"Ilex" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shining undergrowth of beech-trees; and the trickle of water dropping from the limestone rock sounded as a clear melody in the dream. Thoughts began to go astray and to mingle with other thoughts; the beech alley was transformed to a path between ilex-trees, and here and there a vine climbed from bough to bough, and sent up waving tendrils and drooped with purple grapes, and the sparse grey-green leaves of a wild olive-tree stood out against ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... ILEX AQUIFOLIUM.—Common Holly. Europe (Britain) and West Asia. Though the Hollies are not usually reckoned ornamental for the sake of their flowers, their berries are highly so. Some of them are nevertheless deliciously fragrant when in bloom. The leaves ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... quite lately, included as many as sixteen towns and villages among its possessions. The scenery becomes more romantic and savage at every step as we ascend the winding path after leaving St. Scholastica, till a small gate admits us to the famous immemorial Ilex Grove of St. Benedict, which is said to date from the fifth century, and which has never been profaned by ax or hatchet. Beyond it the path narrows, and a steep winding stair, just wide enough to admit one person at a time, leads to the platform before the second ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... think I am going to starve. Stupid, short-sighted little insects! I shall simply spread my wings, and fly away, not to the desert either, but to the bounteous South, and there, under the great, yellow moon, among the ilex trees, where the air is heavy with the fragrance of flowers, I shall sing as you have never dreamed ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... In the ilex grove on the road that we took last night there is a white tower—it may be that you have noticed it to-day. That tower is empty, and this is the key. There may be guards, but I shall know how to pass among them. You must come with me there to-night, the three. Even then it may be too late, ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... Strozzi Palace. I wandered for an hour in the Boboli Gardens; we went there several times together. I remember all those days individually; they seem to me as yesterday. I found the corner where she always chose to sit—the bench of sun-warmed marble, in front of the screen of ilex, with that exuberant statue of Pomona just beside it. The place is exactly the same, except that poor Pomona has lost one of her tapering fingers. I sat there for half an hour, and it was strange how near to me she ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... antiquity—the gigantic Hadrosaurus, who cranes his snaky throat at us in the museum, swelling with the tale of immemorial times when he weltered here in the sunny ooze. The country is a mighty steppe, but not deprived of trees: the ilex clothes it with its set, dark foliage, and the endless woods of pine, sand-planted, strew over that boundless beach a murmur like the sea. The edibles it bears are of the quaintest and most individual kinds: the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... spot, as my father remarks in one of those passages in his diary which was afterwards expanded into the art-picture of his romance. "Broad carriageways," he says, "and wood-paths wander beneath long vistas of sheltering boughs; there are ilex-trees, ancient and sombre, which, in the long peace of their lifetime, have assumed attitudes of indolent repose; and stone-pines that look like green islands in the air, so high above earth are they, and connected with it by such a slender length of stem; and cypresses, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... dense foliage. Here there showed a Venus sculptured in some Ionian isle before ever Caesar and his cohorts had pressed the soil of Gallia beneath their Roman sandals; there, a Ganymede or a Ceres or a Minerva gleamed wan and beautiful; beneath an ilex-tree a Bacchus leaned lightly on his marble thyrsus. It seemed as if all the hierarchy of Olympus had descended to dwell in this royal pleasure-ground at the bidding of the ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... of white gravel, lay in bright moonlight. Even the colours of the hyacinths and tulips with which they were planted could be seen, and the strong scent from them filled the still air. At the far end of this flat-patterned place a group of tall cypress and ilex, black against the sky, struck a note of Italy and the South; while, through the yew hedges which closed in the little garden, broad archways pierced at intervals revealed far breadths of silvery English lawn and the distant gleam of ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... spring-time, and the promise of the ascension of a balloon added to the attractions of the lottery. To enter the Villa, you had to purchase a tombola-ticket, whereas, in the Piazza Navona, this was unnecessary. At one end of the amphitheatre of the villa, under the shade of the ilex-trees, a platform was erected, where the numbers were called out and the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... for cerrus[8] is a kynde of tree lyke one oke, bearinge maste; and therefore by yo{ur} correct{i}one yt sholde be a garland of grene oke cerriall: But for the same reasone (because cerrus ys a kynde of oke as ys also the Ilex) Ijudge yt sholde not be redde cerriall but unseriall, that ys, (yfyou will nedes have this worde cerriall,) agarlande of greene oke not cerriall, as who sholde saye, she had a Garlande of Grene oke, but not of the oke ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... river runs like elemental diamond, so clear and fresh. The rocks on either side are grey or yellow, terraced into oliveyards, with here and there a cypress, fig, or mulberry tree. Soon the gardens cease, and lentisk, rosemary, box, and ilex—shrubs of Provence—with here and there a sumach out of reach, cling to the hard stone. And so at last we are brought face to face with the sheer impassable precipice. At its basement sleeps a pool, perfectly untroubled; a lakelet in which the sheltering rocks and nestling ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... of the banks of the Mississippi continued unvaried for many miles above New Orleans; but the graceful and luxuriant palmetto, the dark and noble ilex, and the bright orange, were everywhere to be seen, and it was many days before we were weary of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... along the Claudian aqueduct lighting up the infinity of its arches like the bridge of chaos. But as I climbed the long slope of the Alban mount, the storm swept finally to the north, and the noble outline of the domes of Albano and graceful darkness of its ilex grove rose against pure streaks of alternate blue and amber, the upper sky gradually flushing through the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep, palpitating azure, half ether and half dew. The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and its masses of entangled and ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... tree is a necessary element in all botanic gardens, but as an ornamental tree it is not sufficiently distinct from the Ilex. Though a native of the South of Europe ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... quaintly—fell in a red-mauve shower upon the slabs of the marble pavement, upon the mimic waves of the fountain basin, and upon the clustering curls, and truncated shoulders, of the bust of Homer standing in the shade of the grove of cypress and ilex which sheltered the square, high-lying hill-garden, at this hour of the morning, from the fierceness of the sun. They floated as far even as the semicircular steps of the pavilion on the extreme right—the leaded dome of which showed dark and livid on the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... villa is very interesting to study, to see how every advantage was taken of the land, how the residence, or casino, was placed in regard to the formal garden and the view over the valley, for they were usually on a hillside and the slope was terraced, how the statues and fountains, the beautiful ilex and cypress and orange trees, the box-edged flower-beds and gravel paths, all formed a wonderful setting for the house, and together made a perfect whole. The Italian villa was not necessarily large, in fact the Villa Lante contains only six acres, which are divided into four terraces, the house ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... horses, or cattle. In the gardens near the town of St. Peter's Port, in Guernsey, it is very common, and does a considerable amount of mischief. It is, however, by no means confined to the parts near the town, as many were nesting in some ilex trees near the house we had on L'Ancresse Common, although the house had been empty since the previous summer, and the garden uncultivated; so food till we came must have been rather scarce about there. As the wheat is coming into ear the Sparrows, as in England, leave the neighbourhood ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... fine old trees, lindens, acacias, chestnuts, a flat-topped Lombardy pine, a darkling ilex, besides the willow that overhung the river, and the poplars that stiffly stood along its border. Then there was the peacock-blue river itself, dancing and singing as it sped away, with a thousand ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... ilex tonsa bipennibus Nigrae feraci frondis in Algido, Per damma, percmdes, ab ipso ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... "Tytler determined to make his exit from the Zukkur-Kahl Valley by a previously unexplored pass, toward which the force moved for its night's bivouac. About the entrance to the glen there was a fine forest of ilex and holly, large, sturdy, spreading trees, whence dangled long sprays of mistletoe; the mistletoe bough was here indeed, and Christmas was close, but where the fair ones whom, under other circumstances, the amorous youth of our column would have ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... history of this building; and the beauty of the forest scenery was conspicuous even in winter, enlivened as the endless woods continued to be by the scarlet berries of mountain-ash, or the dark verdure of the holly and the ilex. Under her present frame of pensive feeling, the quiet lawns and long-withdrawing glades of these vast woods had a touching effect upon the feelings of Paulina; their deep silence, and the tranquillity which reigned amongst them, contrasting in her remembrance ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... of English gardens (I. Aquifolium), more glossy and spiny of leaf and redder of berry than our own, might live here; but it is too tender to withstand New England winters, and the hot, dry summers farther south soon prove fatal. Ilex was the ancient name, not of these plants, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... footprints on the flower-beds or along the edge of the shrubberies. The garden proper had been searched from end to end without result. The children had been to the particular hiding- places each knew best, Tim to the dirty nook between the ilex and the larder window, and Judy to the scooped-out trunk of the rotten elm, and both together to the somewhat smelly channel between the yew trees and ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... lonely lawns they feed them, by the course Of brimming streams, where moss is, and the banks With grass are greenest, where are sheltering caves, And far outstretched the rock-flung shadow lies. Round wooded Silarus and the ilex-bowers Of green Alburnus swarms a winged pest- Its Roman name Asilus, by the Greeks Termed Oestros- fierce it is, and harshly hums, Driving whole herds in terror through the groves, Till heaven is madded by their bellowing din, And Tanager's dry bed and forest-banks. With this same scourge ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... line the mountains run, Cleft by a valley which twice feels the sun, Once on the right when first he lifts his beams, Once on the left, when he descends in steams. You'd praise the climate: well, and what d'ye say To sloes and cornels hanging from the spray? What to the oak and ilex, that afford Fruit to the cattle, shelter to their lord? What, but that rich Tarentum must have been Transplanted nearer Rome with all its green? Then there's a fountain of sufficient size To name the river that takes thence its rise, Not Thracian Hebrus colder or more ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... questibus, Aut laeta late cantibus mulcet loca Famosa pellex Thraciae. Silvisq; coram plorat, & crudelibus Accusat agris Terea: Quaecumque moesta vocibus dicunt aves, Respondet argutum nemus, Affatur alnum quercus, ornum populus, Affatur ilex ilicem, Et se vicissim ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... Milly was writing her Australian letter under a spreading ilex-tree on the lawn. Lady Thomson and Ian were sitting there also; he reading the latest French novel, she making notes for a speech she had to deliver shortly at the opening of a ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... 126. ILEX aquifolium. HOLLY.—A well-known evergreen of singular beauty, of which we have many varieties, both striped, and of different colours in the leaf. Birdlime is made from the inner bark of this tree, by beating it in a running stream and leaving it to ferment in a close vessel. If iron be heated ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... of the dried bodies of a small scale insect, Coccus ilicis, found principally on the ilex oak, in the South of Europe, ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... Acton, and variants in Ogden and Braddock, broad oak. We have ash in Aston, Ascham. The holly was once the hollin, whence Hollins, Hollis, Hollings; cf. Hollings-head, Holinshed. But hollin became colloquially holm, whence generally Holmes. Homewood is for holm-wood. The holm oak, ilex, is so called from its holly-like leaves. For Birch we also find Birk, a northern form. Beech often appears in compounds as Buck-; cf. buckwheat, so called because the grains are of the shape of beech-mast. In Poppleton, Popplewell we have the dialect popple, a poplar. Yeo sometimes represents ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... sunset they had completed the passage of the open country, and had entered the opposite branch of the Apennines, which they had long observed in the distance. After wandering among some rocky ground, they entered a defile amid hills covered with ilex, and thence emerging found themselves in a valley of some expanse and considerable cultivation; bright crops, vineyards in which the vine was married to the elm, orchards full of fruit, and groves of ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... oak-trees in the hills of the Himmelah chain are disfigured in the same manner, and for the same purpose, as the peepul and banyan trees are here; their small branches and leaves are torn off to supply fodder for bullocks and other animals. The ilex of the hills has not, however, in its nakedness the majesty of the peepul and banyan of the plains, though neither of them can be said to be "when ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... That seemed to Reginald final, and so terribly true that he could hardly bear it. "Don't drive it home," he said, and he turned away from Anne and looked across the lawn. There was the gardener's cottage, with the dark ilex-tree beside it. A wet, blue thumb of transparent smoke hung above the chimney. It didn't look real. How his throat ached! Could he speak? He had a shot. "I must be getting along home," he croaked, and he began walking across the lawn. But Anne ran after ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... between the shining undergrowth of beech-trees; and the trickle of water dropping from the limestone rock sounded as a clear melody in the dream. Thoughts began to go astray and to mingle with other recollections; the beech alley was transformed to a path beneath ilex-trees, and here and there a vine climbed from bough to bough, and sent up waving tendrils and drooped with purple grapes, and the sparse grey-green leaves of a wild olive-tree stood out against the dark shadows of the ilex. Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, was conscious that the ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... her walk this very morning, and as she entered the Pamphili woods, where she had a special "permesso" to go whenever she chose, and trod the mossy paths, where the morning sun struck golden shafts between the dark ilex-boughs, as though pointing to the thousands of violets that blossomed in the grass beneath, she opened it at a page ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... they were among heathy mountains, stretched in far perspective, along which the solitary sheep-bell was heard, and the voice of the shepherd calling his wandering flocks to the nightly fold. His cabin, partly shadowed by the cork-tree and the ilex, which St. Aubert observed to flourish in higher regions of the air than any other trees, except the fir, was all the human habitation that yet appeared. Along the bottom of this valley the most vivid verdure was spread; and, in the little hollow recesses of the mountains, under ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... valley, just before its change of direction took it out of sight of the convent, were visible the houses of a small hamlet, surrounded by plantations, and half buried amidst blossoms of the tenderest rose-colour and most dazzling white. Masses of beech and ilex clothed the lower slopes of the mountains, and from out of their dark setting of foliage the grey walls of the Dominican convent arose like a pale and shadowy spectre. The fresh brightness of spring was the characteristic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... with vines and olives, coloured a rusty red, or touched here and there with almost a hue of blood; and here and there a grove of cypress makes a sombre blot. To the north runs a long black line of hills, covered with box and ilex and the giant heather of the south. Far in the distance, to the east, the immense plain is closed in by the wall of Saint-Amant and the ridge of the Dentelle, behind which the lofty Ventoux rears its rocky, cloven bosom abruptly to the clouds. At the end ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... down into the mould of ancient things: his distant ancestors have done much of his political thinking for him, have established in his soul the conditions of his present dilemma.... I wonder if Prince von Buelow ever spent a meditative hour looking down on the fragments of the Forum from the ilex of the Palatine, over the steep ascent of the Capitoline that leads to the Campidolgio, as far as the grandiose marble pile that fronts the newer city? ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... being much larger than they really are. They are not, perhaps, very remarkable, and Leo the Thirteenth must sometimes long for the hills of Carpineto and the freer air of the mountains, as he drives round and round in the narrow limits of his small domain, or walks a little under the shade of the ilex trees, conversing with his gardener or his architect. Yet those who love Italy love its old-fashioned gardens, the shady walks, the deep box-hedges, the stiff little summer-houses, the fragments of old statues at the corners, and even the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... him indeed once (and once only) quote the well-known Latin verse from the Georgics, "O Fortunatos," &c., but generally he showed himself careless about Greeks and Romans; and when (as Mr. Moxon states) "a traveller brought him some acorns from an ilex that grew over the tomb of Virgil, he valued them so little that he threw them at the hackney coachmen as they passed by ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... into ruin. He had (and this to the Italians had seemed a glaring symptom of very decided madness) rooted up the olives on the hillside, and planted forest trees. These were mostly young, but the plantation was more in English taste than I ever elsewhere saw in Italy; some fine walnut and ilex trees intermingled their dark massy foliage, and formed groups which still haunt my memory, as then they satiated the eye with a sense of loveliness. The scene was indeed of unimaginable beauty. The blue extent of waters, ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... party was assembled at the Grange. Among them were some of the young ladies who were to form the chorus; one elderly spinster, Miss Ilex, who passed more than half her life in visits, and was everywhere welcome, being always good-humoured, agreeable in conversation, having much knowledge of society, good sense in matters of conduct, good taste ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... door of his study, and went down the narrow stone passage which parted his bookroom from the entrance. The lofty doorway showed him the stones of the familiar street, a buttress of his church, a great branch of one of the self-sown ilex-trees, the glitter of the arms and the white leather of the cross belts of a sentinel. The shrill lamentations of the women seemed to rend the sunny air. He shuddered as he heard. Coming up the street farther off were half a troop of carabineers and a score of dragoons; the swords of the latter ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... sadly and majestically on the low chain of neighbouring hills. The black squadrons of the rooks had already sought their nests about the city walls, but relieved against the opalescent sky a single sparrow-hawk still hung floating with motionless wings above a solitary ilex tree. ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... wonderful villas, the shady courts, the magic of tessellated pavements, and the hangings of rich stuffs with their intricate and glowing patterns. Lucian wandered all day through the shining streets, taking shelter sometimes in the gardens beneath the dense and gloomy ilex trees, and listening to the plash and trickle of the fountains. Sometimes he would look out of a window and watch the crowd and color of the market-place, and now and again a ship came up the river bringing exquisite silks and ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... blight fungus in Italy is attacking three important European oaks, Quercus ilex, Q. Pubescens, and Q. sessiliflora. These are more important in some countries than chestnuts. For instance, Spain has 3,705,000 acres of Q. ilex orchards, grown largely for acorn hog feed. This will ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... if I cared, at ten, whether they were or not. I was told in tripping measures of the village chestnut tree, to the total exclusion of the linden and ilex; and as for the land where the citrons bloom, and golden oranges are in the gloom, and the long silences of laurel rise—"Kennst du das Land?" Not I! The spreading chestnut tree alone cast its oppressive shadow across my ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... property of three or four acres fairly level upon a headland over the lake. The high wall girds it on the land side, and makes it perfectly secluded. On the lake-side it is bounded by the sudden drops of the land, in sharp banks and terraces, overgrown with ilex and with laurel bushes, down to the brink of the cliff, so that the thicket of the first declivities seems to ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... far before they curved suddenly to their left, and struggled through one of the patches of woodland that beautified the island. This was of oak trees and ilex, dwarfed by their position, tortured into every form of gnarled elbow and crookedness by the sea wind, and seldom visited save by the boys, who knew it as a famous ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... away, and winter came—the strange, treacherous, Genoese winter, green with olive and ilex, brilliant with sunshine, and bitter with storm. Still, rivals at heart and friends on the surface, Mat and I lingered on in our lodging in the Vicolo Balba. Still Gianetta held us with her fatal wiles and her still more fatal beauty. At length there came a day when I felt I could bear the horrible ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... Minturnae, upward, over the mountains behind Tarracina and descending again into the Pontine plain; through the shady groves of Arician ilex that crown the Alban Hills, down to Bovillae, and then away across the Campagna to Rome—a marvel of deep cuttings through the hills,—a marvel of giant superstructures over valleys,—the Appian, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... craves the concrete. All the universe is God's temple, yet the chill breath of the abstract freezes our hearts; and we pray best in some pillared niche consecrated and set apart, I recall a day in Umbria, when the wonderful light of sunset fell on ilex and olive, on mountain snows, on valleys billowing between vine-mantled hills, on creamy marble walls, on columned campaniles; and standing there, I seemed verily to absorb, to become saturated as it were, with the reigning essence of beauty. I walked ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... imagination when we read the beautiful old myths, and fancy a brighter sky, a softer turf, a more picturesque arrangement of venerable trees, than we find in the rude and untrained landscapes of the Western world. The ilex-trees, so ancient and time-honored were they, seemed to have lived for ages undisturbed, and to feel no dread of profanation by the axe any more than overthrow by the thunder-stroke. It had already ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on land and sea. A central aisle of waters, paved by the golden rays of a lyric sun high overhead, was embellished on either side by the marmoreal splendours of stately palaces. An ilex inclined its graceful head to its liquid image; men moved the blocks that made famous in the mouth of the world Queen Dido's Carthage. Clouds of pearl-coloured smoke encircled the enchanting picture. And the galleys came and went in ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... summer afternoon in mid-July, Lady Mary sat in the terrace garden at Barracombe, before the open windows of the silent house, in the shade of the great ilex; sometimes glancing at the book she held, and sometimes watching the haymakers in the valley, whose voices and laughter reached her faintly ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... round the spreading boughs of the banyan grove, mahogany and sandal-wood, ebony and cork, ginger-tree and cardamom, mingle their varied foliage, the translucency of sun-smitten green shading through deepening tones into the sombre tints of ilex and pine with exquisite gradation. Flamboyant trees flaunt fiery pyramids of blossom high in the air, and the golden bouquets of the salacca light up dusky avenues, where large-leaved lianas rope themselves from tree to tree in cables of vivid green. Bare stems, except in the palms, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... visit, and, though Clarence had not a very high opinion of his abilities, he was grown up, and was not likely to be misinformed on such a point as that—at all events, he was the best person to consult just then. As he expected, he found him under the big ilex on his back, with his after-breakfast pipe, no longer ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... was marshaling her pageant, and from divers nooks, the weather-stained nymphs and fauns regarded us in candid, if preoccupied, appraisement; and above us, the clipped ilex trees were about a knowing conference. As for the birds, they were discussing us without any reticence whatever, for, more favoured of chance than imperial Solomon, they have been the confidants in any number of such affairs, and regard the way of a man with a maid as one of ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... clear space of cold silver and a pale lemon sky which was left by the gap in the ilex-trees there passed a slim, dark figure, a profile and the poise of a dark head like a bird's, which really pinned him to his seat with the point of coincidence. With an effort he got to his feet, and said with a voice of affected insouciance: ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... widowed in her prime, Had come with friends to pass the summer time In her grand villa, half-way up the hill, O'erlooking Florence, but retired and still; With iron gates, that opened through long lines Of sacred ilex and centennial pines, And terraced gardens, and broad steps of stone, And sylvan deities, with moss o'ergrown, And fountains palpitating in the heat, And all Val d'Arno stretched beneath its feet. Here in seclusion, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... when they sat and ate under vines and heard voices singing very pleasantly, and there were forest glades and forest tracks in a great variety of beauty with mountains appearing through their parted branches, there were ilex woods, chestnut woods, beech woods, and there were strings of heavily-laden mules staggering up torrent-worn tracks, and strings of blue-swathed mysterious-eyed women with burthens on their heads ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... cult-title Elicius, and as Fulgur or Summanus[258] he was the Power who sent the lightning by day and by night. The ideas thus reflected in the Roman cult were common to all Italian peoples of the same stock; everywhere we find him worshipped on the summits of hills, and in woods of oak, ilex, or beech,[259] where nothing but the trees he loved intervened between the ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... fawn is nimbler than the calf; nay, by as much as sweetest of all fowls sings the clear-voiced nightingale, so much has thy coming gladdened me! To thee have I hastened as the traveller hastens under the burning sun to the shadow of the ilex tree. ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... them for you, mother,' spoke Ida; 'and that they may not be forgotten, I will make a sketch at once of that fountain under the ilex trees, and Mr. Caper in classic costume, making ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... snow is gradually disappearing from Monte Gennaro and the Sabine Mountains. Picnic parties are spreading their tables under the Pamfili Doria pines, and drawing St. Peter's from the old wall near by the ilex avenue,—or making excursions to Frascati, Tusculum, and Albano,—or spending a day in wandering among the ruins of the Etruscan city of Veii, lost to the world so long ago that even the site of it was unknown to the Caesars,—or strolling by the shore at Ostia, or under ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... bestowed, though their fate has not been Jonah's. There's a spinney of elder-trees in the combe of my hermitage, which, I am told, was planted entirely by magpies. And I suppose it was wood-pigeons who planted two ilex trees on the top of the Guinigi tower in Lucca; and some bird or other, once more, which is answerable for a fine fig-tree growing in the parapet of the bridge at Cordova, in no soil whatsoever. It was loaded with fruit when I saw it. But fig-trees are like poets; if you want them to sing you must ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... feed almost on every kind of trees, Young firs, the ilex, and the oak we crop: Sweet trefoil fragrant juniper, and yew, Wild olives, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Ennobled shalt thou be, For I shall sing the joys that spring Beneath your ilex tree; Yes, fountain of Blandusia, Posterity shall know The cooling brooks that from thy nooks ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... Fanny had dressed Francis, from Kennet's Antiquities, out of an old rag-chest, and a more complete little Roman figure I never saw, though made up no mortal can tell how, like one of your own doings, dear aunt, with a crown of ilex leaves. Aurelia was perfectly draped in my French crimson shawl; she looked extremely classical and pretty, and her voice was so sweet, and her looks alternately so indignant to Catiline and so soft ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... groves of oleander, there flowed a stream of which we caught the murmur. The forest was continuous on our side of the wadi. It consisted of dense olive groves around the villages and a much thinner growth of ilex in the tracts between. The shade was pleasant in the daytime, but as night came on its gloom oppressed our spirits with extreme concern, for we were still a long way off our destination, and ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... filled with tears; every thing around was so wild and magnificent that man appeared as nothing, and I felt myself as if climbing the steps of the altar of the great temple of God. The trees, as we advanced, were in a large proportion fir and cedar; but many were ilex, and to my surprise I still saw, even in these wild Alpine tracts, many venerable Peepul trees, on which the white monkeys were playing their gambols. Tigers used to be very common and mischievous; but since ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... alone at the end of one of the tiers of the stone amphitheatre built into the hill that rises, ilex clad, to the heights of San Giorgio. Some other women were there, mothers with young children, nurses and governesses dowdily dressed as she was in dark-coloured stuffs, but she ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... should occur to her to wish to become the Marchioness of Walderhurst, what could possibly prevent the consummation of her desire? Surely not Lord Walderhurst himself, if he was human. She was standing, leaning lightly against the trunk of an ilex-tree, and a snow-white Borzoi was standing close to her, resting his long, delicate head against her gown, encouraging the caresses of her fair, stroking hand. She was in this attractive pose when Lady Maria turned in her ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... granite kopjes like mighty mausoleums adorned with ilex trees barred their path, and Diana was convinced some of the bones of her ancestors lay buried there, because she felt so weirdly at ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... the tea of China is a holly (ilex), and is called by the natives "yaupon" (I. cassine, Linn.). It is a handsome shrub, growing a few feet in height, with alternate, perennial, shining leaves, and bearing small scarlet berries. It is ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... parts of the country is exceedingly hot and is rendered unhealthy in summer by the stagnant marshes. Towards the Spanish frontier the soil is fertile, and in the south the country is covered by extensive forests of oak, pine, chestnut, cork and ilex, especially on the sides of the Mezquita and Caldeirao ranges. In the more fertile parts, grapes, figs, citrons, pomegranates and other fruits are produced. Wheat, maize and rice are grown, and some attention is given to the rearing of mules, asses, goats, cattle ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... exposing it to the light and air. As soon as the seeds are formed, it erects all the flower-stalks to prevent them from falling out; and thus loses the beauty of its figure. Is this a mechanical effect, or does it indicate a vegetable storge to preserve its offspring? See note on Ilex, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... pasture the mast beds. Another good feed is a measure of grape husks which you shall have preserved in jars. By day turn the cattle out and at night feed twenty-five pounds of hay to each steer. If hay is short, feed the leaves of the ilex and ivy.[35] Stack the straw of wheat, barley, beans, vetch and lupine, indeed all the grain straws, but pick out and house the best of it. Scatter your straw with salt and you can then feed it in place of hay. ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... Stromatium strepens in ilex-logs which have been stripped of their bark. There is the same method of deliverance, the same passage curving gently towards the nearest outside point, the same barricade of shavings above the cell. Was the passage also carried through the bark? The stripped ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... which, standing among mountains on the brink of a wooded precipice, lifts into the air its clusters of red-brick towers like tulips. I visited also Cetinale—a strange classical villa, built by a Cardinal Chigi, and surrounded by miles of ilex woods, which are peopled with pagan statues. Returning to Florence, I discovered, with the aid of a large-scale ordnance map, a building equally strange, and so little known even to Florentines that our coachman had never heard of it, and often had to ask the way. This is Torre a Cona—half medieval ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... this unfriendly valley shone like a dell of the Apennines. Not a cloud disturbed the serenity of the sky; the brown grass and yellow moss on the mountains were painted with sunny gold, and the gloss and sparkle of the foliage equalled that of the Italian ilex and laurel. On the second stage a new and superb road carried us through the rugged defile of Saltenaaset. This pass is evidently the effect of some mighty avalanche thousands of ages ago. The valley is blocked up by tremendous ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... the signore has seen the cedar of Lebanon in the garden of the prince, also the ilex tree two hundred years old and the india-rubber plant from South America. They are extremely beautiful, but they don't last ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... at the castle the princess alighted, too preoccupied with her own thoughts to notice that her husband drove off in the opposite direction from the stables. Her forehead was wrinkled and her head bent as she walked between the high hedges of ilex toward the south wing of the building. Her worry over their inability to pay the debt was increased by the fact that their creditor ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... of love's anger, I crushed the tendril and the vine, I wandered up and down the walks and cursed these thorns that tore my heart. As I went, an angle of the shrubbery allured; I turned, and lo! full radiance from open doors, and silvery sounds of sport. I leaned against the ilex, lost in shadow, and watched her as she stirred and floated there before me in the light. She seemed to carry with her an atmosphere of warmth and brilliance; all things were ordered as she moved; one throng melted before her, another followed. By-and-by she stood at the long casement ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... tributaries, together with most of the tract between the Atbara and the Blue Nile. This was a region of great natural wealth, containing many mines of gold, iron, copper, and salt, abundant woods of date-palm, almond-trees, and ilex, some excellent pasture-ground, and much rich meadow-land suitable for the growth of doora and other sorts of grain. Fish of many kinds, and excellent turtle, abounded in the Atbara and the other streams; while the geographical position was favourable for commerce with the tribes ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... along the Claudian aqueduct, lighting up the infinity of its arches, like the bridge of Chaos. But as I climbed the long slope of the Alban Mount, the storm swept finally to the north, and the noble outline of the domes of Albano, and graceful darkness of its ilex grove, rose against pure streaks of alternate blue and amber, the upper sky gradually flushing through the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep palpitating azure, half aether and half dew. The noonday ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... vicinity, and children at hand who have been hanged, and therefore presumably dead. Had the cord broken by which they were hanged, they would certainly have been torn to pieces by the wolves. But especially striking is the statement that Ivor's dog is concealed in a tree; and this tree is called "ilex" (holly-oak), the very word used by Saxo to designate the kind of hollow tree that Hroar and Helgi (he calls them Harald and Halfdan, as has been stated) are concealed in, under the pretence that they are dogs. Also, pieces of meat are thrown into the fires; and Ivor, as soon as the ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... religion of the hearth had tended to maintain. A religion of usages and sentiment rather than of facts and belief, and attached to very definite things and places—the oak of immemorial age, the rock on the heath fashioned by weather as if by some dim human art, the shadowy grove of ilex, passing into which one exclaimed involuntarily, in consecrated phrase, Deity is in this Place! Numen Inest!—it was in natural harmony with the temper of a quiet people amid the spectacle of rural life, like that simpler ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... are rarely met with. If we take trees and shrubs, for example, we find such genera as pinus, cypress, berberis, quercus, viburnam, indigofera, and romeda, lonicera, deutzia, rubus, myrica, spirae, ilex, and many others ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... the foamy shore, A rock, half-hid when wintry waves upleap, And skies are starless, and the North-winds roar, But still and silent, when the calm waves sleep, A level top it lifts above the deep, The seamews' haunt. A bough of ilex here The good AEneas sets upon the steep, Green-leaved and tall,—a goal, to seamen clear, To seek and, doubling round, their homeward course ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... there to take up my nightly abode—I have sat, hour after hour, at the door of the cottage I had selected, unable to lift the latch, and meet face to face blank desertion within. Many nights, though autumnal mists were spread around, I passed under an ilex—many times I have supped on arbutus berries and chestnuts, making a fire, gypsy-like, on the ground—because wild natural scenery reminded me less acutely of my hopeless state of loneliness. I counted the days, and bore with me a peeled willow-wand, on which, as well as I ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... in the modern sense. With a word or a phrase only, he flashes upon our vision the beautiful, the significant, the permanent in the scenery of Italy. The features which he loved best, or which for other reasons caught his eye, are those that we still see. There are the oak and the opaque ilex, the pine and the poplar, the dark, funereal cypress, the bright flower of the too-short-lived rose, and the sweet-scented bed of violets. There are the olive groves of Venafrum. Most lovely of sights and most beautiful of figures, there is the purple-clustered ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... with as little let As fennel, wall-wort-stem, or dill, up-tore; And ilex, knotted oak, and fir upset, And beech, and mountain-ash, and elm-tree hoar. He did what fowler, ere he spreads his net, Does, to prepare the champaigne for his lore, By stubble, rush, and nettle-stalk; and broke, Like these, old sturdy trees and ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... the roadside, the long yellow house seemed to waver and palpitate in the glare; but steep by steep, behind it, the cool ilex-dusk mounted to the ledge where Ralph Marvell, stretched on his back in the grass, lay gazing up at a black reticulation of branches between which bits of sky gleamed with the hardness and ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... But there could be no flinching, though the whole thing was of an imprudence which pricked his conscience. To slip along the shadowed side of the orangery, to cross the space of clouded light beyond, and gain the darkness of the ilex avenue beyond was soon done. Then he heard a soft laugh, and a little figure fled before him. He followed ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and all aglow with berries. The woods were decorated for the holy day. The gentleness of the soft new snow touched everything; cheer and good-will lighted the unclouded sky and warmed the thick depths of the evergreens, and blazed in the crimson-berried bushes of the ilex and alder. The Christmas ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... exuberance of spirits akin to their own, and not unmindful of forthcoming coin, would beckon to the driver to stop, while they repeated their dances for the amusement of the Signorina. A succession of pleasant novelties awaited her at Albano. Running about among the ilex-groves in search of bright mosses, she would come suddenly in front of an elegant villa, with garlands in stucco, and balconies gracefully draped with vines. Wandering away from that, she would utter a little cry of joy at the unexpected sight of some reclining ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... the blood-red color procured from an insect somewhat resembling cochineal, found in great quantities in Armenia and other eastern countries. The Arabian name of the insect is Kermez (whence crimson). It frequents the boughs of a species of the ilex tree: on these it lays its eggs in groups, which become covered with a sort of down, so that they present the appearance of vegetable galls or excrescences from the tree itself and are described as such by Pliny XVI, 12, who ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... broke on the door-step; fishermen Cast their long nets, and drew, and cast again. Deep in the ilex woods we wandered free, When suddenly the forest glades were stirred With waving pinions, and a great sea bird Flew forth, like Shelley's ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... the left, on the rocks were seen the Keifars, or barracks of the regiment of Kourin; while on both sides of the road, fragments of rock lay in picturesque disorder, rolled down in heaps by the violence of the mountain-torrents. A forest of ilex, covered with hoar-frost, thickened as it approached Vellikent, and at each verst the retinue of Verkhoffsky was swelled by fresh arrivals of Beglar and Agalar[4]. The hunting party now turned to the left, and they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... lovely is this plain!—Nor Grecian vale, Nor bright Ausonia's ilex bearing shores, The myrtle bowers of Aphrodite's sweet isle, Or Naxos burthened with the luscious vine, Can boast such fertile or such verdant fields As these, which young Spring sprinkles with her stars;— Nor Crete which boasts fair Amalthea's ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... "Sindiyan" (from the Persian) gen. used for the holm-oak, the Quercus pseudococcifera, vulgarly termed ilex, or native oak, and forming an extensive scrub in Syria, For this and other varieties of Quercus, as the Mallul and the Ballut, see Unexplored Syria, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Had Romulus upreared the weight Of our Eternal City's wall, Denied to Remus by unequal fate. Then lowly cabins small Possessed the seat of Capitolian Jove; And, over Palatine, the rustics drove Their herds afield, where Pan's similitude Dripped down with milk beneath an ilex tall, And Pales' image rude Hewn out by pruning-hook, for worship stood. The shepherd hung upon the bough His babbling pipes in payment of a vow,— The pipe of reeds in lessening order placed, Knit well with wax from longest unto last. Where proud Velabrum lies, A little skiff across the shallows ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... material were inserted in a surface of wood, and "pictorial," in which the various pieces of wood covered the ground entirely. The slices of wood, "sectiles laminae," were laid down with glue, as in modern work. Wild and cultivated olive, box, ebony (Corsican especially), ilex, and beech were used for veneering boxes, desks, and small work. Besides these the Romans used the citrus, Syrian terebinth, maple, palm (cut transversely), holly, root of the elder, and poplar; the centres of ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... stood—over a precipitous chasm, lighted on a narrow ledge, from which a slip of the foot would have been sure death, another bound yet more fearful, and his whole weight hung suspended by the bough of the ilex which he grasped with a single hand; then from bough to bough, from crag to crag, the Eretrian saw him descending till he vanished amidst the trees that darkened over the fissures at the foot ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... safeguard of simplicity. It lays a long level line among the indefinite chances of the landscape. But never more majestic than in face of the wild sea, the wall, steadying its slanting foot upon the rock, builds in the serried ilex-wood and builds out the wave. The sea-wall is the wall at its best. And fine as it is on the strong coast, it is beautiful on the weak littoral and the imperilled ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... Ticked off upon a clock which never stays, Shredding our portion of Eternity, We break away at last, and steal the key Which hides a world empty of hours; ways Of space unroll, and Heaven overlays The leafy, sun-lit earth of Fantasy. Beyond the ilex shadow glares the sun, Scorching against the blue flame of the sky. Brown lily-pads lie heavy and supine Within a granite basin, under one The bronze-gold glimmer of a carp; and I Reach out my hand ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... of architecture. They thought that houses were invented to be looked at, not to be lived in. Determined to be faithful to the tradition and regardless of the difference in climate, they planted the ilex about those mansions which must be dank and gloomy in wintertime, however charming, externally, to those who relish the chill Palladian outlines. You have lately been to Florence, I hear? Come! Let us sit indoors. The courtyard is rather too sultry to-day, in spite of the shade. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas |
