"Sere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make men better be, Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere: A lily of a day, Is fairer far, in May, Although it fall and die that night; It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauty see; And in short measures, life ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... when the year is new, Nor changes, when its frosts appear: For the star still shines in its ground of blue, And the pine tree lives when the rest are sere. From the pine my thoughts ascend above To the Tree of LIfe that Heaven adorns; From the star to the Star of my Saviour's Love, That grandly shone ...
— The American Missionary, October, 1890, Vol. XLIV., No. 10 • Various
... ashen and sober, and the leaves they were crisped and sere, as I sat in the porch chair and regarded our neighbor's patch of woodland; and I thought: The skies may be ashen and sober, and the leaves may be crisped and sere, but in a maple wood we may dispense ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... upon the void in silent grief, The world is drear; I've lived and loved, but now the verdant leaf Of life is sere. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... would pause in a rift of the hills and look wistfully upon the bed of sere leaves and feathery snow, tempting her to sink down and die, with the grim hemlock boughs, plumed with snow wreaths drooping over her, and lulled by the gurgle of unseen waters wandering to the river, under their jewelled network of ice, but she resisted the impulse, and still ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... circumvents. If fire were human it would build boats across the rivers and outmanoeuvre the wind. It would lie in wait in sheltered places, smouldering, husbanding its fuel until the grass was yellow and the forests sere. But fire is a mere creature of man's; our world before his coming knew nothing of it in any of its habitable places, never saw it except in the lightning flash or remotely on some volcanic coronet. Man brought ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... nor I will not hold me still. My tongue, though not my heart, shall haue his will. He is deformed, crooked, old, and sere, Ill-fac'd, worse bodied, shapelesse euery where: Vicious, vngentle, foolish, blunt, vnkinde, Stigmaticall in ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... and sere, The ancient elms seem withered and bare, The river asleep in its rushy bed, The waters are green, and the grass is red, The roses are dead in the sylvan bowers, Where oft in the dewy evening hours, Ere yet ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... if, perchance, the herd shall find thee out In coming time, and many a nobler crown To one they love to honour gladly throw; Wilt thou not turn thee from their eager shout, And whisper o'er these leaves, then sere and brown: 'Thou'rt late, O world! love ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... [2] Joseph Sere de la Colombiere, vicar-general and archdeacon of Quebec, pronounced Mgr. de Laval's ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... clyffe, or a clent[14] hille. Eft dump in the depe as all drowne wolde. Was no stightlyng with stere ne no stithe ropes, Ne no sayle, at might serue for unsound wedur. But all the buernes in the bote, as hom best liked, Besoght unto sainttes & to sere goddes; (p.65) ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... in front of a great, rambling, old house, set in the midst of a wide lawn, brown and sere now with approaching winter, and surrounded by huge, knotted, gnarled, old oaks, whose dry leaves still clung to the twisted branches and rustled in the crisp air. A fat, sleek, black Tabby lay asleep on the warm porch-rail; a gaunt, ungainly ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... cam'st thou here? Around thee all Is sad and sere,— The brown leaves tell Of winter's breath, And all but thou Of ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... tried to pass across the front of the motor-car as it came slowly through the crowd, who escaped by a hair's breadth, and then slipped on the tram-rail and fell down. I have both accounts set forth, under screaming headlines, in two of these sere newspapers upon my desk. No one could ever ascertain the truth. Indeed, in such a blind tumult of passion, could ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... pride of Raghu's race Fly from us to some desert place! Here let us all for death prepare, Or on the last great journey fare;(320) Of Rama our dear lord bereft, What profit in our lives is left? Huge trunks of trees around us lie, With roots and branches sere and dry, Come let us set these logs on fire And throw our bodies on the pyre. What shall we speak? How can we say We followed Rama on his way, The mighty chief whose arm is strong, Who sweetly speaks, who thinks no wrong? Ayodhya's town with sorrow dumb, Without our lord ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... the later year, I sought, but found thee there no more; Only a rigid stalk and sere A withered head in silence bore, Or swung, responsive to the sigh Of the stray wind that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... crimson to the scene; this was given by shrubs, not by trees. The tints were certainly, in the larger growths, less delicate here than there; the poplar's chrome was darker, the willow's mottled chrome more sere. But there was the exquisite pale canary of the birch, the blood-red and yellow of the wild rose, which glows in both hues, the rich crimson of the red willow, with its foil of ivory berries, and the ruddy copper of the high-bush cranberry. These, with many other of the berry bearers and the wild-flowers, ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... spring, And over-long was green, and early sere, And never gathered gold in the late year From autumn suns, and moons of harvesting, But ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... winter. The trees turned into naked black ghosts; or, rather, into many-stringed harps whereon the northwest gales alternately shrieked and roared. The fire-blue lake was a sheet of leaden ice, twenty inches thick. The fields showed sere and grayly lifeless in the patches between sodden snow-swathes. Nature had flown south, with the birds; leaving the northern world a lifeless and empty husk, as deserted as ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... and the old man halted in his tracks, his gaze riveted upon the wood. For several minutes he saw no sign of what was transpiring behind that screen of sere and yellow autumn leaves, and then a man came running out, and after him ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... also carried some provisions, for inns are unknown in this wild country. At first the road ran along the bay, but soon it turned into a shallow valley leading to the mountains. The uncultivated country seemed perfectly bare, and the sides of the hills were covered with tall weeds, turned sere and yellow by the burning heat; they often crossed ravines where only a narrow stream still ran with a gurgling sound, and occasionally they met a mountaineer, sometimes on foot, sometimes riding his little horse, or bestriding a donkey no bigger than a dog; these mountaineers ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... seated myself during his narrative), my heart was stirred with pity; I took down the Cicero, and lit on a sheet of yellow paper covered with faded manuscript, which, of course, I did not read. I turned to the hearth, tossed on the fire the sere old paper, which blazed at once, and then, hearing the words pax vobiscum, I looked round. But I was alone. After a few minutes, devoted to private ejaculations, I returned to the dining-room; and that is all my story. Your ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... long lifting to the blue Of summer's brilliant sky but russet hue Of sere grass shivering in the trade-wind's sweep. Soon, with light footfalls, from their tranced sleep The first rains bid the poppies rise anew, And trills the lark exultant summons, too. How swift at Fancy's beck those gay crowds leap To glowing life! The eager ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... before; but in what a different aspect! The murky heavens reflected the red glare of the flames upon every object for miles around, tinging each with a lurid gleam like nothing in nature. The dark neutrals of the far-off mountains, the gray-green of the pines, the sere colors of the parched valley, the dark dull-green of the oaks, garlanded with hoary moss, and the gay foliage of the wild grape; all came out distinctly in this furnace-glow, but with quite new effects. In the strong and strange fascination of the scene, both these ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... —with a warm haze floating above them, which, though clear enough in our neighbourhood, became impenetrably blue in the far distance. Woods, woods, woods, leafy branches, foliage globes, or parachutes, green, brown, or sere in colour, forests one above another, rising, falling, and receding—a very leafy ocean. The horizon, at all points, presents the same view, there may be an indistinct outline of a hill far away, or here and there a tall tree higher than the rest conspicuous in its outlines against the translucent ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... young beast—I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that forty's just the right age for me. You're reminding me that I'm a trifle passe myself and ought to marry something sere and yellow. But I tell you I don't feel any older than twenty-five—never have, it's my affliction—while you've never been younger than forty in all your life. It's you who ought to marry ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... was so exciting and so wonderful that everything else was wiped out of her mind. In the front of the box she sat—its sole ornament—against a background of Mrs. Kirkham's contemporaries, withered and sere in contrast with her lily-pure freshness. In the entr'actes the hostess recalled the opera house in its heyday when the Bonanza Kings occupied their boxes with the Bonanza Queens beside them, when everyone ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... Fire, when frost-winds sere The heavy herbage of the ground, Gathers his annual harvest here, With roaring like the battle's sound, And hurrying flames that sweep the plain, And smoke-streams gushing up the sky: I meet the flames with flames again, And at my door they ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... his interest for long. A breathless dance or two, a kiss stolen in a shadowy corner, and blushes and giggles and inane remonstrances that bored him because he knew they would come. Tom had reached the sere age of twenty-two when he began to wonder if he must go beyond the Black Rim world for his wife, or resign himself to the fate of an old bachelor. None of the Black Rim girls, he told himself grimly, should ever have a share in ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... redeem his forlorn failure. Mitchel, who shared his Australian imprisonment, left a fine picture of "this noblest of Irishmen, thrust in among the off-scourings of England's gaols, with his home desolated and his hopes ruined, and defeated life falling into the sere and yellow leaf. A man, who cannot be crushed, or bowed, or broken; anchored immovably upon his own brave heart within; his clear eye and soul open as ever to all the melodies and splendors of heaven and earth, and calmly waiting ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... wight that spans the desert's sandy sea: Patient I'll be till Aloe's[FN254] self unwittingly allow * I'm patient under bitterer things than bitterest aloe: No bitterer things than aloes or than patience for mankind, * Yet bitterer than the twain to me were Patience' treachery: My sere and seamed and seared brow would dragoman my sore * If soul could search my sprite and there unsecret secrecy: Were hills to bear the load I bear they'd crumble 'neath the weight, * 'Twould still the roaring wind, 'twould quench the flame-tongue's flagrancy, And whoso saith the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... used it in less quantity. His eye is jaded and satiated, and the blue and red have life in them no more. He tries to paint them bluer and redder, in vain: all the blue has become grey, and gets greyer the more he adds to it; all his crimson has become brown, and gets more sere and autumnal the more he deepens it. But the great painter is sternly temperate in his work; he loves the vivid color with all his heart; but for a long time he does not allow himself anything like it, nothing but sober browns and dull greys, and colors ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Struck with palsy, sere and old, Waiting at the gates of gold, Spake he with his dying breath: "Life is done, but what is death?" Then, in answer to the king, Fell a sunbeam on his ring, Showing by a heavenly ray: ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... rose from his rug, went into the conservatory (he was very thin then), walked around it deliberately, looking at all the plants he knew, and then went to the bay-window in the dining-room, and stood a long time looking out upon the little field, now brown and sere, and toward the garden, where perhaps the happiest hours of his life had been spent. It was a last look. He turned and walked away, laid himself down upon the bright spot in the rug, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... does not own. On the one side is dreary Cant, with a reminiscence of things noble and divine; on the other is but acrid Candour, with a prophecy of things brutal, infernal. Hurd and Warburton are sunk into the sere and yellow leaf; no considerable body of true-seeing men looks thitherward for healing: the Paine-and-Hume Atheistic theory, of 'things well let alone,' with Liberty, Equality and the like, is also in these days declaring itself nought, unable ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... 635 Shall someone deck thee, over and down, Up and about, with blossoms and leaves? Fix his heart's fruit for thy garland-crown, Cling with his soul as the gourd-vine cleaves, Die on thy boughs and disappear 640 While not a leaf of thine is sere? Or is the other fate in store, And art thou fitted to adore, To give thy wondrous self away, And take a stronger nature's sway? 645 I foresee and could foretell Thy future portion, sure and well: But those passionate eyes speak true, speak true, Let them say what thou shalt do! Only ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... three other ladies at table to-night, each of whom sat by her husband's side. Though they were all in what Dr. Spinks afterwards termed the sere and yellow leaf, both he and the good captain really vied with each other in paying kindly ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... ei. Tunc quasiuit si vellemus morari in terra? Ego dixi, Si bene intellexistis literas domini regis, potestis scire, quod sic. Tunc dixit, quod oporteret nos esse patientes multum, et humiles. Sic discessimus ab eo illo sere. In crastino mane misit vnum sacerdotem Nestorinum pro bigis, et nos duximus omnes quatuor. Tunc occurrens nobis frater ipsius Coiacis, separauit omnia nostra ab ipsis rebus quas tuleramus pridie ad curiam, et ilia accepit ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... still the memory, never sere, But fresh as after fallen rain, Of those who learned their lesson here And may not ever come again, Gives to this garden, bruised and browned, A greenness as of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... province of verse, if not exactly of poetry, in which Byron reigns undisputedly, though it is far distant from the land of lyrics. In his latest and longest production, Don Juan, he tells us that his 'sere fancy has ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... rank grass, the briars and nettles, the heaps of broken masonry and plaster, among which shone beneath the darting lizards, scraps of vermilion wall-fresco, the chips of purple porphyry or dark-green serpentine; long avenues of trees early sere, closed in by arum-fringed walls, or by ditches where the withered reeds creaked beneath the festoons of clematis and wild vine; solemn and solitary wildernesses within the city walls, where the silence was broken only by the lowing of the herds driven ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... Casting faint silver pathways like the moon's Across the Ocean's glassy, mottled floor, Far clouds uprear their gleaming battlements Drawn to the crest of some bleak eminence, When autumn twilight fades on the sere hill And autumn winds are still; To watch the East for some emerging sign, Wintry Capella or the Pleiades Or that great huntsman with the golden gear; Ravished in hours like these Before thy universal shrine To feel the invoked presence hovering near, He stands enthusiastic. Star-lit ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... the thousands of other piratical craft which pillage the public with the aid of the taximeter clock on the port beam! Soon they were at the big Broadway playhouse, where Shirley floundered out first, after the ungallant manner of many sere-and-yellow beaux. He swayed unsteadily, teetering on his cane, as Helene leaped lightly to the sidewalk beside him. The driver stood by the door of the car, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... rose a dread black imp, and suddenly The black one bit himself into my heart; And lo, at once the earth lay void and barren, And sun and stars were straightway drenched in gloom. The landscape, glad erewhile, lay dark, autumnal; Each grove was sere, each flower stem was broken; Within the frozen sense my strength lay dead, All joy, all ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... across the trail. Roy remembered the tree. It had stood on a little knoll, strong and graceful, reaching straight toward heaven with a kind of gallant uprightness. Now its trunk was snapped, its boughs crushed, its foliage turning sere. An envious wind had brought it low. Somehow that pine reminded Beaudry poignantly of the girl they were seeking. She, too, had always stood aloof, a fine and vital personality, before the eyes of men sufficient to herself. ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... for our picnic. November dreamed that it was May. The air was soft and mellow, with pale, aerial mists in the valleys and over the leafless beeches on the western hill. The sere stubble fields brooded in glamour, and the sky was pearly blue. The leaves were still thick on the apple trees, though they were russet hued, and the after-growth of grass was richly green, unharmed as yet by the nipping frosts of previous nights. The wind made a sweet, drowsy murmur ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... one rival—Fear; Who follows ever on his footsteps, sent By jealous Fate who calls great joy a crime. While in far ways 'mong leaves just turning sere, With gaze serene and placid, walks Content. No heart ere held these ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... nears the door: a frosty rime Is branching over it, and drifts are deep Against the wall. He knocks, and there is time,— (For none doth open),—time to list the sweep And whistle of the wind along the mere Through beds of stiffened reeds and rushes sere. ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... They sang a love-song in July; In August, hard by Lewes town, They sang of joy 'twixt sky and down; And in September's golden spell We heard them singing on Scaw Fell. October's leaves were brown and sere, But skylarks sang by Teston Weir; And in November, at Mount's Bay, They sang upon our ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... feature, and one that delights me very much, is the perfect emerald of the spring runs while the fields are yet brown and sere,—strips and patches of the most vivid velvet green on the slopes and in the valleys. How the eye grazes there, and is filled and refreshed! I had forgotten what a marked feature this was until I recently ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... sere, yellow skeletons of last summer's ferns, if haply winter have forgotten one green leaf for our home vase—in vain we rake, freezing our fingers through our fur gloves—there is not one. An icicle has pierced ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... knew the Marsian war, If roving Spartacus have spared A single jar. And bid Nesera come and trill, Her bright locks bound with careless art: If her rough porter cross your will, Why then depart. Soon palls the taste for noise and fray, When hair is white and leaves are sere: How had I fired in life's ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Robin's shrill yet mellow pipe, That in the voiceless calm of the young morn, Commingles with my dreams:—lo! as I draw Aside the curtains of my couch, he sits, Deep over-bower'd by broad geranium leaves, (Leaves trembling 'neath the touch of sere decay,) Upon the dewy window-sill, and perks His restless black eye here and there, in search Of crumbs, or shelter from the icy breath Of wild winds rushing from the Polar sea: For now November, with a brumal robe, Mantles the moist and desolated earth; Dim sullen clouds hang o'er the cheerless ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... bring him a prisoner, or upon The field of battle die a noble death. And death need have no horrors unto thee, But unto those to whom this world is bright, Its prospects hopeful and its pleasures keen, And to the healthy and the young death's pangs Are most severe when life is plucked, and from Sere age, when all is ready for the end, Life unperceived goes as from one that sleeps. The gentlest wind brings down the serest leaf. To sever from the parent stem by force The freshest must be plucked, and so with man. And by the righteous and the just, ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... entering the vestibule, he saw something that he had never seen before. At the end of the passage, below the dark staircase, was a door opening into the Paradou, and he could see the vast garden spreading there beneath the pale sunlight, with all its autumn melancholy, its sere and yellow foliage. The doctor hurried through the doorway and took a few ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... evening was very beautiful. The cold November day was dying into night. Clear, clear was the sky save for some black and heavy snow clouds that floated on it driven before the easterly wind that piped through the sere grasses and blew the plovers over him as though they were dead leaves. Where the sun had vanished long bars of purple lay above the horizon; to his excited fancy they looked like the gateway of another and a better world, set, as the old Egyptians ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere— The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year: It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid region of Weir:— It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, In the ghoul-haunted woodland ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to ask," returned the boy; and hastily preceding Rogers, he put his head in at Lapham's door, and then withdrew it. "Please to sit down," he said; "he'll see you pretty soon;" and, with an air of some surprise, Rogers obeyed. His sere, dull-brown whiskers and the moustache closing over both lips were incongruously and illogically clerical in effect, and the effect was heightened for no reason by the parchment texture of his skin; the baldness extending to the crown of his head was like a baldness made ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... deep upon the ground, And winter's brightness all around Decks bravely out the forest sere, With jewels of the brave old year. The coasting crowd upon the hill With some new spirit seems to thrill; And all the temple bells achime. Ring out the glee ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... said one of the boatmen, pointing to a dark object which floated among the tangled debris of sere weeds and woodwork collected against the ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the dull, cold, gray, hopeless desolation of the approach of minter. The hard, wiry grass that thinly covered the once and sand, the occasional stunted weeds, and the sparse foliage of the gnarled and dwarfish undergrowth, all were parched brown and sere by the fiery heat of the long Summer, and now rattled drearily under the pitiless, cold rain, streaming from lowering clouds that seemed to have floated down to us from the cheerless summit of some great ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... for instance, which shocked contemporaries, and which, by the way, has the very large first title of Woman, could only bring a blush to cheeks very tickle of that sere: a yawn might come much more easily. The most shocking thing that the heroine, who is "an attempt to delineate woman in her natural state," does (and that not of malice) is to receive her lover in a natural bathroom. But her adventures are told in a style which is the oddest compound of ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... heaven's wrath sere his brain and scorch his heart!' she said—'had he not, disguised as the Italian, won my love and driven me to desperation, I now should be happy and comparatively guiltless. But, by his infernal means, I have become a murderess and an outcast—perhaps doomed to swing ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions that around us are rushing into life cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests.[3] Events, actions arise that must be sung, that will sing themselves. Who can doubt that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, shall one day be the ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... meadow between them and the water. Many hills were covered with a thin forest of oaks and very little underbrush. At a distance the ground appeared as if carefully trimmed for occupation, especially as it had a few open places like fields. In the sere and yellow leaf of autumn these groves were charming, and I presume they are equally so in the fresh verdure ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... this morning, and I did not like to intrude again," he laughed. "Growing modest in my sere and yellow days, you see; so I thought I should perhaps find you here, as I saw your numerous party drive ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... our distinguished friend here has reached that condition described by Shakespeare as 'the sere and yellow leaf,' or has suffered some premature abatement of his mental and physical faculties. Whether he is ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... skies, sere leaves tossing, sad winds sobbing, and rains that wept for days and nights together, on dead flowers and dying grasses, moaned itself away at last, and December swept into its place with a good rousing snow-storm, merry sleigh-bells, and bright promises of coming Christmas. The girls ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... road ill-formed, leading for the most part across a sere and desolate country, with nothing to relieve its barrenness except long stretches of the great spear-headed reeds. At noon the heat was intense; the little cavalcade halted for half an hour under the shade of some black towering rocks which broke the monotony of the district, and commenced ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... breaks it off, like dry tea. Is it a black species?—or a black-parched state of other species, perishing for the sake of Velasquez effects, instead of accumulation of earth? and, if so, does it die of drought, accidentally, or, in a sere old age, naturally? and how is it related to the rich green bosses that grow in deep velvet? And there again is another matter not clear to me. One calls them 'velvet' because they are all brought to an even surface at the top. Our own velvet is reduced to such trimness ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... come from the cold and stormy North, With a rush and a roar I hurry forth, I toss from the trees the dead leaves down, The withered leaves all sere and brown, And sway the branches to and fro As on my way I whirling go. At crack and crevice I slip in, And make a lively sounding din. Swift I come and swift away, With you I can no longer stay, For I am wanted elsewhere now, And so good-bye, ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... that longs For bloom, and fragrance, and the ruby fire Of maple-buds along the misty hills, And that immortal call which fills The waiting wood with songs? The snow-drops came so long ago, It seemed that Spring was near! But then returned the snow With biting winds, and earth grew sere, And sullen clouds drooped low To veil the sadness of a hope deferred: Then rain, rain, rain, incessant rain Beat on the window-pane, Through which I watched the solitary bird That braved the tempest, buffeted and tossed ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... shadowy sorrow dropped its pall of darkness over his mind and obscured his perception of all awakening, quickening inspirations; a smouldering fire within him withered up every vernal shoot of impulse and turned all the spring-time foliage of thought and fancy sere. His voice, his look, his mien, betrayed that an ever-living woe encompassed him ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... and the windy sycamore and hastened across the sere grass. "Father, father!" he cried. "Do you know who that is?" In his young voice there was both warning and appeal. Adam Gaudylock, he knew, had spoken to his father, but Gideon had given no sign. Suppose, no matter who spoke, his father would give, forever, no other sign ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... hearts, which seems to come forth to such from every dry knoll of sere grass, from every pine-stump, and half-embedded stone, on which the dull March sun shines, comes forth to the poor and hungry, and to such as are of simple taste. If thou fill thy brain with Boston and New York, with fashion and ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... threadbare shawl and carefully bound with home-twisted twine and this she deposited on her knees and began to unfasten with trembling fingers of expectancy. When she had opened up the thing she rose eagerly and shook out a gown that was as brittle and sere as a leaf in autumn and that rustled frigidly as the ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... tienda roof as if they were undergoing a second burning. The black shadow of a chimney on the whitewashed adobe wall was like a door or cavernous opening in the wall itself; the tops of the olive and pear trees seen above it were russet and sere already in the fierce light. Even the moist breath of the sea beyond had quite evaporated before it crossed the plaza, and now rustled the leaves in the Mission garden with a ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to-day, ole f'la," Lord Jasper continued, coming over to Henry and taking hold of his arm. "Thirty-one. I'm getting on in years, ole f'la, that's what I'm doing ... sere and yellow, so to speak ... and a chap my age doesn't want to be bothered with a damn play. He wants something ... something substansl!..." He fumbled over the word "substantial" and then fell on it. "Something substansl," he repeated. ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... Paris green was an effective antidote against these destructive worms, and I have ordered a barrel of it from the city. I intend to spread a layer of this Paris green over all our flower and vegetable beds; the contrast thus presented to the dull, sere brown of our lawn will be very pleasing to the eye. In fact, I am not sure that it would not be cheaper to color our whole lawn with Paris green than to attempt to revise it with water, which can be used with legal liberality only between the first of November ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... is "an inheritance ... that fadeth not away." It shall not be as the garlands offered by men—green to-day and to-morrow sere and yellow. "Its leaf also shall not wither." It shall always retain its freshness, and shall offer me a continually fresh delight. And these are all ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... stately dinner parties grow dim, Masters of Horses and Hounds go to battle, the plate is melted down, and all is sad and sere. The young lord is sent by King Charles abroad, and Parliamentary Fairfax comes thundering at the gate, where admittance is refused by the venerable old marquis. Fairfax besieges boldly and is gallantly attacked by repeated sallies. I had rather the Puritans, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... are serious and sober, Officials look palsied and sere— They indulge in rhetoric small-beer (Instead of sound sparkling October) They're frightened about you, my dear— (You, at present in two senses, dear!) They would scan the far future, and probe her, But can't—and it makes them feel queer; As you sit by the fire, looking sober, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... of woodlands lover, Dusk October, berry-stained; Wailed about of parting plover,— Thou then, too, of woodlands lover. Fading now are copse and cover; Forests now are sere and waned. ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... twilight, rustles by the crisp leaf sere, Sadly wail the lonely night-winds, sweeping sea-ward, chill and drear, Sullen dash the restless waters 'gainst a bleak and rock-bound shore, While the sea-birds' weird voices mingle with ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... had snatched the glory from the trees, whose few brown and sere leaves hung disconsolately on the branches. High above them was an occasional skirmishing line of wild ducks. The deep stillness was broken only by the scattering of nuts the scurrying squirrels were harvesting, by the cry of startled wood birds, or by the wistful ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... the summer floweret charms, The leaves will soon be sere, And Autumn folds his jewelled arms Around the dying year; So, ere the waning seasons claim Our leafless groves awhile, With golden wine and glowing flame We ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... men can love a flower Unto Lanciotto was Francesca dear, 'Tis not on such Love wields his jealous power; And therefore Paolo moved him not to fear, Though he so green with youth and he so sere. Nor yet indeed was wrong, the hidden thing Grew at each heart, unknown of each, a year,— Two eggs still silent in the nest through spring, May draws so near to June, and not ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... influences crowd up around it; the turf awakens all about as if in the spirit of friendliness. See the old barn on the meadow slope; the green seems to have oozed out from it, and to have flowed slowly down the hill; at a little distance it is lost in the sere stubble. One can see where every spring lies buried about the fields; its influence is felt at the surface, and the turf is early quickened there. Where the cattle have loved to lie and ruminate in the warm summer twilight, there the April sunshine ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... at times it is, To clink happy rhymes, and fling On the canvas scenes of bliss, When we are half famishing!— When your "jersey" rips in spots, And your hat's "forget-me-nots" Have grown tousled, old and sere— It is ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... day, tinged with the chill breath of coming snow. Thompson missed the sun that had cheered and warmed those hushed solitudes. Just to look at that dull sky and to hear the wind that was fast stripping the last sere leaves from willow and maple and birch, and to feel that indefinable touch of harshness, the first frigid fingerings of the frost-gods in the air, gave him a swift touch of depression. He shivered a ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... pride: "Exegi monumentum sere perennius." He is not the least afraid to say that. He did it; knew he had done it; said he had done it; and feared ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... one sere leaf, that parting Autumn gilds, Trembles upon the thin, and naked spray, November, dragging on his sunless day, Lours, cold and fallen, on the watry fields; And Nature to the waste dominion yields, Stript her last ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... Even if it were not, the beasts could live upon what herbage remained over from last summer and on the leaves of trees, neither of which in this winter veld ever become quite lifeless, whereas on the sere and fire-swept plains beyond the mountains they might find nothing at all. So we determined to risk the savages and the lions which followed the game into these hot districts, especially as it was not yet the fever season or that ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... goodly handle of olive wood fastened well. Next she gave him a polished adze, and she led the way to the border of the isle where tall trees grew, alder and poplar, and pine that reacheth unto heaven, seasoned long since and sere, that might lightly float for him. Now after she had shown him where the tall trees grew, Calypso, the fair goddess, departed homeward. And he set to cutting timber, and his work went busily. Twenty trees in all ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... got a better idea of the land about the river. It was sere, the vegetation dwindling except for some rough spikes of things pushing through the parched ground like flayed fingers, their puffed redness in contrast to the usual amethystine coloring of Warlock's growing things. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... made on either side. Two large boats and two small ones held them all, and away they went, first up through the three bridges and round the bend, then, turning, they floated down to the green island, where a grove of oaks rustled their sere leaves and the squirrels were still gathering acorns. Here they often met to keep their summer revels, and here they now spread their feast on the flat rock which needed no cloth beside its own gray lichens. The girls trimmed ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... sorry to leave their friend. But the fields were bare, the frosts began to pinch, and the young ones longed to see the world; so they must go. The day they started, the whole flock flew to the great house, to say good-by. Some dived and darted round and round it, some hopped to and fro on the sere lawn, some perched on the chimney-tops, and some clung to the window ledges; ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... scenery had altered altogether by reason of the enormous growth and subsequent drying of the scrub. The crest on which we sat was high, and commanded a wide prospect of the crater landscape, and we saw it now all sere and dry in the late autumn of the lunar afternoon. Rising one behind the other were long slopes and fields of trampled brown where the mooncalves had pastured, and far away in the full blaze of the sun a drove of them basked slumberously, scattered shapes, ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... into the ample tops of which were crowded the legs of his coarse "copperas" trousers; while his other garments were a deer-skin shirt, and a blanket coat that had once been green, but, like the leaves of the autumnal forest, had become sere and yellow. A slouched felt hat shaded his cheeks from the sun upon the rare occasions when Old Zeb strayed beyond the shadow of the "timber." Where and how he lived were the two points that most required explanation. In the tract of virgin forest where ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... more, O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear Compels me to disturb your season due: For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer: Who would ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... rest, and I sit here Among the trees, green mounds, and leaves as sere As my own blasted hopes. There was a time When Love and perfect Happiness did chime Like two sweet sounds upon this blessed day; But one has flown forever, far away From this poor Earth's unsatisfied desires To love eternal, and the sacred ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... to weave her nest, She seeks and gathers there or here; But spins it from her faithful breast, Renewing still, till leaves are sere. ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... level at first, soon came tumbling down amongst huge boulders; the path disappeared; out of the oaks and alder high cliffs of limestones began to lift themselves. The morning was unusually dark and grey, even for October, and as leaves, brown and sere though they were, still clustered thickly on the trees, Copplestone quickly found himself in a gloom that would have made a nervous person frightened. He also found that his forward progress became increasingly ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... the dominant tone of which was green. It was green, green, green—the blue-green of the springing year, and sere and yellow green and tawny-brown green of autumn. There were orange green, gold green, and a copper green. And all these greens were rich green beyond description; and yet the richness and the greenness passed even as we gazed upon it, going out of the gray ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... rivers of the world, and— ominous subject—a sort of comprehensive history of Greek literature, with a careful classification of all authors, each under his own heading. Greek literature was rather in the sere and yellow leaf, be sure, when men thought of writing that sort of thing about it. But still, he is an encyclopaedic man, and, moreover, a poet. He writes an epic, "Aitia," in four books, on the causes of the myths, religious ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... far down, I surveyed the grounds laid out like a map: the bright and velvet lawn closely girdling the grey base of the mansion; the field, wide as a park, dotted with its ancient timber; the wood, dun and sere, divided by a path visibly overgrown, greener with moss than the trees were with foliage; the church at the gates, the road, the tranquil hills, all reposing in the autumn day's sun; the horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white. No feature ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... [Sidenote: on me,] the aduenturous Knight shal vse his Foyle and Target: the Louer shall not sigh gratis, the humorous man[6] shall end his part in peace: [7] the Clowne shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickled a'th' sere:[8] and the Lady shall say her minde freely; or the blanke Verse shall halt for't[9]: [Sidenote: black verse] ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... the sword of Rome lay open my face, yea, wide open as the lips of a crying child. And on my back, most noble mistress, thou mightest hide thy white fingers in the welts cut by the stinging thong. And seest thou my arm? Here is flesh cooked sere as the shell of a tortoise. Thus have blade and thong and branding iron of Rome marked me with wounds and commanded my lips to silence. Yet have these scars each one a thousand silent tongues crying ever 'Hate! Hate! Hate!' But here," and he threw back his tunic and placed three fingers ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... And rest in my little home." Then, deep in its quiet mossy bed, Sheltered from sun and shower, The grateful worm spun its winter tomb, In the shadow of the flower. And Clover guarded well its rest, Till Autumn's leaves were sere, Till all her sister flowers were gone, And her winter sleep drew near. Then her withered leaves were softly spread O'er the sleeping worm below, Ere the faithful little flower lay Beneath the ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... cornfields, a little brown,— The picture must not be over-bright,— Yet all in the golden and gracious light Of a cloud, when the summer sun is down. Alway and alway, night and morn, Woods upon woods, with fields of corn Lying between them, not quite sere, And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom, When the wind can hardly find breathing-room, Under their tassels,—cattle near, Biting shorter the short green grass, And a hedge of sumach and sassafras, With bluebirds twittering all around,— ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... night. An upper window of the house of Morelos looked out upon a court in which two palm trees grew. They had been tall and flourishing. One might see them from the court-room. But for a year they had been shedding their leaflets and turning sere. Tonight their yellow stems had clashed and whispered until the wind was down, leaving the night sullen, brooding, thick, starless, with dashes of rain and a raw chill on the ground that brought out all the malefic ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... thou yet more dear, O, little city, grey and sere, Though shrunken from thine ancient pride And lonely by thy lonely sea, Than these fair halls on Isis' side, Where Youth an ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... and now no more— Like a tree that is broken and sere— My natal gods bring the echo clear Of songs that in past times they bore; Wide seas I cross'd to foreign shore, With hope of change and other fate; My folly was made clear too late, For in the place of good I sought The seas reveal'd unto me naught, But ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... is that of the hemp-plant, where the sexes are indistinguishable up to the period of fertility, but when the male plants have shed their pollen, and thus fulfilled their duty of fertilising the female plants, they cease to grow, turn yellow and sere, and if at all crowded wither and die. Many other examples might be cited, but the question is too wide to enter on here. See Lester Ward, op. ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... will thee betide When thou hast handled been awhile, With sere flowers to be thrown aside; And I shall sigh, while some will smile, To see thy love to every one Hath brought thee to be ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Billy, helpless, Racked with mad'ning fever pains, As the burning sun of summer Scorches sere the desert plains. Then he lay with cold, white features And the feeble, scarce drawn breath, As the silent winter prairie Lies beneath its shroud of death. Ofttimes when the raging sickness Sent the hot blood to his brain, He would point with frantic gesture To the dingy ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... are broader and easier to enter: a few are very capacious and might be legitimately licensed to carry a dozen inside with safety; nearly all or them are lined with green baize, much of which is now getting into the sere and yellow leaf period of life; many of them are well-cushioned—green being the favourite colour; and in about the same number Brussels carpets may be found. There is a quiet, secluded coziness about the pews; the sides are ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the wither'd leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay And from the wood-top calls the crow, through ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... earthly resting-place in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, on Wednesday, the 22nd February. During the day large numbers visited the sorrowing house, and gazed for the last time on the features of the revered dead. As was to be expected, the larger number were, like the venerable deceased, far into "the sere and yellow leaf," and many who had known him for a long time could scarce restrain the unbidden tear as a flood of recollections surged up at the sight of the still form cold ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... many needless dead! That great soul whose beautiful body is lying over yonder, so conspicuous against the sere hillside—could it not have been spared the bitter consciousness of a vain devotion? Would one exception have marred too much the pitiless perfection of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... have sometimes compared him to the silver and graceful ash, with its pensile branches, and leaves of gentle green, reflecting gleams of happy sunshine. The fall of its leaf, too, is like the fall of his,—it is green to-night and gone to-morrow, it does not sere nor wither." ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... of Rafael Sanzio were still fresh in the memory of his surviving pupils. Michael Angelo was in the zenith of his fame, bending his energies to the beautifying of the great cathedral. Martin Luther was in the sere old age of his life, waiting for the command of the Master, which should bid him lay down his armor. A hundred years were to elapse before Charles I. of England must pay with his life ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... lying stiff and cold, to the one pair of human eyes that were destined to see you! The little birds that come and go and return to us over such vast distances, they perish like this in myriads annually; flying to and from us they are blown away by death like sere autumn leaves, "the pestilence-stricken multitudes" whirled away by the wind! They die in myriads: that is not strange; the strange, the astonishing thing is the fact of death; what can they tell us of it—the wise men who live or have ever ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... discovering that there was an old, gabled, lower town at Cassel, I felt the special gladness of the touch of Germany. It was an autumn morning, bright yet tender. I sped along the wide, empty streets, across the sanded square, with hedges of sere lime trees, where a big, periwigged Roman Emperor of an Elector presides, making one think of the shouts of "Hurrah, lads, for America!" of the bought and sold Hessians of Schiller's "Cabal and Love." At the other end was a promenade, terraced ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... which they were seated, through which the little brook foamed and tumbled, was surrounded by magnificent old oaks, some with hollow trunks, others with branches gnarled and twisted in a thousand fantastic shapes, some yet retained a portion of their leaves—brown and sere, one or two were enveloped with ivy, and here and there the mistletoe could be seen, thick and verdant. It was a spot the Druids must have delighted to haunt in the times gone by, and one a painter might like to hap upon now in ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... supposed to have been a dark russet colour. Bayard, a derivative of bay, was the name of several famous war-horses. Cf. Blank and Blanchard. The name Soar is from the Old French adjective sor, bright yellow. It is of Germanic origin and cognate with sere. ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... State in the Union where the vine will not flourish. Here its worst enemy is mildew, a parasitical fungus which attacks the leaves, revealing itself in yellowish-brown patches on the upper side, and thin, frosty patches underneath. Soon the leaves become sere, and then they fall. The microscope reveals a miniature forest of growth in each leaf, with the threadlike roots of the fungi searching about the leaf cells for food. To burn old leaves, and to blow sulphur over the vine ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Where have you flown, bright dreams? Has that rude hand Sufficed to dash to naught your frail creations? Sad thoughts and humors black now fill my soul. So his rough foot hath bruised the dewy grass, And left it sere. Why should his harsh words touch me? The truth of yesterday is false to-day. How could I know, dear God! How might I guess The bitter sweetness, the delicious pain! A new heart fills my breast, as soft and weak ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... spring-like as yourself. And for you, aunt, I will arrange an autumn arraying,—a costume soft, yet bright, like the autumn days which the Americans call 'Indian summer,'—something which will almost make one wish to fall into the sere and yellow leaf of life in ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... thought myself a clever fellow, And wished that others held the same opinion; They took it up when my days grew more mellow, And other minds acknowledged my dominion: Now my sere Fancy "falls into the yellow Leaf,"[232] and Imagination droops her pinion, And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk Turns what was once ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... verse concise yet clear Tunes to smooth melody unconquer'd sense, May your fame fadeless live, as 'never-sere' The Ivy wreathes yon Oak, whose broad defence Embowers me from Noon's sultry influence! 5 For, like that nameless Rivulet stealing by, Your modest verse to musing Quiet dear Is rich with tints heaven-borrow'd: the charm'd eye Shall ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a birth-day now No hastening night that knows, She hath a never-ending year Which feels no blight of autumn sere, Nor ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... the corner of the demolished abode, made his way through a press of sere cabbage palmettos, and emerged suddenly on the blinding expanse of the sea. The limpid water lay in a bright rim over corrugated and pitted rock, where shallow ultramarine pools spread gardens of sulphur-yellow and rose anemones. The land curved ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... born To rapture! ere thy last wild song was sung. I deem thy day is Night and thou the Moon— So feeble is thy kiss, so cold thy light,— Lamp of my life, alas!—how soon, how soon— O speak! comes thy last greeting and good-night? My breasts are sere as sand, no flowers bloom, No grass, no forests hide my misery bare; The reaches of the tyrannous poles consume Those gardens of delight we made so fair, And men lie dark in caves, a sullen race, Framed of ray daughter's flesh but now my bane, Yet shall I not withdraw my patient face, ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... comfort in the farmer's house, In the old age of the year, When the fruit is ripe and squirrels roam Through the forests brown and sere. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... nor too few. The treatment had to be mainly provocative—an appeal in some cases by very coarse means indeed to very coarse nerves, in others by finer devices addressed to senses more tickle o' the sere. And so grew up that unsurpassed and hardly matched product the French short story, where, if it is in perfection, hardly a word is thrown away, and not a word missed that is ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... had been sitting one evening several years previously when Matthew Cuthbert had driven down over the hill with what Mrs. Rachel called "his imported orphan." But that had been in springtime; and this was late autumn, and all the woods were leafless and the fields sere and brown. The sun was just setting with a great deal of purple and golden pomp behind the dark woods west of Avonlea when a buggy drawn by a comfortable brown nag came down the hill. Mrs. Rachel ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... graceful branches which never shed their honours under the tyrant pruning-hook; the soft green sward; the chequered light and shade; the wild luxuriant weeds; the lichen and the moss—all, all are beautiful alike in the green freshness of spring, or in the sadness and sere of autumn. Their beauty is of that kind which makes the heart full with joy—appealing to the affections with a power which belongs to nature only. This wood runs up, from below the base, to the ridge of a long line of irregular hills, having perhaps, in primitive times, formed ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... before my sight In devious tracery that Passage lay; Mocking me with its undeveloped truth, Wealth unappropriated, glory lost! Cruel is she who took from me that substance With which I might have conquered an escape, Leaving me, a forlorn old spirit, sere and grey. Musing through barren hours upon the past, I think with bitterness on those who once Were friends and lovers—Queen, companions, Wife! Forgotten! yes, forgotten by them all! The luxuries of the world-taxing city, ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... The grass was getting sere, there was new-fallen snow on Lizard Head, and winter was coming. He had the animal's instinct to den up, to seek winter quarters. Certain ties other than those of Mary's love combined to draw him back to Marmion for the winter. If he could only shake off his burdening notoriety and ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... soon I heard a roaring wind: It did not come anear; But with its sound it shook the sails, That were so thin and sere. ...
— The Rime of the Ancient Mariner • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... your powers of imagination in endeavoring to picture the positions of the troops,—how they look, how they act, how they stand amid the terrible storm, braying death, how they rush into the thickest fire, how they fall like the sere leaves of autumn,—you will fail in your conceptions of the conflict. You must see it, and be in it, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... feathery seaweed growing out of a frozen ocean than like trees upon a plain. He was nearing a grove of elm and birch which he had not seen the evening before; by the almost hidden rails of the fence there were half-buried shrubs. So dry, so hard, so absolutely without bud or sere leaf was the interlacing outline of the trees and shrubs, that they too seemed to be some strange product of this new sort of ocean; they did not remind him of verdant glades. Not that beauty was absent, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... half-timbered house had gone the way of all shams, and the Times was extinct, and the silk hat a ridiculous antiquity, and the modestly imposing stone that had been sacred to Mr. Morris had been burnt to make lime for mortar, and all that Mr. Morris had found real and important was sere and dead, the world was still going on, and people were still going about it, just as heedless and impatient of the Future, or, indeed, of anything but their own selves and property, as ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... is sere and small, From the hills, the brishings off the hills; And then come by the bats and all We cut last year in the hills; And then the roots we tried to cleave But found too tough and had to leave— Polting through the lowlands, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... that borders it, strewed with the pale yellow leaves of the elm, just beginning to fall; hedgerows glowing with long wreaths of the bramble in every variety of purplish red; and overhead the unchanged green of the fir, contrasting with the spotted sycamore, the tawny beech, and the dry sere leaves of the oak, which rustle as the light wind passes through them; a few common hardy yellow flowers (for yellow is the common colour of flowers, whether wild or cultivated, as blue is the rare one), flowers of many sorts, but almost ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... The upper fields harmonise with the lower. The Christian painting displays a vigorous and stately tree between two younger palm-trees; the pagan picture has the same symbols; but the middle tree is in the sere and yellow leaf, whilst a Dryad issuing from the roots flourishes an axe to cut it down. The allusion is not to be mistaken. The sun of paganism has set: the axe ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... became aware, as the year advanced towards the sere and yellow leaf, that in opposing her wayward will in single combat against a simple little association in the public mind she was undertaking a ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... hesitated—then looked up frankly—"I would rather you spoke no more of it, Harry! I've made my confession. I admit I nearly struck Leveson for slandering an innocent and defenseless woman,—and I believe you'll forgive me for that. Next, I own that though I am getting into the sere and yellow leaf, I am still conscious of a heart,—and that I feel a regretful yearning at times for the joys I have missed out of my life—and you'll forgive me for that too,—I know you will! For the rest, draw a curtain over ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... growing lighter outside. Stars faded in a paling blue and the desert showed faint colorings. He tied his necktie. A deep-toned keening set up off to the southward, over the sere and dreary landscape. It was a faraway noise, something like the lament of a mountain-sized calf bleating for its mother. Joe took a deep breath. He looked, but saw nothing. The noise, though, told him that there'd ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster |
