"Plumy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unwelcom'd by a smile of joy; To me! slow with'ring to that silent grave Where all is blank and dreary! Yet once more The Spring eternal of the soul shall dawn, Unvisited by clouds, by storms, by change, Radiant and unexhausted! Then, ye buds, Ye plumy minstrels, and ye balmy gales, Adorn your little hour, and give your joys To bless the fond world-loving traveller, Who, smiling, measures the long flow'ry path That leads to death! For to such wanderers Life is a busy, pleasing, cheerful dream, And the last hour unwelcome. Not to me, Oh! not ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... bamboos with their plumy leafage hung over the road from each side, meeting and overlapping in the center until they formed an archway so dense that the tropical sun now high in the heavens penetrated it only at intervals. At times the wagon sank up to the hubs in the soft earth, and the muscles of the mules stood out ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... did look out of the window, set high up in the court house, and that he did see the elm trees covering a home which, despite all his perfidy and neglect was full of love for him—love that needed no high sleeves nor great plumy hats, nor twinkling silver bangles, nor jangling gold chatelaines, to make it beautiful. But let us make it of record and set it down here, in this instrument that the court rose, looked into the great ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... the valley from the north. The snow-horses went racing over the wrinkled ice, over the Don Flats, and over the marsh toward the lake, white, for they were driven snow, but on them, scattered dark, were riding plumy fragments of partridge ruffs—the famous rainbow ruffs. And they rode on the winter wind that night, away and away to the south, over the dark and boisterous lake, as they rode in the gloom of his Mad Moon flight, riding and ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... next morning the horses were hitched to the mowing machine, and Peter drove out to the meadow. The plumy heads of the tall timothy swayed on their slender stalks as they bowed before the breeze that swept over the meadow, making it look in the sunshine like the rippling ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... most beautiful production of the soil; if he looked up, it was to see the sky paley blue through the groinery of countless date-bearers, very patriarchs of their kind, so numerous and old, and of such mighty girth, so tall, so serried, so wide of branch, each branch so perfect with fronds, plumy and waxlike and brilliant, they seemed enchanters enchanted. Here was the grass coloring the very atmosphere; there the lake, cool and clear, rippling but a few feet under the surface, and helping the trees to their long life in old age. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... silence seemed cheerful there in the flecked sunlight. The spotted wood-gnats gyrated merrily, chased by dragon-flies; the shy wood-birds hopped from branch to twig, peering at us in friendly inquiry; a lithe, gray squirrel, plumy tail undulating, rambled serenely around the cage, sniffing at the ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... dahlias and tiger-lilies beneath the Transfiguration. So the drawing-room looked lovelily, and a fine rose-odor was diffused. All the blinds were open and the shades up, and a glory of greenness refreshed the eyes outside on the plumy, bowery hill and lawn. In this charming apartment I received my General. The most beautiful light of life beamed from his face at my recognition of his ideas, and at any expression of mine which showed a unity with his; or ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... author thus describes the courtship of Dendryphantes elegans: "While from three to five inches distant from her, he begins to wave his plumy first legs in a way that reminds one of a windmill. She eyes him fiercely, and he keeps at a proper distance for a long time. If he comes close she dashes at him, and he quickly retreats. Sometimes he becomes bolder, and when within an inch, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "Whither has Fancy led The plumy thoughts that circle through thy brain? Like birds about some mountain's lofty head, Singing a sweet refrain: There, without bound, I've been, and must ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... pine forest having been preserved, the trees had attained gigantic height, thrusting their plumy heads heavenward, as their lower limbs died; and year after year the mellow brown carpet of reddish straw deepened, forming a soft safe nidus for the seeds that sprang up and now gratefully embroidered it with masses of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... between the slim, fair English girl in her white gown and Panama hat and the dusky Egyptian, whose dark skin and closely-swathed robes gave her the look of some Old Testament character, a look borne out by the surroundings of reed-fringed river and plumy, tufted palms. In the third photograph Iris was on horseback; but it was the fourth and last which brought the blood to Anstice's brow, made his heart beat quickly with an emotion in which delight, regret, wild happiness and over-mastering ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... seriously. I don't want to be so aloof, but—I don't like to touch other people. It is rather horrid of me I suppose to be like those silky, plumy, luxurious Angora cats who never are civil to you and who always jump out of your arms at ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the plumy grasses beside her, and stared sulkily ahead of her. Evidently it was a great deal for her ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... along he picked a large bunch of the wayside flowers as an offering to Phoebe—purple knapweed and betony, the plumy dead-pink heads of hemp-agrimony, and tufts of strong yellow fleabane, all squeezed together in his hot little hand. The air seemed alive with butterflies and moths, white and brown and red, and clouds of the "blue skippers" that look like periwinkles blown to life. A bee shot past him so quickly ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... ear, And Mr. Walpole's pretty dear. He laughs and cries with mirth or spleen; He does not speak, but thinks, 'tis plain. One knows his little Guai's as well As if he'd little words to tell. Coil'd in a heap, a plumy wreathe, He sleeps, you hardly hear him breathe. Then he's so nice, who ever saw A drop that sullied his sofa? His bended leg!-what's this but sense?- Points out his little exigence. He looks and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... he lapped his new milk as usual at Uncle Roger's dairy door and then sat blandly on the flat stone before it, giving the world assurance of a cat, sleek sides glistening, plumy tail gracefully folded around his paws, brilliant eyes watching the stir and flicker of bare willow boughs in the twilight air above him. That was the last seen of him. In the morning ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... short suspense The plumy people streak their wings with oil, To throw the lucid moisture trickling off, And wait the approaching sign to strike at once Into ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... were busy with a picture too—not the less vivid because only her own imagination had painted it. Her deep, dreamy eyes passed over the landscape actually before them without catching one of its details: they were looking on a desolate stony plain, cracked and calcined by a fierce Indian sun—a few plumy palms in the background, and the rocky bed of a river half dried up—in the foreground a crowd of wild barbaric soldiery, with savage, swarthy features, bareheaded or white-turbaned; mingled with these were ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... off when used.[3] At a short distance from the beech, inland, was a lake of some extent, nearly surrounded by lofty, densely-wooded hills. Some wild ducks were seen, and a gun being fired at them, the report raised numbers of the 'plumy tribe,' filling the air with their screams, alarmed at a noise to which they had been unaccustomed. Several native graves were observed, which were very neat; a stone was placed at the head and the grave neatly covered over by plaited sections of the cocoa-nut frond; no particular enclosures ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... planned—makes a sudden clutch at the coveted prize. The object of her desire is really within her reach, Joan believes, and she shouts aloud in her delight. There is a flash of bead-like eyes, a waving of plumy tails, a scurry of flying feet, a chorus of queer, chattering cries, and, lo, the squirrels have disappeared, some up one tree, some up another—all except one, the very one which Darby desired to possess, ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... isles, Bedarra, has less than a square mile of superficial area; the smallest but 4 or 5 acres. The smaller are made up of confused masses of granite, for the most part so overgrown with fig trees, plumy palms, milkwoods, umbrella-trees, quandongs, eugenias, hibiscus bushes, bananas and lawyer vines, as to be unexplorable without a scrub-knife; for the soil among the rocks is soft and spongy, the purest of vegetable mould, and encourages ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... petals, streaming back Unto the steadfast dwelling of their joy. Faces had they of flame, and wings of gold; The rest was whiter than the driven snow. And as they flitted down into the flower, From range to range, fanning their plumy loins, Whisper'd the peace and ardour, which they won From that soft winnowing. Shadow none, the vast Interposition of such numerous flight Cast, from above, upon the flower, or view Obstructed aught. For, through the universe, Wherever ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... mem!" said the maid and Mistress Blatherwick who was close at hand, came; to which Maggie humbly but confidently making her request had it as kindly granted, and followed her to the barn to fill her pock with the light plumy covering of the husk of the oats, the mistress of Stonecross helping her the while and talking to her as she did so—for the soutar and his daughter were favourites with her and her husband, and they had not seen either of them ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... scornful of man and feared but one beast, the one who now advanced toward him along the wall. That long, silky fur, jet black save for two broad white stripes running down the back, and that plumy tail, could belong to but one creature. The skunk, returning from a neighborly visit to the Hermit's cabin, probably with a view to a meal of fat chicken, advanced with its usual air of owning the earth. This time ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... alive, and ready to shoot, Should the spring of the year Come dancing here— But I pity the flower without branch or root." "You think I am dead," A soft voice said, "Because not a branch or root I own. I never have died, But close I hide In a plumy seed that the wind has sown. Patient I wait through the long winter hours; You will see me again— I shall laugh at you then, Out of the eyes of a hundred flowers." ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... so striking-looking, from her long, graceful head to her plumy tail, that Toni could not resist a second look; and the dog's master had a good view of the girl whom he guessed to be the young mistress of Greenriver, the house which he had often admired as he passed by in his boat during the ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... holidays; they would always live together and be fond of each other. And the mill with its booming—the great chestnut-tree under which they played at houses—their own little river, the Ripple, where the banks seemed like home, and Tom was always seeing the water-rats, while Maggie gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds, which she forgot and dropped afterward—above all, the great Floss, along which they wandered with a sense of travel, to see the rushing spring-tide, the awful Eagre, come up like a hungry monster, or to see the Great Ash which had once wailed and groaned like a man—these things ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... Siargao, that the earthquakes need not shake them down, but built, in this case, upon the ground. A man to whom even the snakes of the forest were submissive, as they were to this man, had no need to perch in trees, as the rest of us must do, in order to sleep in safety. Above the house the plumy tops of a group of great palm trees waved in the air. Birds, more beautiful than any I had ever seen on the island, flirted their brilliant feathers in the trees around the house, and in the vines which laced the tops of the palm trees together a troop of monkeys was chattering. ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... politely disposed person would have called him a retriever, and his curly back and general appearance might have carried this off, but for his tail, which, instead of being straight and rat-like, was as plumy as the Prince of Wales's feathers, and curled unblushingly over his back, sideways, like a pug's. "It was a good one to wag," his master said, and, apart from the question of high breeding, it was handsome, and Rufus himself seemed proud ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... circle of wee pink toadstools, which indeed seemed fit for the elfin folk; a wild grapevine with a most delightfully arranged swing on which the two girls "teetered" away in great joy; shining pebbles, bits of rose-colored quartz, a forest of plumy ferns, and all such like things, over which the ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... at the palm-trees beyond the tamarisks, above whose plumy heads the evening star now rode in the azure blue of the night sky, the singing was taken up again after a pause; she heard once more the angelic greeting which had before struck her soul as so comforting and full of promise when she read it ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... grazing under the tall elms; that lane, where the wild bank, clothed with fern, and tufted with furze, and crowned by rich berried thorn, and thick shining holly on the one side, seems to vie in beauty with the picturesque old paling, the bright laurels, and the plumy cedars, on the other;—down that shady lane, until the sudden turn brings us to an opening where four roads meet, where a noble avenue turns down to the Great House; where the village church rears its modest spire from amidst its venerable ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... chapel by perambulating Rushbrooke Grange under the guidance of Mrs. Honeybone, the old housekeeper; but Esther perversely insisted upon seeing the garden at any rate, giving as her excuse that the Rector would like them to pay the visit. By now it was a pink and green May dusk; the air was plumy with moths' wings, heavy with the scent ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... with a lion at his feet, which is lying down with a book, its hair curving in accordance with its position, which was a beautiful consideration, and difficult to execute; not to mention that the same lion has short wings on its shoulders, with feathers so soft and plumy, that it seems almost incredible that the hand of a craftsman could have been able to imitate nature so closely. Besides this, he painted there a building that curves in a circular form after the manner of a theatre, with some statues so beautiful and so well ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... attacked her. Her hair had fallen out during the fever so that Papa thought it best to have it shaved close. Katy made a pretty silk-lined cap for her to wear, but the girls at school laughed at the cap, and that troubled Johnnie very much. Then, when the new hair grew, thick and soft as the plumy down on a bird's wing, a fresh affliction set in, for the hair came out in small round rings all over her head, which made her look like a baby. Elsie called her "Curly," and gradually the others adopted the name, till at last nobody used any other except the servants, who still ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... And to his crew, that sat consulting, brought Joyless triumphals of his hop't success, Ruin, and desperation, and dismay, Who durst so proudly tempt the Son of God. 580 So Satan fell and strait a fiery Globe Of Angels on full sail of wing flew nigh, Who on their plumy Vans receiv'd him soft From his uneasie station, and upbore As on a floating couch through the blithe Air, Then in a flowry valley set him down On a green bank, and set before him spred A table of Celestial Food, Divine, Ambrosial, Fruits fetcht from ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... he saw was the grandest-looking man he had ever seen. Indeed, he looked more like a bird than a man—a big bird with a big black crest. He was very tall. His feet were broad and white, like the feathered feet of some plumy bird, his legs were bare and brown and hairy. He was clothed in many colours. He had fur in front, which swung as he walked, and silver and shining stones about him. He held his head very high and from it drooped great black ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... its glory you must go to the woods in midwinter when it is laden with myriads of yellow flowers about the size of wheat grains, forming a noble illustration of Nature's immortal virility and vigor. The mature cones, about three-fourths of an inch long, born on the ends of the plumy branchlets, serve to enrich still more the surpassing beauty ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... fragrance. By the side of every "spruit" or brook one sees clumps of tall arum lilies filling every little water-washed hollow in the brook, and the ferns which make each ditch and water-course green and plumy have a separate shady beauty of their own. This is all in Nature's own free, open garden, and when the least cultivation or care is added to her bounteous luxuriance a magnificent garden for fruit, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... on every hillside are the groves 'where the mango apples grow,' their mass of dense rounded foliage looking not unlike our maples, and giving a pleasant sense of home to the northern sojourner. The feathery bamboo, most gigantic of grasses, runs in plumy lines across the country. Around the negro cottages, here and there, rise groups of the cocoanut palms, giving, more than anything else, a tropical character to the landscape. On a distant eminence may perhaps be seen a lofty ceiba or cotton tree, its white trunk rising sixty ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... And with the angelic choir made symphony; But in her cheek's rich tinge, and in the dark Of darkest hair and eyes, she bore a mark Of kinship to her generous mother-earth, The fervid land that gives the plumy palm-trees birth. ...
— How Lisa Loved the King • George Eliot
... lonely and faint, This lime-tree bower my prison! They, meantime, My Friends, whom I may never meet again, On springy heath, along the hill-top edge 5 Wander delighted, and look down, perchance, On that same rifted dell, where many an ash Twists its wild limbs beside the ferny rock Whose plumy[178:A] ferns forever nod and drip Spray'd by the waterfall. But chiefly thou 10 My gentle-hearted Charles! thou who ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... field glasses," replied Gethryn, giving them to her again, at the same time opening her big plumy fan and waving it to and fro ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... night. The moon was high in a sky which was perceptibly blue. In the west was still a faint glow, which was like a memory of a cowslip sunset. The street and the white house-front were plumy with soft tree shadows wavering in a gentle wind. Annie was glad when she was alone in the night. She needed a moment for solitariness and readjustment since one of the strongest readjustments on earth faced her—the ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to the school I like best," he answered, waving a plumy spray of asters as if pointing out the lovely autumn world about them, full of gay hues, ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... have seen my Amphitrite! She bore her plumy crown so grandly, you would have said she was indeed the queen of Actiniae. But, alas! she could not brook imprisonment, and, pining for the unwalled grottoes of Poseidon, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Herculean bend her sinewy limbs; With frolic eye she views the affrighted throng, 190 And shakes the meadows, as she towers along, With playful violence displays her charms, And bears her trembling lovers in her arms. So fair THALESTRIS shook her plumy crest, And bound in rigid mail her jutting breast; 195 Poised her long lance amid the walks of war, And Beauty thunder'd from Bellona's car; Greece arm'd in vain, her captive heroes wove The chains of conquest with the wreaths ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... another loud hail from up the path toward the house and down came the General at top speed, with a plumy setter frisking in his wake. "Aunt Viney says for you to come there to her this minute. They is a-going to be the party and it's right by the Bible to have it, some for Mr. Mark, too. Tobe Poteet said 'shoo' when I told him he couldn't come, 'cause they ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... tree is filled with waving plumes in every variety of attitude and motion. (See Frontispiece.) The bird itself is nearly as large as a crow, and is of a rich coffee brown colour. The head and neck is of a pure straw yellow above and rich metallic green beneath. The long plumy tufts of golden orange feathers spring from the sides beneath each wing, and when the bird is in repose are partly concealed by them. At the time of its excitement, however, the wings are raised vertically over the back, the head is bent down ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... high above the rest, Shakes his huge spear, and nods his plumy crest: In throngs around his native bands repair, And groves of lances ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... other things change, but that remains the same. For me, its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun, the pulsing of its surfbeat is in my ears. I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud rack. I can hear the spirits of its woodland solitudes, I can hear the splash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of the flowers that perished twenty years ago. And these ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... evidently not yet seen her and paused as if uncertain whether to advance. She stood in the open space beside the bench, just off the pathway leading from the gate to the house, along which he must advance should he decide to proceed farther. A pale, plumy spray of tamarisk intervened between them, otherwise he must have seen her. For some time he stood silent and motionless as if uncertain what to do, then he began to ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... endured; but it had already changed from gold to silver, and was changing from silver to gray. The long plumy shadows of the one or two trees in the garden faded more and more upon a dead background of dusk. In the sharpest and deepest shadow, which was the entrance to the house by the big French windows, Rosamund could watch ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... reminding me, by the lightness and buoyancy of their movements, of a flock of white plumy birds. Some of them threw themselves in half-reclining positions on the sofas and ottomans: some bent over the tables and examined the flowers and books: the rest gathered in a group round the fire: all talked in a low but clear tone which seemed habitual to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... when, amidst the fervor of the feast, The Tyrian hugs and fonds thee on her breast, And with sweet kisses in her arms constrains, Thou may'st infuse thy venom in her veins." The God of Love obeys, and sets aside His bow and quiver, and his plumy pride; He walks Iulus in his mother's sight, And in the sweet resemblance ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... great plumy feather fan to and fro, Sibyl looked across it at her companion, and answered in ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... warm," said Meta, tossing off her plumy hat, as she established herself, with her feet on the fender. "But where do you think I have been? You have so much to hear. But first—three guesses where ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... manners toned by the graces of Eastern civilization, were a strange contrast to the shaggy, elfish, ruddy-faced throng about them. This Christmas Eve they were telling the monks wonderful stories of the Holy Land; its beautiful, vine-clad hills; its tropical, luscious fruits; its towering, plumy palms and hoary cedars; the long lines of caravans that wound over the silent, pathless deserts to bring to its cities the riches of Oriental commerce; the palaces and heathen temples of those cities, and the traditional glory of the Temple, with its magnificence of gold, and precious stones, ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... she addressed, in the accents of wonder. "It is impossible!—I watched her green mantle —I watched her plumy bonnet as I saw her hurried from the field, and felt my own inability to follow to the rescue; nor did force or exertion altogether leave me till the waving of the robe and the dancing of the feathers were lost ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the presence and prosperity of the Templers, the spirit of the scene through which we passed was essentially Oriental. The straggling hedges of enormous cactus, the rows of plumy eucalyptus-trees, the budding figs and mulberries, gave it a semi-tropical touch and along the highway we encountered fragments of the leisurely, dishevelled, dignified East: grotesque camels, pensive donkeys carrying incredible loads, ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... sunset, unmatched in beauty since that at Abbeville,—deep scarlet, and purest rose, on purple gray, in bars; and stationary, plumy, sweeping filaments above in upper sky, like 'using up the brush,' said Joanie; remaining in glory, every moment best, changing from one good into another, (but only in color or light—form steady,) for half an hour full, and the clouds afterwards fading into ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... overlooking a hill stream which was pouring noisily down in a flood made turgid by the rain, and the "rough bit of bog and boulder" was a sort of natural bridge across the torrent, formed by heaps of earth and rock, out of which masses of wet fern and plumy meadow-sweet sprang in tall tufts and garlands, which though beautiful to the eyes in day-time, were apt to entangle the feet in walking, especially when there was only the uncertain glimmer of the stars by ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... me that I remember something about Padua with a sort of romantic pleasure. There was a certain charm which I can dimly recall, in sauntering along the top of the old wall of the city, and looking down upon the plumy crests of the Indian corn that flourished up so mightily from the dry bed of the moat. At such times I could not help figuring to myself the many sieges that the wall had known, with the fierce assault by day, the secret attack by night, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... she drew a long white glove over her elbow, her face shadowed by her plumy hat, "you remember you said it might be worse, and I insisted it couldn't be? You were right, it is ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... letter he wrote; And he brushed up his coat; And he shook out his tail, which was plumy and fine: At first break of day He galloped away, At some distant farm-house ...
— The Nursery, May 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 5 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... back, hat pulled over his upper face, he had been lying motionless there, for the best part of an hour. Now, stretching, he got to his feet in leisurely fashion, brushed perfunctorily at his rumpled clothes, and turned his steps toward the double line of plumy Australian pines which bordered the lane ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... possibly tell you the life story of yon big tree, the warrior of the woods who had beaten down all competitors and enemies and wore his purple cones like the tasseled honor badges of a soldier, with pendulous moving, plumy arms: yet to the eye of the Forester, the life history was there, in the fluted grooved columnar bark, in the knot scars where branches had been discarded to send the main trunk towering above its fellows for light and air, in the wood rings, where a branch had broken ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... I went at once, and he came directly in, after a long stare at me, and a few wavings of his plumy tail. It was evidently the right place, and, following me into the parlor, he perched himself on the rug, blinked at the fire, looked round the room, washed his face, and then, lying down in a comfortable sprawl, he burst into a cheerful ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... plumy tail began to wave. Into his sad eyes sprang a flicker of warm friendliness. Unbidden—oblivious of everyone else—he trotted across to where the Mistress sat. He put one tiny white paw in her lap and stood thus, looking up lovingly into her face, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... the bamboo, shooting to the height of sixty feet and upward, with branches gracefully drooping; the generous, kind banana; fairy forests of ferns of a thousand forms; tall grasses, with their pale and plumy blossoms; the many-trunked and many-rooted banyan; the boh, sacred to Buddha,—all combine to form a garden that Adam might have dressed and kept, and only ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... 'tis pleasant, through th' advancing year, To see unnumbered growing forms appear; What leafy-life from Earth's broad bosom rise! What insect myriads seek the summer skies! What scaly tribes in every streamlet move; What plumy people sing in every grove! All with the year awaked to life, delight, and love. Then names are good; for how, without their aid, Is knowledge, gain'd by man, to man convey'd? But from that source shall all our pleasures flow? Shall all our knowledge be ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... a School of Instruction at the back of the Western Front set in a valley of green meadows bordered by files of plumy poplars and threaded through by a silver ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... lilac bushes, her arms still uplifted and fingers outstretched as if beckoning to the plumy sprays above her Head. "Isn't it queer how such things will happen when if I'd been trying to make poetry in my dairy I couldn't have thought of those words for an hour? I guess it was the lilacs that did it. Oh, you are ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... spread a glamour of fairyland and foreign courts. Caroline bowed gravely to the cat, and, seizing his feathery paws, danced, bowing and posturing, in a bewitched abandon around the tinkling, glistening fountain. The plumy tail of Red Rufus flew behind him as he twirled, his little feet pattered furiously after Caroline's twinkling sandals. Stooping over the fountain, she threw a silvery handful high in the air and ran to catch ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... dog understood, for he came a pace nearer and waved his plumy tail tentatively. For the dog she felt a glow of friendliness at once, but for the man she suddenly, and most unreasonably, of course, conceived one of ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... enrichment. But the Gothic fullness of thought is not therefore left without expression; at the edge of each leaf is an animal, first a cicala, then a lizard, then a bird, moth, serpent, snail—all different, and each wrought to the very life—panting—plumy—writhing—glittering—full of breath and power. This harmony of classical restraint with exhaustless fancy, and of architectural propriety with imitative finish, is found throughout all the fine periods of the Italian Gothic, opposed to the wildness without invention, and exuberance without completion, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... for the field. Crowds to the castle mounted up the street, Battering the pavement with their coursers' feet: The greedy sight might there devour the gold Of glittering arms, too dazzling to behold: 450 And polish'd steel, that cast the view aside, And crested morions, with their plumy pride. Knights, with a long retinue of their squires, In gaudy liveries march, and quaint attires. One laced the helm, another held the lance: A third the shining buckler did advance. The courser paw'd the ground with restless feet, And snorting foam'd, and champ'd the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the scarred cliff's iron brow There speeds the fruitful crooked plow; While on the soft west wind come odors Of plumy pine and ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... The plumy helmet, and the martial mien, Might dignify Minerva's awful charms; But more resistless far the Idalian queen— Smiles, graces, gentleness, her ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... appear just above the horizon line a ball of smoke as black as your hat and the size of your hat, which meant a grenade of high explosives. Then right behind it would blossom a dainty, plumy little blob of innocent white, fit to make a pompon for the hat, and that, they told us, would be shrapnel. The German reply to the enemy's guns issued from the timbered verges of slopes at our right hand and our left; and these German shells, ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... indefinite, Wandered across the sands without the wall, And lost itself in finding out the sea: Within, it floated swans, white splendours; lay Beneath the fairy leap of a wire bridge; Vanished and reappeared amid the shades, And led you where the peacock's plumy heaven Bore azure suns with green and golden rays. Ah! here the skies showed higher, and the clouds More summer-gracious, filled with stranger shapes; And when they rained, it was a golden rain That sparkled as it fell, an ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... large cat sat on the fence, and, as they watched, a huge collie dog, with a beautiful plumy tail, came marching around ...
— Brother and Sister • Josephine Lawrence |
