ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... for a few minutes. Donal had taught her to hop and she felt it an accomplishment. Entangled in the meshes of the feathery, golden, if criminal, ringlets of Lady Audley, Anne did not know when she hopped round the curve of the walk behind the ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of charity, for a meal and a place to sleep, or else to sleep out under the sky. That would be delightful for once. She had always longed to sleep out of doors, to feel the breeze playing with her feathery hair in the dark, to watch the constellations turning slowly westwards, to listen to the night sounds, to the low rhythmical piping of the tree toad, the sorrowful cry of the little southern owl and the tolling of the hour in a ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... birds—gulls, sea-swallows and other feathery denizens of the Bermudan beaches have made their home in the cavern. They have apparently never been hunted, for they are in no way disturbed by ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... meant them to be, unaffected bits of colour and grace, upspringing from the sod. In the cathedral at Berne is a happy example of the use of these sweet flowers, as they appear at the feet of the sacred group, and as they carry the eye into the sky by means of the feathery branches like fern-fronds which tops the scene; but we find them nearer home, in almost ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... naught to be said in the way of description. The fire, when kindled, had been a large one, and all the burning sticks were in one pile instead of two or three, as is often the case. The charred ends protruded irregularly from the white, feathery ashes, and one solitary brand, smothered almost from sight, sent up the faint bluish vapor which, creeping through the foliage overhead, told the vigilant Shawanoe where to look for the camp of ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... those names Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames, And set them as a banner, that men may know, To dare the generations, burn, and blow Out on; the wind of Time, shining and streaming.... These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And flowers ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... those lonely places, to come back and tell us about them; and, alas! some heroes have not returned, but have lain down there to perish of cold and hunger. Doesn't it look cold, the clear blue ice, almost as blue as the air? And look at the snow, drifts upon drifts, and the air filled with feathery flakes even now. ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... was almost too lovely, and our little wayside friend sighed with a sense of overpowering astonishment at the wondrous beauties around, beauties that dazzled her unaccustomed eyes. Her place, however, was upon one of the lower shelves, and above her head waved the feathery leaves of tropical plants, which throve wonderfully well in the heated atmosphere of this (to ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... death Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath Of Zephyr slew him,—Zephyr penitent, Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament, 330 Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain. The archers too, upon a wider plain, Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft, And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top, Call'd up a thousand thoughts to envelope Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee And frantic gape of lonely Niobe, Poor, lonely Niobe! when her lovely ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... koomeriah, a royal or high-caste elephant, and still a youth, being but forty years of age, vide his ears. His height was ten feet at the shoulder, and would the mem-sahib note the perfect slope of the back down to the beautiful, long, feathery tail. Also the massive chest and head, with the prominent lump between the eyes so bright and kind, and full of knowledge. Notice also the deep barrel, and short, so very short, hind legs, the heaviness of the trunk, the plump cheeks which would indeed grace a comely ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... silent again, watching the desert panorama roll back and away, beneath them. Afar, two or three little oases showed feathery-tufted palms standing up like delicate carvings against the remote purple spaces or against the tawny, seamed desolation that burned as with raw colors of fires primeval. Here, there, patches of stunted tamarisk ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... in his chair. In appearance Mr. Scogan was like one of those extinct bird-lizards of the Tertiary. His nose was beaked, his dark eye had the shining quickness of a robin's. But there was nothing soft or gracious or feathery about him. The skin of his wrinkled brown face had a dry and scaly look; his hands were the hands of a crocodile. His movements were marked by the lizard's disconcertingly abrupt clockwork speed; his speech was thin, fluty, and dry. Henry Wimbush's school-fellow ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... had brought him was delicious: hot biscuits of feathery lightness, three wide slices of ham, a bowl of scrambled eggs, a pot of coffee, some preserved raspberries, and a ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... the corona appears to our eyes varies markedly at different eclipses. Sometimes its streamers are many, and radiate all round; at other times they are confined only to the middle portions of the sun, and are very elongated, with short feathery-looking wisps adorning the solar poles. It is noticed that this change of shape varies in close accordance with that 11-1/4 year period during which the sun spots wax and wane; the many-streamered regular type corresponding to the time of great sunspot activity, ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... of Battery Park, the girls and the sea were my favourite. For the girls in a crowd have for me a fascination which only the girls at the bath can surpass. I love to lose myself in a crowd, to buffet, so to speak, its waves, to nestle under their feathery crests. For the rolling waves of life, the tumbling waves of the sea, and the fiery waves of Al-Mutanabbi's poetry have always been my delight. In Battery Park I took especial pleasure in reading aloud my verses to Khalid, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... with bud. In the distance were the guinea cornfields of brownish hue, the cotton-fields, the long ranges of negro houses like thatched cottages, the penguin hedges, with their beautiful red, blue, and white convolvuluses; the lime, logwood, and breadfruit trees, the avocado-pear, the feathery bamboo, and the jack-fruit tree; and between the mountains and his own sugar-estates, negro settlements and pens. He heard the flight of parrots chattering, he watched the floating humming-bird, and at last he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shrouds of white mist were still hanging around. His own clothes were damp. Little beads of moisture were upon his face. But below, where the Atlantic billows came thundering in upon a rock-strewn coast, the sun, slowly gathering strength, seemed to be rolling aside the feathery grey clouds. Downwards, split with great ravines, the road now sloped abruptly to a little plateau of farmland, on the seaward edge of which stood the ruins of a grey castle. Dotted here and there about that pastoral strip and on the opposite ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... slept that early summer night, weathermen across the world were marking their weather maps with thousands of observations—feathery wind arrows, temperatures, barometric pressures ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... called it solid comfort. He liked to sit out from under the porch roof, he said; he wanted to see more of the sky. The others moved their chairs down to join him in the celestial vision. There had blown across the heaven a feathery, thin cloud or two, but save for these, there was nothing but glorious and tender, brilliant blue. It seemed so clear and close one marvelled the little church spire in the distance did not pierce it; yet, at the same time, the eye ascended ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... their soft and planetary light over the gently-heaving ocean; or I would recall the deep valleys of the Cordilleras, where the tall and slender palms pierce the leafy vail around them, and waving on high their feathery and arrow-like branches for, as it were, "a forest above a forest;"* or I would describe the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe, when a horizontal layer of clouds, dazzling in whiteness, has separated the cone of cinders ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... which one receives across an artificial lake, is a worthy residence for the administrator of the Dutch Indies. The surface of the lake is studded with lotus flowers and victoria regia, and the little island in the centre displays a wealth of the red or rajah palm, feathery yellow bamboo, and dark-green foliage which the lake ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... never love; as you, in your woman's heart, can never dream of loving—with every thought, with every fibre, with every pulse, with every breath; with a love that is burning the old oak through and through, root and branch, core and knot, to feathery ashes that you may scatter with a sigh—the only sigh you will ever breathe for me, Unorna. Have I loved? Can I love? Do I love to-day as I loved yesterday and shall love to-morrow? Ah, child! That you should ask that, with your angel's face, when I ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... sunburned. There was some loose flesh under the jaws. The nose was thick and pudgy, wide in the nostrils, like a lion's. The predatory are not invariably hawk-nosed. The eyes were blue—in repose, a warm blue—and there were feathery wrinkles at the corners which suggested that the toll-taker could laugh occasionally. The lips were straight and thin, the chin square—stubborn rather than relentless. A lonely man who was ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... which has thrust itself among them, which you take for a dark copper-coloured fern, so finely divided are its glossy leaves. It is really a Mimosa—Bois Mulatre, {139d} as they call it here. What a contrast again, the huge feathery fronds of the Cocorite palms which stretch right away hither over our heads, twenty and thirty feet in length. And what is that spot of crimson flame hanging in the darkest spot of all from an under-bough of that low weeping tree? A flower-head ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... white villas, before which pink and scarlet geraniums ran riot, with spreading mimosas golden with their feathery blossom, for Ospedaletti makes a frantic, if vain, bid for popularity as a winter-resort. Its deadly dullness, however, is too well known to the habitue of the Riviera; and its casino, which never obtained a licence, imparts to it the air of ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... foot of the mountain is the grand plantation that stretches miles and miles away, embosoming Baronscourt, the seat of the Duke of Abercorn, and the way to it in the shade of young forests. There are nodding firs and feathery larches over the hills, glassing themselves in the still waters of beautiful lakes. Lonely grandeur and stately desolation reign and brood over a scene instinct with peasant life and peasant labor some years ago. The Duke of Abercorn was counted a model landlord. His published ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... less, of tree-bordered road sloped gently from the Residency gate-posts to the walled City of Victory, backed by craggy, red-grey spurs of the Aravalli range, hidden almost in feathery heads of banyan, acacia, and neem—a dusty, well-ordered oasis, holding its own against the stealthy oncoming of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... almost a desert. Around the stations are groups of dwellings of varied appearance, the most solidly built of which are connected with farms that belonged to the late President Lopez. At times appear palm trees, the feathery leaves of which mingle with beautiful effect with the pale or dark foliage of an exuberant vegetation. Lopez had established telegraphic communication between the mouth of the Paraguay and Paraguari, but the line having been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... cascade leaped through the deep verdure. On one side the tall mahogany dropped its woody pears. On another, sand-box and calabash trees rattled their huge fruit like warring savages. Here the banyan hung its ropes and yonder the tamarind waved its feathery streamers. Here was the rubber-tree, here the breadfruit. Now and then a clump of the manchineel weighted the air with the fragrance of its poisonous apples, the banana rustled, or the bamboo tossed its graceful canes. Beside some stream we might espy black washerwomen beetling ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... family. It is about the size of our common crow, brown on the back and lavender-gray below, with a curved bill more than three inches long. But closer study reveals several peculiarities: a bare space of bright blue around the eye, brilliant green on the throat, and a pair of feathery tufts standing up on the forehead like horns, with the crowning attraction of two pairs of fans, one behind the other on each side of the breast, capable of being folded smoothly against the body, or spread wide in two gorgeous semicircles altering the entire outlines of ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... difficulty, then the sun disappeared, and snow drove in our faces with northerly wind—very warm and impossible to steer, so camped. After supper, still very thick all round, but sun showing and less snow falling. The fallen snow crystals are quite feathery like thistledown. We have two full days' food left, and though our position is uncertain, we are certainly within two outward marches from the middle glacier depot. However, if the weather doesn't clear by to-morrow, we must ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... is it possible to describe the charming vivacity seen in the works of Antonio da Correggio, who painted hair in detail, not in the precise manner used by the masters before him, which was constrained, sharp, and dry, but soft and feathery, with each single hair visible, such was his facility in making them; and they seemed like gold and more beautiful than real hair, which is surpassed by that which ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari |
