"Sapless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... observable in this tree which made Reuben tremble. The middle and lower branches were in luxuriant life, and an excess of vegetation had fringed the trunk almost to the ground; but a blight had apparently stricken the upper part of the oak, and the very topmost bough was withered, sapless, and utterly dead. Reuben remembered how the little banner had fluttered on that topmost bough, when it was green and lovely, eighteen years before. Whose guilt ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dreadful persecutions which began with the accession of Mary, it was impossible that Cranmer should escape. In spite of his dignity, rank, age, and services, he could hope for no favor or indulgence from that morose woman in whose sapless bosom no compassion for the Protestants ever found admission, and still less from those cruel, mercenary, bigoted prelates whom she selected for her ministers. It was not customary in that age for the Roman Church to spare heretics, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... not speak, For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun; A single crow on the tree-top bleak From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun; 245 Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, As if her veins were sapless and old, And she rose up decrepitly For a last dim look at earth ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... large flakes, which one may find lying at its foot, pushed out, and at last pushed off, by that tranquil movement from beneath, which is too slow to be seen, but too powerful to be arrested. One finds them always, but one rarely sees them fall. So it is our youth drops from us,—scales off, sapless and lifeless, and lays bare the tender and immature fresh growth of old age. Looked at collectively, the changes of old age appear as a series of personal insults and indignities, terminating at last in death, which Sir Thomas Browne has called "the very disgrace ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... they suggest of the brilliant colours and strange forms buried in embryo within their uncouth bulk. On a cross table stand some dozens of "established" plants in pots and baskets, which the owners would like to part with. Their growths of this year are verdant, but the old bulbs look almost as sapless as those new arrivals. Very few are in flower just now—July and August are a time of pause betwixt the glories of the Spring and the milder effulgence of Autumn. Some great Dendrobes—D. Dalhousianum—are bursting into untimely bloom, betraying to the initiated that their ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... sickly, sapless thorn, Which must, alas! no longer stand, Behold the cruel Dean in scorn Cuts down ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... building two Bleriot-type machines, and trying to build an eight-cylinder V motor. All these things had Bagby given for the good of the game, expecting no profit in return. He was one of the real martyrs of aviation, this sapless, oldish man, never knowing the joy of the air, yet devoting a lifetime of ability to helping man ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... effect of magic. Behind them stalked a tall black figure, driving them on with a rod made of brambles. Groups of children were busily employed in thrusting the full sugar canes between the cylinders; and after they were pressed, collecting together the sapless reeds, and piling them up in ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... send for thee, That Talbot's name might be in thee revived, When sapless age and weak, unable limbs, Should bring thy father to his drooping chair. But—O malignant and ill-boding stars!— First part of Henry ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... entertainment, without thought or intention of preserving in the memory that which is read. It is a process which in the course of years dries all the juice out of a familiar verse of Scripture, leaving nothing but a sapless husk behind. In that case you at least know the origin of the husk, but in the case in point I apparently preserved the husk but presently forgot whence it came. It lay lost in some dim corner of my memory a year or two, then came forward ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... the rainbow, the far view; the view within us as well as without. Our blood runs through it, our history in the quick. The Philistine detests it, because he has no view, out or in. The dry confess they are cut off from the living tree, peeled and sapless, when they condemn it. The vulgar demand to have their pleasures in their own likeness—and let them swamp their troughs! they shall not degrade the fame of noble fiction. We are the choice public, which ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fiddler left his violin in its case; he never took it from that case again. The oxen had grown gaunt from lack of feed and drink; they wandered about the night camps nibbling disdainfully at what growth there was, low bitter sapless weeds. ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... intertexture and intensity of passion. You thus convey to us more largely and expeditiously the stores of your understanding and imagination, than you ever could by sonnets or canzonets, or sinewless and sapless allegories. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the two horses was killed, and its scanty flesh, cut into strips, was dried in the sun and smoke. This, the most repellant, sapless food to be found in the world, had been their diet for some time. Douglas was the first to die. The survivors were still strong enough to give him burial. In a few days Taylor followed him and was interred by his side. The blacks threatened them continually, ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... their hollow sockets sink, Bereft of sleep, he loathes his meat and drink. He withers at his heart, and looks as wan As the pale spectre of a murder'd man: That pale turns yellow, and his face receives 530 The faded hue of sapless boxen leaves: In solitary groves he makes his moan, Walks early out, and ever is alone: Nor, mix'd in mirth, in youthful pleasures shares, But sighs when songs and instruments he hears. His spirits are so ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of November The fog forms and shifts; All the world comes out again When the fog lifts. Loosened from their sapless twigs Leaves drop with every gust; Drifting, rustling, out of sight In the damp ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... with a touch, a word, or a distant message; and to expel the most obstinate demons from the souls or bodies which they possessed. They familiarly accosted, or imperiously commanded, the lions and serpents of the desert; infused vegetation into a sapless trunk; suspended iron on the surface of the water; passed the Nile on the back of a crocodile, and refreshed themselves in a fiery furnace. These extravagant tales, which display the fiction without the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... which produces partial inconveniences; but its general effect is good. It lessens the cost of distribution for the consumer, and it decides many to take to new and more hopeful courses, who otherwise might cling to a branch of business that had become nearly sapless. Underselling generally has the same results. When in a trade in which distribution usually costs 43 per cent., one man announces himself as willing to lessen this by 15 or 20 per cent., his conduct is apt to appear unbrotherly and selfish to the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... art thou, own brother of the clod, That from his hand the crook wouldst snatch away And shake instead thy dry and sapless rod, To scare the sheep out of the wholesome day? Yea, what art thou, blind, unconverted Jew, That with thy idol-volume's covers two Wouldst make a jail to coop ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... die," reflected Jethro Rackby, "gnarled, withered, still hanging on when they are all but sapless." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to make each interpretation of a masterpiece—a living thing. It exists only for the moment, and cannot be explained. For instance, two pianists of equal technical ability may play the same composition. With one the playing is dull, lifeless and sapless, with the other there is something that is indescribably wonderful. His playing seems fairly to quiver with life. It commands interest and inspires the audience. What is this vital spark that brings life to mere notes? In one way it may be ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... in the fiercer strife Which winter brings to me amain, Sapless, I waste my life, And, murmuring at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... which is one of the chief merits of the book, makes one of the main joys of its perusal, and sets it high above more popular rivals. Athos, with the coming of years, has declined too much into the preacher, and the preacher of a sapless creed; but d'Artagnan has mellowed into a man so witty, rough, kind and upright, that he takes the heart by storm. There is nothing of the copy-book about his virtues, nothing of the drawing-room in his fine, natural ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so many Christian men so little joy in their lives? Because they look for it in all sorts of wrong places, and seek to wring it out of all sorts of sapless and dry things. 'Do men gather grapes of thorns?' If you fling the berries of the thorn into the winepress, will you get sweet sap out of them? That is what you are doing when you take gratified earthly affections, worldly competence, fulfilled ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... from. Freath, to froth, Fremit, estranged, hostile. Fu', full. Fu'-han't, full-handed. Fud, a short tail (of a rabbit or hare). Fuff't, puffed. Fur, furr, a furrow. Fur-ahin, the hindmost plough-horse in the furrow. Furder, success. Furder, to succeed. Furm, a wooden form. Fusionless, pithless, sapless, tasteless, Fyke, fret. Fyke, to fuss; fidget. Fyle, to ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the night would soon be upon him. There was only one thing that could protect him in the night, and that was fire. With a feverish energy, regardless now of the rustlings about his little island, he began to cut the tallest of the reeds that were hard and sapless, and these he banked in six heaps round the base of the mound; and when the task was done he reared a bigger pile in the centre ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... clouds. Heaven was blotted out. Was there a heaven? Last night he had thought there must be—but that was long ago. Was he sad? He scarcely knew. He was dull, as if the blood in him had run almost dry. He was like a sapless tree. Hermione and Maddalena—what were they? Shadows rather than women. He looked steadily at the sea. Was it the same element upon which he had been only a few hours ago under the stars with Maddalena? He could scarcely believe that it was the same. Sirocco had him fast, sirocco that leaves many ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... tears; His eyeballs in their hollow sockets sink, Bereft of sleep; he loathes his meat and drink; He withers at his heart, and looks as wan As the pale spectre of a murdered man: That pale turns yellow, and his face receives The faded hue of sapless boxen leaves; In solitary groves he makes his moan, Walks early out, and ever is alone; Nor, mixed in mirth, in youthful pleasure shares, But sighs when songs and ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... the popes as temporal sovereigns. 'A monarchy sustained by foreign armies, smitten with the curse of social barrenness, unable to strike root downward or bear fruit upward, the sun, the air, the rain soliciting in vain its sapless and rotten boughs—such a monarchy, even were it not a monarchy of priests, and tenfold more because it is one, stands out a foul blot upon the face of creation, an offence to Christendom and to mankind.'[255] As we shall soon see, he was just as wrathful, just as impassioned and as eloquent, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... sluices, and the shining stems Of runnel blooms, the dreamy wanderer saw, The wilder for the vision of the moon, Stark desolations and a waste of plain, All smit by flame and broken with the storms; Black ghosts of trees, and sapless trunks that stood Harsh hollow channels of the fiery noise, Which ran from bole to bole a year before, And grew with ruin, and was like, indeed, The roar of mighty winds with wintering streams That foam about the limits of the land And mix their ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... of wattles, standing Dead and sapless on the rise; When their boughs were full of beauty, Even to uncaring eyes, I was ever first to rifle The soft branches of their store. O the golden wealth of blossom I ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... look at her, and the look led him to the unwelcome conclusion that Irene "took after" her mother. It was certainly not from the sapless paternal stock that the girl had drawn her warm bloom: Mrs. Carstyle had contributed the high ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... These trees, they told me, were the remnants of that forest which existed in the days of the Heptarchy, and were even then noted as landmarks. No wonder that their upper and more exposed branches were leafless, and that the dead bark had peeled away, from sapless old age. ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... inserted firm, and wrought With curious art. Then placing in his hand A polished adze, she led herself the way To her isle's utmost verge, where loftiest stood The alder, poplar, and cloud-piercing fir, Though sapless, sound, and fittest for his use, As buoyant most. To that most verdant grove His steps the beauteous nymph Calypso led, And sought her home again. Then slept not he, But, swinging with both hands the axe, his task Soon ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... summer. Perhaps if the country be taken at large there is never a time when there is not a flower of some kind out, in this or that warm southern nook. The sun never sets, nor do the flowers ever die. There is life always, even in the dry fir-cone that looks so brown and sapless. ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... Gradually the old man seems to have developed a preference for two or three strictly exquisite intimates, over a throng of your vulgar pensioners. His tardy literary schemes, too—fruit of his all but sapless senility—have absorbed more and more of his time and attention. The end of it all is, therefore, that Theodore and I have him quite to ourselves, and that it behooves us to hold ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... root need others, nor doth the pruner's hand Shrink to restore the topmost shoot to earth That gave it being. Nay, marvellous to tell, Lopped of its limbs, the olive, a mere stock, Still thrusts its root out from the sapless wood, And oft the branches of one kind we see Change to another's with no loss to rue, Pear-tree transformed the ingrafted apple yield, And stony cornels on the plum-tree blush. Come then, and learn what tilth to each ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... chimney-corner, that brightens day with the possibility of divine encounters, and darkens night with intimations of demonic ambushes, is of other substance than one which we take down from our bookcase, sapless as the shelf it stood on, and remote from all present sympathy with man or nature as a town history. It is something like the difference between live metaphor and dead personification. Primarily, the action of the imagination ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... to solicit with address, make a graceful parade of themselves and spend lavishly. An ill-understood system of culture had diverted them from their natural avocations, and converted them into showy and agreeable specimens of vegetation, often hollow, blighted, sapless and over-pruned, besides being very costly, over-manured and too freely watered; and the skillful gardening which shaped, grouped and arranged them in artificial forms and bouquets, rendered their fruit abortive that flowers might be multiplied.—But the flowers were ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... that morning sun upon the frosty and embossed panes of Gaffer Wiswall's dwelling; but the light brought no cheer, no solace unto him. The old man was now a withered, a sapless trunk, stripped of the green verdure which had lately bloomed on its hoary summit. His daughter, as he loved to call her—and he had almost cheated himself into the belief—was ravished from him, and the staff of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... took her from you, you could take her from him to-morrow, if you pleased. The greater your folly, because you do not. As for her, her foolishness is such that she would follow you to the ends of the earth—poor girl! she little knows what a pale, wretched, sapless thing you have in your breast ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... tombstone bears an epitaph which Wordsworth indited. The poet spent a summer at Peel, pitching his tent above what is now called Peveril Terrace. One of my friends tried long ago to pump up from this sapless soil some memory of Wordsworth, but no one could remember anything about him. Shelley is another poet of whom there remains no trace in the Isle of Man. He visited the island early in 1812, being driven into Douglas harbour by contrary winds on his voyage from Cumberland to ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine |
