"Petal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that she was not heated by the walk. The drops of perspiration on her forehead were like dew on the cool, white petal of a flower. He looked at her figure of grace and strength, solid and supple, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... orientale. 2-4 ft. June. Flowers 6-8 in. across; deep scarlet, with a purple spot at the base of each petal. There are other varieties of pink, orange, and ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... Death will never find us in the heart of the wood, The song is in my blood, night and day: We will pluck a scented petal from the Rose upon the Rood Where Love lies bleeding on the way. We will listen to the linnet and watch the waters leap, When the clouds go dreaming by, And under the wild roses and the stars we will sleep, And wander on ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... to upturn to the warm air Half-germinating spices, mere decay Produces richer life, and day by day New pollen on the lily-petal grows, And still more labyrinthine buds ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl. And on the top-most spray of the Rose-tree there blossomed a marvellous rose, petal following petal, as song followed song. Pale was it, at first, as the mist that hangs over the river—pale as the feet of the morning, and silver as the wings of the dawn. As the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, as the shadow of a rose in a water-pool, so was the rose that blossomed ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... stir in the air, no stir in the sea Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are Now, now the mirth comes Now ponder well, you parents dear Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white Now ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... I reached my mother. There was nothing scared or faded about her, and she was dreadfully sick too, once in a while since she had the fever. She was a little bit of a woman, coloured like a wild rose petal, face and body—a piece of pink porcelain Dutch, father said. She had brown eyes, hair like silk, and she always had three best dresses. There was one of alpaca or woollen, of black, gray or brown, and two silks. Always ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... a languorous gloom, And heavy-headed poppies drip perfume In secret arbours set in garden close; And all the air, one glorious breath of rose, Shakes not a dainty petal from the trees. Nor stirs a ripple on the ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... shade of yellow, and extremely brilliant. It is, in shape and size, exactly like the flower of the jonquil. In the center is inserted, with all the nice finish of art (or rather of nature, for it is her work), a polished piece of quartz, of the purest shade of pink, and between each radiant petal is set a tiny crystal of colorless quartz, every one of which flashes like a real diamond. It is known beyond doubt to be a real live specimen, as many saw it when it was first taken from the earth, and the owner has carried it carelessly in his pocket ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... tulip-bulbs emerging from the seed, Year after year unknown to sex proceed; Erewhile the stamens and the styles display Their petal-curtains, and adorn the day; The beaux and beauties in each blossom glow With wedded joy, or amatorial woe. 130 Unmarried Aphides prolific prove For nine successions uninform'd of love; New sexes next with ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... strewn thoughts o'er the sweet vernal dale, These on the hearts of the flowers bestowing, Therefore, when open the chalices glowing, Whispers each petal ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... now in her tenth year, nor an idler in her solitude. Do you wish for a flowery bracelet for the neck of a chosen one, whose perfumes may mingle with the bosom-balm of her virgin beauty? The orphan of Wood-edge will wreath it of blossoms cropt before the sun hath melted the dew on leaf or petal. Will you be for carrying away with you to the far-off city some pretty little sylvan toy, to remind you of Ambleside and Rydal, and other beautiful names of beautiful localities near the lucid waters of ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... India resembles that of America in most particulars. It is there often placed in alternate rows with rice, and after the rice-harvest is over puts forth a beautiful yellow flower with a crimson eye in each petal; this is succeeded by a green pod filled with a white pulp, which as it ripens turns brown, and then separates into several divisions containing the cotton. A luxuriant field, says Forbes in his "Oriental Memoirs," "exhibits at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... knotted branches of the tree are upraised as in benediction: and petals—petals, fluttering, drifting, turning,—interminable white petals fall silently in the stillness. Neither speaks: for there is no need. Silently he brushes a petal from the blackness of her hair, and silently he kisses her. The lake is dusky and hard-seeming as jade. Two lonely stars hang low in the green sky. It is droll that the chest of a man is hairy, oh, very droll! And a bird is singing, a silvery needle of sound moves fitfully ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... difficult to tell. "Look," said he, "I have in that Japanese vase two roses gathered yesterday evening in the bud from the governor's garden; this morning they have blown and spread their vermilion chalices beneath my gaze; with every opening petal they unfold the treasures of their perfume, filling my chamber with a fragrance that embalms it. Look now on these two roses; even among roses these are beautiful, and the rose is the most beautiful of flowers. Why, then, do you bid me desire ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... her three celluloid fish and had trotted down the path. She wore her pink rompers, and as she bobbed along she was like a mammoth rose-petal blown ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... This, of course, is difficult at first, but with the proper training the pupil should be able to see the phrases at a glance, just as a botanist in examining a new flower would divide it in his mind's eye into its different parts. He would never mistake the calyx for a petal, and he would be able to determine at once the peculiarities of each part. In addition to the melodic phrases the pupil should be able to see the metrical divisions which underlie the form of the piece. He should be able to tell whether the composition is one of eight-measure ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... towards the other sex—thus to mistake the sweet, liberal, but womanly frankness of a noble and generous disposition. Still, it was of no avail to reason with myself nor to upbraid myself. Pertinaciously the thought, "Zenobia is a wife; Zenobia has lived and loved! There is no folded petal, no latent dewdrop, in this perfectly developed rose!"—irresistibly that thought drove out all other conclusions, as often as my mind reverted ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fine azure blue and most singular form, composed of two petals, the upper petal very short and broad, with a whitish mucro or point, the sides of which lap over the base of the other petal; inferior petal about two inches and a half in length, the lower half somewhat triangular, grooved on the two lowermost sides, and keeled at bottom, the ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 4 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... drawn herself from many thousand years, And all the separate Edens of this earth, To centre in this place and time. I listen'd, And her words stole with most prevailing sweetness Into my heart, as thronged fancies come, All unawares, into the poet's brain; Or as the dew-drops on the petal hung, When summer winds break their soft sleep with sighs, Creep down into the bottom of the flower. Her words were like a coronal of wild blooms Strung in the very negligence of Art, Or in the art of Nature, where each rose Doth faint upon the bosom ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... has white tips to petal and sepal; the crimson spot keeps its place; and the inside of the flower is deep red—an inversion of the usual colouring. Mr. Lange could scarcely fail to observe this peculiarity, but he seems to have thought little of it. Mr. Cookson, paying him ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... swiftly, before your eyes, the first of the hundred petals detaches its delicate edges, and springs back, opening towards the water, while its white reflection opens to meet it from below. Many moments of repose follow,—you watch,—another petal trembles, detaches, springs open, and is still. Then another, and another, and another. Each movement is so quiet, yet so decided, so living, so human, that the radiant creature seems a Musidora of the water, and you almost blush with a sense of guilt, in gazing on that peerless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the petals of a marguerite, muttering "he loves me—he loves me not," her heart flutters in momentary anguish with every "not," till the next petal soothes it again. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... death's loud thunder came upon him, Though death's loud thunder struck him down— The boughs and the proud thoughts swept through the thunder, Till he saw our wide nation, each State a flower, Each petal a park for holy feet, With wild fawns merry on every street, With wild fawns merry on every street, The vista of ten ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... should one expect when a man has such a little sweetmeat, such a little syrup drop, such a rose petal—Come, come, you ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... in its debauch of sun-lit ether! The sea, too, although it reeled slightly, unsteadily rising only to fall away, what a radiance of color it maintained! Here in the garden the drowsy air would lift a flower petal, as some dreamer sunk in hasheesh slumber might touch a loved hand, only to let it slip away in nerveless impotence. Never had the charm of this Normandy sea-coast been as compelling; never had the divine ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... heavy with eels. Give back to me the blue gleaning under the moon, and my timid and clandestine loves amid the wild sorrel, where I could no longer distinguish the rosy tongue of my beloved from the dew-laden petal of the eglantine which had fallen upon the grass. Give back to me my weakness, oh thou, my dear heart. And go, and say unto God, that I can ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... not, for what time the wain Was loosened and the lily's petal furled, Then I would rise, climb the old wall again, And pausing look forth on the sundown world, Scan the wide reaches of the wondrous plain, The hamlet sites where settling smoke lay curled, The poplar-bordered roads, and far away Fair snowpeaks ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... stay a day longer. And all that day he did nothing but visit, arm in arm with Noemi, all the places which had been witnesses of his tranquil happiness; here he plucked from a tree, and there from a flowery cluster, some leaflet to keep as a memorial. On every leaf and petal whole romances were written which only ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... baby, one of the type the Temple women prize, and will take so much trouble to rear. The little head was finely formed, and the tiny face, in its minute perfection of feature, looked as if some fairy had shaped it out of a cream rose-petal. Alas, there was that look we know so well and fear so much—that look of not belonging to us, the elsewhere, other-world look. But we could not do this work at all, we would not have the heart to do it, if we did not hope. So we go ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... without bending outside, so that the whole looks like an inverted pentapod; but gradually the tips of the arms bend outward as the arms diverge more and more, and when fully expanded the crown has the appearance of a lily of the L. martagon type, in which each petal is curved upon itself, the pinnules of the arms spreading laterally more and more, as the crown is more fully open. I have not been able to detect any motion in the stem traceable to contraction, though there is no stiffness ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... it had been a mother's shoulder. That instant she was asleep. Once in the night she woke. A dream waked her. It seemed to her that a great white flower had blossomed in the window of her room and that in the heart of it was Dickie's face, tender and as pale as a petal. It drew near to her and bent over her wistfully. She held out her arms with a piteous longing to comfort his wistfulness and woke. Her face was wet with the mystery of dream tears. The flower dwindled to a ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... little use for me to tell you that Hetty's cheek was like a rose-petal, that dimples played about her pouting lips, that her large dark eyes hid a soft roguishness under their long lashes, and that her curly hair, though all pushed back under her round cap while she was at work, stole back in dark delicate rings on her forehead, and about her white shell-like ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... her to play down first. Yet she recognized the instinct of his manhood to rescue the confusion of her embarrassment when he put forward his hand casually and said—"See my roses, Miss Eleanor? They are a new variety of American Beauties. See, each petal has a white veining? Know how those roses are produced? Ages and ages of poor trash worthless common roses have been sacrificed to produce this ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... step-children, with only one chair; the two small gay petals are the daughters, with a chair each; and the large gay petal is the wife, with two chairs. To find the father, one must strip away the petals until the stamens and pistils are bare. These then bear a fanciful resemblance to an old man with a flannel wrapper about his neck, having his shoulders upraised, and his feet in a bath tub. The French also ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... planted, flung sackfuls of bloom at his feet. They poured themselves out in abandoned, open-armed, spendthrift, wasteful—perfectly prodigal—quantities of rose-tinted petal; prodigal as a river which flows full to the brim, never questioning but what there will be plenty of water ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... beside the river. And always her hair was blond and soft and loosely curling, her eyes of a brown so bright and clear that it seemed to glow with hidden gold, and her face a full oval, tinted like the petal of a great ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... ye?" inquired old Mrs. Bray, sharply. "There's nothin' to whisper about as I know. Did ever you see anything purtier than this pink chiny piece, Myry? It broke so clean, and curved as a petal. And this here piece of George's wife's lemonade-glass—it's handsome as a brooch. See how the flower come out! Why, Myry, I've set here and fairly ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of them—commemorated in the two showy blue petals of the blossom—published their works; the third, lacking application and ambition, amounted to nothing, like the inconspicuous whitish third petal! Happily Kaspar Commelyn died in 1731, before the joke was perpetrated in "Species Plantarum." Soon after noon, the day-flower's petals roll ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... Hunt, of the Old Water-colour Society, in this respect, continually, and make frequent memoranda of the variegations in flowers; not painting the flower completely, but laying the ground colour of one petal, and painting the spots on it with studious precision: a series of single petals of lilies, geraniums, tulips, &c., numbered with proper reference to their position in the flower, will be interesting to you on many grounds besides those of art. Be ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... like lotus-petal, sweet her tender jasmine form, And a maiden's stainless honour ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... lane to Claygate the great elder-bushes are coming into flower, each petal a creamy-white. The dogwood, too, is opening, and the wild guelder-roses there are in full bloom. There is a stile from which a path leads across the fields thence to Hook. The field by the stile was fed off in spring, and now is ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... is yet a great season for wild flowers; oceans of them line the roads through the woods, border the edges of the water-runlets, grow all along the old fences, and are scatter'd in profusion over the fields. An eight-petal'd blossom of gold-yellow, clear and bright, with a brown tuft in the middle, nearly as large as a silver half-dollar, is very common; yesterday on a long drive I noticed it thickly lining the borders of the brooks everywhere. Then there is a beautiful ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... bring. That year the spring came early, and they went often together into the country. And that year when all the world was white with blossom the snow came and laid upon earth's bridal veil a white shroud. Every cup of May blossom, every petal of hawthorn, bent beneath its burden of snow. And so it was in the full spring-tide of Rachel's heart. The snow came down upon it. She discovered at last that though he loved her he did not wish to marry her; that even from the time of that ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... new sense of beauty and perfection. Flowers, each with a genealogy reaching unbroken through the Flood back to the overhanging blossoms of Eden, have come down to us, as it were, only in their travelling costume, with their best dresses packed away in stamen, or petal, or private seedcase, to be brought out at the end of fifty centuries at the touch of human genius. Those of which Solomon sang in his time, and which exceeded his glory in their every-day array, even "the hyssop by the wall," never showed, on the gala-days of his Egyptian bride, the hidden ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... L'Her. (STUARTIA.) Leaves thick, ovate, acuminate, acute at base, obscurely mucronate, serrate, finely pubescent, 3 to 4 in. long, one half as wide. Flowers whitish cream-colored, one petal much the smallest; stamens of the same ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... Tulip from Batavia's shore; The thrifty Fleming for my beauty rare Pays a king's ransom, when that I am fair, And tall, and straight, and pure my petal's core. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... its uncluttered, sane, forceful orderliness. It was rather like Hunter himself—polished, perfect, with a note of finality and of fitness upon it like a hall-mark. Nothing out of keeping, nothing overdone. Even the red petal fallen from the pottery vase on the white marble mantel was a last ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... flowers in the light of a window to show its crisp details, its delicate contrasts, its arabesques of color, and allow the sovereign lady to see a tear upon some petal more expanded than the rest. What do we give to God? perfumes, light, and song, the purest expression of our nature. Well, these offerings to God, are they not likewise offered to love in this poem of luminous flowers murmuring their sadness to the heart, cherishing ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... over him, and her lips brushed his. Faintly, like the touch of a rose petal, and the perfume of her hair ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... abstractedly from the vase at her side, and began picking it to pieces, floret after floret, with twitching fingers. She was deeply moved. "Well, consider his family history," she burst out at last, looking up at me with her large brown eyes as she reached the last petal. "Heredity counts.... ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... granules, from any similar, stipitate species. It varies a little according to locality. Ohio specimens are a little larger and have thicker and more calcareous stipes than is usual in those from Philadelphia. The walls of the sporangia when fully matured generally break into several petal-like segments which finally become reflexed. The description given by ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... weak, as when he doubts whether each curvature of the beak of humming-birds is of service to each species. He admits, perhaps too fully, that I have shown the use of each little ridge and shape of each petal in orchids, and how strange he does not extend the view to humming-birds. Still odder, it seems to me, all that he says on beauty, which I should have thought a nonentity, except in the mind of some ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... will be in here five minutes after you are out," he said, curtly. "You have no message—" He paused to pick up from the floor a petal of his flower that had fallen. Then he walked to the window and looked out. Standing there, with his back to Cartoner, he went on: "No message ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... carefully, enriched and prepared perfectly for the seed; when rain is abundant, sunshine plenteous and mother-earth's spring quickening is instinctive, is it to be wondered at that the rootlet delves, the plantlet lifts itself, the bud forms quickly, and unexpectedly spreads its petal-star to the sunlight which enhances its beauty and fructifies its work of reproduction? The natural laws, in this case, work to their prescribed end along lines of favoring circumstance—and Love is but the working out of the greatest of all Nature's ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... arms bare and their hair gathered gracefully about their shapely heads, looking like cherubim drunk with light, floating in spheres of harmony and beauty, I would think: "Ah, what a garden, what flowers to gather, to breathe! Ah! Marguerites, Marguerites! What will your last petal say to him who plucks it? A little, a little, but not all. That is the moral of the world, that is the end of your smiles. It is over this terrible abyss that you are walking in your spangled gauze; ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... to tell Mr. Perkins. She felt better already in her conscience, she declared, and even sang as she set about rearranging her roses. Each one of these she named with a girl's name, Johnnie assisting; and the two were able, by the curl of a petal, or the number of leaves on a stem, or some other tiny sign, to tell Cora from Alice, and Elaine from Blanchefleur, and the Princess Mary from Buddir al Buddoor, as well as to recognize Rebecca, and Julia, and Anastasia, and Gertie, and June—and so on through a list that ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... and Marianna grew to be quite the loveliest lass in all the world. Her hair was as black as the raven's wing, her eyes were as blue as the midsummer sea, and her skin was fair as the petal of a rose. One spring morning a little yellow bird flew into the cedar grove, and gave the dwarf a letter which it held in ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... there still springs up a flower seeking for air and light in the midst of a smothering mass of weeds. They needed no kindly gardener's hand to make them grow luxuriantly; can barely put out a pale petal unless cared for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is this: that nature iterates her means perpetually on successive planes. In the old aphorism, nature is always self-similar. In the plant, the eye or germinative point opens to a leaf, then to another leaf, with a power of transforming the leaf into radicle, stamen, pistil, petal, bract, sepal, or seed. The whole art of the plant is still to repeat leaf on leaf without end, the more or less of heat, light, moisture, and food, determining the form it shall assume. In the animal, nature ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... or elsewhere, some sound or scent or sight of life, suddenly perceived—always of life! He had often been observed gazing with peculiar gravity at a dead flower, bee, bird, or beetle, and, if spoken to at such a moment, would say, "Gone!" touching a wing or petal with his finger. To conceive of what happened after death did not apparently come within the few large conclusions of his reflective powers. That quaint grief of his in the presence of the death of things ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... respectful manservant stood ready. Then came the large hall, with its noiseless carpets and great Chinese jars, its lacquered cabinets and the wide staircase, and floating down the wide staircase, impatient to greet him, light and shining as a flower petal, sweet and welcoming, radiating a joyfulness as cool and clear as a dewy morning, came his mother. "WELL, little man, my son," she would cry in her happy singing ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... seen at a distance before her features were discernible. Her eyes were of a gray-blue that changed in shade with her swiftly varying moods. Her lower lip was full and red, the upper one firm and repressed with the dull crimson of a fading rose-petal. Her shapely arms and legs were restless, seemingly impatient to break into some quickly moving dance. She was extraordinarily alive. Vitality flashed from her with every gesture, and her mind, a thing of caprice and whim, knew no boundaries ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... She spoke of Johnson, of Dickens, and of Balzac as though they had died but yesterday. She was like one who had been everywhere and yet saw everything through a veil that bewildered her. In her simplicity she unfolded herself to Philip, leaf by leaf, petal by petal, like the morning apios that surrenders its mysteries to the sun. She knew the world which he had come from, its people, its cities, its greatness; and yet her knowledge was like that of the blind. She knew, but she had never seen; and in her wistfulness ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... story, "coo-roo, coo-roo," Mingles with the wooing note That bubbles from the song-bird's throat; Where on waves of rosy light at play, Mingle a thousand airy minions, And drifting as on a golden bay, The butterfly with his petal pinions, From isle to isle of his fair dominions Floats with the languid tides away; Where the squirrel and rabbit shyly mate, And none so timid but finds her fate; The meek hen-robin upon the nest Thrills to her lover's flaming breast. Youth, ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... baby. "We have named her for you, darling," she wrote. "Oh, Rose, she has brought me such deep happiness. I wonder if this ecstasy can last. Her little hand against my breast—it is so warm and soft—like a flower's curling petal, as delicate and as beautiful as a butterfly's wing. I never knew until now what life really meant." As Rose reread the throbbing lines and pictured the eager-eyed young mother, her own sweet face glowed ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... mantelpiece, and while she gazed at the engraving she knew that he was looking at her and was moving nearer; she felt that he was going to kiss her, but she did not resist this time though the colour was rising in her throat, and just under the exquisitely shaped petal of peach-blossom on which his eyes were fixed, and which was really only the tip of her ear, though it was so like the leaf of a flower that the scent of the bloom came to his memory when his lips touched the ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... on a white-crepe peignoir, and there was no color in her cheeks. Her skin had the soft whiteness of a rose petal. Her eyes were like stars. As I lay there and looked at her I wondered if it was Anthony's kisses or the memory of Olaf's singing which had made her ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... grass is thinner are the heads of purple clover; pluck one of these, and while meditating draw forth petal after petal and imbibe the honey with the lips till nothing remains but the green framework, like stolen jewellery from which the gems have been taken. Torn pink ragged robins through whose petals a comb seems to have been remorselessly ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... plants. The airs were always astir, helping the soft designs of Nature, loosening a leaf from its stem and bearing it to the sand, striking a berry from its place and causing it to drop at Domini's feet, giving a faded geranium petal the courage to leave its more vivid companions and resign itself to the loss of the place it could no longer fill with beauty. Very delicate was the touch of the dying upon the yellow sand. It increased the sense of pervading mystery and made Domini more ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... of chocolate, little companion!" Hunger, too, awoke, and she dropped two sticks of chocolate into the water. "The fire dies down to-night. To-morrow I shall be gone." A petal from the apple blossom on the mantelpiece fell against ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... in his composition. Life and the world are fine, but not as an abiding place; as an arena—yes, an arena gorgeously curtained with sea and sky, mountains and broad prospects, decorated with all the delicate magnificence of leaf tracery and flower petal and feather, soft fur and the shining wonder of living skin, musical with thunder and the singing of birds; but an arena nevertheless, an arena which offers no seats for idle spectators, in which one must will and do, decide, strike and strike ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... of their accommodating nature lies in the fact that within the Hyacinth or Tulip every petal of the coming flower is already stored. During the five or six years of its progressive life the capacities of the bulb have been steadily conserved, and we have but to unfold its beauty, aiming at short stout growth and intensity of colour. Of course ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... in the middle of the floor, its glass was shattered, and out of each of its eight panels streamed a great flame six or seven feet high, like the petal of an enormous flower. Facing these flames stood Miss Ford and Mr. Tovey, hand in hand, each singing a different song very earnestly. Lady Arabel had found somewhere a patent fire extinguisher, and was putting on her glasses in order to read the directions. ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... flash of blue, at another flowed on in darkness, as it were, in wrath. Here and there a delicate mist moved strangely over the water, and the water-lilies' cups shone white in maiden pomp with every petal open to its full, as though they knew their safety out of reach. I longed to pick one of them, and behold, I found myself at once on the river's surface.... The damp air struck me an angry blow in the face, just as I broke the thick stalk of a great flower. We began to fly across from bank ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... that fold within them, Closed and covered from our sight, Many a richly tinted petal, Never looked on by the light: Fain to see their shrouded faces, Sun and dew are long at strife, Till at length the sweet buds open— Such a bud ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... skin was dark and smooth as satin. Even her long throat and nervous hands, and the slim, lace-covered arms, were of the same satin-textured duskiness as the heart-shaped face, with its laughing red mouth. Her cheekbones were rather high and touched with colour, as if a geranium petal had been rubbed across them, just under the brown shadows beneath the eyes. Her chin was small and pointed, her forehead low and broad, and this, with the slight prominence of the cheekbones and the narrowing of the chin, gave ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... dreamily, "how I shall match that rose color of her cheek, not havin' her by? I shall taik the innah petal of a rose and maik the little ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... such a great deal of honest enthusiasm. He himself did not join in the singing; he was otherwise occupied. With his arms around two of the girls, drinking now and then from the great goblet three more were holding, and winking and laughing at the extra two, he made his joyous way down the petal-strewn paths of ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... What the tyranny really had grown to can be gauged nowhere so well as in country lodgings, where the most ordinary things of design and decoration have sifted down and gathered together, so that foolish ornament gains a cumulative force and achieves a conspicuous commonness. Stem and petal and leaf—the fluent forms that a man has not by heart but certainly by rote—are woven, printed, cast, and stamped wherever restlessness and insimplicity have feared to leave plain spaces. The most ugly of all imaginable rooms, ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... there, selling daffodils along the windy street, Poor drooping, dusty daffodils — but oh! so Summer sweet! Green stems that stab with loveliness, rich petal-cups to hold The wine of Spring to lips that cling like bees about ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... news could be received from outside, but thanks to the United States Minister, who had resolved to remain in Paris, a letter arrived from time to time. It was in this way that I received a thin slip of paper, as soft as a primrose petal, bringing me the following message: "Every one well. Courage. A thousand kisses.—Your mother." This impalpable missive dated from seventeen ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... the stream of petal beauty flows, Softly the white strings trickle down and shine. Oh! speak to me, my love, I crave a rose. Sing me a song, for I would ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... variety, but with the actually velvet look of a bee's body. The girls at school had told her her eyes looked good to stroke. Her nose was an indeterminate snub, her chin delightfully round but retreating, falling away from a mouth like a baby's—so fine in texture, so petal soft, so utterly helpless-looking, with its glint of two small square teeth. Only when she looked obstinate and closed her mouth the charm went out of her face as though wiped off like a tangible thing. ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... appealing. He began to note vaguely that her dresses were better, and oftener changed, than they had been at Mallowe. A more observant man might have been touched by the suggestion that she was unfolding petal by petal like a flower, and that each carefully chosen costume was a new petal. He did not in the least suspect the reverent eagerness of her care of herself as an object hoping to render itself worthy of his ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... petal, and a thorn Upon a common summer's morn, A flash of dew, a bee or two, A breeze A caper in the trees, ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... which now adorns the National Gallery, had been painted in the previous year. You will have seen it, or at least you will have seen one of its numerous replicas, and you will have remarked its singular, delicate, rose-petal loveliness—the gleaming golden head, the flawless outline of face and feature, the immaculate skin, the dark blue eyes with ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... A dewdrop on the petal of a flower is nearly globular; but it is not quite a globe, because the gravitation presses it against the flower and somewhat distorts the shape. A falling drop of rain is a globe; a drop of oil suspended in a liquid with which it does not mix forms a globe. Passing ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... see, this little one shan't count to make up," said Levin, tearing off a little half-grown petal. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... either his honesty or his courage. Even the private secretary of His Excellency hesitated to have this rubber prince and mahogany baron haled before him as a common citizen of Anchuria. So he sent Goodwin a flowery epistle, each word-petal dripping with honey, requesting the favour of an interview. Goodwin replied with an invitation to ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... willow-wrens, and hops from bough to bough, examining every part for food; it also runs up the stems of the crown-imperials, and, putting its head into the bells of those flowers, sips the liquor which stands in the nectarium of each petal. Sometimes it feeds on the ground like the hedge- sparrow, by hopping about on ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... . the miracle happened. Michael, with the hand that had just taken hers, stroked a petal of this prized vegetable, with no thought in his mind stronger than the thoughts that had been indigenous there since Christmas. As his finger first touched the rim of the town-bred petals, undersized yet not quite lacking in "rose-quality," he had intended nothing ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... tenderly. The dark cloak about her had fallen a little aside, and showed a gleam of white neck emerging from snowy drapery underneath—it was, to his fancy, as though a white rose- petal had been suddenly and delicately unfurled. He longed to kiss that virginal whiteness, and trembled at the audacity of his ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... and was still, the unrivaled beauty of Seddon Hall. Her complexion was as soft and pink as a rose petal, and her shimmering golden hair and big blue eyes made you think of gardens and Dresden china. She was never known to hurry, and she spoke with a soft lazy drawl, which, curiously enough, never irritated any one. She ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... we have time this afternoon, I will go over this list with you. Bring me those five boxes on the first row of shelves." I brought the boxes to her room and placed them on the table. She opened the first one and it contained a most beautiful peony made of coral and jade and each petal trembled like a real flower. This flower was made by stringing the petals which were made of coral on very fine brass wire, also the leaves which were made of pure jade. She took this flower and placed ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... the most glorious yellow in the picture was the Sulphur Butterfly. He zigzagged lightly down the hedgerow, catching the sunshine at every turn, and the marigolds drooped their heads at the sight of him. Close to the nest he dropped on a briar-leaf, like a floating petal. He was more than colour now—he was form. For a full minute he poised there motionless, the most exquisitely graceful, the most exquisitely coloured of all our butterflies, and, for a full ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... while the east kindled and glowed. Above us the clouds changed from grey to dove-colour, from that to rose-pink; and then, straight before us, the sun came up and gave us gold for redness. The little purple wild flowers opened, showing us where the night had left a jewel on every petal, and the sleepy soldiers plucked them as they passed and cheered themselves with their faint fragrance. The day, like the night, comes quickly there, and brings with it an even greater change. For in that last ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... as she lay asleep in the woods with the tears on her cheek like the dew-drops upon a rose petal! She was a dear little girl and he must take care of her and protect her. That scoundrel Temple! What were such men made for? ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... excuses and prostrate supplications had less effect upon the queen's anger than her own teaks; like water upon the fire they quenched the blaze of her indignation. I am now only anxious for Sagarika. Her form, as delicate as the petal of the lotus, dissolving in the breath of inexperienced passion, has found a passage through the channels by which love penetrates, and is lodged deep in my heart. The friend to whom I could confide my secret sorrows ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... delineation, while it may convey accurately a part of the idea of a character, is not capable of transmitting the more volatile and subtle shades. You may mix your colors never so cunningly, and copy never so minutely every fold of every petal of the rose, and hang it so gracefully on its stem, as to present its very port and bearing, but where is its fragrance, its exquisite texture, and the dewy freshness which was ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... flush of sunrise crept down the snowy slopes of the mountains, until at last, with a quick sudden burst, it poured a flood of light into the valley, tinging our little white tent with a delicate pink, like that of a wild-rose petal, turning every pendent dewdrop into a twinkling brilliant, and lighting up the still water of the river, until it became a quivering, flashing mass of ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... longer and be permitted to save enough money to complete my orphans' home!" As the sun's warm beams lend a soft blush to the rose and pulsate the crimson tides through to the uttermost edge of each petal, so a great, loving sympathy, sang and sighed, thrilled and throbbed through the tones of the Swedish singer, and ravished the hearts of the people and ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... neck the tepid smoothness of a woman's arm. She, she! his Illusion, his Temptation; but how transformed, transfigured!—preternatural in her loveliness, incomprehensible in her charm! Delicate as a jasmine-petal the cheek that touched his own; deep as night, sweet as summer, the eyes that watched him. "Heart's-thief," her flower-lips whispered,—"heart's-thief, how have I sought for thee! How have I found thee! Sweets I bring thee, my beloved; lips and bosom; fruit and blossom. ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... For two years she had been thus tall, but the grace of her proportions had only of late fully determined itself. Her work in the City warehouse was unexacting; she had even a faint impress of rose-petal on each cheek, and her eye was excellently clear. Her lips, unfortunately never quite closed, betrayed faultless teeth. Her likeness to Richard was noteworthy; beyond question she understood the charm of her presence, and one ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... as Halvard placed a chair for her. She was, Woolfolk thought, lighter in spirit on the ketch than she had been on shore; there was the faintest imaginable stain on her petal-like cheeks; her eyes, like olive leaves, were almost gay. She sat with her slender knees crossed, her fine arms held with hands clasped behind her head, and clad in a crisply ironed, crude white dress, into the band of which she had thrust a ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... were swaying reeds of grace, and being in radiant spirits at the prospect of "going to Europe," were companions to lure a man to any desperate lengths. They laughed incessantly, as though they were chimes of silver bells; they had magnolia-petal skins which neither wind nor sun blemished; they had nice young manners, and soft moods in which their gazelle eyes melted and glowed and their long lashes drooped. They could dance, they played on guitars, and they sang. They were as ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... forth from the shelter, and developed under the calm and genial atmosphere of holy, happy love—can such affection as Harley L'Estrange may proffer suffice to thee? Will not the blossoms, yet folded in the petal, wither away beneath the shade that may protect them from the storm, and yet shut them from the sun? Thou who, where thou givest love, seekest, though meekly, for love in return; to be the soul's sweet necessity, the life's household partner ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... line of leaf-cutting ants was passing, each bearing aloft a huge bit of green leaf, or a long yellow petal, or a halberd of a stamen. A shadow fell over the line, and I looked up to see an anthropomorphic enlargement of the ants,—the convicts winding up the steep bank, each with cot, lamp, table, pitcher, trunk, or aquarium balanced on his head,—all my possessions suspended between earth and sky by ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... snowfields. From the villages the people came out to meet him, and here and there from some castle of a greater importance a chieftain would ride out with his bodyguard, gay in velvets, and silks from Bokhara and chogas of gold kinkob, and offer to him gold dust twisted up in the petal of a flower, which he touched and remitted. He was escorted to polo-grounds and sat for hours witnessing sports and trials of skill, and at night to the music of kettledrums and pipes men and boys danced interminably before him. ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... of discretion, the maiden proceeds to choose the style of beauty she prefers. Will she be a Juno, a Venus, or a Helen? Will she have a Grecian nose, or one tip-tilted like the petal of a rose? Let her try the tip-tilted style first. The professor has an idea it is going to be fashionable. If afterwards she does not like it, there will be time to try the Grecian. It is difficult to ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... incapable, associated with the fall of monarchs and the fate of man, is for us only a professor, a piece of chalk, and a blackboard. The solemn and unapproachable skies we have vulgarized; we have peeped and botanized among the flowers of light, pulled off every petal, fumbled in every calyx, and reduced them to the bare stem of order and class. The stars can no longer maintain their divine reserves, but whenever there is a conjunction and congress of planets, every enterprising newspaper sends thither its special reporter with his telescope. Over those ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... I tell you she is too sweet. She has a round baby face with the loveliest violet eyes in the world and such a skin!—like a velvet rose petal!" His unabashed regard penetrated Sabine ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... promise to the gods, the divine Vishnu, ardent in the work, sought a birth-place among men. Dividing himself into four parts, he whose eyes resemble the lotus and the pulasa, the lotus petal-eyed, chose for his father Dasaratha the sovereign of men. The divine sages then with the Gandharvas, the Rudras, and the (different sorts of) Apsaras, in the most excellent strains, praised the destroyer of Madhu, (saying) "Root up ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... set above the country of the silver firs, I must go on until I find white columbine. Around the amphitheatres of the lake regions and above them to the limit of perennial drifts they gather flock-wise in splintered rock wastes. The crowds of them, the airy spread of sepals, the pale purity of the petal spurs, the quivering swing of bloom, obsesses the sense. One must learn to spare a little of the pang of inexpressible beauty, not to spend all one's purse in one shop. There is ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... the festival Thou holdest in the regions of romance, Where dragons lurk and elfin spirits dance, And pearls lie hid within each rose petal. What magic changes in life's crystal ball Shall thus transform earth's dullness at thy glance! Ride then the wind, a feather for thy lance, A pool thy sea, thy heaven a waterfall. So shall thy soul to fairy worlds belong, Where dust ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various
... talk quietly together as they sipped hot soup and crumbled rolls. Everything had been changed, the flowers were gone, furniture was back in place, and the upper front room had been opened widely to the suddenly spring-like afternoon. There was not a fallen violet petal to remind her descendants that the old mistress of forty full years was gone ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... physical condition, I was disposed toward a large charity. And yet I could not help wondering how some that I saw could walk among their roses and still look so glum and matter-of-fact. I felt as if I could kiss every velvet petal. ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... obliterate them; some massive and strong, like those in which the earth keeps her mineral treasures; then, at last, on a round charcoal disk, he traced out a perfect rose, in a fragrant white powder, which piled up under his fingers, petal after petal, circle after circle, till the feathery stamens were buried out of sight. Then, as we held our breath for fear of disturbing it, with a good-natured little chuckle, he shook it off into the fire, and by a few quick strokes ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... be moistened before they are applied to the wax. Warmth as well as moisture is essential for these. A glass of lukewarm water will answer the purpose; but great care must be taken to shake off the surplus water; for if the globules were to fall upon the petal, it would ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... changes and developments in characteristics than have been achieved by the most expert trainers of animals. He could not make a carrot into a calla; but he did take the dwarf natural calla plant and develop it into a splendid lily that bears flowers measuring a foot across the petal. He also multiplied the characteristic colors of the natural calla and has evolved great blossoms of a score of shades, from pure ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... the shrill ecstasy of life in nesting time. All is hot and fierce and passionate, ardent and unashamed in its exulting and importunate desire for life and love. And, do you know that the scarlet lilies are woven petal by petal from my heart's blood, these little quivering birds are my soul made incarnate music, these heavy perfumes are my emotions dissolved into aerial essence, this flaming blue and gold sky is the ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... of the stalk. Everything is sacrificed to the practical principle of keeping life together, and it is not until these stout-stemmed plants are cultivated and duly sheltered and watered, and can grow, as it were, with confidence, that they are able to do justice to the inherent beauty of penciled petal and veined leaf. Then the stem contracts to ordinary dimensions, and leaf and blossom expand into things which may well be a joy to the botanist's eye. A thousand times during that shady saunter did I envy my companions their scientific ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... tell of a love that grew without sight? So much of the love of romance and history is a matter of flower-petal complexions, heart-consuming eyes, satin lips, and all the form and color that make beauty. How can I make clear a love that grew strong and passionately demanding, knew delicate coquetries of advance and evasion, intimacy of minds like the meeting of eyes ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... as fine as the petal of a flower," cried Rameri. "Her voice is like the ring of pure gold, and—Oh! look, she is moving. Uarda, open your eyes, Uarda! When the sun rises we praise the Gods. Open your eyes! how thankful, how joyful I shall be if those ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is unfolding, petal by petal, and beginning to bloom gloriously," said Patsy to sympathetic Uncle John. "Could anyone be ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing shoes he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feet that were covered with ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... lonely room, tomb-like to thee as mine, Tomb-like as tomb of some returning ghost Seems only bright about my lily-flower. And, mayhap, while I wrong thee thus in thought Thou bendest o'er it, feigning for some ease Of parted ache conceits of poet-wit On petal and on stamen—let me try! If lilies be alike thine is as this, I wonder if ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... glance returned to the moth quivering like a flower petal in the breeze. "Well, there it is!" he said cheerily. "Let's give it the ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... domesticated animals there is great variation in colouring, but not in the majority of wild species. What the causes are that operate in the painting of the skin of an animal no one can say, any more than one can say how particular spots are arranged on the petal of a flower or the wing of a butterfly. That specific liveries have been designed by an all-wise Creator for purposes of recognition I have no doubt, as well as for purposes of deception and protection—in the former case to keep certain breeds pure, and in the latter to protect ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... lines of her figure and split at the side for walking; a tight-fitting bodice, light in color (a man knows little of the technicalities of such things); throat bare, with a flaring rolled collar behind—a throat like a rose-petal with the moonlight on it; arms bare, save for the ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... mysterious things; Its little life to peck and pipe, As long as cherries ripe and ripe, And minister unto the need Of baby-birds that feed and feed. This, Fragoletta, is a flower, Open and fragrant for an hour, A flower, a transitory thing, Each petal fleeting as a wing, All a May morning blows and blows, And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... She knew she was. But she looked so charming, a petal of spring, a quick incarnation of pink may and forget-me-not and laburnum, that I put down my pen and ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... lines. Above the "reversing layer" lies the scarlet "chromosphere" with "prominences" of various forms and dimensions rising high above the solar surface; and over, and embracing all, is the "corona," with its mysterious petal-like ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... Cut from red tissue paper a couple of dozen little leaf shaped pieces to be crimped and creased and coaxed into representing rose petals. On each petal write a familiar quotation relating ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... papers on the table, the seal-ring, with its quartered bearings,—all intensely there, and there in beauty of which no one could have dreamed that even flowers or gold were capable, far less parchment or steel. But every change of shade is felt, every rich and rubied line of petal followed; every subdued gleam in the soft blue of the enamel and bending of the gold touched with a hand whose patience of regard creates rather than paints. The jewel itself was not so precious as the rays of enduring light which ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... pink roses had lost a petal another box was brought to Miss Sterling's door. Her fingers quivered with hope as she untied the ribbon. The address was in the same firm, open hand. A shimmer of gold met her first glance, but the scrap of white she had longed for was missing. Without ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... owe their structure primarily to the arrested development of perfect ones, we may infer from such cases as that of the lower rudimentary petal in Viola being larger than the others, like the lower lip of the perfect flower,—from a vestige of a spur in the cleistogamic flowers of Impatiens,— from the ten stamens of Ononis being united into a tube,—and other such structures. The same ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... above the ink-black trunks and night, A pale pink petal drifted with the light; And presently the gates of sun swung wide, And through them flowed a crimson, scented tide: Roses that bloomed and bloomed again and died, Staining the lonely hills on ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... an apple blossom that had fallen into her lap. The fingers that held the petal tingled, and a ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... of a June midnight on the edge of the Milky Way,—a sheaf no Ceres owned, no foodfull garner coveted, but the satiating aliment of beauty, fresh as if God that hour had pronounced them good, and set his sign-manual upon each delicate tremulous petal, that might have been sapphire, save for its wistful translucence. And on the teapoy in the window stood two dainty baskets of clean willow, in which we had that day brought home chestnuts from the wood;—mine was full of nuts, but they were small and angular ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... my forehead glance and gleam, A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always, Since I have felt the fall, upon my lifetime's stream, Of one rose petal plucked from the ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... eyes," she answered, as a witch might have answered. "And I feel. I have the quick touch of the blind. I can feel the pores in a flower-petal." ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... read again—grew faint for love; I was thine utterly. Each separate page Was like a fluttering flower-petal, loosed From your own soul, and wafted thus to mine. Imprinted in each burning word was ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... the approach of a hand or instrument, retire like a snail, out of sight! On examination, there appears in the middle of a disk, filaments resembling spiders' legs, which moved briskly round a kind of petal. The filaments, or legs, have pincers to seize their prey, when the petals close, so that it cannot escape. Under this flower is the body of an animal, and it is probable he lives on the marine insects thrown by ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... broad June light On the open bank of the river, In the summer of manhood, young; And over the water bright Is a lair that is overhung With coned pink blooms that quiver And droop, till the water's breast Is of petal and leaf caressed. ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... build up the most prominent flower solidly in clay, putting on the outer petals separately. The back flower can have the near petals modelled, while the distant ones can be just indicated on plaque with incised lines. Don't attempt to copy every petal in clay, which is an impossibility, but try and get the general effect of the flower in your modelling. Take the prominent petals first, and put them on in their proper positions, and the less important petals can then be filled in in the intervening ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... songs, and after it a gay chanson, and then a string of epigrams. All true,—he said,—all flowers of his soul; only one with the corolla spread, and another with its disk half opened, and the third with the heart-leaves covered up and only a petal or two showing its tip through the calyx. The water-lily is the type of the poet's soul,—he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... duffers' work was assigned to the less experienced. The picked river-drivers stood upon the rocks of the upper rapid, pole in hand. And here, watching them with a lack-lustre eye, stood Mamie in the shade of a dogwood tree in full blossom. Now and again a soft white petal would fall upon the water and be swept away. Above the hemlocks soughed softly. At her feet the giant maidenhair raised its delicate fronds ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... of old, when, amid thoughts of thee, I asked, 'Loves she, loves she not?' and the poppy petal clung not, and gave no crackling sound, but withered on my ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... herself in the soiree kettle Out of her Ma's way, wise, wee maid! Wan was her lip as the lily's petal, Sad was the smile that over it played. Why doth she warble not? Is she afraid Of the hound that howls, or the moaning mole? Can it be on an errand she hath delayed? Hush thee, hush ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... Intelligence and Ignorance in equal measure, symbolizing the Peoples of the World. A gradual development to the higher forms of plant life is expressed upward in the altar tower, the conventionalized lily petal being the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... and trying to see how many of her darlings she can get together in one mountain wreath—daisies, anemones, columbines, erythroniums, larkspurs, etc., among which we wade knee-deep and waist-deep, the bright corollas in myriads touching petal to petal. Altogether this is the richest subalpine garden I ever found, a perfect floral elysium.—John Muir: "Our ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... of Kumm, a sleeve, a petal. See vol. iv. 107 and supra p. 267. The Moslem woman will show any part of her person rather than her face, instinctively knowing that the latter may be recognised whereas the former cannot. The traveller in the outer East will see ludicrous situations in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... own garden—commonplace things which the experienced naturalist has long since got utterly tired of. But has your rash objector ever lighted upon that rare larva which lives among the periwinkles, and exactly imitates a periwinkle petal? Has he ever discovered those deceptive creatures which pretend for all the world to be leaves of lady's-bedstraw, or dress themselves up as flowers of buttonweed? Has he ever hit upon those immoral caterpillars which ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... throne-room, near a little fountain that trickled continually a sort of silver-colored syrup, which made a drowsy sound as it fell. Then they flew away again, and after a good while returned carrying a pat of butter in a large magnolia petal. The magnolia petal was about the size of Mother's best turkey-platter, and as white and fragrant as the magnolias at home. And the pat of butter was about as large as a veal loaf. Of course it did not look in the least like a veal loaf; it looked exactly like butter—a delectable, ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... all—but lately there hath been A listless air beneath thy livery mien; Thyself art all fair petal, and sweet perfume, And smiles that light the damask of thy bloom; Yet some, pale distance seems ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... brightly colored like butterflies and brightly colored cups in the center of the crown. Wherever the sun reached, the ground was gilded by other odd orchids, small and yellow, in which two petals protruding on the sides of a third petal created a resemblance to the head of a little animal with big ears ending abruptly. In some places the forest was lined with bushes of wild jasmine draped in garlands with thin, climbing plants, blooming rose-colored. The shallow hollows and depressions were overgrown with ferns, ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... a silver flute, which he lovingly describes as "a petal on a harmony." He was a member of the Peabody Symphony orchestra of Baltimore, and Asger Hamerik, his director for six years, says of him: "In his hands the flute no longer remained a mere material instrument, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... flowers of yellow, red, and pink. Delicate little crucifers of white and yellow shine modestly below all these; little cream-colored flowers on slender scapes look skyward on every side; while others of purer white, with every variety of petal, crowd up among them. Standing now upon some hill-side that commands miles of landscape, one is dazzled with a blaze of color, from acres and acres of pink, great fields of violets, vast reaches of ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... most minute to the very largest flowers. The red martagon grows abundantly on our plains; the dog's tooth violet, Erythronium, with its spotted leaves and bending yellow blossom, delicately dashed with crimson spots within, and marked with fine purple lines on the outer part of the petal, proves a great attraction in our woods, where these plants increase: they form a beautiful bed; the leaves come up singly, one from each separate tuber. There are two varieties of this flower, the pale yellow, ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... wife, whose heart hung upon his story; "your husband's young friend, Aurelia, wears sometimes a camelia in her hair, and no diamond in the ball-room seems so costly as that perfect flower, which women envy, and for whose least and withered petal men sigh; yet, in the tropical solitudes of Brazil, how many a camelia bud drops from the bush that no eye has ever seen, which, had it flowered and been noticed, would have gilded all hearts ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... Petal by petal, Margaret had watched the rose of her youth fading and falling. More than all her sisters, she was endowed with a zest for existence. Her superb physical constitution cried out for the joy of life. She was made to be a great lover, a great mother; and to her, more than most, the sunshine ...
— Different Girls • Various
... hanging of the graceful head the width of a petal's top nearer to his shoulder—and then she ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... aside for a backward look over her shoulder, she made him, somehow, think of a hollyhock, by the tilt of her tall, slim, young figure, and by the colors of her hat from which her face flowered; no doubt the deep-crimson silk waist she wore, with its petal-edged ruffle flying free down her breast, had something to do with his fantastic notion. She was a brunette, with the lightness and delicacy that commonly go with the beauty of a blonde. She could not have been more than fifteen; her skirts had not yet matured ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... good specimens of the flower you wish to imitate, carefully pull off the petals of one, and, with a piece of tissue paper, cut out the shape of each, taking care to leave the shaft of the feather at least half an inch longer than the petal of the flower. Carefully bend the feather with the thumb and finger to the proper shape; mind ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... luscious effects. Study the works of William Hunt, of the Old Water-color Society, in this respect, continually, and make frequent memoranda of the variegations in flowers; not painting the flower completely, but laying the ground color of one petal, and painting the spots on it with studious precision: a series of single petals of lilies, geraniums, tulips, etc., numbered with proper reference to their position in the flower, will be interesting to you on many grounds besides ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin |
