"Verdure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lay asleep in voluptuous beauty, veiled in a glorious atmosphere. Everything wore a dreamy look. The breeze had a loving, lingering touch, not unlike to the Indian Summer of North America. But no Indian Summer ever knew that dark green verdure, like the first robe of spring. Wherever the eye turned it met something charming in cloud, or sky, or water, or vegetation. Everything had felt the magical ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... small blade bowed its head to me in welcome. A pair of bluebirds flitted from stake to stake of a rail fence at our right. Yonder two gentle undulations prepared for corn swelled and fell away. Wherever I looked was freshness and verdure, and the starting into life of green things beneath the magic wand of spring. She holds the key to earth's resurrection, and she alone can unlock the myriad gateways of the sod. And what a host comes forth when her luring ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... been a little alarmed at traversing such steep and shelving hills, the loose stones on which added to the insecurity of our footing. Nevertheless we found it extremely pleasant, from the romantic beauty of the scenery and the freshness of the verdure. We had been ascending an extremely elevated country for the last thirty miles; and I was in great hopes of soon reaching the point of division between the eastern and western waters. By a tolerably easy acclivity, we gained that which ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... though quite exhausted, very comfortable. The fire rolled past them without reaching them further, and finally, after having spent itself died away, leaving the broad prairie that was at noon so heavily covered with verdure, ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... a restaurant permanent among flowing waters, so prominent was this feature of the island, but it had only a roof, and presently we noticed a little grass and some bushes as well. The verdure had quite a novel look, and we decided to discourage the casual person who wished to sell us strange and uncertified shell fish from a basket for immediate ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... which Clay selected was Lexington in Kentucky,—then a small village in the midst of beautiful groves without underbrush, where the soil was of virgin richness, and the landscape painted with almost perpetual verdure; one of the most attractive spots by nature on the face of the earth,—a great contrast to the flat prairies of Illinois, or the tangled forests of Michigan, or the alluvial deposits of the Mississippi. It was a paradise of hills ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... settlement remains, save the ruins of an old stone house, which may probably have been the theatre of wild and bloody incidents, in by-gone years. The serrated hills are grey and barren, and the surrounding country shows no verdure. Anchoring here, we waited several hours for the wind to moderate, and tried to get such sleep as might perchance be caught in an ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... passing a streamlet flowing north, we kept at that elevation for a considerable distance, after which, having descended 100 ft. (2,450 ft.), we found ourselves in a most enchanting, oval-shaped cuvette of cinders well covered with fresh verdure, and in its centre from north to south a row ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... where the water ceased, and went to the Darling, striking it about fifteen miles above its junction with the Murray. The unlooked-for course of the Darling however kept me longer on its banks than I had anticipated; but you can form no idea of the luxuriant verdure of its flats. They far surpass those of the Murray, both in quantity and quality of soil; and extended for many miles at a stretch along the river side. We have run up it at a very favourable season, and seen the commencement of its floods; for, two days after we reached it, and ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Fortune says of green tea, that "it has naturally no bloom on the leaf, and a much more natural color. It is dyed with Prussian blue and gypsum. Probably no bad effects are produced. There is no foundation for the suspicion that green tea owes its verdure to an inflorescence acquired from plates of copper on which it is curled or dried. The drying-pans are said to be invariably of sheet-iron." We drink our tea with milk or sugar, or both, and always in warm infusion. In Russia, it is drunk cold,—in China, pure; in Ava, it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... wandered over the wide horizon, the Meuse coursing through the valley at his feet, before him the range of wooded heights whose summits recede and are lost in the distance, on the left the waving tree-tops of Dieulet forest, on the right the verdure-clad eminence of Sommanthe. He was surrounded by his military family, aides and officers of rank; and a colonel of dragoons, who had already applied to me for information about the country, had just motioned me not to go away, when ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... autumn, until it reached the top of the tree. To-day, the only vestige of cedar-individuality that remains to sight, is in the trunk, the bare branches, stripped of all slight twigs, and at the extremity of one of these, a few tufts of evergreen verdure, that proclaim ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... traveler is charmed by the emerald verdure of the coast, and by "evergreen Quito"—more beautiful than the hanging gardens of Babylon—suspended far above the ordinary elevation of the clouds. In the San Francisco market we find wheat, barley, maize, beans, peas, potatoes, cabbages, beets, salads, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... carts under any sort of discipline. Such a summer we have enjoyed here, free from burning heats and mosquitos—the two drawbacks of Italy—and in the heart of the most enchanting scenery. Mountains not too grand for exquisite verdure, and just kept from touching by the silver finger of a stream. I have been donkey-riding, and so has Wiedeman. I even went (to prove to you how well I am) the great excursion to Prato Fiorito, six miles there and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... greater by imagination than they are in effect; I have passed a good part of my life in a perfect and entire health; I say, not only entire, but, moreover, sprightly and wanton. This state, so full of verdure, jollity, and vigour, made the consideration of sickness so formidable to me, that when I came to experience it, I found the attacks faint and easy in comparison with what I had apprehended. Of this ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... seven planets, each of which—not only the sun—is far larger than the earth; he has adorned it with myriads of radiant stars. See how serenely the glorious sun is riding in the cloudless sky, giving to the earth abundance of fruit! Behold the verdure of the meadow! The trees are bursting into leaf and the grass is springing up; behold the smiling flowers and listen to glen and dale re-echoing with the sweet song of the nightingales and little singing birds; the beasts which ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... blessed evergreen islands, and their beauty is the beauty of youth, for though the freshness of their verdure must be ascribed to the bland moisture with which they are bathed from warm ocean-currents, the very existence of the islands, their features, finish, and peculiar distribution, are all immediately referable to ice-action during the great glacial winter just ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... still shown to strangers. The guides, of course, gave them out to be a device of Semiramis, but the well-informed knew that they had been constructed by Nebuchadrezzar for one of his wives the daughter of Oyaxares, who pined for the verdure of her native mountains. "They were square in shape, each side being four hundred feet long; one approached them by steps leading to terraces placed one above the other, the arrangement of the whole, resembling that of an amphitheatre. Each terrace ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... this same year Johnson thus ends a severe criticism on Samson Agonistes: 'The everlasting verdure of Milton's laurels has nothing to fear from the blasts of malignity; nor can my attempt produce any other effect than to strengthen their shoots by lopping their luxuriance.' The Rambler, No. 140. 'Mr. Nichols shewed Johnson ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Italian opera, given in 1832. The relics of Niblo's Garden have disappeared as completely as those of Richmond Hill, but its site is still fresh in the memory of those whose theatrical experiences go back a quarter of a century. They must be old, however, who can recall enough verdure in the vicinity of Broadway and Prince Street to justify the name maintained by the theater to which for many years entrance was gained through a corridor of the Metropolitan Hotel. Three-quarters of a century ago Niblo's Garden was a reality. William Niblo, who built ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the earth is ever again to see any verdure, it must first grow along the path which my daughter will tread ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... the progress of its decay, but, last autumn, when seen by the describer, its naked gigantic trunk and arms, retaining not the least symptom of animation, presented a ghastly spectacle of the ravages of time, as contrasted with the rich verdure ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... the exercising-ground, up and down which recruits march and manoeuvre notwithstanding the heat. The high walls have masses of flowers hanging over them and little summer-houses perched upon them here and there among the verdure. At the bottom of the descent is a tree-planted promenade, across which the grey walls of the Porta Pile glimmer, pierced with a low arch above which the patron saint, S. Biagio, looks forth from ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... heart of a poet, when these bare, gray, rocky, treeless hills were crowned with forests that protected the soil from the beating storms; when these slopes, now furrowed with gulleys and spread with stones, were covered with orchards and clad with verdure, where the flocks might 'lie down midst pastures of tender grass;' and when these dried up waterways were purling brooks, where the flocks were 'led beside the waters of quietness.' I believe that David's description of this country was a true picture of the land as it appeared then. 'Thou ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... boisterous point of land since called Corlear's Hook,[29] and leaving to the right the rich winding cove of the Wallabout, they drifted into a magnificent expanse of water, surrounded by pleasant shores, whose verdure was exceedingly refreshing to the eye. While the voyagers were looking around them, on what they conceived to be a serene and sunny lake, they beheld at a distance a crew of painted savages busily employed ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... through their light green covering. There is no time of the year equal in beauty to the first week in summer: and no colour which nature gives, not even the gorgeous hues of autumn, which can equal the verdure produced by the first ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... lived in Stanley Armstrong's memory. It was one of those rare August days when the wind blew from the southeast, beat back the drenching Pacific fogs, and let the warm sun pour upon the brilliant verdure of that wonderful park. Earth and air, distant sea and dazzling sky, all seemed glorifying their Creator. Bright-hued birds flashed through the foliage and thrilled the ear with their caroling. The plash of fountain fell softly on the ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... the sight of those sweet fruits of love, without counting the other things that he raised, carved, and caressed with the chisels, smoothed down with his file, and fashioned in a manner that would make their use intelligible to the mind of a greenhorn, and stain his verdure in a single day. The ladies would criticise these beauties, and all of them were smitten with the youthful Cappara. And the youthful Cappara would eye them up and down, swearing that the day one of them gave him her little finger to kiss, he ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... from the ranchhouse sank the big basin, sweeping away to the mountains. Miles into the distance the Circle Bar cattle could be seen—moving dots in the center of a great, green bowl. To the right Razor-Back ridge loomed its bald crest upward with no verdure saving the fringe of shrubbery at its base; to the left stretched a vast plain that met the distant horizon that stretched an interminable distance behind the cottonwood. Except for the moving dots there was a total absence of life ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... thou, gentle cypress, in evergreen tears, Art constant and hopeful though winter appears. My heart hath thy verdure, it blossoms above; Like thee, it endureth and liveth ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... To plant that formal, dull disjointed scene Which once was called a garden! Britain still Bears on her breast full many a hideous wound Given by the cruel pair, when, borrowing aid From geometric skill, they vainly strove By line, by plummet and unfeeling shears To form with verdure what the builder formed With stone. . . Hence the sidelong walls Of shaven yew; the holly's prickly arms Trimmed into high arcades; the tonsile box, Wove in mosaic mode of many a curl Around the figured carpet of the lawn. . . The terrace mound ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... was a sterile desert, bloomed anew when through it coursed a strong and life-bringing stream of fresh water. The children could observe on the left side from the windows of the coach a wide belt of verdure composed of meadows on which were pastured horses, camels, and sheep, and of tilled fields, diversified with maize, millet, alfalfa, and other varieties of plants used for fodder. On the bank of ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... as bright as ever on the sunny hedgerow banks and on the fringe of the woods, but when we plucked some at a wayside station we saw that they were just past their golden prime. There was a grey-green hint of verdure in the sallows that stood against a dark background of firs, and the branches of the fruit-trees were tipped with pink, rosy-hued promises of May just threatening to break through their silvery April sheaths. Raindrops were still glistening on the fronds of the tender young ferns and on the great ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... days were past, and that 'the time of the singing of birds had come.' As to the little brooks and streams, how rejoiced were they to be free once more! they bounded away over the sandy shallows or pebbly beds, laughing for very gladness, and kissing the green banks whose fresh verdure they laved, whilst murmuring ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... distance we could just discern the church of Kara Klisseh, or the Black Monastery, the first station of the Russians on this part of their frontier, and situated on a dark and precipitous rock, rising conspicuous among the verdure of the surrounding scenery. ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... taking the road with a long and easy stride. Few were abroad; the bare and frozen fields stretched on either hand to the hills, the hills rose to the mountains, grey and sullen in the changing light. That meadow, field, and hill had once been mantled with tender verdure, and would be so again, was hard to believe, the land lay so naked and ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... gushing from the midst of the verdure, and emptied its waters into a shallow pool, the bottom of which was composed ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... those who sought relief from a hot sun. With the exception of the thin line of sand, over which the sap-green water rolled itself with a constant murmur and moan, the island seemed buried under one deep stratum of verdure. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... enrobeth man: He comes like morning bringing with him light; He goes like evening, ent'ring portals dark Where none can track him to his final doom And know that Immortality's kind arms Shall hug him to her breast and bear him on To Fields whose verdure wears a brighter hue, Or whether Entity shall on the wings Of fickle Fate be borne to final rest, Who shall the mystery of being solve? We see the birdling break from prison shell And dream that we have found the source of life. ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... the foot of the ridges, ponds and lagoons were frequent. The heat of summer had already burnt up a great part of the grasses; and it was only in the immediate neighbourhood of the river that there was any appearance of verdure. The bed of the river became drier, and changed its character considerably. Charley stated, that he had seen a large plain extending for many miles to the south-west, and a high mountain to the north. Several ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... what a sudden change! Nothing but savage, awful precipices of naked granite, snowy fields, and verdureless wastes! In every other place in the Alps, we have looked upon the snow in the remote distance, to be dazzled with its sheeny effulgence—ourselves, meanwhile, in the region of verdure and warmth. Here we march through a horrid desert—not a leaf, not a blade of grass—over the deep drifts of snow; and we find our admiration turns to horror. And this is the road that Hannibal trod, and Charlemagne, and Napoleon! ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the pleasant foliage of many creeping plants, that made a [v]tapestry for the naked rock by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At a small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure, there appeared a [v]niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure. Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended and threw a look of familiar kindness around upon his audience. They stood, or sat, or reclined upon the grass, as seemed ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... where a strip of mirror lay imprisoned in an embrace of frame covered with yellow muslin. We may talk of the dreariness of winter; and winter, no doubt, is desolate: but what in the world is more dreary to eyes inured to the verdure ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... West Indies, he was delighted by the beauty in and about them. "I know not," he said, "where first to go; nor are my eyes ever weary with gazing on the wonderful verdure. The singing of the birds is such as to make ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... glades of the Forest, for the soft turf under foot and the thick verdure overhead! Bessie longed for them with all her heart as she passed upon the sun-baked stones to the great door of the cathedral. The dusk of its vaulted roof was not cool and sweet like the arching of green ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... nearly filled with guests when Paul Clitheroe arrived upon the scene. These guests were not sitting against the wall talking at each other; the room looked as if it were set for a scene in a modern society comedy. In the bay window, a bower of verdure, an extremely slender and diminutive lady was discoursing eloquently with the superabundant gesticulation of the successful society amateur; she was dilating upon the latest production of a minor poet whose bubble ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... laciniata, Lam. (Turbo delphinus, Linn.). After obtaining bearings from its extremity, as also from the summit of the outer dry rock, we landed upon a small verdant-looking grassy mound, the northernmost islet of the group; but we found the verdure of its appearance was caused only by the abundance of the spinifex, through which we had, as usual, much difficulty in travelling. After procuring some bearings from its summit we re-embarked and pulled ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... a few sheaves, which the labourers were occupied in removing to their garners in the villages. The country could scarcely be called beautiful, being perfectly naked, exhibiting neither trees nor verdure. It was not, however, without its pretensions to grandeur and magnificence, like every part of Spain. The most prominent objects were two huge calcareous hills or rather one cleft in twain, which towered up on high; the summit of the nearest being surmounted by the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the mountain, are found fields of a very beautiful verdure. They are called the pastures, or grass-plots, of Paao (Na mauu a Paao). The old priest cultivated these fields himself, where no one since his time has dared to use spade or mattock. If an islander was impious enough to cultivate the meadow ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... December 4th in the steamer John Aull for New Orleans. As we passed Cairo the snow was falling, and the country was wintery and devoid of verdure. Gradually, however, as we proceeded south, the green color came; grass and trees showed the change of latitude, and when in the course of a week we had reached New Orleans, the roses were in full bloom, the sugar-cane just ripe, and a tropical air prevalent. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... thank God, suffer from the melancholy of a cellar: my solitude is gay with light and verdure; I attend, whenever I please, the fields' high festival, the Thrushes' concert, the Crickets' symphony; and yet my friendly commerce with the Spider is marked by an even greater devotion than the young typesetter's. I admit her to the intimacy of my study, I make room for her among my ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... not-man. If Darwin is right, there is no more reason for believing that the different species or forms of animal life were suddenly introduced than there is for believing that the soil, or the minerals, gold, silver, diamonds, or vegetable mold and verdure were ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... the yellow brick melts softly into the verdure of the residence quarter, and is tempered into inoffensiveness in the Old Town by the admixture of older and plainer structures, which refresh the eye. But the chief charm, unfailing, inexhaustible ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... divided, and, I may add too, so fertile, exhibit to the traveler's eyes. The constant water-falls from the melted snow above, the gullies and breaches made by water-torrents during great rains, the rivulets in the vale below, the verdure on their banks, the herds of goats, the humble, but picturesque habitations of the goat-herds, the hot sun shining upon the snow-capt hills above, and the steep precipices below, all crowd together so strongly upon the imagination, that they ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... and the only son in a family consisting of father, mother, self, and two sisters, new-blown flowers of womanhood. It was an October dawn, when, long wearied of the ocean, and with bright anticipations of verdure, and fragrance, and tropical gorgeousness, this simple-hearted family awoke to find the bark that had borne them from their far northern home already entering upon the ascent of ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... the verdure still is permanent, Still permanent the eternal blossoms are; Not that kind nature, in her government, So nicely tempers here the genial air, But that, unneeding any influence lent By planet, Logistilla's zeal and care Ever keep fast (what may appear ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Murray, a few miles from Charley's hut, is a tract, about a hundred acres in extent, of fine grass land, completely isolated by billabongs, reed-beds, dense scrub, and steep ridges of loose sand. At the time I write of, it was impossible to ride to this island of verdure, and no white man could track a horse through the labyrinth that led to it. Once placed in that spot, no horse would ever try to get away. This is all the information ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... — N. vegetable, vegetable kingdom; flora, verdure. plant; tree, shrub, bush; creeper; herb, herbage; grass. annual; perennial, biennial, triennial; exotic. timber, forest; wood, woodlands; timberland; hurst[obs3], frith[obs3], holt, weald[obs3], park, chase, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... intervals, lifted the silken folds of the banner, which drooped from the tall flag-staff, displaying the escutcheon of La Tour, surmounted by the arms of France. Far up, the noble stream, on either side, was skirted by extensive intervals, covered with the rich, bright verdure, peculiar to early summer, and occasionally rising into gentle acclivities, or terminating in impervious forests. Tufts of woodland, and large trees scattered in groups, or standing singly, like the giants of past ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... Fowl. It is the Head of one of the Branches of Santee-River; but a farther Discovery Time would not permit; only one Thing is very remarkable, there growing all over this Swamp, a tall, lofty Bay-tree, but is not the same as in England, these being in their Verdure all the Winter long; which appears here, when you stand on the Ridge, (where our Path lay) as if it were one pleasant, green Field, and as even as a Bowling-green to the Eye of the Beholder; being hemm'd in on one Side with these Ledges of ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... poured contempt upon the men who said: "They are not so green as to waste their money on the farce of Foreign Missions." "No, no, indeed," he continued, "they are not green, for greenness implies verdure, and beauty, and there is not a single atom of verdure in their parched and withered up souls." Under the burning satire and mellowing pathos of his tremendous appeal for heathendom, tears welled out from every eye in the house. I leaned over toward ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... through the delightful valley of the Mohawk. It was now that Julia, in some measure accustomed to her proximity to her hero, began to enjoy the beauties of the scenery; her eye dwelt with rapture on each opening glimpse that they caught of the river, and took in its gaze meadows of never-failing verdure, which were beautifully interspersed with elms that seemed coeval with the country itself. Occasionally she would draw the attention of her aunt to some view of particular interest; and if her eager voice caught the attention of Antonio, and he turned ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... the 9th, we saw an antelope on the top of a little hill, which instantly disappeared, before we had time to shoot it. The Desert seemed to our view one immense plain of sand, on which was seen not one blade of verdure. However, we still found water by digging in the sand. In the forenoon, two officers of marine complained that our family incommoded the progress of the caravan. It is true, the females and the children could not walk so quickly as the men. We walked ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... laburnums and hawthorns and hollies of the low-walled garden that ended at the sheer cliff-edge, from whence you looked down upon the tops of the pines and chestnuts, whose green foliage hid the shining metals of the iron way, and made a sea of verdure in place of the salt blue waves that once had lapped and sighed there—gazing across the powdery sand-dunes that were prickly with sea-holly and gay with flaunting poppies and purple scabious, the pink and white convolvulus, and the thorny yellow dwarf ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... debt] which tempts men towards it with such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure. It is wonderful how soon a man gets up to his chin there,—in a condition in which, spite of himself, he is forced to think chiefly of release, though he had a scheme of the universe ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... a view of three white-tilted Conestoga wagons or "prairie schooners," each drawn by four pair of oxen rumbling along through a plain enameled with the verdure and many tinted flowers of spring. The day is drawing to its close, and the rays of the sinking sun throw a mellow light over a waving sea of vernal herbage. The wagons are driven by the sons of Mr. Chase and contain the women and the household goods of the family. ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... borders (and was graciously thrown open to the gaze of the admiring public on Sunday afternoon, when they were begged to keep off the grass), and that Lord Ashbridge was himself. He liked reminding himself that the towering elms drew their leafy verdure from Lord Ashbridge's soil; that the rows of hen-coops in the park, populous and cheeping with infant pheasants, belonged to the same fortunate gentleman who in November would so unerringly shoot them down ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... gates of precious stone unfold, The streets are paved with shining gold; Pure crystal streams of water flow, And trees of fadeless verdure grow. ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... now shining steadily, pouring down its radiance on the soft foliage, and here and there mottling the verdure under my feet. ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... stuck to his work. The heat of Paris was faint and smothering. On the first Sunday he went out to St. Germain, loveliest of all the Parisian suburbs, and wandered all day in the green and mossy forest. He was lonely and depressed. Not even the cool verdure of the woods, nor the splendour of the view from the terrace looking out over the curves of the Seine, and the green rolling hills, and the lines of light that led to the city beginning to glow with a pale yellow radiance in the dusk, could console him. The merry, companionable stir of ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... and presently the peculiar form of outline belonging to a forest composed entirely of the maritime pine is distinguishable on the horizon to the left. The road quickly draws nearer to it; and the large, heavy, velvet-like masses of dark verdure become visible. In a forest such as the famous Pineta, consisting of the maritime pine only, the lines, especially when seen at a distance, have more of horizontal and less of perpendicular direction than in any other assemblage of trees. And the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... have a very pretty garden," he writes, "not unlike our little grass-plot at Clapham, but larger. It consists of a fine sheet of turf, with a gravel walk round it, and flower-beds scattered over it. It looks beautiful just now after the rains, and I hear that it keeps its verdure during a great part of the year. A flight of steps leads down from my library into the garden, and it is so well shaded that you may walk there till ten o'clock ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... pronounce his words, and prints the ground with a firm tread, delights to play with his fellows, and contracts and lays aside anger without reason, and is subject to change every hour. The beardless youth, his guardian being at length discharged, joys in horses, and dogs, and the verdure of the sunny Campus Martius; pliable as wax to the bent of vice, rough to advisers, a slow provider of useful things, prodigal of his money, high-spirited, and amorous, and hasty in deserting the objects of his passion. [After this,] our inclinations being changed, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... built on the summit of a gentle mound, and doubtless commanded from its upper window the extreme reaches of this sea of verdure. ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... which the Indians had given a name that Europeans have never violated, the voyagers were charmed with the prospect before them. The season was mild, and nature had fully assumed that emerald robe of spring. On either side the distant land presented a scene of tranquil verdure, upon which the eye might rejoice to repose. The noble bay received into its bosom the waters of many broad streams, which descended from the highlands faintly visible in the dim horizon. Green islands saluted them at times ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... yards thick, and furrowed by deep crevasses. Of the inhabitants all perished to a man. Three islands, Steers, Calmeyer, and the islet east of Verlaten, completely disappeared and were covered by twelve or fourteen feet of water. Verlaten, formerly one mass of verdure, was uniformly covered with a layer of ashes about one hundred ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... stretched for leagues this splendid harbor, upon whose broad bosom lay vessels of every nation (and which appeared capable of bearing the fleets of the world), fringed by hills whose verdure seemed undying, over which were spread the beautiful ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... amphorae. Those at the north end were half buried amid imitation mountains, peaked with real snow wherewith the wine was to be cooled, while those at the south were surrounded by more than tropical verdure, with the braziers and vessels of hot water beside them, ready for mixing the ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... hence, and o'er the distant hills A tender robe of verdure shall be spread, And life in myriad forms be manifest, Where all seemed desolate, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... crossed" (in the direction of Montdardier), "the ride has been the most interesting which I have taken in France; the efforts of industry the most vigorous, the animation the most lively. An activity has been here that has swept away all difficulties before it and clothed the very rocks with verdure. It would be a disgrace to common sense to ask the cause; the enjoyment of property must have done it. Give a man the sure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden." The italics are my own. When will Arthur Young have ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... light, and had one been favorably placed to enjoy a bird's-eye view of the spot, he would have seen a broad and undulating field of leafy forest, in which the various deciduous trees of New-England were relieved by the deeper verdure of occasional masses of evergreens. In the centre of this swelling and nearly interminable outline of woods, was a valley that spread between three low mountains. Over the bottom-land, for the distance of several miles, all the signs of a settlement in a state of rapid ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... isolated dots of white settlements and the slender lines of communication between them, the whole vast interior country was buried in the shade of an unbroken forest that swept like a billowy sea of verdure over plains, hills, valleys, and mountains, screening the sunlight from innumerable broad rivers and rushing streams, and spreading its leafy protection over uncounted millions of beasts, birds, and fishes. Here dwelt the Indian, and before ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... The principal island is not more than three miles long. It is well wooded and at the top of the highest hill the rocks have the appearance of a fortified garrison. The other high island is only a single mountain almost destitute of trees and verdure. The other two are only crazy barren rocks. We saw three two mast boats under sail near the reef, which we supposed belong to the islands. Murray Islands lie in Latitude 9 deg. 57' S. and Longitude 216 deg. 43' W. We kept turning to the Southward along ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... stately hickories, each standing alone in its ring of shadow, the turf everywhere bespangled with dandelions and buttercups, and changing its hue from shade to shade of vivid green, as the wind sweeps over the thick growing verdure. Through these meadows flows a sluggish brook, in broad meandering curves, crossed at each turn by rustic farm-bridges, with clumps of trees fringing the deeper pools. The plain is skirted by a country road, bordered with majestic trees, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... a short halt, and carrying our impedimenta across the portage on which the fort is situated, commenced the descent of Lac de la Pluie river,—a beautiful stream, running with a smooth, though strong current, and maintaining a medium breadth of about 200 yards. Its banks, which are clothed with verdure to the water's edge, recede by a gradual slope until they terminate in a high ridge, running parallel to the river on both sides. This ridge yields poplar, birch, and maple, with a few pines, proving the excellence of the soil. The interior, ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... season when its dark boughs are covered with hoar frost. The faithful companion of its destiny, it falls when the tree is cut down: death itself does not relax its grasp; and it continues to adorn with its verdure the dry trunk ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... rivalled in beauty those at Versailles, though not so extensive; the artificial lake, while not built in a night, as one other that history mentions, was quite as attractive. Water mains ran through miles of the tropical forest and, no matter how great the drouth, the natives kept the verdure green and fresh with a constancy that no real wage-earner could have exercised. As to the stables, they might have aroused envy in the ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... undulating, the ground being well covered with verdure even thus early in the spring. Sometimes pursuers and fugitives were out of sight of each other for a minute or two, but not long ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... been hot, and the first floor dining-room was sultry in spite of the palms and fans which attempted to simulate the verdure ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... bananas, and dates in great profusion; while others were seen on the banks reposing in the sun, or bathing in the waters of the Ganges, or diving beneath the surface for the shellfish which are found there; while beyond, the country was seen in all the beauty of verdure and delight, as ever and anon the Hindoo cottage and the white pagoda reared themselves amid the trees which ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... valley and the lower parts of the mountain. I knew that the mountain which they were ascending was not often tried either by natives or by strangers, for it was boggy and pathless; though tempting to the eye by its verdure, and by a fine pile of rocks, which stood like a crown on the brow of the first ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... and sailed away from her, and behold, already she had melted into her cliffs. Opposite, nearing with every dip of the dun-colored sail into the blue seas, was the Calvados coast; in its turn it glistened, and in its young spring verdure it had the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... its bitter, wormwoody flavor, having nothing else to do, she finished it, all but the tough stems, just as the long sermon was brought to a close. Her waking mother, discovering no signs of green verdure in the pew, quickly drew forth a whispered confession of the time-killing Nebuchadnezzar-like feast, and frightened and horrified, at once bore the leaf-gorged child from the church, signalling in her retreat to the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... then without profit to anyone, will concentrate, drop by drop, into the bottom of this well; little by little the water will increase and rise, the reservoir will fill; then, if a beneficent hand spreads this salutary spray liberally, verdure and blossoms will appear as if by enchantment on that hitherto unfruitful, desolate soil. Now, Louis, is not my comparison good? Is not the miser's hidden treasure like this deep well, where, thanks to his obstinate and courageous savings, riches accumulate drop by drop, ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... their gaze from a slight elevation they had reached, showing cattle and sheep roving in it, tall groves where cows and horses found midday shade, and winding creeks, carrying sails of hidden boats, as if in a magical cruise upon the velvet verdure. Haystacks and farm settlements stood out in the long levels, and sailing birds speckled the air. In the far distance lay something like more marsh, yet also like ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... six in the morning we saw the island bearing east by north 12 leagues distant: between 10 and 11 o'clock we ran along the south side at about a league distant from the shore. There was a verdure that covered the higher parts of the land, but I believe it was nothing more than moss which is commonly found on the tops of most rocky islands in these latitudes. We saw several whales near the shore. The extent of this island is five miles from east to west; and about ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... bosomed in a thick grove of laurels and cypresses, which reached as far as a circumference of ten miles, and formed in the most sultry summers a cool and impenetrable shade. A thousand streams of the purest water, issuing from every hill, preserved the verdure of the earth, and the temperature of the air; the senses were gratified with harmonious sounds and aromatic odors; and the peaceful grove was consecrated to health and joy, to luxury and love. The vigorous youth pursued, like Apollo, the object of his desires; and the blushing maid ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... with more rapture upon the charms of some country-seat put up for sale, than the authors of these placards do, upon the beauty and salubrity of the distant climes, for which the regiments wanting recruits are about to sail. Bright lawns, vine-clad hills, endless meadows of verdure, here make up the landscape; and adventurous young gentlemen, fond of travel, are informed, that here is a chance for them to see the world at their leisure, and be paid for enjoying themselves into the bargain. The regiments for India ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... curious effects that an AEolian harp produced upon his lively and impassioned imagination: "On one of those gloomy days that sadden the end of the year, listen, while reading Ossian, to the fantastic harmony of an AEolian harp swinging at the top of a tree deprived of verdure, and I defy you not to experience a profound feeling of sadness and of abandon, and a vague and infinite desire for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... heart of a small archipelago. All about us are verdure-covered islands. They are now the homes of native fishermen, but a century ago they were hiding-places for the fierce Malayan pirates whose sanguinary deeds made the peninsula a byword ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... masts of the steamer we obtained an excellent coup-d'oeil of the Sunderbunds; its swamps clothed with verdure, and intersected by innumerable inosculating channels, with banks a foot or so high. The amount of tide, which never exceeds ten feet, diminishes in proceeding westwards into the heart of these swamps, and the epoch, direction, and ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... either in an expanse of water or of air. The hills which border these meadows are wide swells of land, or long and gradual ridges, some of them densely covered with wood. The white village, at a distance on the left, appears to be embosomed among wooded hills. The verdure of the country is much more perfect than is usual at this season of the year, when the autumnal hue has generally made considerable progress over trees and grass. Last evening, after the copious showers of the preceding two days, it was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... 1910, ran its course, beautiful as only a spring month in Norway can be — a lovely dream of verdure and flowers. But unfortunately we had little time to admire all the splendour that surrounded us; our watchword was "Away" — away from beautiful sights, as ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... mules and camels, caravans of merchandise; nothing arrested her; she saw nothing that she passed, as she rode over the hard, dust-covered, shadowless roads; over the weary, sun-scorched, monotonous country; over the land without verdure and without foliage, the land that yet has so weird a beauty, so irresistible a fascination; the land to which men, knowing that death waits for them in it, yet return with as mad an infatuation as her lovers went back across the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... and hatred, sorrow and rejoicing, fear and veneration. Nothing is too exalted or humble, too solemn or fearsome, to be the subject of these frolic events. Nature in all her panoply is here in dramatized form or reference—earth, stone, fire, and water; verdure and the kingdom of living things from beast to man; the seasons and the planets. Industry, love and war, fiends and deities, death itself and the hereafter, all pass in review, for one who sees the hidden significance, like a panorama of existence, ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... the river Niger, their description of the scenes is extravagant. They represent the country on each side of the river, for several hundred miles up the valley, as being not only beautiful and picturesque, but the fields as in a high state of cultivation, clothed in the verdure of husbandry, waving before the gentle breezes, with the rich products of industry—maize, oats, rye, millet, and wheat, being among the fruits of cultivation. The fences were of various descriptions: hedge, wicker, some few pannel, and the old fashioned zig-zag, known as the "Virginia worm ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... the full-charged clouds poured their deluge upon mother earth. This natural phenomenon, however, was only of short duration; but sufficient to render the atmosphere most delightfully pure and refreshing. It was now a redoubled pleasure to view the many hills and dales, adorned in every shade of verdure, varying with romantic forest scenes; all mingling into one inexpressibly rich garniture in which Nature had royally clad herself in order to give us greeting on ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... events and our friend's actions. At the dawn of science a Thales, observing the ways and the conditions of things somewhat more subtly, will notice that rain, something quite adventitious to the fields, is what covers them with verdure, that the slime breeds life, that a liquid will freeze to stone and melt to air; and his shrewd conclusion will be that everything is water in one disguise or another. It is only after long accumulated observation that we can reach any exact ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... battlements into fragments; but it is not half so powerful as the gentle light that comes so softly from the skies that we do not feel it, that travels at an inconceivable speed, strikes and yet is not felt, but exercises an influence so great that the earth is clothed with verdure through its influence, and all nature beautified and blessed by its ceaseless action. The things that make no noise, make no pretension, may be really the strongest. The most conclusive logic that a preacher uses in the pulpit will never exercise the influence that the consistent piety of character ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... they are not built close together but have ample space around them, and are all picturesquely placed along broad streets and lanes. In front of the large bright windows of many of the houses, beyond the kitchen gardens, dark green poplars and acacias with their delicate pale verdure and scented white blossoms overtop the houses, and beside them grow flaunting yellow sunflowers, creepers, and grape vines. In the broad open square are three shops where drapery, sunflower and pumpkin ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... made no further effort to flee, the two monsters grew still more excited. For a moment Grom thought they would dare the passage of the barrier, but he was reassured to see that the flames filled them with an insuperable fear. They dared not come nearer than the thin edges of the verdure. At last, as if the same notion had struck them both at once, they whirled about simultaneously, made off among the dense thickets to the right, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts |
