"Sere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you sowing to the flesh, O youth? Have you turned your back upon the truth? Are you scattering seeds of evil From the garner of the devil? Are you thinking of the harvest By and by? Soon will spring and summer pass, Brown and sere will grow the grass; No time then for good seed-sowing: You and I Must gather what we've sown, forsooth. Are you sowing to the flesh, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... steam, dead clouds awoke And quivered on the Western rim. Then the singing started: dim And sibilant as rime-stiff reeds That whistle as the wind leads. The South whispered hard and sere, The North answered, low and clear; And thunder muffled up like drums Beat, whence the East wind comes. The heavy sky that could not weep Is loosened: rain falls steep: And thirty singing furies ride To split the sky from ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... shoulder of Yellow Old Bald up came the sun, bannered and glorious; the distant ranges glowed in his splendours; the sere fields about the place were all gilded. The small-paned eastern window of the sick-room let in a flood of morning light. Gone was the bird choir that used to welcome his earliest rays, swept south by the great tide of migration. Those that remained, snowbird, ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... I 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
... not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make man 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 beauties see; And in short ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... time, the fields of force took a sere planet, of barren, blistered rock, and with a concept made it into the garden of man's dreams. On one island, they set up a crystalline structure, a thing, this much concession to the mind of man; a tool, to amplify and clarify their thought to ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... the year when day gives place to night so suddenly, that the sober calm of twilight even appears denied to us. The streams rushed by, turbid and swollen from the heavy autumnal rains. A rude wind had robbed most of the trees of their foliage; the sere and withered leaves, indeed, yet remained on the boughs, beautiful even in, their decay, but the slightest breath would carry them away from their resting-places, and the mountain passes were incumbered, and often slippery from the fallen leaves. The mountains ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... owing to the freshness of her robe, which was of simple organdie, looked infinitely better than the other, who was quite as pretty, but who, wearing a robe of expensive lace, whose whiteness had fallen into "the sere and yellow ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... 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; all twittering a ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... 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 ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... Tribute of mee: [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] what Players ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... occupant, who put it to the additional use of sitting-room and study, made the lack of space particularly noticeable. The window afforded a prospect pleasant enough to eyes such as theirs. Above the lower houses on the opposite side of the way appeared tall trees, in the sere garb of later autumn, growing by old Westminster School; and beyond them, grey in twilight, rose the towers of the Abbey. From this point of view no vicinage of modern brickwork spoilt their charm; the time-worn monitors ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... galloping fox as it looped past them through the snow. Presently they came to an open place ringed in by forest, so wet that only marsh-trees would grow there. To their right lay a little ice-covered mere, with sere, brown reeds standing here and there upon its face, and at the end of it a group of stark pollarded willows, whereof the tops had been cut for poles by those who dwelt in the forest farm near by. Sir John looked at the place and shivered a little—perhaps ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... roaring wind: It did not come anear; But with its sound it shook the sails, That were so thin and sere. ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... whose 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 gaze undazzled ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... grandfather's comfort in any way. Isn't it dreadful, Jennie, to be in this lovely world with so much around you to charm and please, and yet the sense of enjoyment gone, and brightness and beauty all the same as if it were brown and sere? You'll find me a dull companion, I fear, Jennie, for I've grown old and thoughtful by seeing ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... hills long parched, 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 ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... deepened into night. Along the sere and melancholy wood, the autumnal winds crept, with a lowly, but gathering moan. Where the water held its course, a damp and ghostly mist clogged the air, but the skies were calm, and chequered only by a few clouds, that swept in long, white, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... amid the 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 every heart; ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... wax-works has broken down utterly. These figures—kings, princes, duchesses, queens—all are real to me now, and all are infinitely pathetic, in the dignity of their fallen and forgotten greatness. With what inalienable majesty they wear their rusty velvets and faded silks, flaunting sere ruffles of point-lace, which at a touch now would be shivered like cobwebs! My heart goes out to them through the glass that divides us. I wish I could stay with them, bear them company, always. I think they like me. I am afraid they will miss me. Perhaps ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... perfect days for the girl-wife. Under these genial suns, with such companionship, such daily food, she rushed towards maturity like some half-wild colt brought suddenly from the sere range into abundant and peaceful pasture, the physical side of her being rounded out, glowing with the fires of youth, at the same time that the poor old Captain sank slowly but surely into inactivity and feebleness. She did not perceive his decline, for he talked bravely of his future, and ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... into—a struggle has to be made before you can fairly take possession; others 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 high; the fronts come up well; nobody ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... sunny morning, he 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, and ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... barren poll one hoary lock Over his wrinkled front fell far adown, Well nigh to where his frosty brows did frown Like jagged icicles at cottage eaves; And for his coronal he wore some brown And bristled ears gather'd from Ceres' sheaves, Entwined with certain sere and russet leaves." ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... and the elk and the deer, And eagles gigantic, aged and sere, They rode long-horn cattle, they cried "A-la-la." They lifted the knife, the bow, and the spear, They lifted ghost-torches from dead fires below, The midnight made grand with the cry "A-la-la." The midnight made grand with a red-god charge, A red-god ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... of hardship and discouragement. He looked hungry—hungry for food, hungry for change, hungry for the words of men. His long gray mustache hung far below his stubble-covered chin; there was a pallor of a lingering sickness in his skin, which the hot sun could not sere out of it. He sat dispiritedly on his broken seat, sagging forward with forearms across ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... some one 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? I foresee and could foretell Thy future portion, sure and well: But those ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... 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 autumn 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 shrubs, the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow through all ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... 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 with the sun, such irradiation is there from the gold ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... the colour riot, 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, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... long 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 loved ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... that the eye may at any season be gladdened by the sight of living green, and interspersed with these are deciduous trees of every kind, to make a fantastic tracery of bare branches against the wintry sky and furnish a series of beautiful contrasts, from the earliest tender bud to the last sere autumn leaf. And the ferns! Did the Great Artist have any left after planting the fence-corners, roadsides and deep woods of Peterboro? Overarch these features with a fair dome of fleece-scattered blue and waft abroad throughout the place a succession of mountain breezes, ozone charged, and ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... vestrum. Dixi quod hoc nullo modo posset fieri. Sed totam dimitteremus 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 tanquam sua, scilicet libros et vestimenta: ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... afford to go about with black eyes, except as an occasional indulgence. Then it is that single-stick comes in. Boxing is the game of youth, and fencing with foils, we have been assured, improves as men fall into the sere and yellow leaf. Single-stick, then, may be looked upon as a gentle exercise, ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... rain. In the distance, blurred by the sheets of rain, was a line of low hills, with a jagged fringe of bluish firs and a solitary windmill. It must be a good mile and a half since we had passed a house, and there was none to be seen in the distance—nothing but the undulation of sere grass, sopped brown beneath the huge blackish oak-trees, and whence arose, from all sides, a vague disconsolate bleating. At last the road made a sudden bend, and disclosed what was evidently the home of my sitter. It was not ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... of 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 upon the scaffold! But no, ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... 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 greyhound lay sunning himself on the door mat, and ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... 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. ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... thou thy cheer, Cease from thy sorrow and sighing sere, It syttes[373] unto my heart full sore; The sorrow is sharp, I suffer here; But the dole thou drees,[374] my mother dear, Me martyrs mickle more. Thus wills my father I fare To loose mankind from bands His son will he not spare, To loose that bond was ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... I will not hold me still; My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will. He is deformed, crooked, old, and sere, Ill-fac'd, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere; Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind; Stigmatical in making, ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... retain all that is good, and that which is provoking will now be softened down. No doubt by this time they are married. Where have they gone? The continent is unsettled, and they have often already been there. Perhaps they have gone to Scotland? No doubt they have. And perhaps before the leaves are sere we may find them out among the sea lochs of the beautiful Frith of Clyde, or under the shadow of ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... remains to protect the poet's family place of interment, which opens to the sides in lofty Gothic arches, and is defended by a low rail of enclosure. At one extremity of it, a tall, thriving young cypress rears its spiral form. Creeping plants of different kinds, "with ivy never sere," have spread themselves very luxuriantly over every part of the Abbey. Amongst other decorations, we observed a plum-tree, which was, perhaps, at one period, a prisoner, chained to the solid masonry, but which having long since been emancipated, now threw out its wild, pendant branches, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... of Concha ... At intervals she would moan a little between her sobs; and at last cried out, with a thin, shrill cry: "Maman!—oh! maman!" Then Carmen lifted her from the bed to her lap, and caressed her, and rocked her gently to and fro, as she had done many a night for Concha,—murmuring,—"Yo sere tu madre, angel mio, dulzura mia;—sere tu madrecita, palomita mia!" (I will be thy mother, my angel, my sweet;—I will be thy little mother, my doveling.) And the long silk fringes of the child's eyes overlapped, shadowed her little ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... Torch Race To Sleep Sister Snow The Contrast A Mystery Triumph In Winter, with the Book we had in Spring Sere Wisdom Isolation The Lost Dryad The Gifts of the Oak The Strayed Singer The ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... insurance office. This sounded best, but had the smallest salary to begin with, and locality had to be taken into account. Mr. Dutton's plan was, that as soon as Mark was no longer necessary for what Annaple was pleased to call the fall of the sere and withered leaf, the pair should come to stay with him, so that Mark could see his possible employers, and Annaple consider of the situations. They accepted this gratefully, Mark only proposing that she should ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... again and I could survey him in the light of a riper experience than I had during his lifetime, I should still be able to offer him such an undivided fealty as I paid him then, I cannot guess; but all the other gods of youth and early manhood, with one exception only, have fallen somewhat into the sere and yellow leaf. For some six or eight enthusiastic years, I was saturated with Carlyle; I thought Carlyle and talked and wrote in unconscious Carlylese, and one day when in the library at the British Museum I got an actual bodily sight ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... which suffices quiet 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
... an axe of bronze double-edged, and with a 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 ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... 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 ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... sere, bare hillside on which neither trees nor brushwood grew. It amounted to a natural clearing, acres in extent. Lockley swept his eyes around. There were many thick-foliaged small trees attempting to advance into the clear space. He grunted ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... park. A steel-grey sky, with slowly-trailing clouds, looked down on her, and the keen, chilly wind wafted a fine snow-powder in her face as she pressed against it. The trees were bare, and the sere grass grew hoary as the first snow-flakes of the season came down softly and shroud-like. The walks were deserted, save where a hurrying form crossed from street to street, homeward bound; and ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... should be kept constantly covered with a piece of lint wetted with glycerine or spread with spermaceti ointment, the part being at the same time carefully preserved from dirt, cold, and wind. It is said that a once favorite actress, celebrated for the beauty of her hands, even when in the "sere and yellow leaf," covered them nightly with the flare of a calf or lamb, with the fat attached, over which was drawn a glove or mitten of soft leather. The application of a little glycerine or fatty matter, in the way just indicated, would ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... ashen and sober, The leaves they were crisped and sere,— " " " withering " " It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year; It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,— " " down " " dark tarn " " In the misty mid region of Weir,— " ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... insatiate arms. On summer afternoons, When from the blue horizon to the shore, 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 ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... The chill east wind is sighing, The autumn tints are sere, The summer flowers are dying. The river's sullen way Winds on through vacant meadows, The dying light of day Strives vainly ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... grayling fishing up to my colonial interlude is of a wet, muggy November day in Herefordshire. It was late in the month, and as the previous week had been marked by early frost, the sere leaves, having lost their grip, were rattling down on the water with every gust, and, indeed, from the mere weight of the rain. It was pretty practice, dropping the flies so as to avoid these little impediments; ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... 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 ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... sustained his sorrows in her sight. And earth was bitter, and heaven, and even the sea Sorrowful even as he. And the wind helped not, and the sun was dumb; And with too long strong stress of grief to be His heart grew sere and numb. ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... poor, shalt thou roam, For a loving friend hast thou found in me, 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 ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... amaze; the blacksmith strode to the door and looked out, himself a massive, dark silhouette upon the shimmering neutrality of the background. There was no figure in sight; no faint foot-fall was audible, no rustle of the sere leaves; only the voice of the mountain torrent, far below, challenged the stillness with its ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... "Sombre and sere the slim sycamore sighs; Lushly the lithe leaves lie low o'er the land; Whistles the wind with its whisperings wise, Grewsomely gloomy and garishly grand. So doth the sycamore solemnly stand, Wearily watching in wondering wait; So it has stood for six centuries, ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... 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 steps ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... on that sweet day, Their dignity installing In gentle bosoms, while sere leaves Were on the bough or falling; But breezes play'd, and sunshine gleam'd The forest to embolden, Redden'd the fiery hues, and shot Transparence through ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... wind-swayed branches, little flickering patches of morning sunlight met his gaze, as they played and quivered on the forest moss or over the sere pine-spills. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the spring is scarcely earlier than in our latitudes, but the fall is a long, slow decline from the temperature of October to the lowest level of January without the vicissitudes of other autumns. The embrowning or reddening or yellowing leaves turn sere, but drop or cling to their parent boughs as they choose, for there is seldom a frost to loosen their hold, and seldom a storm to ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... 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. "Now, if you ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... 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 ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... by ghosts of departed Marquises and Abbes of the vieille ecole. There was the debateable land to the rear of the Invalides and the Champ de Mars. There was the Faubourg St. Germain, fast falling into the sere and yellow leaf, and going the way of the Ile de Saint Louis. There was the neighborhood of the Boulevart d'Aulnay, and the Rue de la Roquette, ghastly with the trades of death; a whole Quartier of monumental ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... mild, yet somewhat overcast by tho mists which announce coming winter in London, and Helen walked musingly beneath the trees that surrounded the garden of Lord Lansmere's house. Many leaves were yet left on the boughs; but they were sere and withered. And the birds chirped at times; but their note was mournful and complaining. All within this house, until Harley's arrival, had been strange and saddening to Helen's timid and subdued spirits. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... a glorious 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. ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... future. Mary Queen of the Scots was a tiny infant in swaddling clothes. The labors 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 the price ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... the autumn 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 their ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... dwellings that flanked the way. Reaching the square, they turned to cross a makeshift bridge—beside one of stone that had spanned the little river but now lay broken in its shallow bed. Beyond this stream they followed a white road that wound gently up a sere hill between rows of blasted poplars. At the top of the rise two shining lines of helmets ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... here? ye lese my lyff: Alas! dere God, xuld I now rave? An old man may nevyr thryff With a yonge wyff, so God me save! Nay, nay, sere, lett bene, Xuld I now in age begynne to dote, If I here chyde she wolde clowte my cote, Blere myn ey, and pyke out a mote, And thus oftyn tymes it ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... in art, in poetry, in thought; and it would last while the emotions, its object, were left in a human soul. It would turn the eye of America hitherwards with love, gratitude and tears, such as those with which we turn to the walk of Socrates beneath the plane-tree, now sere, the summer hour of Cicero, the prison into which philosophy descended to console the spirit of Boethius,— that room through whose opened window came into the ear of Scott, as he died, the murmur of the gentle Tweed,—love, gratitude, and tears, such as we all yield ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Divinity that guides her must protect their new evolving creatures. A too sudden revelation and they might perish from sheer wonder.... Yes, truth must come softened, as a dream, to the man child's brain. Its naked light would sere and blind him forever.... But to me it has been given to see—to hear—and keep sane in the light. Oh, from what planet is the call? From what one of the hundred million spheres? How many centuries has it been sent outward to the deaf, the dumb, and the ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson
... Passage! When the day Glinted o'er this pale land, 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 kisses of ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... When the first sere leaves of the year were falling, I heard, with a heart that was strangely thrilled, Out of the grave of a dead Past calling, A voice I fancied ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... branches; for it is a general practice of the hacienderos to drive down their herds to the low grounds of the coasts and rivers, during the dry season, and as soon as the grass on the hills or highlands begins to grow sere and yellow. We observed also occasional heaps of oyster-shells on the banks, or half washed away by the river; and on the sand-spits at the bends of the stream, and in all the little shady nooks of the shore, we saw thousands ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... confuted it, but because, like witchcraft or astrology, it has ceased to interest them. The great ship of your Church, once so stout and fair and well laden with good destinies, is become a skeleton ship; it is a phantom hulk, with warped planks and sere canvas, and you who work it are no more than ghosts of dead men, and at the hour when you seem to have reached the bay, down your ship will sink like lead or like ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... successful journalist) at keeping his head cool and his feet warm; and here again the noble enterprise of a newspaper has provided the exact desideratum in its happily-named Corkolio detachable soles, which are absolutely invaluable when roads are dark and ways are foul, when the reeds are sere, when all the flowers have gone and the carrion-crow from the vantage of a pollard utters harsh notes of warning to all the corvine company ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hoary. Swallows turn'd glossy throats, Timorous, uncertain, When to hear their matin notes, Peep'd she thro' her curtain, Shook the mill-stream sweet and clear, With its silver laughter— Shook the mill from flooring sere Up to oaken ratter. "Bouche-Mignonne" it cried "come down! "Other flowers are stirring; "Pierre with fingers strong and brown "Sets the ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... "The sere wounded one, O sweetest Dulcinea of Toboso, sends thee the health which he wants himself. If thy beauty disdain me, I cannot live. My good Squire Sancho will give thee ample account, O ungrateful fair one, ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... 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 little. Turning ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was at its height now. For weeks there had been no rain, and the Pacific side of the Isthmus was growing sere and yellow beneath the ceaseless glare of the sun. The musty dampness of the rainy season had disappeared, the steady trade-winds breathed a dreamy languor, and the days fled past in one long, unending procession of ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... disquietude have fallen upon our people. Why is our age so sad? Has Schopenhauer carried the judgment of mankind by his favorite motto, "It is safer to trust fear than faith?" Is it because our age has lost faith in God? Have doubt and skepticism burned the divine dew off the grass, and left it sere and brown? Nay, ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... but 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 two ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... bathed in blood From sunset light in a crimson flood, We wandered under the young teak trees Whose branches whined in the light night breeze; You led me down to the water's brink, "The Spring where the Panthers come to drink At night; there is always water here Be the season never so parched and sere." Have we souls of beasts in the forms of men? I fain would have ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... naturally forest-clad, I have seen the trees diminish in number, give place to wide prairies, restrict their growth to the borders of streams, and then disappear from the boundless drier plains; have seen grassy plains change into a brown and sere desert—desert in the common sense, but hardly anywhere botanically so—have seen a fair growth of coniferous trees adorning the more favored slopes of a mountain-range high enough to compel summer showers; have traversed that broad and ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... dwell upon a phase of life that was like autumn and sere and drifting leaves. It bothered him that the thought of Hannah and Hughie had driven him to think it out. He liked best in heart things to think back, not ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... 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
... 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 middle-age"—and he ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... to be sure, are the brown stems of the pasture goldenrod standing stiffly as if to state with grim definiteness that all rainbow hopes are folly and there will be no more blossoming for them. Their leaves are dun and sere where they have not already fallen and their tops that in early September were such soft cumulus clouds of golden yellow are but scrawny clots of brown, draggled by the tears in which the sudden sun has drowned the pasture. Yet ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... pagan picture, we behold a tall and erect cross. 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 is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... the same—where'er we tread, The wrecks of human power we see, The marvel of all ages fled, Left to decay and thee. And still let man his fabrics rear, August in beauty, grace, and strength,— Days pass, thou 'Ivy never sere,'[6] And ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... gray beard almost touched the ground as he crept onward. Hester gazed after him a little while, looking with a half fantastic curiosity to see whether the tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown, across its cheerful verdure. She wondered what sort of herbs they were which the old man was so sedulous to gather. Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs of species ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were a sweet relief, The bride of a single year. Oh! would she might, with her weight of grief, Lie down in the dust, with the autumn leaf Now trodden and brown and sere! ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... wreaths will look unseemly. Here, perhaps, an everlasting Amaranth, and, close by its side, some weed of an hour, sere, yellow, and shapeless. Their very beauties will lose half their effect, from the bad company they keep. They rely too much on story and event, to the neglect of those lofty imaginings that are peculiar to, and definite ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... world to speak, And voiceless hangs the world beside his bier, Our words are sobs, our cry or praise a tear: We are the smitten mortal, we the weak. We see a spirit on earth's loftiest peak Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear: See a great Tree of Life that never sere Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms might wreak; Such ending is not death: such living shows What wide illumination brightness sheds From one big heart,—to conquer man's old foes: The coward, and the tyrant, and the force Of all those weedy ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... potters vessel shiver'd so. And now be wise at length ye Kings averse Be taught ye Judges of the earth; with fear Jehovah serve and let your joy converse With trembling; Kiss the Son least he appear In anger and ye perish in the way If once his wrath take fire like fuel sere. Happy all those who ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Franz Lachner] in accordance with "classical" custom, permitted this concise and concentrated theme, a contrast of power and gentle self-content, to be swept away by the rush of the Allegro, like a sere and withered leaf; so that, whenever it caught the ear at all, a sort of dance pace was heard, in which, during the two opening bars the dancers stepped forward, and in the two following bars twirled about in "Laendler" [Footnote: Laendler—an ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... have fixed on such a subject. In the closet, when you only see the courage, fame, and dignity of the hero, you can find some excuses for the girl who is won by these attributes, and bestows her love on the possessor of them, albeit he is fallen into the sere and yellow leaf. But look at him on the stage—though the best and most intellectual of our actors represent him, and this I can answer for, as the last I saw in the character was Macready—your sympathy with Desdemona is at once at an end. The woolly hair spoils all—the black face separates ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... virulent, and prevails amongst the troops. Ophthalmia and rheumatism are common complaints. Thus Mourzuk is not quite one of those oases, or Hesperian gardens, where the happy residents quaff the elixir of immortal health and virtue. Contrarily, it is a sink of vice and disease within, and a sere foliage of palms and vegetation without, overhung with an ever forbidding ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... has long been green on the graves of Shepherd Fennel and his frugal wife; the guests who made up the christening party have mainly followed their entertainers to the tomb; the baby in whose honour they all had met is a matron in the sere and yellow leaf. But the arrival of the three strangers at the shepherd's that night, and the details connected therewith, is a story as well known as ever in ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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
... and sweet is the love of young hearts! How little does it contain of earth—how much of heaven! No selfish passions mar its beauty. Its tenderness, its pathos, its devotion, who does not remember, even when the sere leaves of autumn are rustling beneath his feet? How little does it regard the cold and calculating objections of worldly-mindedness. They are heard but as a passing murmur. The deep, unswerving confidence of young love, what a blessed thing it is! ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... slowly into the west, leaving behind him a deep red glow that illuminated the hills, and burnished the windows of the sick-chamber. The wind moaned, and, sweeping the sere leaves at intervals, threatened a tempest. There was a solemn stillness in the parsonage, around whose gate—weeping in silence, without heart to speak, or wish to make their sorrow known—were collected a host of humble creatures—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Of all the things in the room their greeting strikes me as sincere. They are still here simply because it was not felt worth while even to remove them. Never mind; let me welcome truth, albeit in such sere and sorry garb, and look forward to the time when I shall be able to do so ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... 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 robes, with gold and purple gay.— So droops my life, of your soft beams despoil'd, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... 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 all the 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, With rumpled feathers, down the wind again. Oh, were the seeds all lost When ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... 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
... and horn, Shall scare your heaths and coverts lorn, Braying 'em shrill and clear, O; But lone and still Shall lift each hill, Each valley wan and sere, O. ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... shall at once be seen: Trees, at one time, shall be both sere and green: Fire and water shall together lie In one self-sweet-conspiring sympathy: Summer and winter shall at one time show Ripe ears of corn, and up to th' ears in snow: Seas shall be sandless; fields devoid ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... birthday without feeling that an event has happened. Fifty! Why, the Psalmist's limit is only seventy. Fifty from seventy. An easy sum, but what an impressive answer! Twenty years, and they the years of the sere, the yellow leaf. Only twenty more times to hear the cuckoo calling over the valley and see the dark beech woods bursting into tender green. I look back twenty years, and it seems only a span. And yet how remote fifty seemed in those days! It was so remote as to be hardly worth thinking ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... can stride four and a-half feet without the smallest effort, he can't be quite in the sere and yellow. That was the breadth of a puddle on the garden walk which he had evidently walked across. Patent-leather boots had gone round, and Square-toes had hopped over. There is no mystery about it at all. I am simply applying to ordinary life a few of those precepts ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... price of Rachel; them, Of that calm grace Tobias said, And Sarah's innocent 'Amen.' Without avail! O'erwhelming wealth, The wondrous gift of God so near, Which should have been delight and health Made heart and spirit sick and sere. Until at last the soul of love, That recks not of its own delight, Awoke and bade the mists remove, And then once more I breathed aright; And I rehears'd my marriage vow, And swore her welfare to prefer To all ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... 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
... at the unwinding view up Winterbottom Road—so familiar to Ken, who was trying to see it all with fresh eyes. They climbed out at the gate of the farm, and Hop turned his beast and departed. Half-way up the sere dooryard, Ken touched his wondering mother's arm and drew her to a standstill. There lay Applegate Farm, tucked like a big gray boulder between its two orchards. Asters, blue and white, clustered thick to its threshold, honeysuckle swung buff trumpets from the vine about ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... 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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... contemptuous reply; "you are already in the sere and yellow leaf; while I seem to have a green old age ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile) |
