"Vernal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... song—are equally plaintive, and closely resemble each other. I am not aware that this bird ever utters a harsh note. His voice, which is one of the earliest to be heard in the spring, is associated with the early flowers and with all pleasant vernal influences. When he first arrives, he perches upon the roof of a barn or upon some still leafless tree, and pours forth his few and frequent notes with evident fervor, as if conscious of the delights that await him. These mellow notes are all the sounds he titters for several weeks, seldom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... shows changes in all of them, but most marked in the pituitary, the shrunken cells staining as if they too were asleep, or in a resting stage. The characteristic alive qualities of these cells return, without relation to food or climate, when the animal comes to in the spring, at the vernal equinox. Hibernation may, perhaps, be put down to a seasonal wave of inactivity of the ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... her heart. That you may not doubt the fact, the statue still remains, and stands in the temple of Venus at Salamis, in the exact form of the lady. Now think of these things, my dear, and lay aside your scorn and your delays, and accept a lover. So may neither the vernal frosts blight your young fruits, nor furious winds scatter ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... 'Twas like a vernal morn, yet overhead The leafless boughs across the lane were knitting: The ghost of some forgotten Spring, we said, O'er ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... lottery could be suppressed. At this I knew my business was done, and all present, after signing a document which M. du Vernai gave them, took their leave, and I myself left directly afterwards with a friendly leave-taking from M. du Vernal. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Anningait, that he could no longer be restrained from a declaration of his love. He therefore composed a poem in her praise, in which, among other heroick and tender sentiments, he protested, that "she was beautiful as the vernal willow, and fragrant as the thyme upon the mountains; that her fingers were white as the teeth of the morse, and her smile grateful as the dissolution of the ice; that he would pursue her, though she should pass the snows of the midland cliffs, or seek shelter in the caves of the eastern ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... all pure emerald and translucent beryl, made opulent outpouring of that new life which now pulsed through the Mother's million veins. Diaphanous mist wreaths and tender showers wooed the Spring; under silver gauze of vernal rain rang wild rapture of thrushes, laughter of woodpeckers, chime and chatter of jackdaws from the rock, secret crooning of the cushat in the pines. From dawn till dusk the sweet air was winnowed by busy ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... and sweet re-union, Where the bells of time shall cease; Oh, the greeting, endless greeting, On the vernal heights of peace; Where the hoping and desponding Of the weary heart are past, And we enter life eternal— Home at last, home ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... or stretched upon the lockers, in that state of despondency which overwhelming sickness induces;—and they have a picture of the Good Intent's cabin and state-room during the voyage to which I refer. Nor was this all. The weather was boisterous, being the vernal equinox; the winds cross and tempestuous; and the waves of the sea so tremendous that the little vessel sunk, and rose, and rolled, as if each succeeding shock were the last ere she sank for ever into the roaring abyss; while each convulsion of the bark called forth involuntary ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... poet of the lusty spring, of "Aprille with her showres sweet" and the "foules song," of "May with all her floures and her greene," of the new leaves in the wood, and the meadows new powdered with the daisy, the mystic Marguerite of his Legend of Good Women. A fresh vernal air ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... with them. There was great rejoicing among the Hebrews, who like those of their blood in the city of Rameses, had assembled in every house at a festive repast on the night of the new moon after the vernal equinox when the harvest festival usually began. The heads of the tribes had informed them that the day of liberation had arrived, and the Lord would lead them into the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... field-clubs—out in pursuit of weeds, of stone-cracking, and the desecration of those old heathen burying barrows on Stone Horse Head quieted off for the time being. Deadham, meanwhile, in act of repossessing its soul in peace and hibernating according to time-honoured habit until the vernal equinox. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... uncertain speech, that murmurs only when indigent nature prompts;—and her own parents wondered whence they came in her simplicity, when first they looked upon her kneeling in an unbidden prayer. As one mild week of vernal sunshine covers the braes with primroses, so shone with fair and fragrant feelings—unfolded, ere they knew, before her parents' eyes—the divine nature of her who, for a season, was lent to them from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... works, and to see how many immortal productions have, within a few months, been gathered to the poems of Blackmore and the novels of Mrs. Behn; how many "profound views of human nature," and "exquisite delineations of fashionable manners," and "vernal, and sunny, and refreshing thoughts," and "high imaginings," and "young breathings," and "embodyings," and "pinings," and "minglings with the beauty of the universe," and "harmonies which dissolve the soul in a passionate sense ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... levitated them from the district of dark loft-buildings and theater-bound taxicabs to a far-out Broadway, softened with trees and brightened with small apartment-houses and little shops. They could see a great feathery space of vernal darkness down over the Hudson at the end of a street. Steel-bound nature seemed reaching for them wherever in a vacant lot she could get free and send out quickening odors of ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... vernal arches, where a murmurous rustle seemed to whisper, "Stay!" along shadowless sweeps, where the blue turned to gold and dazzled with its unsteady shimmer; passed islands so full of birds they seemed green cages floating in the sun, or doubled capes that opened long vistas of light and shade, ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... alterations they cause in the attractive force. During the revolution of the earth round the sun the successive positions of the point on the earth which is nearest to the sun will form a diagonal line across the equator. At the vernal equinox (March 20) the equator is vertically under the sun, which then declines to the south until the summer solstice (June 21), when it reaches its maximum south declination. It then moves northwards, passing vertically ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... twiles in the vernal vale, In adumbration of azure awe, And I listlessly list in my swallow-tail To the limpet licking his limber jaw. And it's O for the sound of the daffodil, For the dry distillings of prawn and prout, When hope hops high and a heather hill Is a dear delight and ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... boy sat there and the sun shone on him, and he looked at the red blood in his three fingers, as he held them up before his face, he would say, 'Yes, to-day he has been out.' He knew the forest with its beautiful vernal green only from the fact that the neighbor's son brought him the first green branch of a beech-tree, and he held that up over his head, and dreamed he was in the beech wood where the sun shone and the ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... tunic, with a crown of shells and seaweed upon his head, or a brown-brimmed hat adorned with eagle or heron plumes. As personification of the summer, he was invoked to still the raging storms which desolated the coasts during the winter months. He was also implored to hasten the vernal warmth and ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... season vernal, Time may cast a shade; Sunshine, if eternal, Makes the roses fade: Time may do his duty; Let the thief alone - Winter hath a beauty That is all his own. Fairest days are sun and shade: Happy be ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... was like a bird that sings At morning on a vernal bough! The springtide at the heart of things Sang as the spring knows how. And fair was she, and both were young; We knew not what made time so good; Nature with glamour-tutored tongue ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... Year. Beginning with the Vernal Equinox, it must be remembered; and (howsoever the old Solar Year is practically superseded by the clumsy Lunar Year that dates from the Mohammedan Hijra) still commemorated by a Festival that is said to have been appointed by the very Jamshyd whom Omar so often talks of, and whose ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... afternoon, and already the crocuses were thrusting their heads out of the neat flower-beds as if to ascertain whether the spring had really arrived. There was, indeed, a pleasant vernal scent in the air. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... useless! See, o'erburdened with their load, All the friends who went before us fall or falter by the road! We have come a weary distance, seeking what we may not get, And I think we are but children, chasing rainbows through the wet. Tell me not of vernal valleys! Is it well to hold a reed Out for drowning men to clutch at in the moments of their need? Go thy journey on without me; it is better I should stay, Since my life is like an evening, ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... death, with mist o'erstrown, Rides the dark ocean on this icy throne; When ships thro vernal seas with light airs steer Their midnight march, and deem no danger near. The steerman gaily helms his course along, And laughs and listens to the watchman's song, Who walks the deck, enjoys the murky fog, Sure of his chart, his magnet and his log; Their shipmates dreaming, while their slumbers ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... of myrtle, Love, summer-tressed and vernal-eyed, At morn or eve is seen to wander, A dark-haired girl is at ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... thing as peaceable secession. It is an utter impossibility. Is this great Constitution, under which we live, to be melted and thawed away by secession, as the snows on the mountains are melted away under the influence of the vernal sun? No, sir; I see as plainly as the sun in the heavens what that disruption must produce. I see it must ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... wide the vernal breeze Sweet odours waft from blooming trees, So, too, the grateful savour spreads To distant ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... as I strolled over them, I found dotted with lovely villas, and everywhere traversed by perfectly-kept carriage-roads, and easy and pleasant foot-paths. It was in the spring-time, and the peach-trees and almond-trees hung full of blossoms and bees, the lizards lay in the walks absorbing the vernal sunshine, the violets and cowslips sweetened all the grassy borders. The scene did not want a human interest, for the peasant girls were going to market at that hour, and I met them everywhere, bearing heavy burdens on their own heads, or hurrying forward ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... the white-flowered Stuartia, and, mounting still higher, cover the summits of the lofty trees around, accompanied with innumerable vines, that here and there festoon the dense foliage of the magnificent woods, lending to the vernal breeze a slight portion of the perfume of their clustered flowers; where a genial warmth seldom forsakes the atmosphere; where berries and fruits of all descriptions are met with at every step; in a word, kind reader, it is where Nature seems to have paused, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... into thy bosom, Earth, This joyous, May-eyed morrow, The gentlest child that ever Mirth Gave to be rear'd by Sorrow. 'Tis hard—while rays half green, half gold, Through vernal bowers are burning, And streams their diamond-mirrors hold To Summer's face returning— To say, We're thankful that His sleep Shall never more be lighter, In whose sweet-tongued companionship Stream, bower, and beam ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... preference for words of Latin origin certainly brings Milton near at times to the poetic diction banned by Wordsworth. "Vernal bloom" for "spring flowers," "humid bow" for "rainbow," the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... same bright path, or enthusiastically rapt amidst the beauty and bloom of Australia.—Bernard Barton, bringing us snatches of vernal philosophy, gathered in the silence of murky woods, and the solitude of perfumed meadows.—John Clare, swearing everlasting fealty to his beauteous Mary, by the elm-shadowed cottage of her bowery home; thanking heaven for the benison of love and rurality.—Richardson, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... Flourets of a thousand hues. Ye valleys low where the milde whispers use, Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart Star sparely looks, Throw hither all your quaint enameld eyes, That on the green terf suck the honied showres, And purple all the ground with vernal flowres. Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken dies. The tufted Crow-toe, and pale Gessamine, The white Pink, and the Pansie freakt with jeat, The glowing Violet. The Musk-rose, and the well attir'd Woodbine. With Cowslips wan that hang the pensive hed, And every ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... budding breasts like fragrant fruit Of love were ripening to be pressed: Her voice, that shook my heart's red root, Yet might not break a babe's soft rest! More liquid than the running brooks, More vernal than the voice of Spring, When Nightingales are in their nooks, And all the leafy thickets ring. The love she coyly hid at heart Was shyly conscious in her eye; O! who that looked could help but love? Not I, ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... closed and her hand clinched upon it in her pocket. Delia sat hard by with a needle in her fingers, certain morsels of silk and ribbon in her lap, several pins in her mouth, and her attention turning constantly from her work to her sister's face. The weather was now so completely vernal that Mr. Dosson was able to haunt the court, and he had lately resumed this practice, in which he was presumably at the present moment absorbed. Delia had lowered her needle and was making sure if her companion were awake—she had been perfectly still for so long—when her glance was drawn to the ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... council led the way. Uprose the sceptred monarchs, and obey'd Their leader's call, and round them throng'd the crowd. As swarms of bees, that pour in ceaseless stream From out the crevice of some hollow rock, Now clust'ring, and anon 'mid vernal flow'rs, Some here, some there, in busy numbers fly; So to th' Assembly from their tents and ships The countless tribes came thronging; in their midst, By Jove enkindled, Rumour urged them on. Great was the din; and as the mighty mass Sat down, the solid earth beneath them ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... nature's rich array," to "orient day;" then "but soon the scathing lightning," to "blighted land." Then "Sublime of thought" to "his bosom glows." Then "but soon upon his poor unsheltered head Did Penury her sickly Mildew shed, and soon are fled the charms of vernal Grace, and Joy's wild gleams that lightend o'er his face!" Then "Youth of tumultuous soul" to "sigh" as before. The rest may all stand down to "gaze upon the waves below." What follows now may come next, as detached verses, suggested ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... my faith, My hope of victory through the years, My steadiness of step, my clear and visioned eye. The early flowers, the birds Singing in the rain, The increasing light, the slowly opening buds, The almond blooms, the trees in vernal dress Are like the silver crown upon the head; A prophecy of heaven's summer time. Yes, even now it is the April Of my ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... only recently opened their sleepy eyes and stretched their thin forms, there comes the great worldwide army of the birds, whose bright eyes peer at us from tree, thicket, and field, whose brilliant feathers and sweet songs bring summer with a leap—the height of the grand symphony, of which the vernal peeping of the frogs and the squirrels' chatter were only the first ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... another sort. He had dreamt of a music that should be a bridge to the Superman, the man whose every motion would be carefree. He had seen striding across mountain chains in the bright air of an eternal morning a youth irradiant with unbroken energy, before whom all the world lay open in vernal sunshine like a domain before its lord. He had seen one beside whom the other musicians would stand as convicts from Siberian prison camps who had stumbled upon a banquet of the gods. He had seen ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... evening star Singing to worlds where dreamers are, That makes upon the leafless bough A solitary vernal vow— Sing, lyric soul! within thy song The love ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... prosperous and happy. In Vasavadatta, the daughter of Pradyota, I have a wife whom I adore, and in Vasantaka, a friend in whom I can confide. Attended by such a friend, at such a season, and so disposed I might fancy myself the deity of desire, and this vernal celebration held in honour of myself. Kausambi outvies the residence of the god of wealth. Her numerous sons are clad in cloth of gold, decked with glittering ornaments and tossing their heads ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... the high Arachosian plateau. In Kabul the snow lies for two or three months; the people seldom leave their houses, and sleep close to stoves. At Ghazni the snow has been known to lie long beyond the vernal equinox; the thermometer sinks to 10 deg. and 15 deg. below zero (Fahr.); and tradition relates the entire destruction of the population of Ghazni by snowstorms ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and "lawns," and "level downs," and "flocks," and "irriguous valleys," and "umbrageous grots and caves of cool recess," and "murmuring waters," and "airs, vernal airs—" ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... Edinian spring survey'd; Morn's fairy splendours; night's gay curtained shade, The high hoar cliff, the grove's benighting gloom, The wild rose, widowed o'er the mouldering tomb; The heaven embosom'd sun; the rainbow's dye, Where lucid forms disport to fancy's eye; The vernal flower, mild autumn's purpling glow, The summer's thunder and the ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... equinox must traverse the southern or watery region of the zodiac. This, on their system, signified a submergence of the whole universe in water, and the Deluge myth would symbolize the safe passage of the vernal Sun-god through that part of the ecliptic. But we need not spend time over that view, as its underlying conception is undoubtedly quite a late development of ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... think, his extreme openness and proneness to pleasing outward impressions in a striking point of view. 'But to return to our own institute,' he says, 'besides these constant exercises at home, there is another opportunity of gaining experience to be won from pleasure itself abroad. In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with Heaven and earth. I should not therefore be a persuader to them of studying ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... like the vernal May, When ev'ning Phoebus shines serene, While birds rejoice on every spray; An' she has twa ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... tender, vernal spray The sunny air such fragrance drew, As breathes from fields of strawberries wild, All bathed in ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... from the vernal Heat Shall Old Acquaintance Old Acquaintance greet, Under the Branch that leans above the Wall To shed his Blossom over head ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... to tend the fair, Not a less pleasing, though less glorious care; To save the powder from too rude a gale, Nor let the imprisoned essences exhale; To draw fresh colours from the vernal flowers; To steal from rainbows ere they drop in showers A brighter wash; to curl their waving hairs, Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs; Nay oft, in dreams, invention we bestow, To change a flounce ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... underworld to see her "young Persephone, transcendent queen of shades." Not for her weary, wandering feet was a single one of the thousand paths that lead downward to death. Her only consolation was in the vernal flowers, which, springing from the dark earthly mould, seemed to her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... of Sentinel Dome, conscious that your own good muscles have lifted you over four thousand feet from the valley's floor, with such a world spread before you; the indescribable beauty of a sunrise at Glacier Point, the beauty and majesty of Vernal and Nevada falls, the knightly crest of the Half Dome, and the imposing grandeur of the great Capitan—what words can even hint ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... fond adieu to thee, O muse of rhyme— I do remand thee to the shades until that happier time When fields are green, and posies gay are budding everywhere, And there's a smell of clover bloom upon the vernal air; When by the pond out yonder the redwing blackbird calls, And distant hills are wed to Spring in veils of water-falls; When from his aqueous element the famished pickerel springs Two hundred feet into the air for butterflies ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... this sylvan Momus is to be found in an old play. "Enter Robin Goodfellow, in a suit of leather, close to his body, his hands and face coloured russet colour, with a flail."—Grim, the Collier of Croydon, Act 4, Scene 1. At other times, however, he is presented in the vernal livery of the ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... of leaf and flower: Ye pleasant sounds of bird and bee: Ye sports of deer in sylvan bower: Ye feasts beneath the greenwood tree: Ye baskings in the vernal sun: Ye slumbers in the summer dell: Ye trophies that this arm has won: And must ye hear your ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... produces will be succeeded by a powerful and healthy population. The results of these events in the moral and political world may be compared to those produced in the vegetable kingdom by the storms and heavy gales so usual at the vernal equinox, the time of the formation of the seed; the pollen or farina of one flower is thrown upon the pistil of another, and the crossing of varieties of plants so essential to the perfection of the vegetable ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... lady," Mr. Kennaston cried, playfully, "you, like many of us, have become an alien to Nature in your quest of a mere Earthly Paradox. Epigrams are all very well, but I fancy there is more happiness to be derived from a single impulse from a vernal wood than from a whole problem-play of smart sayings. So few of us are natural," Mr. Kennaston complained, with a dulcet sigh; "we are too sophisticated. Our very speech lacks the tang of outdoor life. Why should we not love Nature—the ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... be the efficient cause, the tendency to suicide should be as great at the time of the fall equinox as it is at the time of the spring equinox; but this is not the case. Two hundred and seventy-two suicides out of every thousand occur in the vernal equinoctial period and only two hundred and fifteen in the autumnal equinoctial period, and this proportion holds good throughout the whole northern hemisphere. Light, therefore, must also ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Adonis, with the hymeneal Fresh vernal buds half sunk between His youthful curls. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... that great State, and proud of it and its condition, may join in congratulating you, gentlemen, on the establishment of this "Southern Society of New York." After the long season of strife and discontent this is one of the many signs which mark the vernal equinox, and foretell the coming summer. I believe, notwithstanding the infinite disasters of the war, the overthrow of slavery, and with it all the industrial system of the South, and the needless loss and the humiliations ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... of Kaf, that unseen mountain-wall of emerald, the so-called Desert, changed face twice a year; now brown and dry as summer-dust; then green as Hope, beautified with infinite verdure and broad sheetings of rain-water. The vernal and autumnal shiftings of camp, disruptions of homesteads and partings of kith and kin, friends and lovers, made the life many-sided as it was vigorous and noble, the outcome of hardy frames, strong minds and spirits breathing the very essence of liberty and independence. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... geranium at my window. It had put forth two sickly leaves. Two sickly leaves for me, and the world alive with vernal things! Spring, thou Queen of the ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... made a detour of the settlement. There was even a singular compensation to this amicable invasion; the inhabitants sometimes found gold in those breaches in the banks made by the overflow. To wait for the "old Rattlesnake sluicing" was a vernal hope of the ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... went a long walk up the avenues and across half the alphabet in the streets, and through the pretty squares and circles, where the statues were sometimes beautiful and always picturesque; and the sparrows made a vernal chirping in the naked trees and on the green grass. In two or three they sat down on the iron ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 1816, two days before the vernal equinox, I sailed from Liverpool for Pernambuco, in the southern hemisphere, on the coast of Brazil. There is little at this time of the year, in the European part of the Atlantic, to engage the attention of the naturalist. As you go down the Channel you ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... Nature suspends her functions, by putting them into a deep, and, for aught we know to the contrary, a pleasant sleep. It is only when the snow melts, under the vernal sun, and the green blades of grass and the spring flowers array themselves on the surface of the earth, that the little marmots make their appearance again. Then the warm air, penetrating into their subterranean abodes, admonishes them to awake from ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... to singing, Set about composing verses? None can sing except the singer, None can call save vernal cuckoo, None can paint, except Sinetar, None can ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... feed on thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid, Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and, for the book of knowledge fair, Presented with a universal blank Of ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... praise the bards shall tell, When to their hymning voice the echo rings, Or when they sweep the solemn strings, And wake to rapture the seven-chorded shell: Or in Sparta's jocund bow'rs, Circling when the vernal hours Bring the Carnean Feast, whilst through the night Full-orb'd the high moon rolls her light; Or where rich Athens, proudly elevate, Shows her magnific state: Their voice thy glorious death shall raise, And swell th' enraptured ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... terrours, we find this folly countenanced by frequent examples. Those that laugh at the portentous glare of a comet, and hear a crow with equal tranquillity from the right or left, will yet talk of times and situations proper for intellectual performances, will imagine the fancy exalted by vernal breezes, and the reason invigorated by a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... glided imperceptibly away, and as imperceptibly vernal bloom and beauty stole over the ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Missouri, takes the lead of it in its annual excess, and its superabundant waters are disgorged and disposed of long before the breaking up of the icy barriers of the north; otherwise, did all these mighty streams rise simultaneously, and discharge their vernal floods into the Mississippi, an inundation would be the consequence, that would submerge and devastate all the ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... observed along with the purest and clearest skies, and with the freshest land and sea breezes. But if no meteorological phenomenon indicates the coming earthquake either on the morning of the shock or a few days previously, the influence of certain periods of the year (the vernal and autumnal equinoxes), the commencement of the rainy season in the tropics after long drought, and the change of the monsoons (according to general belief), can not be overlooked, even though the genetic connection of meteorological processes with those going on in the interior ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... instincts of civilization. They were no longer barbarous by a brutal and animal barbarism. The deep soil of their powerful natures had long been budding into nobler capacities, and had expanded into nobler perceptions. Reverence for female dignity, a sentiment never found before in any nation, gave a vernal promise of some higher humanity, on a wider scale than had yet been exhibited. Strong sympathies, magnetic affinities, prepared this great encampment of nations for Christianity. Their nobility needed such a field for its expansion; ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks, Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes, That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... tides happening in every revolution of the moon, is that when the moon approaches nearest to the zenith or nadir; for this reason, while the sun is in the northern signs, that is during the vernal and summer months, the greater of the two diurnal tides in our latitude is that, when the moon is above the horizon; and when the sun is in the southern signs, or during the autumnal and winter months, the greater tide is ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. They no longer soar, and they attain only to a Shanghai and Cochin-China grandeur. Those gra-a-ate thoughts, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... blest. Whatever fruits in different climes were found, That proudly rise, or humbly court the ground; Whatever blooms in torrid tracts appear, 115 Whose bright succession decks the varied year; Whatever sweets salute the northern sky With vernal lives that blossom but to die; These here disporting own the kindred soil, Nor ask luxuriance from the planter's toil; 120 While sea-born gales their gelid wings expand To winnow ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... is no light in the rocky South that so tenderly touches the soul as this. Here the spurge drinks of the wine of heaven with golden lips wide open; but the hellebore, which has already lost all its vernal greenness, and is parched by the drought, ripens its drooping seeds sullenly on the shadowy side of the jutting crag, and seems to hate the sun. Higher and yet far below the plateau is a little ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... wonderful to behold; and his voice was calculated to gladden the heart; and his speech was pleasant like the song of the male blackbird. And while listening to the same I felt touched to my inmost soul. And as a forest in the midst of the vernal season, assumes a grace only when it is swept over by the breeze, so, O father! he of an excellent and pure smell looks beautiful when fanned by the air. And his mass of hair is neatly tied up and remains adhering to the head and forehead ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... this is a severe mortification, especially to Shaykhs and elders, who not only look upon the beard as one of man's characteristics, but attach a religious importance to the appendage. Hence the enormity of Kamar al-Zaman's behaviour. The Persian festival of the vernal equinox was called Kusehnishin (Thin-beard sitting). An old man with one eye paraded the streets on an ass with a crow in one hand and a scourge and fan in the other, cooling himself, flogging the bystanders and crying heat! ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... full of summer melody and bloom. Gentle creatures haunted it, and there was none to make afraid; wood-pigeons cooed and crickets chirped their shrill roundelays, anemones and lady-ferns looked up from the moss that kissed the wanderer's feet. Warm airs were all afloat, full of vernal odors for the grateful sense, silvery birches shimmered like spirits of the wood, larches gave their green tassels to the wind, and pines made airy music sweet and solemn, as they stood looking heavenward through veils of summer sunshine ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... the soft awakening of the zephyr. Even within the house, the languors of the fire drowsing on the hearth, the broad bar of sunshine across the puncheon floor, so slowly creeping away, the sense of the vernal lengthening of the pensive afternoon, the ever-flitting shadow of the wren building under the eaves, and its iterative gladsome song breaking the fireside stillness, partook of the serene beatitude ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... charm of Aphrodite is Greek. Even without foreign influence, Greek polytheism would have developed a Goddess of Love, as did the polytheism of the North (Frigga) and of the Aztecs. The rites of Adonis, the vernal year, are, even in the name of the hero, Oriental. "The name Adonis is the Phoenician Adon, 'Lord.'" {44} "The decay and revival of vegetation" inspires the Adonis rite, which is un-Homeric; and was superfluous, where the descent and return of Persephone typified the ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... Yet all its vernal beauty seemed but as a portal to the inner shrine, the sanctuary of Southern hospitality. Which hospitality is a separate brand and hath no rival this side the Gates of Pearl. Let all who would feel the surprise of heaven's welcome forego the ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... impurities and waste products to escape. It not only makes the blood purer and richer, but it strengthens the organ (the heart) that pumps it everywhere throughout the system. It not only builds up and rejuvenates the general system, but it brings vernal strength and power to the ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... the Middle Ages there was a unity (Einheit) which ought to be again recovered. All Europe was then one fatherland with a single faith. The period of the Arthursage was the blossoming time of romance, the vernal season of love, religion, chivalry, and—sorcery! He pleaded for the creation of a new ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... rehearsing his part in the interview which was about to take place between him and his noble friend. The day, though calm, as we said, was nevertheless without sunshine, and, consequently, that joyous and exhilarating spirit of warmth and light which the vernal sun floods down upon all nature, rendering earth and air choral with music, was not felt so powerfully. On the contrary, the silence and gloom were somewhat unusual, considering the mildness which prevailed. Every one, however, has experienced the influence of such days—an influence which, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... this time—the vernal equinox had just passed—that from some small cause Richling, who was generally detained at the desk until a late hour, was home early. The air was soft and warm, and he stood out a little beyond his small front door-step, lifting his head to inhale the universal fragrance, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... me. When my father had decided, one year, that we should go for the Easter holidays to Florence and Venice, not finding room to introduce into the name of Florence the elements that ordinarily constitute a town, I was obliged to let a supernatural city emerge from the impregnation by certain vernal scenes of what I supposed to be, in its essentials, the genius of Giotto. All the more—and because one cannot make a name extend much further in time than in space—like some of Giotto's paintings themselves which shew us at two separate moments the same person engaged in ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... fearlessly to alight had been changed into a disgusting expanse of farms. If geese are favored with the long lives in which fable bids us believe, some of these venerable honkers must have seen every vernal and autumnal phase of the transformation from boundless prairie to boundless corn-land. I sometimes seem to hear in the bewildering trumpetings of wild geese a cry of surprise and protest at the ruin of their former ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... life. The root of an ash tree, on the bank which bends round the little bay, had been half bared by the waters during one of the winter floods, and afforded a commodious resting-place, whereon I took my seat, at once basking in the sun and bathing, as it were, in the vernal breeze. But delightful as all about me was to eye, and ear, and feeling, it brought with it a natural reflection, that the scene which I now beheld was the same which it had been and would continue to be, while so many of those with whom I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... it flew, in and out, over the water and under, as the Varsimle', the leader doe of the Reindeer herd, walked past on the vernal banks, ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Nature, and the naming of specific objects," says Mr. Gosse,[36] "they substituted generalities and second-hand allusions. They no longer mentioned the gillyflower and the daffodil, but permitted themselves a general reference to Flora's vernal wreath. It was vulgar to say that the moon was rising; the gentlemanly expression was, 'Cynthia is lifting her silver horn!' Women became nymphs in this new phraseology, fruits became 'the treasures of Pomona,' a horse became 'the impatient courser.' The result ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... year, about the approach of the vernal equinox or the seedsman's catalogue, we wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning. This is an immediate warning and apprisement that something is adrift. Three hundred and sixty-four days in the year we wake, placidly enough, at seven-ten, ten minutes ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... 2 this change of era is formally commanded by Moses: "This month (the passover month) shall be the beginning of months unto you, it shall be to you the first of the months of the year." According to George Smith, the Assyrian year commenced at the vernal equinox; the Assyrian use depends on the Babylonian (Assyrian Eponym Canon, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... however, unsuspected reserves of vitality. He crept out into the sunshine again, basking in the vernal warmth with a sense of luxury, and entering into the gossip of the ditchers with an unwonted ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... heart of Nature, beating still With throbs her vernal passion taught her,— Even here, as on the vine-clad hill, Or by the Arethusan water! New forms may fold the speech, new lands Arise within these ocean-portals, But Music waves eternal wands,— Enchantress of ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... the taste, being adorned with garlands of the sweetest smelling flowers? In this paradise there will be a perpetual spring; so that the fruits and flowers will be renewed every day with an infinite variety, and by their continual growth and freshness, added to the vernal temperature of the atmosphere, the souls of the blessed will be daily fitted to receive and taste new joys, till they shall be restored to the flower of their age, and finally to their primitive state, in which Adam and his wife were created, and thus recover their paradise, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... early green were dressed, And from the chambers of the west The warm breezes, travelling out, Breathed the new scent of flowers about, My truant steps from home would stray, Upon its grassy side to play, List the brown thrasher's vernal hymn, And crop the violet on its brim, With blooming cheek and open brow, As young and gay, sweet rill, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... secession. Peaceable secession is an utter impossibility. Is the great Constitution under which we live, covering this whole country, is it to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun, disappear almost unobserved, and run off? No, sir! No, sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption of the Union; but, sir, I see as plainly as I can see the sun in heaven what that disruption ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... and Egyptian years appears in the fact that the Babylonian new year dates from about the period of the vernal equinox and not from the solstice. Lockyer associates this with the fact that the periodical inundation of the Tigris and Euphrates occurs about the equinoctial period, whereas, as we have seen, the Nile flood comes at the time of the solstice. It is but natural ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... myriads in the peopled grass: 210 What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme, The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam: Of smell, the headlong lioness between, And hound sagacious on the tainted green: Of hearing, from the life that fills the Flood, 215 To that which warbles thro' the vernal wood: The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line: In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew? 220 How Instinct varies in the grov'lling swine, Compar'd, half-reas'ning ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... things of distant years, Warm, eloquent, and holy, as the balm Of flow'rs impearl'd with dew, which summer skies Diffuse around—I mark the marble brow Of polish'd symmetry, the eyes more blue Than violets in their vernal bloom, the neck Swanlike, and moulded with ethereal grace; And feel their magic influence on my mind. I will embody them, and give the stamp Of fervid genius to their various charms, Ere this last aspiration is extinct In the unbroken slumbers of the tomb! For I have had prophetic monitors ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... and much sprawling and crouching there, under the feet of passers, and the little curled and feathered people who drove their hoops under the eyes of French nursemaids—all the infant population filled the vernal air with small sounds which had a crude, tender quality, like the leaves and the thin herbage. Olive wandered through the place, and ended by sitting down on one of the continuous benches. It was a long time since she had done anything so vague, so wasteful. There were a dozen things ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James |
