"Primrose" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that every day it happened as it had happened that morning: Denys sat alone on the beach or wandered about on the cliff, and Gertrude, with a lightly uttered "Oh, Denys is busy somewhere," had gone cycling or rowing or primrose hunting with Cecil. ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... Sunday, there was no doubt but that the spring had come at last. It was warm, with a latent shiver in the air that made the warmth only the more welcome. The shallows of the stream glittered and tinkled among bunches of primrose. Vagrant scents of the earth arrested Archie by the way with moments of ethereal intoxication. The grey Quakerish dale was still only awakened in places and patches from the sobriety of its winter colouring; ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... truth, Mr. Narkom, I came within an ace of doing the very thing you speak of," replied Cleek. "It's full moon, for one thing, and it's primrose time for another. Happily for your desire to catch me, however, I—er—got interested in the evening ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... whit roused from its apathy, by the information that the primrose is a Dicotyledonous Exogen, with a monopetalous corolla and central placentation. But I advocate natural-history knowledge from this point of view, because it would lead us to seek the beauties of natural objects, instead of trusting ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... later appeared the first volume of de Vries' remarkable book on The Mutation Theory. From a prolonged study of the evening primrose (Oenothera) de Vries concluded that new varieties suddenly arose from older ones by sudden sharp steps or mutations, and not by any process involving the gradual accumulation of minute {16} differences. ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... "The primrose path" was, of course, open to Peter. He was popular enough, at the beginning of that Autumn term, to do anything, and, had he followed the "closed-eyes" policy of his predecessor, smiling pleasantly ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... the elder daughter of the vicar of Wakefield. She was a sort of a Heb[^e] in beauty, open, sprightly, and commanding. Olivia Primrose "wished for many lovers," and eloped with Squire Thornhill. Her father went in search of her, and on his return homeward, stopped at a roadside inn, called the Harrow, and there found her turned out of the house by the landlady. It was ultimately discovered that ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... primrose on the braes Beside my Jessie's cot, We 've gather'd nuts, we 've gather'd slaes, In that sweet rural spot. The wee short hours danced merrily, Like lambkins on the fell; As if they join'd in joy wi' me And Jessie ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the summit was by the bed of a watercourse, now a roaring torrent, from the heavy and incessant rain. A small Anagallis (like tenella), and a beautiful purple primrose, grew by its bank. The top of the mountain is another flat ridge, with depressions and broad pools. The number of additional species of plants found here was great, and all betokened a rapid approach to the alpine region of the Himalaya. In order of prevalence ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... me that loves the soft, gray weather— The little mists that trail along like bits of wind-flung foam, The primrose and the violet—all wet and sweet together, And the sound of water calling, as it ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... green, all flowery; its great elm, ash, and oak skeletons were restored to majestic life; woodland plants sprang up profusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled its hollows, and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of its wild primrose plants: I have seen their pale gold gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre. All this I enjoyed often and fully, free, unwatched, and almost alone: for this unwonted liberty and pleasure there was a cause, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... shall I bring you, sweet? A posy prankt with every April hue: The cloud-white daisy, violet sky-blue, Shot with the primrose sunshine ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... been hurt somewhat seriously in a carriage accident, frequent in travelling through such wild lands as Ireland and the south of Scotland. People averred that he would find himself safer on the Mall or climbing the slopes of Primrose Hill. ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... with dewy fingers, Brings a waft of violet, Sweet arbutus, dainty primrose, On their lowly graves we set. Soft they slumber, We their lives ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... crooked man. There was a piper had a cow. The man in the wilderness. Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark. As I was going to St. Ives. I had a little husband no bigger than my thumb. Great A, little a. Bat, bat, come under my hat. As I was going up Primrose Hill. There was a little boy went into a barn. When good King Arthur ruled his land. Jacky, come give me your fiddle. One, two, three, four, five. The north wind doth blow. You owe me five shillings. There was a ...
— Mother Goose - The Original Volland Edition • Anonymous
... steep road, overhung with trees, at whose roots grew clusters of large primrose leaves, showing what a lovely walk it must be in spring; then higher, till all this vegetation ceased, leaving only the short grass cropped by the sheep, the purple thistles, and the furze-bushes, yellow and ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... spoil the grass—and they were red-tipped daisies. There was besides, in the very heart of it, one plant of the finest pimpernels I have ever seen, and this was my introduction to the flower. Nor were these all the treasures of the spot. A late primrose, a tiny child, born out of due time, opened its timid petals in the same hollow. Here then we regathered red-tipped daisies, large pimpernels, and one tiny primrose. I lay and looked at them in delight—not ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... put it to yourself—when a man stands up against vested interests, such as exist here, and says plainly that he's never going to rest, nor leave a stone unturned, until he's made a radical and thorough reformation, do you think he's going to have a primrose path of it? Bah! But he ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... late Rev. Dr. Primrose (of Wakefield, vicar) wrote me a little note from his country living this morning, and the kind fellow had the precaution to write "No thorn" upon the envelope, so that, ere I broke the seal, my mind might be relieved of any anxiety lest the letter should contain one of those lurking stabs which ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dreamlike haze. Memories of her father and mother, and of the dear deanery among its meadows, floating fragments of the poetry her father had loved, of the prayers her mother had taught her in childhood, hovered in her mind. She seemed to see the primrose woods where she had wandered, and to hear the sound of brooks and birds in Spring. A vague smile was on her lips. She thought of Sir Hugh as of a radiance lighting all. She ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Tuesday, 29th November, Primrose springs. Surveying run. Sent Muller to the north to a distant range, and Strong to the north-east to look for springs. Towards evening both returned without being successful. They passed over plenty of good feeding country, but the range is high and stony, with very little grass, only salt ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... you come with me into a marvellous land wherein is music (?); the top of the head there is hair of primrose, the body up to the head is colour ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... marked poison), green bottles marked ammonia, bottles with bulbs and sprays, cases of razors, festoons of strops—all these stood or lay on shelves at my elbow as I proceeded to wash my hands and face with a piece of yellow primrose soap that by some chance was among the welter of expensive brands. No luck with our women, observe. I certainly had had no luck with Gladys. But he, he, to whom women ran as though he were a necromancer, as though he had the secret ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... of which we now perceive the culmination in impressionistic tales and pictures—that voluntary aversion of the eye from all speciously strong and beautiful effects—that disinterested love of dulness which has set so many Peter Bells to paint the river-side primrose. It was then chosen for its proximity to Paris. And for the same cause, and by the force of tradition, the painter of to-day continues to inhabit and to paint it. There is in France scenery incomparable for romance and harmony. Provence, and the valley of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of English girls remain so poor, so dependent, so well aware that the drudgeries of such honest work as is within their reach are likely enough to lead them eventually to lung disease, premature death, and domestic desertion or brutality, that they would still see reason to prefer the primrose path to the strait path of virtue, since both, vice at worst and virtue at best, lead to the same end in poverty and overwork. It is true that the Board School mistress will tell you that only girls of a certain kind will reason in this way. But ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... coiled in a twisted heap to fit the crown of her mannish sombrero. It came down lightly over the tips of her ears in pretty disorder, due to the excitement of the morning, and she was fair as a camelia blossom and fresh as an evening primrose of her ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... melancholy, because nothing half so silly, as to be concerned about such problems. But so respectability and the duties of society haunt and burden their poor devotees; and what seems at first the very primrose path of life, proves difficult and thorny like the rest. And the time comes to Pepys, as to all the merely respectable, when he must not only order his pleasures, but even clip his virtuous movements, to ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Stanton came to tell Sanda that he was off for Touggourt to fetch the priest, no alternative had yet presented itself to Max's mind, and he was still indifferent to his own future. But when Stanton had been gone for half an hour, and a faint primrose coloured flame had begun to quiver along the billowy horizon in the east, he heard a soft voice call his ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... Day of 1259, one of the brightest days of the calendar. The season was well forward, the elms and bushes had arrayed themselves in their brightest robe of green; the hedges were white and fragrant with may; the anemone, the primrose, the cowslip, and blue bell carpeted the sward of the Andredsweald; the oaks and poplars were already putting on their summer garb. The butterflies settled upon flower after flower; the bees were rejoicing in their labour; their work glowed, ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... Now the evening primrose at the side of the road has folded all its yellow petals, marking the near approach of noon. Growing near it on this rise of the road are lavender-flowered bergamot, blue and gold spiderwort, milkweeds ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... young and pleasure new, Ah! why the shades of Death explore? Better, ere May's sweet prime is o'er, The primrose path of joy pursue: The torch, the lamps' sepulchral fire, Their paleness on your charms impress, And glaring on your loveliness, Death mocks what living eyes desire. Approach! the music of your tread No longer bids ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... Annora, running up and throwing herself down on the primrose bank, "I have been to the cell, but I ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... settle the affair before dinner, but by the time she was gowned and primped, the first premature guest had arrived like the rashest primrose, shy, surprised, and surprising. Sir Joseph had gone below already. Lady Webling was hull down ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... good deal of power on sunny days now. The mud was all gone by this time; in its place a thick groundwork of dust. Winter frost was replaced by soft spring air; but that gave a chance for the lane odours to come out—not the fragrance of hawthorn and primrose, by any means. Nor any such pleasant sight to be seen. Poor, straggling, forlorn houses; broken fences, or no courtyards at all; thick dust, and no footway; garbage, and ashes, and bones, but never even so much as a green potato patch to greet the eye, much less a rose or ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... wood, pleasant with the noise of water and not badly damaged by the fighting. The trees are alive and leafy, the shrubs are pushing, and the spring flowers, wood anemones, violets, and the oxlip (which in this country takes the place of the primrose and the cowslip) flower beautifully among the shell-holes, rags, and old tins of war. But at the north-eastern end it runs out in a straggling spinney along the Leipzig's east flank, and this horn of wood is almost as badly shattered as if the ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... as the apples in the garden of the Hesperides were sometimes seen—over the wall. I prefer the fruit which I can buy in the market to that which a man tells me he saw in Sicily, but of which there is no flavor in his story. Others, like Moses Primrose, bring us a gross of such spectacles as we prefer not to see; so that I begin to suspect a man must have Italy and Greece in his heart and mind, if he would ever see them ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... somber little hall, then found herself in a very large room draped with ivory colored cretonne patterned with butterflies in vivid shades. The furniture was ivory colored wood, and the carpet gray, with clusters of wild flowers, primrose, poppies, ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... men, not counting Indians. He himself never reported how many Indians he and Buffalo Bill killed as scouts in the Black Kettle campaign under Carr and Primrose, but the killing of Black Kettle himself was sometimes attributed to Wild Bill. The latter was badly wounded in the thigh with a lance, and it took a long time for this wound to heal. To give this hurt ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... be seen from these notes on social history that the Loyalists had no primrose path. But after the first grumblings and discontents, poured into the ears of Governor Haldimand and Governor Parr, they seem to have settled down contentedly to their lot; and their life appears to have been ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... bookseller Griffiths, who was also proprietor of the 'Monthly Review'. He invited Dr. Milner's usher to try his hand at criticism; and finally, in April, 1757, Goldsmith was bound over for a year to that venerable lady whom George Primrose dubs 'the 'antiqua mater' of Grub Street'—in other words, he was engaged for bed, board, and a fixed salary to supply copy-of-all-work to his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... compound of innocence, boldness and modesty as shall satisfy the beast? If one engross oneself on something that lies to the lee of danger, it allays suspicion. Or if one absorb oneself upon the flora—a primrose on the river's brim—it shows him clear and stainless. The stupidest dog should see that so close a student can have no evil in him. Perhaps it would be better to throw away one's stick lest it make a show of violence. Or it may be concealed along the outer leg. Ministers of Grace defend ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... assert that the particular plant Crinum capense is much more fertile when crossed by a distinct species than when fertilised by its proper pollen! On the other hand, the famous Gaertner, though he took the greatest pains to cross the Primrose and the Cowslip, succeeded only once or twice in several years; and yet it is a well-established fact that the Primrose and the Cowslip are only varieties of the same kind of plant. Again, such cases as the following are well established. The female of species ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... morn when south winds blow, And gently shake the hawthorn's silver crown, Wafting its scent the forest-glade adown, The dewy shelter of the bounding Doe, Then, under trees, soft tufts of primrose show Their palely-yellowing flowers;—to the moist Sun Blue harebells peep, while cowslips stand unblown, Plighted to riper May;—and lavish flow The Lark's loud carols in the wilds of air. O! not to ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... difficulties, either within or without. So we must set our shoulders to the wheel, put our backs into our work. Do not think that you are going to be carried into the condition of conformity with Jesus Christ in a dream, or that the road to heaven is a primrose path, to be trodden in silver slippers. 'I will not offer unto the Lord that which doth cost me nothing,' and if you do, it will be worth exactly what it costs. There must be concentration of effort if we are to be well-pleasing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... "Ring, ting! I wish I were a primrose;" and then another of dear William Allingham's, which had been her own pet song when she ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... I need wholesome excitements and distractions; so I will go lightly excursioning along the primrose path of theology.] ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... absence from church, she took the path through the park, determined to call upon him, and explain, as far as she was able, her reasons. It was a lovely day, and the child walked by her side, or ran hither and thither after a blue-bell, or a primrose; stopping sometimes behind, to watch a pair of building robins, or running on in advance after a rabbit. There was in Elizabeth's heart a certain calm happiness, which she did not analyze, but was ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... and he to Moll's, and in a little while we all shivering down to the great kitchen, where is never a muleteer left, but only a great stench of garlic, to eat a mess of soup, very hot and comforting. And after that out into the dark (there being as yet but a faint flush of green and primrose colour over towards the east), where four fresh mules (which Don Sanchez overnight had bargained to exchange against our horses, as being the only kind of cattle fit for this service) are waiting for ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... flowers While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack The flower that's like thy face—pale primrose, nor The azured harebell—like thy veins; no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, Outsweetened not thy breath. The ruddock would With charitable bill bring thee all this; Yea, and furred moss besides, when flowers are none, To winter-ground ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... flung round the splintered stump to steady himself, proceeded to wave his coat energetically. Luckily for the pair in distress, they were to the westward of the approaching ship, with the evening sky, in which still lingered a pale primrose glow, behind them, and against this background their figures and that of the boat stood out black as silhouettes cut in ebony. It is possible that, even with this advantage, they might have escaped notice, had not Phil thought of waving his coat; but the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... elevation. Amongst the most noticeable of these is the blue Hepatica, Anemone, Hepatica L., apink variety of which is sometimes met with, the pink cyclamen-like flower, Erythronium Dens Canis L. with its trefoil-like and spotted leaves; in shady places the Primrose, Primula acaulis All.; everywhere over the summit of the mountain the Cowslip, Primula veris; two species of Gentian, Gentiana verna and G. acaulis L.; Ophrys fusca Link, also a species of Asphodel, Asphodelus albus Willd.; Saxifraga cuneifolia; Sempervivum arachnoideum L.; and lastly, in shady ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... him waning. The proud sire Beheld his pride go drooping in the cold Down, down to the warm earth; and gave God thanks That he was old. But evermore the son Looked up and smiled as he had heard strange news, Across the waste, of primrose-buds and flowers. Then again to his father he would come Seeking for comfort, as a troubled child, And with the same child's hope of comfort there. Sure there is one great Father in the heavens, Since every word of good from fathers' lips Falleth with such authority, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... beyond me I respect The virtue, equal to the stiffest crux, Which thus forbids your costume to deflect Into the primrose path of straw and ducks; I praise that fine regard for red-hot tape Which calmly and without an eyelid's flutter Suffers the maddening noon to melt your nape As it ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... Show me the steep and thorny way to Heaven, Whilst like a puff'd and reckless libertine Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweets— With the sky above my head And the grass beneath my feet; For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel Before I knew the woes of want, And the walk that costs ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Liberals—a school of politicians whose ideas have now been swept into the limbo of forgotten things, the only surviving principles of that age being apparently those associated with a faint and somewhat fantastic cult of the primrose. In 1866 he wrote to his sister—and I cannot but smile on reading the letter—"I am more and more Radical every year"; and he expressed regret that circumstances did not permit of his setting up as "a fierce demagogue" in England. I could have ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... As for the primrose ring—reach across it to Bridget and let her give you back again the heart of a child which you may have lost somewhere ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... on the delights within them. I saw gangs of negroes plodding to work along the road, an overseer riding behind them with his gun on his back; and there were whole cotton fields in these domains blazing in primrose flower,—a new plant here, so my father said. He was willing to talk on such subjects. But on others, and especially our errand to Charlestown, he would say nothing. And I knew ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... tiny thing, but perfect in shape—a baby wonder. As he stooped his face to see it close, a little wind began to blow. Two or three long leaves that stood up behind the flower shook and wavered and quivered. But the primrose lay still in the green hollow, looking up at the sky and not seeming to know at all that the wind was blowing. It looked like a golden eye that the black wintry earth had opened to look at ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald
... pale yellow, with a thick warm coat of the same fashionable color. Her hat was demurely tied under her little chin with black velvet ribbons. She was like a primrose of the spring—and Barry ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... sat on the ground and watched the woman dance. Her primrose cape was across his knee. He was a big man and wore a cap. Becky, surveying him from afar, saw nothing to command closer scrutiny. Yet had she known, she might have found him worthy of another look. For the man with ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... variegate the eternal universe; Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, That leads to azure isles and beaming skies And happy regions of eternal hope. Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on: 550 Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom, Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth, To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower, That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, 555 Lighting the green wood ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... frequently. We have found the wild tulip, the primrose, the lupine, the eardrop, the larkspur, and creeping hollyhock, and a beautiful flower resembling the bloom of the beech tree, but in bunches as large as a small sugarloaf, and of every variety of shade, to red ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... galleons, one of these being the same in which the viceroy was personally, when he engaged our fleet under Captain Downton. During a calm on the 7th, we captured a small frigate-built ship called the Jacinth, which we named the Primrose, which had come from Mozambique and was bound for Goa. Thence to the 13th, we had variable winds, with calms and much rain. Finding the May-flower delayed us much, and that our pilots were either ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... landscapes printed in gold, in white, or what not. Covers like this, may or may not please the eye while they are new and clean, but they soon become dirty and hideous. When a book is covered in cloth of a good dark tint it may be allowed to remain unbound, but the primrose and lilac hues soon call out for the aid ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... correctly decided against him. The same qualities which appear in these cases are shown in the others of a like nature, which were conspicuous among the multitude with which he was intrusted. We find them also in cases involving purely legal questions, such as the Bank of the United States v. Primrose, and The Providence Railroad Co. v. The City of Boston, accompanied always with that ready command of learning which an extraordinary memory made easy. There seemed to be no diminution of Mr. Webster's great powers in this field as he advanced ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... was enemy to him, Yet he most Christian-like laments his death; And for myself, foe as he was to me, Might liquid tears or heart-offending groans Or blood-consuming sighs recall his life, I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans, Look pale as primrose with blood-drinking sighs, And all to have the noble duke alive. What know I how the world may deem of me? For it is known we were but hollow friends. It may be judg'd I made the duke away; So shall my name with slander's tongue be wounded And princes' courts be fill'd with my reproach. ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... was a favourite habit of his, and he said it gave him an appetite; but the truth was that he always loved to be in the open air to the very last moment of the day, watching the colours of the sky as they changed and melted into twilight. On this particular evening the heavens were streaked with primrose, and pale iris, and delicate limpid green; and so absorbed was he in gazing at this splendour of dissolving beauty that he forgot all about his appetite, and had to be called twice over before he ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... "As fresh as a primrose, my lord, and as clear as crystal: he's ready, this moment, to run through any set of three years old as could be put on the ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... are now being formed, or whether, like coal, it was the result of causes not now in operation, is an unsolved problem. The specimens obtained differ considerably; some are pale as primrose, some deep orange or almost brown; some nearly as transparent as crystal, some nearly opaque. Large pieces, uniform in color and translucency, fetch high prices; and there are fashions in this matter for which it is not easy to account,—seeing that the Turks ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... many times, old darling, and I really can't believe it. The Premier's very silly. Everybody knows that. But he's still got just a faint idea of the few things the country won't stand. And you are one of them, you truly are. You don't go down even with the Primrose League, and they simply worship at the shrine of the ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... them, and the other of which, occupying themselves exclusively with the facts of science, never ask what implications they have. Be it trilobite or be it double star, their thought about it is much like the thought of Peter Bell about the primrose[44].' Now, both these classes are logical, since both, as to their religion, adopt an attitude of pure agnosticism, not only in theory, but also in practice. What, however, have we to say of the third class, ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... Roots from Highbury came back with a revolver and cartridges, and we went off six strong to live a free wild life one holiday afternoon. We fired our first shot deep in the old flint mine at Chiselstead, and nearly burst our ear drums; then we fired in a primrose studded wood by Pickthorn Green, and I gave a false alarm of "keeper," and we fled in disorder for a mile. After which Roots suddenly shot at a pheasant in the high road by Chiselstead, and then young Barker told lies about the severity of the game laws and made Roots sore ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... girlish hands a primrose wreath enwove, With fingers deft, and eyes with tears bedimmed: No lovelier face the painter's art e'er limned, No poet's thought e'er ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... this flower, Denis? it's a faded primrose. I'm like that flower in one sense; I'm faded; my ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... expect it, and least—heaven knows—deserve it, makes any final opinion upon the stuff of this world vain and false; and any condemnation of the opinions of others foolish and empty. It destroys our assurances as it alleviates our miseries, and in some unspeakable way, like a primrose growing on the edge of a sepulchre, it flings forth upon the heavy night, a fleeting signal, "Bon espoir ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... very early stage. Indeed, I do not remember any period of my life when I did not love Rose Herrick more dearly than anything else in God's fair world. To me she was all that is sweet and desirable, a companion whose company must needs make the path of life a primrose path; and, therefore, even when I was a lad, I looked forward to the time when I might take her hand in mine, and enter with her upon the highway which ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... preserves were enclosed in wire netting, and over this they climbed into their primrose paradise. Several partridges rose from the children's feet, and whirred noisily away, to the huge delight of the boys but to Avery's considerable dismay. However, Marshall was evidently not within earshot, and they settled ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... lives seemed very sweet indeed to those of their friends whose eyes were not holden. Nelson Haley and Janice Day were at the beginning of that path which, if sometimes rugged and steep to the travelers thereon, is primrose strewn. ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... Primrose-mornings in the copse, Autumn berrying Where the dew for ever stops, And the serrying, Clinging shrouds of gossamers Glue your eyes together; Gleaning after harvesters In the mild ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... the experiences and character of Dr. Primrose, of Mr. Burchell, or of George Primrose to suggest Goldsmith's own experiences and character, or those ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... carried her to a shady covert, and there laying her gently on the grass, they sang repose to her departed spirit, and covering her over with leaves and flowers, Polydore said, "While summer lasts and I live here, Fidele, I will daily strew thy grave. The pale primrose, that flower most like thy face; the blue-bell, like thy clear veins; and the leaf of eglantine, which is not sweeter than was thy breath; all these will I strew over thee. Yea, and the furred moss in winter, when there are no flowers to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... certain gaols and nightly refuges I know of, where my own heart dies within me, when I see thousands of immortal creatures condemned, without alternative or choice, to tread, not what our great poet calls the "primrose path" to the everlasting bonfire, but one of jaded flints and stones, laid down by brutal ignorance, and held together, like the solid rocks, by years of this most ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... Still further she drew apart the lissome trees, and stepped through, a vision of spring itself. Clouds of chiffon swirled about her, softest dawn-rose in colour, changing of tints of heliotrope and primrose, as she swayed in graceful, pliant rhythm. Her slim white arms waved slowly, as the hidden melodies came faintly from the depth of the grove. Her pretty bare feet shone whitely among the soft pine needles and the steps of ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... to swell the Jingo train and ape the tricks of Tories: Let Rosebery share with Chamberlain his cheap Imperial glories: Let Primrose Leaguers' base applause to Duty's promptings blind you— Desert an outraged nation's cause, and take ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... evidently recently caught an infernal cold. No wonder, wrapped up like that! I developed the nurse idea, and all the while kept my eyes open. Bottles—chemicals—everywhere. Balance, test-tubes in stands, and a smell of—evening primrose. Would he subscribe? Said he'd consider it. Asked him, point-blank, was he researching. Said he was. A long research? Got quite cross. 'A damnable long research,' said he, blowing the cork out, so ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... methe* *mead Or hoard of apples, laid in hay or heath. Wincing* she was as is a jolly colt, *skittish Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt. A brooch she bare upon her low collere, As broad as is the boss of a bucklere. Her shoon were laced on her legges high; She was a primerole,* a piggesnie , *primrose For any lord t' have ligging* in his bed, *lying Or yet for any ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... constructed a romance out of her poor little history. 'She came from a place called Ecclesbourne Hall,' he said, one day. 'She was an heiress; old Ralph Combermere knew what he was about when he transplanted the pale primrose. Do you know, Ursula, this room is supposed to be haunted? And one of the maids told me seriously that Mistress Combermere walks here on windy nights with her babe in her arms. Fancy such a report in ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... you come with me into a marvellous land wherein is music, where heads are covered with primrose hair and bodies are white as snow? There is no "mine" or "thine" there; white are teeth, and black are eyebrows, and cheeks are the hue of the foxglove, and eyes the hue of blackbirds' eggs.... We see everything on every side, yet no man seeth us. Though pleasant the plains of Ireland, ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... pressed bravely on, though the storms of hail often beat on her face, and then the cloud breaking, great fields of deepest blue sky appeared in the rifts, and now and again the sun shone out brightly on the young leaves and primrose banks, as if to reassure them that the present cold was but an afterthought of winter, and that spring and May ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... The burning scarlet and violet hues had all melted into a transparent yet brilliant shade of pale mauve,—as delicate as the inner tint of a lilac blossom,—and across this stretched two wing-shaped gossamer clouds of watery green, fringed with soft primrose. Between these cloud-wings, as opaline in lustre as those of a dragon-fly, the face of the sun shone like a shield of polished gold, while his rays, piercing spear-like through the varied tints of emerald, brought an unearthly radiance over the landscape—a lustre as though ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... from death, and he will stone a dog if he has a grudge against it. His attitude to Peter Grim is one of devotion. He actually told me that it was very sad that Peter had now grown too old to catch mice. Again, he always brings me the first primrose and spares no pains to find it. Such little acts argue a kindly nature. But against them, you have to set his unreasoning dislike of human beings and a certain—shall I say ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... tree I sate down when I was last this way a fishing, and the birds in the adjoining Grove seemed to have a friendly contention with an Echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow cave, near to the brow of that Primrose hil; there I sate viewing the Silver streams glide silently towards their center, the tempestuous Sea, yet sometimes opposed by rugged roots, and pibble stones, which broke their waves, and turned them into some: and sometimes viewing the harmless Lambs, some leaping ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... of the field there was a deep, dry ditch under great curtains of blackberry bushes, which in autumn bore luscious fruit. And by Katie's door, if she would sit in the sun, was a primrose bank, about which the hens stalked and clucked with their long-legged chickens or much prettier ducklings. Katie did not want for playmates. She had none of her own kind, but was sociable to the fowl and the pig in his stye, and the white and red cattle that browsed in ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... to go out in the lanes, Flurry and I, to gather the spring flowers that Miss Ruth so dearly loved. We made a primrose basket once for her room, and many a cowslip ball for Dot, and then there were dainty little bunches of violets for mother and Carrie, only Carrie took hers to a dying girl in ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... which hangs from a tree in the shape of small eggs, and contains a white powder of a sticky consistency. This powder is mixed with the leaves, and the paper thus prepared is very transparent. At first it has a kind of primrose tint, but, when subjected to heat, or to the sun, turns green. The egg called "Brulista Tavi," or "Lime Egg," follows a small blossom, but the fruit alone is used. The trees are plentiful, growing on marshy ground, a long distance from, the city, for ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... was the child of Friends, or Quakers. The author tells Primrose's experiences among very strict Quakers, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... among the thick undergrowth are found some lovely ferns, broad-leaved plants, and flowers of every hue, all alike nearly scentless. Here is no odorous breath of violet or honeysuckle, no delicate perfume of primrose or sweetbriar, only a musty, dank, earthy smell which gets more and more pronounced as the mists rise along with the deadly vapours of the night. Sleeping in these forests is very unhealthy. There is a most fatal miasma all through the year, less during the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... rathe primrose, that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansie freakt ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... save, always add, always hold as a sort of sacred deposit, the mysteriously precious pose-boxes. Occasionally, again, a child gets a present of a sovereign, or an old-fashioned guinea, which it would be dreadful sacrilege to change. Every one will remember how Sophy and Livy Primrose 'never went without money themselves, as my wife always let them have a guinea each to keep in their pockets, but with strict injunctions never to change it.' There are hundreds of thousands of Sophies and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... to, mother. And I'd made an arrangement with him to meet him every morning out in the primrose dell to practise sword-cutting. I was going to-morrow morning, but I won't ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... Opera House large faces and lean ones, the powdered and the hairy, all alike were red in the sunset; and, quickened by the great hanging lamps with their repressed primrose lights, by the tramp, and the scarlet, and the pompous ceremony, some ladies looked for a moment into steaming bedrooms near by, where women with loose hair leaned out of windows, where girls—where children—(the long mirrors held the ladies suspended) but one must follow; ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... star, day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose. ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... with its praises. Yet, though it is, if I am not mistaken, of rare occurrence in America, it is not absolutely necessary to go to England for the hawthorn. Any one who cares to go a-Maying along the banks of the Hudson, in the neighbourhood of Peekskill, will find it there. But for the primrose and the cowslip you must cross the sea; and, if you come upon such a wood as I strayed into, my last visit, you will count it worth the trip. It was literally carpeted with clumps of primroses and violets (violets that smell, too) so thickly massed together in the mossy turf that there was ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... to him. Cf. chap. iii. of the Vicar of Wakefield, where this anecdote is referred to. Indeed Hooker is there alleged to have been the "great ancestor" of George Primrose. ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... said abruptly. "I've been over Primrose Hill to see a friend of mine, a man with whom I studied when I was a lad, and then, coming back, I lost ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... are Alpine plants so anxious to be seen of men and angels? Why do they flaunt their golden glories so openly before the world, instead of shrinking in modest reserve beneath their own green leaves, like the Puritan primrose and the retiring violet? The answer is, Because of the extreme rarity of the mountain air. It's the barometer that does it. At first sight, I will readily admit, this explanation seems as fanciful as the traditional connection ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... speech, made a notable declaration: "The bond of the British Empire, let me tell you this my fellow-countrymen, and accept it from a man not of your own race, the bond of union of the British Empire is allegiance to the King without distinction of race or colour." The Primrose League in London entertained the visiting Premiers at a banquet; and the Fishmonger's Company did the same. An interesting incident was the visit of Mr. R. J. Seddon, Premier of New Zealand, and his wife and daughters to Windsor Castle whence, ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... said to my mother,—"This kind of life will never do, Mary must at least know how to write and keep accounts." So at ten years old I was sent to a boarding-school, kept by a Miss Primrose, at Musselburgh, where I was utterly wretched. The change from perfect liberty to perpetual restraint was in itself a great trial; besides, being naturally shy and timid, I was afraid of strangers, and although Miss Primrose was not unkind she had an habitual frown, ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... Dick from Guildford, who had been familiarised to rustic scenes from his earliest infancy, he could see no beauty in the various objects that each instant delighted the little Londoners' eyes and ears; for, like the hero of Wordsworth's verse, "the primrose by the river's brim" was but a primrose and nothing more ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... purposes. The Bishops were either politicians, or theological polemics collecting trophies of victory over free-thinkers as titles to higher preferment. The inferior clergy as a body were far nearer in character to Trulliber than to Dr. Primrose; coarse, sordid, neglectful of their duties, shamelessly addicted to sinecurism and pluralities, fanatics in their Toryism and in attachment to their corporate privileges, cold, rationalistic, and almost heathen in their preachings, if they preached at all. The society of the day is mirrored ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... as he was sparing of them when he preached before the University of Oxford. Any one who had read this sermon in a book of sermons would have divined what sort of congregation it was preached to—a primrose of a sermon. Mr. Eden preached from notes and to the people—not the air. Like every born orator, he felt his way with his audience, whereas the preacher who is not an orator throws out his fine things, hit or miss, and does not know and feel and care whether he is hitting or missing. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... woody dells, by shallow brooks that stand, The modest violet, and primrose pale, (Like youth just bursting into life,) expand, And cast their perfumes down the dewy vale, Till laden seems each bland, yet searching gale That fans the cheek with odours of the Spring. All living nature rushes to inhale: As if ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... as he walked, at the long zigzag shadows on the river. Forest fire in the distance showed a leaning column, black at base, pearl-colored in the primrose air, like smoke from some gigantic altar. He had seen islands in the lake under which the sky seemed to slip, throwing them above the horizon in mirage, and trees standing like detached bushes on a world rim of water. The Ste. Marie River was a beautiful light green in color, and sunset and twilight ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the same time waving his wand over the fire. Immediately the flames rose towards the sky, the snow began to melt and the trees and shrubs to bud; the grass became green, and from between its blades peeped the pale primrose. It was Spring, and the meadows were ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... safely lodged in the remand prison, was brought to trial, or unless Burchill was arrested. Consequently, Triffitt was not expected to make up a half or a whole column of recent and sensational Herapath news every morning. And so he gladly took this Sunday for a return to the primrose paths. He and Carver met their sweethearts; they took them to the Albert Hall Sunday afternoon concert—nothing better offering in the middle of winter—they went to tea at the sweethearts' lodgings; later in the evening they carried them off ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... this way. It's the 'primrose path,' you see, and they're afraid of the 'everlasting bonfire.' I'm not; you're not. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... dazzling white, unrelieved by shadow or reflection. The green of the masses of jungle on the river banks takes to itself a paler hue than usual, and the yellow of the sandbanks changes its shade from the colour of a cowslip to that of a pale and early primrose. It was on such a white morning as this that Imam Bakar crossed slowly to meet his fate. His dug-out grounded on the sandbank, and when it had been made fast to a pole, its owner, fully armed, walked towards the hut in which To' ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... a clear warm morning. The wind blew deliciously over the Mountainside. Here and there she saw a late primrose but she did not stop to call upon them. The sky was mottled ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... and green, became dim and purple; the blue went out of the waters of the lake, they became the hue of steel touched with iridescence of gold; and above the hills, vapour that had before been almost invisible in the sky, now hung in upright layers of purple mist, blossoming into primrose yellow on the lower edges. A few moments more and grey bloom, such as one sees on purple fruit, was on these vast hangings of cloud that grouped themselves more largely, and gold flames burned on their fringes. Behind them there were great empty reaches of lambent ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... I come! ye have called me long; I come o'er the mountains, with light and song; Ye may trace my step o'er the waking earth By the winds which tell of the violet's birth, By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass, By the green ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... haste to appear, To be her bosom guest, With first primrose that grew this year I purchas'd from her breast; To me, Gave she, Her golden lock for mine; My ring of jet For her ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... had vowed that parliament should be purged. On the morning of December 6, Colonel Pride and Colonel Rich, with troops, surrounded the House of Commons; and, as the members were going into the house, the most obnoxious were seized and sent to prison, among whom were Primrose, who had lost his ears in his contest against the crown, Waller, Harley, Walker, and various other men, who had distinguished themselves as advocates of constitutional liberty. None now remained in the House of Commons but some forty Independents, who were ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... fowls, to be eaten by my wife and the girls. We had a pair of pigeons, a pair of robins and sparrows, and a hen lark—her mate died just as we were going on board—belonging to Mark and John. I don't think we had much else. Yes, we had some primrose, violets, snowdrops, daisies, and other roots and small plants, which took up little space, to remind us of ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... that anywhere in the country villages there was anything approaching to a panic. Only a novice would be led astray by what he might read occurred at Coltishall. Five brothers named Gritlof and two other brothers named Primrose, being nativi, i.e., villeins born, and so the property of the lord, had decamped whither none could tell; the court solemnly adjudicated upon the case, and decreed that the seven runaways should be attached per corpora, ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... tragedy of his race pictured on his furrowed face, a face like an ancient weather-worn statue on whose countenance grief has petrified—has summed up the character of Disraeli as no other man ever has or can. I will not rob the reader by quoting from "The Primrose Sphinx"—that gem of letters must ever stand together without subtraction of a word. It belongs to the realm of the lapidary, and its facets can not be transferred. Yet when Mr. Zangwill refers to the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... And then a light which, glowing to a blaze, Fill'd me with genial life,) I seemed to wake Upon a bed of bloom. The breath of spring Scented the air; mingling their odours sweet, The bright jonquil, the lily of the vale, The primrose, and the daffodil, o'erspread The fresh green turf; and, as it were in love, Around the boughs of budding lilac wreathed The honeysuckle, rich in earlier leaves, Gold-tinctured now, for sunrise fill'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various |
