"Leafless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up the Hudson, above Eagle's Nest; the other northerly on Blue Mountain, toward Racquet River. Doing this was hard work, and when they came again to their cabin the robins had gone from the bleak and leafless woods; the grouse were making long night flights; the hollows had tracks of racing deer; there was a sense of omen, a length of gloom, for the Mad Moon was afloat in the shimmering sky; its wan ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the place where my own clothes were lying. To them he walked, and very quietly picking up my whinger and my raiment that he gathered under his arm, he concealed himself in a thick bush, albeit it was leafless, where no man could have been aware of him. This amazed me not a little, for modesty did not seem any part ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... beaks for bread, pleased him; they recalled evenings passed with Helen; she had often spoken of her love for these birds. He went to the window with bread for the peacocks, and the landscape came into his eyes: the clump of leafless trees on the left, rugged and untidy with rooks' nests; the hollow, dipping plain, melancholy of aspect now, misty, gray and brown beneath a lowering sky, dipping and then rising in a long, wide shape, and ringing the sky with a brown line. The terrace with ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... through hothouse after hothouse; yet one life, one stream of sap, one essential quality and character pervades them all, from the dark root, buried in the soil, to the furthest twig or leaf. Yonder branch, waving its fronds high up against the hothouse glass, cannot say to that long leafless branch hidden beneath the shelf, You do not belong to me, nor I to you. No twig is independent of another twig. However different the functions, root and branches, leaves and cluster, all together make one composite but organic whole. So is it with Christ. All who are one ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... shimmering silver. The mists, hovering here and there, showed now a blue and now an amber gleam as the moon's rays conjured them. On one side of the road an oak tree had been uptorn in a wind-storm; the roots, carrying a great mass of earth with them, were thrust high in the air, while the bole and leafless branches lay prone along the ground. This served as a break in the density of the forest, and the white moonshine ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora! if the ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... camellias, with leaves in the same proportion as those on trees in the earlier ages of illumination, and one scraggy, leafless geranium, besides a green and stagnant tank, where a goldfish moved about, flapping and gasping, as the boy disturbed it in his search for the crayfish. He absorbed all the conversation, so that Julius could only look back into the room, where an attempt at artistic effect was still ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... twilight was soon at hand. He was riding over one of the bare ridges, when first he noticed how late the day had grown. All the sky was gray and chill and the cold sun was setting behind the western mountains. A breeze sprang up, rustling among the leafless branches, and Dick shivered in the saddle. A new necessity was pressed suddenly upon him. He must find shelter for the night. Even with his warm double blankets he could not sleep in the forest on such a night. Besides the horse ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sinks beyond the misty hills; The chill winds whistle in the leafless elms; The cold rain patters on the fallen leaves. Where pipes the silver-fluted whippowil? I hear no hum of bees among the bloom; I hear no robin cherup on the hedge: One dumb, lone lark sits shivering in the rain. I hear the voices of the Autumn wind; I hear the cold rain dripping ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... explain! Why are we born to tread this little round, To live, to love, to suffer, sorrow, die? Why do the young like field-flowers bloom to fade? Why are the strong like the mown grass cut down? Why am I left as if by death forgot, Left here alone, a leafless, fruitless trunk? Is death the end, or what comes after death? Often when deepest sleep shuts out the world, The dead still seem to live, while life fades out; And when I sit alone and long for light The veil seems lifted, and I seem to see A world of life and light and peace ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... pounded barley cakes in their upraised hands, and praying to Jupiter to grant them victory in the approaching battle. After the prayer the ox was killed, and the carcass cut into pieces. Portions of the flesh were then burned on leafless billets, while other portions were roasted for the banquet ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... over to Heatherly after luncheon next day, taking of preference the way which led him past Captain Sedgewick's cottage and through the leafless wood where he and Marian had walked together when the foliage was in its summer glory. The leaves lay thick upon the mossy ground now; and the gaunt bare branches of the trees had a weird awful look in the utter silence of the place. His footsteps trampling upon the fallen leaves had ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... of any sort, the full, rich, luscious tones, with just a tinge of plaintiveness in them, are poured forth with spontaneous abandon. Such a song at such a time is enough to summon anybody with a musical ear out of doors under the leaden skies to where the delicious notes issue from the leafless shrubbery by the roadside. Watch the singer until the song ends, when he will quite likely descend among the dead leaves on the ground and scratch among them like any barn-yard fowl, but somehow contriving to use both feet at once in the operation, as no chicken ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... inculcates a serious consideration of the value and blessings of a temperate; and well-spent life; it induces a thoughtful reflection that a life of goodness alone insures an end of peace. The holly, the mistletoe, the ivy, the acorn shell, the leafless branch, and the fruitless vine encircle the brow-fit emblems of the period which marks an exchange of time for eternity. All the figures are rendered complete by a carved lion's foot, at the bottom of each, and above the feet is a connecting frame, to make that portion ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... the water, having been tied among the trees, made a constant rustling and trampling among the fallen leaves. The sharp rustle, the thud of the hoofs upon the ground, were sounds long connected in her mind with the crisis of her doubt, which then began. The maples stood above them, tall and leafless; the waters of the lake were leaden in hue and cold. Looking southward on either side of its long flood, the snores with their many points and headlands lay cold, almost hueless, near by, and in the distance ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... leave that great sound behind and stand again listening to the marvellous echo from the wooded hill on the other side of the valley. Nor would I care to go again in search of that small ancient lost church in the forest. It would not be early April with the clear sunbeams shining through the old leafless oaks on the floor of fallen yellow leaves with the cuckoo fluting before his time; nor would that straggling procession of villagers appear, headed by an old man in a smock frock with a big book in his hand; nor would I hear ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... he now turned towards the latter, accompanied by Pierre and chatting with him. One found the mildness of springtime there that February afternoon; for pale sunshine streamed between the trees, which were still leafless. It was indeed one of those first fine days which draw little green gems from the branches of the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the large order containing the fennel, hemlock, and a multitude of other forms which, though mostly ranking as herbs, attain gigantic dimensions in some species found in Africa and Kamskatka (Umbelliferae); the very singularly-shaped group of cactuses (Cactaceae), with leafless fleshy stems, which sometimes look like dry columns and sometimes are globular; the begonias (Begoniaceae); the cucumbers, melons, and vegetable marrows (Cucurbitaceae); the singularly-formed ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... had reached the top of the long hill where the park fence began, and a high solid gate—so that no dogs could enter—gave access to that wild domain, when a confused murmur in the keen blue air caused him to look back. For a mile or more the road was straight, and the leafless trees and hedges left the prospect open to him in all directions; at the extremity of the road was some huge moving object, which, advancing at great speed, disclosed the Squire's mail phaeton, drawn by four antlered stags, and followed at some distance by three or four mounted grooms, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... the forest of dead trees. He knew that it was the forest, although there was nobody there to tell him so. He had not, in fact, seen any human being for the last three days, but he felt that he could not be mistaken. A vast forest of enormous trees lifted leafless, sapless branches to the sky, and every breath of wind rattled them together like the bones of a skeleton. When he was about twenty yards from the forest a terrible sound came from it. It was as though a thousand horses were neighing and screaming all at once. Fritz's heart stood still. He wanted ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... reckless destruction of which has caused here, as at St. Helena, and at some of the Canary islands, almost entire sterility. The broad, flat-bottomed valleys, many of which serve during a few days only in the season as water-courses, are clothed with thickets of leafless bushes. Few living creatures inhabit these valleys. The commonest bird is a kingfisher (Dacelo Iagoensis), which tamely sits on the branches of the castor- oil plant, and thence darts on grasshoppers and lizards. It is brightly coloured, but not ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... impossible to go out. The storm had begun, the old man declared, just as the chickens were crowing for day, and it had continued almost without intermission. The dark gray clouds had blotted out the sun, and the leafless limbs of the tall oaks surrendered themselves drearily to the fantastic gusts that drove the drizzle fitfully before them. The lady to whom Uncle Remus belonged had been thoughtful of the old man, and 'Tildy, the house-girl, had been commissioned to carry him his meals. This arrangement ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... storms of night descended, the winds rolled along the clouds with all their ghosts, around the rock the dark waves burst, and shewed their flaming bosoms, loud rushed the blast through the leafless oaks, and the voice of the spirit of the mountains was heard in our halls; it was Saturday, when lo! at once the postman came, mighty was his striding in the kitchen, and strong was his voice for ale. In short, I have as yet received no letter from you, ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... Distils from cup half gelid yet some drops Of finer relish than the hand of May Pours from her full-brimmed beaker. Frost, though gone, Had left its glad vibration on the air; Laughed the blue heavens as though they ne'er had frowned, Through leafless oak-boughs; limes of kindlier grace And swifter to believe Spring's "tidings good" Took the sweet lights upon a breast bud-swoll'n, And crimson as the redbreast's; while, as when Clear rings a flute-note through sea-murmurs harsh, ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... flap in mutiny against the mast. Burdened with barnacles the untarred keels Drowse on the tide with parching decks unswabbed, And anchors rusting on inglorious ooze. All indolent the vast armada tilts, A leafless resurrection of dead trees. The sailors in a dream do go about Or at the fo'c's'le ominously meet. Should any foe upon the sea-line loom They'll light with ease upon an idle prey. And yet I felt the grandeur of stagnation And the ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... the children cried for food, Father de Smet took down the rifle from the wall and went out with it, coming back only when he could feed the hungry. There were places where the prairie was black with buffalo, and the shy deer showed their delicate heads among the leafless willows of the Papillion. When they—the children—were cold, this young man brought in baskets of buffalo chips from the prairie and built them a fire, or he hung more skins up at the entrance to the tepees. If he wanted to cross a river and had no boat at hand, he leaped the uncertain ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... were calling me, and rose to obey the summons. My sister was, by this time, so accustomed to my going out in all weathers, that she troubled me with no expostulation. My spirits began to rise the moment I was in the wind. Keen, and cold, and unsparing, it swept through the leafless branches around me, with a different hiss for every tree that bent, and swayed, and tossed in its torrent. I made my way to the gate and out upon the road, and then, turning to the right, away from the village, I sought a kind of common, open and treeless, the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... the oasis in this direction it is all a level of dried-up mud, speckled with low shrubs and dangerous watery spots, where a man may slowly sink down and disappear for ever. A strange desert lily, purple and golden, starts leafless, like a tall orchid, out of the bitter waste; camels eat its fat, bulbous, snowy-white root; the Arabs call ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... to be suffered, and forgotten as soon as may be; but the long winter of the North forces the Goth (I mean the Englishman, Frenchman, Dane, or German), if he would lead a happy life at all, to find sources of happiness in foul weather as well as fair, and to rejoice in the leafless as well as in the shady forest. And this we do with all our hearts; finding perhaps nearly as much contentment by the Christmas fire as in the summer sunshine, and gaining health and strength on the ice-fields of winter, as well as among the meadows ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Corinthian-columned portico. There was no moon, but the stars had the gold fire with which they shine when the sky is violet. Above the horizon a shimmering halo marked the cluster of cities and towns. In the immediate foreground the great elm was leafless now, but for that reason more clearly etched against the starlight—line on line, curve on curve, sweeping, drooping, interlaced. Guion stood with head up and figure erect, as if from strength given back to him. Even through the darkness ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... associated plants, including the soft-wooded ambach, flourish in immense quantities—-and little else is found in the way of vegetation. South Africa is largely destitute of forest save in the lower valleys and coast regions. Tropical flora disappears, and in the semi-desert plains the fleshy, leafless, contorted species of kapsias, mesembryanthemums, aloes and other succulent plants make their appearance. There are, too, valuable timber trees, such as the yellow pine (Podocarpus elongatus), stinkwood (Ocotea), sneezewood or Cape ebony (Pteroxylon utile) and ironwood. Extensive miniature woods ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... on the red tiles of the clustered roofs, the brown thatch of the ricks, and the white cobblestones of a corner of the yard; and the blossom of pears and apples was pink and white, as if a light shower of colored snow had just fallen on the still leafless trees. Beneath the orchard branches he could see his children and Norah playing among the daffodils that grew wild in the grass; the light all about them was faintly blue and unceasingly tremulous and he stood ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... the Potomac a party of us unwittingly made our camp near the foot of a bee-tree, which next day the winds of heaven blew down, for our special delectation, at least so we read the sign. Another time, while sitting by a waterfall in the leafless April woods, I discovered a swarm in the top of a large hickory. I had the season before remarked the tree as a likely place for bees, but the screen of leaves concealed them from me. This time my former presentiment occurred to me, and, looking sharply, sure enough ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... &c.—everything so white, so marbly pure and dazzling, yet soft—the White House of future poems, and of dreams and dramas, there in the soft and copious moon—the gorgeous front, in the trees, under the lustrous flooding moon, full of realty, full of illusion—the forms of the trees, leafless, silent, in trunk and myriad—angles of branches, under the stars and sky—the White House of the land, and of beauty and night—sentries at the gates, and by the portico, silent, pacing there in blue overcoats—stopping you not at all, but eyeing you with sharp ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... of the Scotch firs and other fortunate evergreens, there was nothing to be seen on all sides but leafless branches standing out sharply against the cold, grey sky. The ground was frozen, and entirely covered with snow, for there had been a heavy fall during the night. The way-marks of field and road were obliterated, all was one sheet ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... individualizes the place most strongly to our memory. There, for instance, is a photographic view of our own birthplace, and with it of a part of our good old neighbor's dwelling. An artist would hardly have noticed a slender, dry, leafless stalk which traces a faint line, as you may see, along the front of our neighbor's house next the corner. That would be nothing to him,—but to us it marks the stem of the honeysuckle-vine, which we remember, with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... was, falling so silently, all day long, all night long, on the mountains, on the meadows, on the roofs of the living, on the graves of the dead! All white save the river, that marked its course by a winding black line across the landscape; and the leafless trees, that against the leaden sky now revealed more fully the wonderful beauty and ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... heart, once free to hold A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine, Be left more desolate, more dreary cold Than a forsaken bird's-nest fill'd with snow 'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine— Speak, that my torturing doubts their ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... together, and all are hidden away in the dark. So our joys and treasures, were they sufficient did they last, cannot last. After a summer's day comes a summer's night, and after a brief space of them comes winter, when all are killed and the leafless ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fingers, and the friar was already between him and his adversary, warning the other off with his outstretched hand. The loose sleeve had slipped back from his wrist, baring a brown, emaciated arm and elbow upon which the swollen veins seemed to twist and climb like leafless vines upon a withered tree. His lips were white, his eyes blazed, and his voice was suddenly ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... which I contemplate this wild and desolate scenery. We often see him perched upon a dead tree that stands in the water, a few rods from the shore, apparently watching our angling operations from his leafless perch, where he sings so sweetly, that the very desolation of the scene borrows a charm from his voice that renders every object delightful. This bird I believe to be the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... creature have been created? She looked as if it would not be amiss to put her under a glass-case, or exhibit her as a specimen of wax-work; or hire her out, at so much per night, to fashionable parties, to play "fairy" in the Tableaux. But the wind howled; the leafless branches of the old trees without were crushed up, shivering and creaking against the house; the frozen snow beat a wild reville on the windows, and May's face grew very sad and thoughtful. She dropped her knitting, and ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... tenderly; for to her they always returned like birds to their tree, from all the regions whither the energetic dispersion of Mr Cupples might have scattered them for their pickings of intellectual crumbs. Now, however, it was but as to a leafless wintry tree, instead of a nest bowered in green leaves. Yet he was surprised to find that he was not ten times more miserable; the fact being that, as he had no reason to fear that she preferred any one else, there ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... houses, its dazzling white canvas awnings, its church and campanile, and its life that seems to pass entirely in the street: men in their shirt sleeves, lounging, smoking, spitting (else the land were not Italy!), or perhaps playing cards at a table under the leafless bush of the wine-shop; women gossiping over their needlework, or, gathered in sociable knots, combing and binding up their sleek black hair; children sprawling in the kindly dirt; the priest, biretta ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... an ugly brick house, built apparently for some public purpose. This was the immediate outlook. Around, the land was undulating; trees were abundant, and were more apparent in the moonlight than the flat field spaces between them. The graceful lines of leafless elms at the side of the main road were clearly seen. About half a mile away the lights of a large village were visible, but bits of walls and gable ends of white houses stood out brighter in the moonlight than, the yellow lights within the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... were close at hand. How beautiful and homelike it was! plushy moss for mattresses decked with red corner berries, noble spruce standing guard about us and spreading kindly protecting arms. A few ferns, aspidiums, polypodiums, with dewberry vines, coptis, pyrola, leafless huckleberry bushes, and ledum grow beneath the trees. We retired at eight o'clock, and just then Toyatte, who had been attentively studying the sky, presaged rain and another southeaster ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... lonely tenant of the leafless vine, Granted the right to grow thy mates beside, To ripen thy sweet juices, but denied ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... matting and looks and looks—I like the unfathomable philosophy in its golden eye. And my brother stops reading Indian politics and calls me outside to see a Horn Bill—all beak, and little head or body to speak of, he sways on a leafless tree and scraiks anxiously for his friends; they are generally in companies of three or four. A little later, as I write beside a reading lamp in G.'s room, a lizard takes a position on the window, and out of the outer darkness comes a moth and lights on to the outside of the pane, and the lizard ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... you question the young children in their sorrow, Why their tears are falling so? The old man may weep for his To-morrow Which is lost in Long-Ago; The old tree is leafless in the forest; The old year is ending in the frost; The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest; The old hope is hardest to be lost: But the young, young children, O my brothers! Do you ask them why they stand Weeping sore before the bosoms of their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... scarce she yet may know The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow; And through her bowers the wind's way still ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... species is common throughout the country. As a rule its nest is well hid, but one I saw in the compound of a house in Maulmain was placed in the exposed leafless fork of a tree, not above six feet from the ground. It contained no eggs when I examined it, and was deserted a day or two after. This was in ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... Murray was gone in the carriage with her mamma to pay some morning calls. But it struck me that I ought to leave these selfish pleasures, and the park with its glorious canopy of bright blue sky, the west wind sounding through its yet leafless branches, the snow-wreaths still lingering in its hollows, but melting fast beneath the sun, and the graceful deer browsing on its moist herbage already assuming the freshness and verdure of spring—and go to the cottage of one Nancy Brown, a widow, whose son was ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... trees which the Duke of Mazarin gave the king," writes Superintendent Foucauld in his journal. "M. Louvois, in spite of the representations I made him, would have them sent by carriage through the snow and ice. They arrived leafless at Versailles, and several are dead. I had sent him word that the king could take towns in winter, but could not make orange trees bear removal from their hothouses." The nature and the consciences of the Protestants were all that withstood Louis XIV. and Louvois. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... screen, the contours of the town began to come into clearer view: the fronts of the houses shining from their recent drenching; the eaves dripping with the last few drops of rain; the roofs gleaming like polished silver; the trees along the broader avenues, naked and shorn as brooms, shaking their leafless branches, while water seemed to ooze ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... great dreary lump of farm-buildings, with its yard of yellow stacks. Beneath our feet the earth was iron, and the sky iron above our heads. Dark curdled clouds, "which had built up everywhere an under-roof of doleful grey," swept on before the bitter northern wind, which whistled through the low leafless hedges and rotting wattles, and crisped the dark sodden leaves of the scattered hollies, almost the only ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... games Confederate, imitative of the chase 35 And woodland pleasures,—the resounding horn, The pack loud-chiming, and the hunted hare. So through the darkness and the cold we flew, And not a voice was idle; with the din Smitten, the precipices rang aloud; 40 The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron; while far-distant hills Into the tumult sent an alien sound Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars, Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west 45 The orange sky of evening ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... of London uphold the dark as upon the points of burning bayonets. The yellow canopy sinks and swells over the great four-poster. Passengers in the mail-coaches running into London in the eighteenth century looked through leafless branches and saw it flaring beneath them. The light burns behind yellow blinds and pink blinds, and above fanlights, and down in basement windows. The street market in Soho is fierce with light. Raw meat, china mugs, and silk stockings blaze in it. Raw voices wrap themselves round ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... till she brings some violets with her. After many entreaties for mercy the orphan is driven out, and goes out in the snow on the hopeless errand. As she enters the forest she sees a little way on in the deep glade, under the leafless trees, a large fire burning. As she draws near she perceives around the fire are twelve stones, and on the stones sit twelve men. The chief of them, sitting on the largest stone, is an old man with a long snowy beard, and a great staff in his hand. As she comes ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... to snap asunder the bonds she had accepted in blind faith: whatever befell her, she would no more feel the breath of soft hated lips warm upon her cheek, no longer feel the breath of an odious mind stifling her own. The bare wintry morning, the chill air, were welcome in their severity: the leafless trees, the sombre hills, were not haunted by the gods of beauty and joy, whose worship ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... among the gray and brown tints, there was a dash of scarlet,—the cardinal grosbeak, whose presence was sufficient to enliven any scene. In the leafless trees, as a ray of sunshine fell upon him, he was visible a long way off, glowing like a crimson spar,—the only bit of color in the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the wild fury of winter is lowering, And leafless and drear is the tree; But the vertical sun of the south appears pouring Its fierce, killing heats upon me: Without, all the season's chill symptoms begin— But the fire of passion is ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... keen and fresh. The chalk hill curved picturesquely round it, and the friendly woods ran down behind to keep it company. Rachel Henderson, in pursuit of that campaign she was always now waging against a natural optimism, tried to make herself imagine it in winter—the leafless trees, the solitary road, the treeless pasture or arable fields, that stretched westward in front of the farm, covered perhaps with snow; and the distant stretches of the plain. There was not another house, not even a ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had become warm and pleasant again and he would be able, he knew, to obtain a fine view. Just what he expected to see, he had not thought, but the grandeur of the scene he beheld was magnificent. Far as he could see the ocean of nearly leafless treetops rose and fell in giant waves, broken here and there by lakes or rivers, he knew not which, glimpses of whose waters and bushy banks, he caught. Here were lowlands—there highlands, and through the latter ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... of song and flowers, Which blessed, through thee, the Northern Land! I pine amid its leafless bowers, And on the black and lonely strand. The forest wails the starry bloom, Which yet shall pave its shadowy floor, But down my spirits aisles of gloom ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... trees, that looked black as hearse-plumes in contrast with the snow. The cold gleam of the lake in the moon which had begun to shine out now met their gaze; and the familiar outline of Snakes Island, its solemn timber bleak and leafless, standing in a group, seemed to watch Mardykes Hall with a dismal observation across the water. Through the gate and between the huge files of trees the carriage seemed to fly; and at last the steaming horses stood panting, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... their own convenience, prodigious flambeaux were borne aloft on halberds. These rose to a height which surmounted all the lower bushes, and were visible in all parts of the woods,—even the smaller lights, in the leafless state of the trees at this season of the year, could be generally traced without difficulty; and composing a brilliant chain of glittering points, as it curved and humored the road amongst the labyrinths of the forest, would have ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... proportioned size; a cheese-press, often supported by some tree near the door; a cluster of embowering sycamores for summer shade; with a tall fir, through which the winds sing when other trees are leafless; the little rill or household spout murmuring in all seasons;—combine these incidents and images together, and you have the representative idea of a mountain-cottage in this country so beautifully formed in itself, and so richly adorned ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of trees, and to my childish unaccustomed eyes it was like a great unexplored forest. There were no pines, firs, nor eucalyptus (unknown in the country then), nor evergreens of any kind; the trees being all deciduous were leafless now in mid-winter, but even so it was to me a wonderful experience to be among them, to feel and smell their rough moist bark stained green with moss, and to look up at the blue sky through the network of interlacing ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... chastises nor directs. The rider moves without motion, and the horse judges without guidance. It would seem that the man had borrowed the beast's body, and the beast the man's mind. His regiment has formed upon the field, their stout lances erected like a young and leafless grove; but although now in line, it is with difficulty that they can subject the spirit of their warlike steeds. The trumpet has caught the ear of the horses; they stand with open nostrils, already breathing war ere they can see an enemy; and now dashing up one ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... the cemetery, with its large, new-made graves; the sparse, leafless trees that swayed in the wind, was desolate, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... hardly serve to distinguish much of the habitats of the Galapagos plants, but they may in some cases; most, if not all, of the green, leafy plants come from the summits of the islands, and the thin brown leafless plants come from the lower arid parts: would you be so kind as to bear this remark in ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... and bridle roads were often edged with prickly Cacti and a leafless Euphorbia, but the country being so highly cultivated there was not much room for indigenous vegetation, except upon the sea-beach. We saw plenty of the fine race of domestic cattle descended from the Bos banteng of ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... himself he felt chilled, and was leaning against a huge leafless tree. The night was moonless, and when he looked up he thought he had never seen stars so large and bright, or sky so black. The stars, too, seemed to blink down with longer intervals of darkness, and fiercer and more dazzling emergence, and something, ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... from her window overlooking the garden, had seen a picture that she never forgot. It was about noon, all the warmth that was in the December sun filled the garden (which the leafless trees no longer shaded). There was no snow on the ground, for the few stray flakes premonitory of winter which had fallen from time to time in the month had melted almost as soon as they had touched the ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... darkness and the cold we flew, And not a voice was idle. with the din Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud; The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills Into the tumult sent an alien sound Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars, Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west The orange sky of ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... is passing, and I begin to cock an attentive eye at the signs of awakening, and feel that I am waking up myself. If you could see the view from here, the barren expanse of veldt stretching miles away, the cluster of tin roofs and the few leafless thorn-trees beyond, I have no doubt you would laugh at this fancy of a spring day. And yet I am sure I can feel it; there is a change in the air. It has grown elastic and feels alive, and there is a smell in it to my mind of earth and vegetables. Yesterday, when I toddled in as far as the village, ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... at Upper Ashton Falls the afternoon had waned so far towards evening that the first robins were singing their vespers from the leafless choirs of the maples before the hotel. He indulged the landlord in his natural supposition that he had come up to make a timely engagement for summer board; after supper he even asked what the price of such rooms as his would be by the week in July, while he tried to lead the talk round to the fact ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... air was still cool and fresh. The soldiers lit fires, made some tea, and ate their rations of biscuits and meat. Then they lay down and waited for evening. Gradually, as the hours passed, the sun became powerful. There was no shade, and only a few thin, leafless bushes rose from the sand. The hours of a day, peculiarly hot, even for the country and season, dragged wearily away. The sandy ridge beat back the rays till the air above was like the breath of a furnace and the pebbly ground burned. The ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... and soon came to a place where things changed their appearance. Hard sand was here, and on every side there arose curiously- shaped coral structures, which resembled more than any thing else a leafless forest. These coral tree-like forms twisted their branches in strange involutions, and in some places formed a perfect barrier of interlaced arms, so that he was forced to make a detour in order to avoid them. The chief fear here was that his ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... a silence of some moments. The train rushed on, past fields desolate under patches of snow, and stark, leafless trees; over rivers dotted with cakes of grimy ice; between banks of frost-gnawed rock. The landscape in the dim January afternoon was gray and gloomy; and as day declined everything became more lorn and forbidding. Maurice turned away from the ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... and all was changed. The trees stood bare and leafless; no birds sang in their branches; no sweet blossoms raised their heads to catch the sun's warm rays. The skies were gray and cheerless, and ever the soft white snow kept falling silently, "like the footsteps of angels ...
— The Enchanted Castle - A Book of Fairy Tales from Flowerland • Hartwell James
... blew again; the child turned over and unclosed her eyes. A brassy light glimmered between leafless apple branches outside her window. Through the frosty radiance of sunrise a blue ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... north. The snow lay all over the ground, like soft feathers, and the hay-ricks looked as though each one wore a dunce-cap, like the dull boy in Dame Week's school over by the green. The icicles hung down by the thatch, and the little birds crouched shivering in the bare and leafless hedge-rows. ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... his new range interesting to explore, and began to forget his indignation. Privacy it had not, for the trees at this season were all leafless, and there were no dense fir or spruce thickets into which he could withdraw, to look forth unseen upon this alien landscape. But there were certain rough boulders behind which he could lurk. And there were films of ice, and wraiths of ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... side of the path, and rising again in a steep bank on the other side of a narrow dell; both sides were thickly wooded, but stripped of green now, except where here and there a hemlock-fir flung its graceful branches abroad, and stood in lonely beauty among its leafless companions. Now the gurgling of ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... would go through the cold of dying day, the sun, over beyond the Rhone, dipping toward the Cevennes; leafless trees, red in low sun-rays; black lines of cypress; in the fields an old woman with a fagot on her head; beside the road an old man scratching under the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... while the rest of the swarm descended on a green hedge, and on the grass. As for us, we went and knocked them down with our riding-whips, and carried away specimens in our hats; but the survivors took no manner of notice of us, and in about ten minutes they left the trees mere skeletons, leafless and stripped of their bark, and moved across the field in a dense mass towards some fruit-trees a little way off. For days after this, when we met with travellers on the road, or stopped at the door of a cottage to get a light or something to drink, and chatted a few ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... they trod the deserted paths of the Bois de Boulogne. The buds, which were beginning to swell on the tips of the slender black branches, dyed the tree-tops violet under the rosy sky. To their left stretched the fields, dotted with clumps of leafless trees, and the houses of Auteuil were visible. Slowly driven coupes, with their elderly passengers, crawled along the road, and the wet-nurses pushed their perambulators. A motor-car broke the silence of ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... and her aunt seemed to have vanished, as they drove up the now familiar slope, and under the leafless copper beeches. Blood is thinker than water, and what five months ago had seemed to be exile, had become the first step towards home, if not home itself, for now, like Valetta, she welcomed the sound of her mother's voice in her aunt's. And there were Valetta and Fergus rushing out, almost ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... belt. "The master," he said curtly, getting to his feet as three cloaked figures, followed by a negro bearing a torch, came up the hillside and into the waste of stones beneath the crags. Advancing to meet them, he took the torch from Regulus's hand and fired a mass of dead and leafless vine depending from the cliff. In the bright light which sprang up, filling the rocky chamber and burnishing the face of the crags into the semblance of a cataract of fire, the parties to the interview gazed ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... 1-1/2 in. wide, in 3-bracted whorls of 3, borne near the summit of a leafless scape 4 in. to 4 ft. tall. Calyx of 3 sepals; corolla of 3 rounded, spreading petals. Stamens and pistils numerous, the former yellow in upper flowers; usually absent or imperfect in lower pistillate ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... of which he would have spoken so enthusiastically, though even that were a thing not to be disdained by such a lover of the beautiful as Seymour had shown himself to be,—the dry brown hills rising in swelling slopes from the edge of the wide quiet river; the bare and leafless trees upon their crests, now scarce veiling the comfortable old white house, which in the summer they quite concealed beneath their masses of foliage; and all the world lying dreamy and calm and still, in the motionless haze of one of those rare ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... pebbled shore, O'erhung with wild woods, shorn of green; The leafless birch and hawthorn hoar Were planted round the wintry scene; No flowers sprang wanton to be pressed— No birds sang love on every spray— But brightest yet o'er all the rest Will ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... last the general surface cleared, still there remained the trenches and traverses of the enemy, his ramparts drifted high, and his roads marked with snow. The black firs on the ridge stood out against the frozen clouds, still and hard; the slopes of leafless larches seemed withered and brown; the distant plain far down gloomy with the same dull yellowish blackness. At a height of seven hundred feet the air was sharp as a scythe—a rude barbarian giant wind knocking at the walls of the house with a vast club, so that we crept sideways even ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... blasts swirled dreamily through the leafless branches of the Langaffer beeches, causing them to creak and moan; when the snow lay thick upon the ground, and the nights closed in apace, and the villagers relished the comforts of the "ingle-nook," then—alas!—there was no fireside ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... withered rose, bereft and shorn Of all thy primal glory, All leafless now, thy piercing ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Leicester Lodge, and lights were shining above the shutters of the dining and drawing-room windows. The dim light enabled Arthur to see that it was a large house with a small piece of garden-ground in front, and one or two leafless trees, which gave ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... amidst the thirsty wilds, to hear New falls of water murmuring in his ear. On rifted rocks, the dragon's late abodes, The green reed trembles, and the bulrush nods. Waste sandy valleys, once perplexed with thorn, The spiry fir and shapely box adorn: To leafless shrubs the flowery palms succeed, And odorous myrtle to the noisome weed. The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead And boys in flowery bands the tiger lead: The steer and lion at one crib shall meet, And harmless serpents lick the pilgrim's feet. The smiling infant in his ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... wont, seated at his desk, writing letters, after his early breakfast, with his neatly-labelled accounts at his elbow. There was a pleasant frosty sun glittering through the twigs of the leafless shrubs, and flashing on the ripples and undulations of the Liffey, and the redbreasts and sparrows were picking up the crumbs which the housekeeper had thrown for them outside. He had just sealed the last of ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... sight which met the eye of the travellers as they gazed, in early spring, on one of these trees with its full complement of leaves—clad in full summer luxuriance. While the others in the plantation, true to the order of development, were yet bare and leafless, or else the buds of spring only flushing them with verdure, the broad leaves of this precocious (and we may think at first favoured) plant—the pioneer of surrounding vegetation—rustled in the morning breeze, and invited the passers-by to turn aside, examine ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... see her daughter wearing mourning for her, and, above all, to see that she was properly clothed, and that she was warm. He thought of that forest of Montfermeil; they had traversed it together, Cosette and he; he thought of what the weather had been, of the leafless trees, of the wood destitute of birds, of the sunless sky; it mattered not, it was charming. He arranged the tiny garments on the bed, the fichu next to the petticoat, the stockings beside the shoes, and he looked at them, one after the other. She was no ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to fall, and the fierce northern winds swept through the forests, creaking the leafless limbs of the trees as they swayed them to and fro, anon rending them in twain, and scattering the fragments over the white mantled earth. The wanderers now spent most of their time within the temple, by their glowing fire that blazed so cheerfully, ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... the dismal skies on the pavement and the railings and the now almost leafless trees. The atmosphere was filled with a thin white mist, and the people going by were hidden under umbrellas. It was a dreary picture enough; and yet Sheila was thinking of how much drearier such a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... burned its way into the home that even then enshrined my dearest treasures. I saw the window at which Emily Warren had directed the glance that had sustained my hope for months. I looked wistfully at the leafless, flowerless garden, where I had first recognized my Eve. "Will her manner be like the present aspect of that garden?" I groaned. I saw the arbor in which I had made my wretched blunder. I had about broken myself of profanity, but an ugly expression slipped out (I ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... the pretty flowers; Coming ere the spring time, To tell of sunny hours, While the trees are leafless, While the fields are bare, Buttercups and daisies Spring up here ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... commencing the work of taking down and rolling up the silken awnings, accompanying their labors by a sort of monotonous chant that, mingling with the slow, gliding plash of the river, sounded as weird and mournful as the sough of the wind through leafless trees. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... weenest, therefore thou gettest no weapon, an I may keep you therefrom. Alas, said Sir Launcelot, that ever a knight should die weaponless. And therewith he waited above him and under him, and over his head he saw a rownsepyk, a big bough leafless, and therewith he brake it off by the body. And then he came lower and awaited how his own horse stood, and suddenly he leapt on the further side of the horse, fro-ward the knight. And then Sir Phelot lashed at him eagerly, weening ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... Indian-like in their stealth. Bending low to avoid the rustling branches, he crept on, silently and swiftly. He no longer followed the tracks. He had turned off, meaning to come up with his quarry against the wind. At every opening in the bush he paused, his keen eyes alert for a sign of his prey. But the leafless branches of the scrub, faintly tinged with the signs of coming spring, alone confronted him; only that, and the noise of ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... hour they heard nothing of the huntsmen. Not a sound broke the stillness of the forest; the sun was shining through the leafless trees, and they were therefore enabled to shape their course in the direction in which they had come. Presently they heard the sound of a shot, followed by several others, and then the bay of hounds. The sound ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... guarded well Withered things to make us glad, Shyest friend that could not tell Half the kindly thought he had. Haste thee, speed thee, O kind snow; Down the dripping valleys go, From the fields and gleaming meadows, Where the slaying hours behold thee, From the forests whose slim shadows, Brown and leafless cannot fold thee, Through the cedar lands aflame With gold light that cleaves and quivers, Songs that winter may not tame, Drone of pines and laugh of rivers. May thy passing joyous be To thy father, the great sea, For the sun is getting ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... heard from thence; and in the autumn, when the leaves looked like hammered plates of copper, came birds of passage, and rested there before they flew far over the sea. But now it was winter, and the tree stood leafless, and the bended and gnarled branches were naked. Crows and jackdaws came and sat themselves there alternately, and talked of the rigorous weather which was commencing, and how difficult it was to ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... other as high as the surface of the earth or about 2 inches; they are more succulent than the grasses and less so than most of the fillies hyesinths &c.- the peduncle is soletary, proceeds from the root, is columner, smooth leafless and rises to the hight of 2 or 21/2 feet. it supports from 10 to forty flowers which are each supported by seperate footstalk of 1/2 an inch in length scattered without order on the upper portion of the peduncle. the calix is a partial involucret situated at the base of the footstalk ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... fresh as if they had been sound asleep all night; to keep up with the pack the whole day in a fast burst or on a cold scent, or in whatever sport Fortune and the coverts gave them, till their second horses wound their way homeward through muddy, leafless lanes, when the stars ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Domini whether they would take each other for wife and husband, and listened to their replies. Androvsky's voice sounded to him hard and cold as ice when it replied, and suddenly he thought of the storm as raging in some northern land over snowbound wastes whose scanty trees were leafless. But Domini's voice was clear, and warm as the sun that would shine again over the desert when the storm was past. The mayor, constraining himself to keep awake a little longer, gave Domini away, while Suzanne dropped tears into a pocket-handkerchief edged with rose-coloured frilling, ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... a new experience to them to feel the cold wind cutting through their skins and making them shiver. The dismal prospect of the leafless trees and the hard cold ground weighed heavily upon their hearts, and, worse still, there was less food. The scarcity grew serious, and hunger plunged them into unhappiness and despair. Doggie became melancholy, while Pussie ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... this time penetrated the misty atmosphere, and the white frost had changed to diamond drops, which hung tremblingly on the leafless branches. A gleam of sunshine showed the red tints of the beech-trees, and the bright golden hue of the poplars, and the forest burst upon Julien in all the splendor of its autumnal trappings. The pleasant remembrance of Reine Vincart's hospitality doubtless predisposed ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... should be met among the great brakes of a sandy wood edge, where white leafless wands of its cousin, star-grass, or colic root, wave above it, and the tall late meadow-rue and white angelica ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the steep, twisting road, Nasmyth glanced with satisfaction to left and right. He had seen wilder and grander lands, but none of them appealed to him like this high, English waste. On one hand dim black hills rose out of fleecy mist; on the other a leafless birch wood, close by, stood out in curiously fragile and delicate tracery against a paling saffron glow, though overhead the sky was barred with motionless gray cloud. A sharp smell of peat-smoke followed them as they clattered past a low white ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... glacier that excavated its basin. The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in its pure depths; the winds ruffle its glassy surface, and the sun fills it with throbbing spangles, while its waves begin to lap and murmur around its leafless shores,—sun-spangles during the day and reflected stars at night its only flowers, the winds and the snow its only visitors. Meanwhile, the glacier continues to recede, and numerous rills, still younger than the lake itself, bring down glacier-mud, sand-grains, and pebbles, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... What mattered it that leafless trees might rock, Or snow might drift athwart his window-pane? He bare a charmed life against their shock, Secure from cold, hunger, and weather stain; Fixed in his right, and born to good estate, From common ills set by ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... had met to sell their meal, pledge their superfluous rags, and drink their gains. It may be added, that he loved to walk in solitary spots; that his chief musing-ground was the banks of the Ayr; the season most congenial to his fancy that of winter, when the winds were heard in the leafless woods, and the voice of the swollen streams came from vale and hill; and that he seldom composed a whole poem at once, but satisfied with a few fervent verses, laid the subject aside, till the muse summoned him to another exertion of fancy. In a little back closet, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... blackened the budding mesquite trees, and their twigs still showed no signs of sprouting. Occasionally we came across open space where there was nothing but short brown grass. In most places, however, the leafless, sprawling mesquites were scattered rather thinly over the ground, cutting off an extensive view and merely adding to the melancholy barrenness of the landscape. The road was nothing but a couple of dusty wheel-tracks; the ground was parched, and the grass cropped ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... cold November day. A rude north wind raved among the leafless oaks that defied its power with their rugged, unclad arms. The heavy masses of clouds were mirrored darkly in the spring, and the pine, grown to lofty stature, rocked swiftly to and fro as the fierce ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various |
