"Wither" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought how he had cheated Ca Boo-Ug, but soon his part began to wither and die, and he was ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... and insect life of the rich river banks, the only part of the landscape where the hand of man has never interfered, and the only part in general which never feels the drought of summer, 'the trees planted by the waterside whose leaf shall not wither.' ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... many of his old friends still in office. The governor and higher officials were only annuals—some not very hardy at that—while the minor officials, in many cases, were hardy perennials, whom no political hot weather or cold storm could wither or destroy. ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... once past changing were! Fast in thy Paradise, where no Flowers can wither; Manie a Spring I shoot up faire, Offering at Heaven, growing and groaning thither, Nor doth my Flower want a Spring Shower, My Sins and I ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... lick there, suh. De po' lamb fell—No, suh"—the old woman's racial mutability swept her into a sudden flare of indignation —"old Cindy ain't gwineter lie for dat debble. He done it, suh. May de Lawd wither de hand what—dar now! Cindy promise her sweet lamb she ain't gwine tell. Miss Amy got hurt, ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... from Upper Serbia down to Saloniki, was the only line of communication and transportation between the main Serbian armies and the Allies. Cut this, and they would wither like a flower ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... vanity wither everything? Mademoiselle de Fontaine, a prey to the most violent struggle that can torture the heart of a young girl, reaped the richest harvest of anguish that prejudice and narrow-mindedness ever sowed in a human soul. Her face, ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... Ned, a mare and a colt. Fine hacks they were, too! Anybody could ride them, they were so quiet. Dad reckoned Ned was the better of the two. He was well-bred, and had a pedigree and a gentle disposition, and a bald-face, and a bumble-foot, and a raw wither, and a sore back that gave him a habit of "flinching"—a habit that discounted his uselessness a great deal, because, when we were n't at home, the women could n't saddle him to run the cows in. Whenever he saw the saddle or heard the girth-buckles ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... have for himself the tenderness and fostering that belong of right to her children. Since marriage began, the great artist has been known as a bad husband. But he is worse: he is a child-robber, a bloodsucker, a hypocrite and a cheat. Perish the race and wither a thousand women if only the sacrifice of them enable him to act Hamlet better, to paint a finer picture, to write a deeper poem, a greater play, a profounder philosophy! For mark you, Tavy, the artist's work is to show us ourselves as we really ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... immediately rout them, and move rapidly to join Kirby Smith. These orders were given under the impression that Buell's command was so separated that his right and left were sixty miles apart. Bragg also sent Wither's division to Kirby Smith at Frankfort, who reported himself threatened by a large force on ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... development almost impossible even where unhelped nature is most kind. Both knew, perhaps, that it could not last, but neither wished it checked, and neither liked to think of the moment when it must either begin to wither by degrees, or be suddenly absorbed into a greater and more ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... to droop and wither, and in spite of all that we, or the kind Hudson's Bay officials, who were very much attached to him, could do for him, he seemed almost visibly ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... Animals, we find by their being so seldom afflicted with Mens Distempers, deriv'd from the Causes above-mentioned: And if the many Diseases of Horses seem to [80]contradict it, I am apt to think it much imputable to the Rack and Manger, the dry and wither'd Stable Commons, which they must eat or starve, however qualified; being restrained from their Natural and Spontaneous Choice, which Nature and Instinct directs them to: To these add the Closeness of the Air, standing in an almost continu'd Posture; besides the fulsome Drenches, unseasonable ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... it not been for the strength of the clary, I should have kept the Bastard longer in suspense. But what is done is done. Let not thy roses wither when thou hearest Warwick is in England,—nay, nay, child, look not so appalled; thine Edward is no infant, whom ogre and goblin scare; and"—glancing his eye proudly round as he spoke, and saw the goodly cavalcade of his peers and ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... among men. Then the years that would have belonged to thee will be contracted to half the span of the ephemeral fly, that lives but a day: one night, and thy life-taper shall be blown out—the leaves of the tree will wither and be blown away, to become ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... its crystal, its pink shades, its pretty flowers, and compelled his host to meet his flaming eyes,—"man, I risked my wife's love and respect. And," he drew a deep breath, "by God, I was justified. I got there. If I hadn't," the fire died down in his mild blue eyes, and the thin body seemed to wither and shrink,—"if I hadn't struck it, it would hev killed her, the finest lady in the land, an' me too. It was nip an' tuck with both of us. And now," his voice warmed into life again,—"and now you offer me ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... was a true "collector," delighting [119] in the personal finding of a thing, in the colour an old book or print gets for him by the little accidents which attest previous ownership. Wither's Emblems, "that old book and quaint," long-desired, when he finds it at last, he values none the less because a child had coloured the plates with his paints. A lover of household warmth everywhere, of that tempered atmosphere which our various habitations get by men's ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... WITHER, GEORGE, poet, born at Arlesford, in Hampshire, and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford; was imprisoned for his first poem, a satire, "Abuses Stript and Whipt," in 1613; his subsequent productions betray true poetic inspiration, and special passages in them are ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... he asked the Dragon-fly if she could decide for him between the Upper and the Nether—the height and the depth? The Dragon-fly flew above, and beneath, and around; but the Water spake:- "The foliage and the sky above are not the true ones: the leaves wither and fall; the sky is often overcast, and sometimes quite dark." Then the Leaves and the Sky said, "The water only apes us; it must change its pictures at our pleasure, and can retain none." Then the Dragon-fly ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... Lord comes; if he be not in the faith, it lays him down in his sins till the Lord comes. (Heb 11:13, 1 Thess 4:14, Job 20:11) Again; if thou hast some beginnings that look like good, and death should overtake thee before those beginnings are ripe, thy fruit will wither, and thou wilt fall short of being gathered into God's barn. Some men are 'cut off as the tops of the ears of corn,' and some are even nipped by death in the very bud of their spring; but the safety is when a man is ripe, and shall ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... baby's neck; or with the stalks of the dandelion makes a chain several feet in length. She plucks great bunches of the beautiful bluebell, and of the purple orchis of the meadow; gathers heaps of the cowslip, and after playing with them a little while, they are left to wither in the dust by the roadside, while she is sent two or three miles with her father's dinner. She chants snatches of rural songs, and sometimes three or four together, joining hands, dance slowly round and round, singing slowly rude rhymes describing marriage—and not over decent some of these rhymes ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... changing their locality, far less of changing their employment. They are rooted to the soil like a plant; when the work they have been accustomed to is no longer wanted, they cross their hands; and so they remain, and wither, and despair, and die. Thus when the kelp business was at an end, the Scotch Highlanders sat down in their helpless hunger, till they were swept as with a besom out of the land they cumbered. Yet what Mechi has done for his Tiptree bog on a large scale, with expensive ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... breath in French, as she bent lower over her knitting, "Nevertheless, Mere Jeanne's good Lord was good, and yours—"; and then she would quietly turn a hairpin upside down in her hair, for it was quite certain that if she caught Jacques's eye when he was in this mood, her hand would wither, or her hair fall out, or at the very least the cream all sour in the pans; and when one's hands were righteously busy, as with knitting, one might make the horns with other things, and a hairpin was very useful. She wished she had a little coral hand, ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... she suspected. That impression came back to her from time to time, and now she wondered it had never come before. Besides this, her short interview with Osmond half an hour ago was a striking example of his faculty for making everything wither that he touched, spoiling everything for her that he looked at. It was very well to undertake to give him a proof of loyalty; the real fact was that the knowledge of his expecting a thing raised a presumption against it. It was ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... salt mist the trees did not wither, but grew prodigiously. In all that expanse of turbulent sea—and only those who have seen the North Sea in a storm know how turbulent it can be—there had not been a foot of ground on which the birds, storm-driven across the water-waste, could rest in their flight. Hundreds of dead ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... Perhaps he had hitherto hardly realized the existence of his child, and was solely wrapped up in the thought of his wife; but the wooden cradle, the homely toy, stirred up fresh depths of feelings; he saw Eustacie wither tender sweetness as a mother, he beheld the little likeness of her in the cradle; and oh! that this should have been the end! Unable to repress a moan of anguish from a bursting heart, he laid his face against the senseless wood, and kissed it again and again, then lay motionless ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... end. The flower caught her eye. She stooped and plucked it, saying, "Oh, you beautiful creature!" and, lightly kissing it, put it in her bosom. It was the first kiss she had ever given me. But the flower soon began to wither, and I ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... curse would come upon him, or a pride in those rhymes would move him, and he would teach his lines to the children, and the girls, and the robbers. Or else he would tell another of his craft how he fared in the guest-house, and he in his turn would begin to curse, and my name would wither. For learn there is no steadfastness of purpose upon the roads, but only under roofs and between four walls. Therefore I bid you go and awaken Brother Kevin, Brother Dove, Brother Little Wolf, Brother Bald Patrick, Brother Bald Brandon, ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... expect divine influence to come down "like showers that water the earth," till we put away that which we know tends only to wither and consume all the "fruits ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... cried. "Now would I not let you take this man from me were I to dwell ten thousand laya in the agony of the Yekta's kiss. This I swear to you—by Thanaroa, by my heart, and by my strength—and may my strength wither, my heart rot in my breast, and Thanaroa forget me ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... every day out-fool ev'n Nokes and Lee. | They're forc'd to stop, and their own Farces quit, T'admire the Merry-Andrews of the Pit; But if your Mirth so grate the Critick's ear, Your Love will yet more Harlequin appear. —You everlasting Grievance of the Boxes, You wither'd Ruins of stum'd Wine and Poxes; What strange Green-sickness do you hope in Women Should make 'em love old Fools in new Point Linen? The Race of Life you run off-hand too fast, Your fiery Metal is too hot to last; Your ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... of them all And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands, And call'd him by his name, complaining loud, And dropping bitter tears against a brow Striped with dark blood: for all his face was white And colorless, and like the wither'd moon Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east; And all his greaves and cuisses dash'd with drops Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls— That made his forehead like a rising sun High from the dais-throne—were parch'd ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... shrank to pale invisibility in the advancing glare, and the crackle of hot roofs and beams, and the crash of walls and timbers, drowned the cries of the frightened and bankrupt, who beheld their fortunes wither in an hour, and the inheritance of their children fall to ashes. By the red, consuming light, poured past the straggling Confederate soldiers, dead to the acknowledgment of private rights, and sacking shop and home with curses and ribaldry; the suburban citizens and ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the condition of a district subject to such crimes! Few are struck, but all suffer! 'Tis as if men knew assuredly that a spirit of plague were passing through the land, but knew not whom it would wither. Think of a district where there has been peace—the People are poor, but they are innocent; some of the rich are merciless, but some are just, and many are kind and sympathising; in their low homes, in their safe chapels, in the faith of their fellows, in the hope ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... or the cane-borer. The adults are wasp-like insects about a half-inch long and very active. They come out of the canes in spring and the females soon lay eggs in the tender tips of the young shoots. These eggs soon hatch and the larvae eat their way up toward the tip, which causes it to wither and die. It is this injury that causes much notice. As the tip dies, the larvae turn and go down into the canes, as in the sample sent, also injuring them greatly, though possibly not killing them for some ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... and whether 'neath the load Of heavy griefs ye struggle on, or whether Your better destiny shall strew the road With flowers, and golden fruits that cannot wither, United let us move, still forwards striving; So while we live shall joy our days illume, And in our children's hearts our love surviving Shall gladden them, when we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... when the saint must vainly plead, Oh! how shall the sinner fare? I hold your comfort a broken reed; Let the wither'd branch for itself take heed, While the green shoots wait your care; I've striven, though feebly, to grasp your creed, And I've ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... appeared like sisters twin, In feature, form, an' claes; Their visage wither'd, lang an' thin, An' sour as ony slaes: [sloes] The third cam up, hap-stap-an'-lowp, [hop-step-and-jump] As light as ony lambie, An' wi' a curchie low did stoop, [curtsey] As soon as e'er she saw me, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... you alway, I will not deny it; not for three months, and not for a year; but I loved you from the first, when I was a child, and my love shall not wither, till death shall ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... friend begged to provide for my sister from his own ample means, and even offered her an asylum at his house. I still retained sufficient sanity to perceive the wrong of bringing a young child to that dismal place to wither removed from all human companionship and sympathy. A spirit not in a condition to be sustained and elevated by the society of Herbert would be confused, and finally petrified. Had this refined probing and questioning deadened ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... did not think I meant to give you Freya? 'T is she who feeds us golden apples. No one but Freya knows how to make them grow. If it were not for her fresh fruits my family would grow old. They would wither like ...
— Opera Stories from Wagner • Florence Akin
... more? But beards of mice, a newt's stew'd thigh, A bloated earwig, and a fly; With the red-capt worm, that's shut Within the concave of a nut, Brown as his tooth. A little moth, Late fatten'd in a piece of cloth; With wither'd cherries, mandrakes' ears, Moles' eyes: to these the slain stag's tears; The unctuous dewlaps of a snail, The broke-heart of a nightingale O'ercome in music; with a wine Ne'er ravish'd from the flattering vine, But gently prest from the soft side Of the most sweet and dainty bride, Brought ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... ye airy rabble, come, "And follow till I reach my home; "We want a marriage dance." As when the leaves on wither'd trees, Are rustled by an edying breeze, The muttering ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... COUN. Is't guilt, that I thus tremble? Why should I Feel like a sinner? I'll not dare to meet His flashing eye. O, with what scorn, what hate His lightning glance will wither me. Away, I will away. I care not whom he meets. What if he love me not, he shall not loathe The form he once embraced. I'll be content To live upon the past, and dream again It may return. Alas! were I ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... mother good by, and promised to be perfect; but Mrs. Parlin knew too well how the child's resolutions were apt to wither away ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... intention of the Government to do away with capital punishment and send all felons here? I am not surprised the camel has the hump. I would develop one here myself. What an accursed country!" Yes, it is not an elysium; and when one allows the dirt, heat, and discomfort to wither all power of endurance, the Soudan becomes a horror and anathema, particularly in the summer time. Now, the camel is to me the personification of animal wretchedness, a fit creature for the wilderness. The ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... be recommended to the botanist, who need not fear that the flowers he will find there will wither at his touch like those gathered for Marguerite by her guileless lover. The ever-crumbling dolomite has formed a soil very favourable to a varied flora. As I had, however, to reach the gorge of the Tarn before nightfall, and it was still far off, I only took away ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Thackeray's name were brought in he was never stung at all, but he certainly thought that passage and one or two others quite unwarrantable. However, slander without a germ of truth is seldom injurious: it resembles a rootless plant and must soon wither away. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... seventeenth-century diarist, Abraham de la Pryme, says that he had heard of a Presbyterian minister who was so precise that "he would not as much as take a pipe of tobacco before that he had first sayed grace over it." George Wither, one of the most noteworthy of the poets who took the side of the Parliament, was confined in Newgate after the Restoration, and ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... house was occupied by a bar and oyster saloon; the pungent testaceous odors, mounting from those lower regions, gave the offended nostrils no respite or rest; in a few minutes, a robust appetite, albeit watered by cunning bitters, would wither, like a flower in the fume of sulphur. Half-a-dozen before dinner, have always satiated my own desire for these mollusks; before many days were over, I utterly abominated the name of the species; familiarity only made the nuisance more intolerable, and I fled at last, fairly ostracised. ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... wither'd hags, Tell how wi' you on ragweed nags, They skim the muirs, and dizzy crags, Wi' wicked speed; And in kirk-yards renew their leagues ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... is adopted and all come together as equals, and unite the rich and the poor, the high and the low, in an equal right to hate the colored man; and its operations upon the mind and character are cruel and disastrous, as it is murderous and wicked in itself. One needs to feel it, and to wither under its effects, to know it: and the colored men of the United States, wherever found, and in whatever circumstances, are living epistles, which may be read by all men in proof of all that is paralyzing to enterprise, destructive to ambition, ruinous ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... referred was followed (as you will doubtless recollect), by a period of bitterly cold weather. With an anguish which I am utterly incapable of describing, I saw my marigolds and mignonette and roses and peonies and dahlias and pansies and other leafy pets wither and droop and shrivel. In less than forty-eight hours' time they were all apparently as dead as that side of the moon which is invisible to us. The only flower or shrub in all that once blooming lawn which remained unshorn of its beauty by the bitter hyperborean blasts was the Macleod ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... despair over the conversion of 2,861 florins into half-crowns, he stood by, telling her every operation, and leaving her nothing to do but to write down the figures. He was reckless of Janet, who tried to wither them both by her scorn; but Jessie looked up with her honest ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fall, And flowers to wither at the North-wind's breath, And stars to set: but all, Thou hast all seasons for thine ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... took another direction.—Could it be that already the glamour had begun to disperse, the roses of love to wither, the magic to lose its force, the common look of things to return? Paul was as kind, as courteous, as considerate as ever, and yet there was a difference. Her heart did not grow wild, her blood did not rush ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... the names of Shakespeare and Swedenborg is eminently well. They are Titans both. In the presence of such giants, small men seem to wither and blow away. Swedenborg was cast in heroic mold, and no other man since history began ever compassed in himself so much physical science, and with it all on his back, made such ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... cannot remain thus for ever, Here under the changeable moon; For earthly things bloom but a season, And wither away ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... mallows wither in the garden, and the green parsley, and the curled tendrils of the anise, on a later day they live again, and spring in another year; but we men, we, the great and mighty, or wise, when once we have died, in hollow earth we sleep, gone down into silence; a right long, and endless, ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... there was not a particle of prismatic coloring about it. It was a bas-relief cut on granite—full of power, enduring, and with a touch of eternity about it. Such picture-drawing is not flowery and does not wither. ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... like the flower or weed, That wither away to let others succeed; So the multitude comes, even those we behold, To repeat every tale that ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... would tell," to talk naturally and play at the same time. I "shied" at the lines, became self-conscious, and either sang the words or altered the rhythm of the tune to suit the pace of the speech. I grew anxious about it, and was always practicing it at home. After much hard work Edy used to wither me with: ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... sheer weight of arms and the arbitrary choices of self-constituted masters, by the nation which can maintain the biggest armies and the most irresistible armaments—a power to which the world has afforded no parallel and in the face of which political freedom must wither and perish. ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... peeple their money's worth, by showin them Sagashus Beests, and Wax Statoots, which I venter to say air onsurpast by any other statoots anywheres. I will not call that man who sez my statoots is humbugs a lier and a hoss thief, but bring him be4 me and I'll wither him with ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... lily-leaves, and take a lane which winds among the meadows and gives a fitting avenue for the pretty thing we seek. But it is not safe to vary many days from the twentieth of May, for the plant is not long in perfection, and is past its prime when the lower blossoms begin to wither ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... and finds her chief pleasures in the spreading grove, by the babbling brook, among the brilliant flowers, is sad and unhappy. And why? Because she has learned too soon that there is no such thing as [real and abiding] happiness on earth, that the fairest plants wither, that pleasure is a deceitful phantom-false and fleeting. Truly she has learned all this, and will she never learn to raise her eyes to that bright world where true happiness only resides, and to trust meekly ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... vengeance to come. When she laughs her loudest the look is still there. The same look can be seen in the eyes of Russian peasants; and those of us left will see it some day on Gabriel's face when he comes to blow us up. It is a look that should wither and abash man; but he has been known to smirk at it and offer flowers—with a string ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... and disappeared I understood why the works were idle when the moon was not above the horizon, why birds flying across that fatal beam fell dead upon the rocks, and whence the terrible master of that mysterious mill derived the power of destruction that could wither an army as the Assyrian ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... as though there were a coward crime in the action, her hand unclosed and let the letter fall into the spirit flame of a silver lamp, burning by; the words that were upon it merited a better fate, a fonder cherishing, but—they would have compromised her. She let them fall, and burn, and wither. With them she gave up his life to its burden of shame, to its fate ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Girdle, and he first introduced the smooth correct manner of writing in couplets, which Dryden and Pope carried to perfection. Gallantry rather than love was the inspiration of these courtly singers. In such verses as Carew's Encouragements to a Lover, and George Wither's The Manly Heart— ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... rats will consume it. Sow it broadcast on the fields with liberal hand, and it will spring up, 'some thirty, some sixty, some an hundredfold.' Use increases strength in all regions, and unused organs atrophy and wither. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... vanished before the sordid realities of European statecraft; and the defence of Christendom (p. 055) became with him, as with others, a hollow pretence, a diplomatic fiction, the infinite varieties of which age could not wither nor custom stale. Did a monarch wish for peace? Peace at once was imperative to enable Christian princes to combine against the Turk. Did he desire war? War became a disagreeable necessity to restrain the ambition of Christian princes who, "worse than ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... you would rove Where the bud cannot wither; Where Araby's perfumes Each breeze wafteth thither. Where the lute hath no string That can waken a sorrow; Where the soft twilight blends With the dawn of the morrow; Where joy kindles joy, Ere you learn to forget it, And care never comes— Don't you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... under which it was performed. On passing the shelter of the pier-head the boat and her crew were met not only by the tumultuous surging of cross seas, but by a blast which caught the somewhat high bow and almost whirled them into the air; while in its now unbroken force the cold blast seemed to wither up the powers of the men. Then, in the dark distance, an unusually huge billow was seen rushing down on them. To meet it straight as an arrow and with all possible speed was essential. Failure here—and the boat, turning side on, would have been rolled over ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... means ruin,—thy embraces shame,—thy unthinking passion death! What!—wilt thou be a spendthrift of desire?—wilt thou drain the fond souls of women as a bee drains the sweetness of flowers?—wilt thou, being honey- cloyed, behold them droop and wither around thee, and wilt thou leave them utterly destroyed and desolate? Hast thou no vestige of a heart, my friend? a poet-heart, to feel the misery of the world? ..the patient grief of all-appealing Nature, commingled with the dreadful, yet majestic silence of an unknown God? ... ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... or more drying, dying, till the sap is out of the stalks, till leaves and blossoms and earliest ripened or un-ripened fruits wither and drop off, giving back to the soil the nourishment they have drawn from it; the whole top being thus otherwise wasted—that part of the hemp which every year the dreamy millions of the Orient still consume in quantities beyond human computation, ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... fact that I no longer ate so heavily as once I had. Not that I wished actually to decry my appetite. It had been a good friend to me and not for worlds would I slander it. I have a sincere conviction that age cannot wither nor custom stale my infinite gastric juices. Never, I trust, will there come a time when I shan't relish my victuals or when I'll feel disinclined to chase the last fugitive bite around and around the plate until I overtake it. But I presented the claim, which was ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... Lawrence Bury had not yet grown so utterly cold toward his beautiful wife that he could see that trial approach without some slight sympathetic dread; but his miserable egoism forbade him to wish her success; in his secret heart he even hoped that an utter, irretrievable failure would wither at once and forever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... shivering through the village with that half-pound of tea as though the powers of the air were after him. He's schooled his conscience so that he couldn't be dishonest if he were to try. I do believe a dishonorable act would wither him and drive ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... shops and counting-houses must resemble the palaces of the Venetian nobility, and our dwellings be more royally arrayed than the dwellings of the mightiest monarchs. When the time comes—as come it will—for paying for all this glorious frippery, we collapse, we wither, we fleet, we sink into the sand.—A third Diogenes, of a more practical turn of mind, vociferates, that the whole thing comes from the want of a high protective tariff. These subtle and malignant foreigners, who are so jealous of our progress, who are ever on the watch ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... hoary hair Amid that Pilgrim band; Why had they come to wither there, Away from their ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... labour in the fields or who dwell in vessels, are almost invariably coarse, ill-featured, and of a deep brown complexion, like that of the Hottentot. But this we find to be the case among the poor of almost every nation. Hard labour, scanty fare, and early and frequent parturition, soon wither the delicate buds of beauty. The sprightliness and expression of the features, as well as the colour of the skin, which distinguish the higher ranks from the vulgar, are the effects of ease and education. We saw women in ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... of themselves. I have seen much of men and manners in my life, and they have taught me that it is the small failings, not the big faults, which are deadliest to love. Why, I've seen a romantic passion survive shame, and treachery, and even blows, and another wither out of existence before the first touch of bad breeding. 'A man's table manners are a part of his morality,' your ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... been your guide, so that a rose has issued from the brier, and the thorn has been extracted from your foot, and you have arrived at this dignity. Of a truth, joy succeeds sorrow; the bud does sometimes blossom and sometimes wither; the tree is sometimes naked and sometimes clothed." He replied: "O brother, condole with me, for this is not a time for congratulation. When you saw me last, I was only anxious how to obtain bread; but now I have all the cares of the world to encounter. If the times ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... night," her Majesty's revenues being seldom collected in that happy valley, its rents being pronounced dubious, and its water communication described as "frequently cut off," we found in respect to the whole picture thus lightly-sketched in, that age did not wither nor ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Thus human nature survives amid a continual fluctuation of its embodiments. At every step twigs and leaves are thrown out that last but one season; but the underlying stem may have meantime grown stronger and more luxuriant. Whole branches sometimes wither, but others may continue to bloom. Spiritual unity runs, like sap, from the common root to every uttermost flower; but at each forking in the growth the branches part company, and what happens in one is no direct ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... scorn me in my mother's womb; And, for I should not deal in her affairs, She did corrupt frail nature in the flesh, And plac'd an envious mountain on my back, Where sits deformity to mock my body; To dry mine arm up like a wither'd shrimp; To make my legs of an unequal size. And am I then a ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... sustenance; how even myths and legends apparently the most puerile have been the natural husks and rinds and shells of our best ideas; and how the atmosphere is created in which these husks and rinds and shells in due time wither, shrivel, and fall away, so that the fruit itself may be gathered to sustain a nobler ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... love, and the dying charge, Of his dead father, gives such store of sap Unto this tree of my affection That it will never wither till I dye. ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... the professor. "Bududreen gave up his life for this. Rajah Muda Saffir fought and intrigued and murdered for possession of it! Poor, misguided von Horn has died for it, and left his head to wither beneath the rafters of a Dyak ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... entrance," says the grave scientist in conclusion, surprised into sentiment, "it would appear that the husband offers there the daily gift to the wife, removing the objects to the back of the hut as they fade or wither." It is clever not only in building a house and lawn, but in imitating the songs and cries of other birds, and doing it so well, according to our author, that it brought "his hunters ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... with a patience hardly to be expected from one of so fitful a temper. Pope's life had been all a struggle against ill-health and premature decrepitude. He was deformed; he was dwarfish; he was miserably weak from his very boyhood; a rude breath of air made him shrink and wither; the very breezes of summer had peril in them for his singularly delicate constitution and ever-quivering nerves. He was but fifty-six years old when death set him free. Life had been for him a splendid ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... a queer, dry, knowing laugh to herself, a laugh like the scraping of reeds in a solitary place. A strange black weariness seemed to be crushing down her brows, like the 'unwilling sleep' of a strong narcotic. She would begin a sentence and let it wither away unfinished, and point sadly and almost humorously to her straight black hair, clammy as the feathers of a dead bird lying in the rain. Her hearing was strangely keen. And yet she did not know, was not to know. How was one to talk to her—talk ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... this volume was obviously collected by a Scotchman, and it includes pieces by Ben Jonson, Wither, Dr. Donne, &c. It must have been made in the latter part of the reign of Charles I. The second portion of the volume is a later production; a humourous poem, called a Whig's Supplication, by {54} S. C., in which there is a remarkable notice of Cleveland, Donne, and 'Bass Divine.' ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... unless I'm much mistaken Mondego will be in flood 105 And all the wine from the casks be taken: Could a demon do less good? For He so brings it about That the aldermen grow stout And like dry sticks girls wither away, 110 Purple the friars wax and red, Yellow and jaundiced are the lay, And lusty they whose youth is fled While the young grow weak and grey And for nothing doth He care. 115 At Coimbra when for oats ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... their numbers countervail the stars, Or ever-drizzling [189] drops of April showers, Or wither'd leaves that autumn shaketh down, Yet would the Soldan by his conquering power So scatter and consume them in his rage, That not a man should [190] live to rue ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... good; it could not get out of the blood vessels or into the cells of your body. You might breathe all you liked, but breathing would not help you; the air could not get through the walls of your lungs into the blood. Plants would begin to wither and droop, although they would not die quite as quickly as animals and fishes and people. But no sap could enter their roots and none could pass from cell to cell. The plants would be as little able to breathe through their leaves as we ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... attendance at the side of the platform. Presently Rev. Dr. Mandeville, of Albany, arose, turned his chair facing them, his back to the audience, and stared at them with all the impudence of a boor, as if to wither them with his ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... chance he has for heaven? Think of a heaven filled with men who never thought. Better that all that is should cease to be; better that God had never been; better that all the springs and seeds of things should fall and wither in great nature's realm; better that causes and effects should lose relation; better that every life should change to breathless death and voiceless blank, and every star to blind oblivion and moveless naught, than that this religion should ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... barley or oats. You need not use all, but vary now and then. Give beside every day a moderate quantity of fresh green leaves, kept first long enough to dry off all dew or rain, and begin slightly to wither.] ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... first five hundred yards of the road that led to world-wideness and freedom. At the end of it lay Samoa, Tibet, the Malay Archipelago—jeweled seas and painted solitudes which human disillusions could not wither. Instantly his will concentrated. By following that road he could become lean-souled again. By reseeking hardships, he could recover his lost discipline. The idea held him spellbound. It meant escape. It meant a return to monasticism. Then and there he determined ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... the morasses; you eater of unclean vegetation, do you not see this is a ghost I am conducting, a dweller in the ice cliffs, a spirit ten thousand years old? Put by your sling lest he wither you with a glance." And, very reasonably, surprised, the aborigine did as he was bid and cautiously advanced to ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... the war, when the price of corn fell very low, and, consequently, tillage gave place to grazing, labourers became to the middleman an encumbrance and a nuisance that must be cleared off the land, just as weeds are plucked up and flung out to wither on the highway. Then came Lord Devon's Land Commission, which inquired on the eve of the potato failure and the great famine. The Irish population was now at its highest figure—between eight and nine millions. ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... marriage than the presence of a distinguished foreigner to dinner. That people should laugh over the same sort of jests, and have many a story of "grouse in the gun-room," many an old joke between them which time cannot wither nor custom stale, is a better preparation for life, by your leave, than many other things higher and better sounding in the world's ears. You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as though I dared to speak to him; but at last he spoke to me, and his voice was as soft as a flute, and he said, 'All the roses on earth fade and wither, but nothing fades or withers in the happy place where I now live; and oh, do not be anxious to possess the withering, fading flowers, but walk on the road that leads to my happy home, where everything is ...
— The One Moss-Rose • P. B. Power
... health, for that is the crisis of our bodily health. Thy beloved servant, St. John, wishes to Gaius, that he may prosper in his health, so as his soul prospers;[202] for if the soul be lean the marrow of the body is but water; if the soul wither, the verdure and the good estate of the body is but an illusion and the goodliest man a fearful ghost. Shall we, O my God, determine our thoughts, and shall we never determine our disputations upon our climacterical years, for particular men and periodical ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... footing it to the tune of the Kerry Dance at the Crossroads in the full of the moon! Father Quinn—may the angels spread his bed smooth—was always telling me to take heed of my soul which would last me forever, and have done with the sinful pride in the skin and the hair which would wither like grass. But I went my ways with a scandalous come-hither in my eye, leaning over a still pool till I'd see my bold face smiling back at me, and Larry Kinsella stealing behind to whisper his ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... pathway is leading, Whether we tread on lilies fair, Or trample love-lies-bleeding. But we must onward go and up, Nor stop to question whither. E'en if we drink the bitter cup, And fall at last, to wither. ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... helpless invalids; sell worthless stocks to an aged couple in exchange for the hard earnings of a life-time, and still endure to live. Dishonesty makes men inhuman. The love of gain is a species of moral and spiritual decay. When it attacks the heart the finer and better feelings wither and die; and on this decay of sympathy and kindness and generosity and justice there thrive and flourish meanness and heartlessness ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... shake. "I declare, you were well named. The swift transitions from the tremendous 'Barbara' to the inconsequent 'Baby' takes but an instant, and exactly expresses you. A moment ago you were bent on withering me: now, I am going to wither you." ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... give six dinners of twenty people and pay your acquaintance all round; but the welcome, the friendly spirit, the kindly heart? Believe me, these are rare qualities in our selfish world. We may bring them with us from the country when we are young, but they mostly wither after transplantation, and droop and perish in the stifling ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... speaking with all the eloquence of a pious woman who is trying to wither an impious man, she poured upon him a stream of reproaches for what she called his infamous treachery. What? How could he appear against Jacques, who was his friend, and who had actually aided him in obtaining the promise of a great match. By that one hope he had become, ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... pow'r of constancy and courage? Did unresisted lightning aid their cannon? Did roaring whirlwinds sweep us from the ramparts? 'Twas vice that shook our nerves, 'twas vice, Leontius, That froze our veins, and wither'd ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety: other women cloy The appetites they feed: but she makes ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... at that time was still young, but had already lost that fresh bloom of youth, which suffering causes to wither so soon among the poor. Her husband, a clever joiner, gradually left off working to become, according to the picturesque expression of the workshops, a worshipper of Saint Monday. The wages of the week, which was always reduced to two or three working days, were completely ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... really dead now, and will wither very quickly. So we must plant him at once, that other Sorcerers may grow upon ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... destroying angel! Uprooted, they lie along the earth side by side—the soil still clinging to the clavicles of their roots, and their leafy tops turned to the lee—in this prostrate alignment slowly to wither and decay! A forest, thus fallen, presents for a time a picture of melancholy aspect. It suggests the idea of some grand battle-field, where the serried hosts, by a terrible discharge of "grape and canister," ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats
... of Cusco, the plate-ships of Lima and Guayaquil, the pearl-fisheries of Panama, these had been hitherto the loadstar of English enterprise. The hope was that such feats as those of Drake would bring about a time when, as George Wither put it, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... "you needn't try to wither me with your indignation. No doubt he's precisely what he ought to be, and I dare say it will ease your feelings if you talk about him again; at least it will help you to formulate your reasons for going out to ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... see," she had urged, at least a score of times, "if we could only teach all the cripples to let their minds run—free-limbed—over hilltops and pleasant places, their natures would never need to warp and wither after the fashion of their poor bodies. And the time to begin is in childhood, when the mind ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... side with these children in the Sunday school, we shall find our Christian experiences enlarged and blessed. Let us pray, then, that each of these precious lives may be 'like a tree planted by the streams of water, that bringeth forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf doth not wither, and ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... and prepared a scathing witticism with which to wither the young girl. But he did not have the pleasure of delivering it to Esperance, who had hidden herself behind her portrait at the foot of ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... braggart quailing with a quip, The upstart I can wither with a whim; He may wear a merry laugh upon his lip, But his laughter has an echo that is grim. When they've offered to the world in merry guise, Unpleasant truths are swallowed with a will - For he who'd make his fellow-creatures wise Should always ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... rising through the darken'd air, Appall'd, we saw a hideous phantom glare; High and enormous o'er the flood he tower'd, And 'thwart our way with sullen aspect lower'd: An earthy paleness o'er his cheeks was spread, Erect uprose his hairs of wither'd red; Writhing to speak, his sable lips disclose, Sharp and disjoin'd, his gnashing teeth's blue rows; His haggard beard flow'd quiv'ring on the wind, Revenge and horror in his mien combin'd; His clouded front, by with'ring lightnings scar'd, The inward anguish ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... with plighted faith, not merely with the ordinary rules of humanity and justice, but also with that great law of filial piety which, even in the wildest tribes of savages, even in those more degraded communities which wither under the influence of a corrupt half-civilisation, retains a certain authority over the human mind. A pretext was the last thing that Hastings was likely to want. The insurrection at Benares had produced disturbances in Oude. These disturbances ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... by lightning.[491] Traces of the cities are said to remain, and the ground, which looks scorched, has lost all power of production. The plants, whether wild or artificially cultivated, are blighted and sterile and wither into dust and ashes, either when in leaf or flower, or when they have attained their full growth. Without denying that at some date famous cities were there burnt up by lightning, I am yet inclined to think ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... slept in it. He sleeps in his nest still, and has a fascinating way of curling round in it, for it is just large enough to hold him comfortably when he curls round like a kitten. It is brown inside, of course, but outside it is mostly green, being woven of grass and twigs, and when these wither or snap the walls are thatched afresh. There are also a few feathers here and there, which came off the thrushes while they ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... prisoner two-and-fifty of the doughtiest Captains of the army of Hind. Then the day came to an end and the kettle-drums beat the retreat; whereupon Gharib left the field and rode towards the Moslem camp. The first to meet him was Sahim, who kissed his feet in the stirrups and said, "May thy hand never wither, O champion of the age! Tell us who thou art among the braves." So Gharib raised his vizor of mail and Sahim knew him and cried out, saying, "This is your King and your lord Gharib, who is come back from the land of the Jann!" When the Moslems heard Gharib 's name, they threw ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... permitted one for an instant to perceive a musical realm in which the earth-fast could not breathe. He permitted one for an instant to hear ringing "the prelude of a deeper, mightier, perchance a more evil and mysterious music; a super-German music which does not fade, wither and die away beside the blue and wanton sea and the clear Mediterranean sky; a music super-European, which would assert itself even amid the tawny sunsets of the desert; a music whose soul is akin to the palm-trees; a music that ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... subsequently made by individuals and associations in all kinds of pastures and climates, we still seem to be as far from definite and satisfactory results as we ever were. In one breed the wool is apt to wither and crinkle like hay on a sun-beaten hillside. In another, it is lodged and matted together like the lush tangled grass of a manured meadow. In one the staple is deficient in length, in another in fineness; while in all there is a constant tendency toward disease, rendering ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... love as we breathe? Would not woman, considered simply as a perfectly organized vegetation, be the queen of creation? Why not enjoy her perfume as we bend before her, leaving her clinging to the ground where she was born and lives? Why tear her from the earth, this flower so fresh, and have her wither in our hands as we raise her up like an offering? Why make of so weak and fragile a creature a being above all others, for whom our enthusiasm can find no name, and then discover her to ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... Common Room Window (OWEN) will be a slight refreshment to those who are weary of realistic studies of schoolmasters and schoolboys. "ORBILIUS," during what I take to have been a long career as a teacher, has not allowed his sense of humour to wither within him. In a note to his slender volume of sketches he says, "School-life is largely a comedy. When a schoolmaster ceases to recognise this it is time for him to 'bundle and go.'" He has been in the main a keen and sympathetic observer, and though his remarks upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... with much thunder and lightning; and in April the latter rain becomes light and uncertain, and generally ceases altogether. Then the sky becomes intensely blue, and the sun comes out in all his glory, or rather in all her glory, for with the Arabs the sun is feminine. Suddenly grass and vegetation wither up and become dry for the oven. The level country, except where there are rivers, becomes parched. The stones stick up out of the red soil like the white bones of a skeleton. Limestone, flint, and basalt, and thorny shrubs, cover the face of the wilderness country. Here and there ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... this community sleep in separate cells, as men do in other well-ordered communities, but they do not pine and wither and die in cells for offenses committee outside the prison walls. Here, if you see a man caged like a wild beast all day, you may be sure he is there, not so much for his own good as for that of the little ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... evil thread. The time was past when a drink would make him feel good. His unhealthy soft fat of earlier years had melted away and he was beginning to wither and turn a leaden grey. He seemed to have a greenish tint like a corpse putrefying in a pond. He no longer had a taste for food, not even the most beautifully prepared stew. His stomach would turn ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... Springall. "Come, come, Master Bob, you're mazed by some devilry or other; the wind's in your teeth; you've been sailing against a norwester, or have met with a witch on a broomstick the other side of this old oak: Serves an oak right to wither up—why wasn't it made into a ship? But here's to Barbara Iverk, the fair ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... her frauds and follies, her sin and shame. "Come," she cried mockingly, "let us on together. You may caress me as in the days of old, and I will answer with a curse. Hold me to your heart and I will wither it with my breath of flame. Praise me, and I will requite you with dishonor and crown you with the grewsome chaplets of grief. Fool! Thou hast striven for a prismatic bubble bursting on the crest of a receding wave. Why scorned you gold and lands to grasp at castles in the air? Why ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... gnarled giant admits us to intimate companionship. Trees are filled with reserve; when denuded of their neighbors, they stand in melancholy solitude until the leaves fall for the last time, until their branches wither, and their ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... pieces, and comprise admirable specimens of the verse of Samuel Daniel, Giles Fletcher, Countess of Pembroke, James I., George Peele, Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Sackville, Sir Philip Sidney, Drummond of Hawthornden, Thomas Heywood, George Wither, Sir Henry Wotton, Sir William Davenant, Thomas Randolph, Frances Quarles, James Shirley, and ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... are also susceptible to sunstroke. When growing in the full light and heat of the sun, and the buds are ready to open, suddenly the flowers, leaves, and entire stalk will wither, as when in spring a tulip collapses and we find that a meadow-mouse has nipped it in the core. But with the lily the blight comes from above, and the only remedy is to plant in ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... him;" this they did, and afterwards "combed him with harrows and thrust clods on his head," but did not kill him. Then with hooks and sickles they "cut his legs off at the knees," bound him like a thief, and left him "to wither with the wind," but he died not. They now "rent him to the heart," and having "mowed him in a mow," sent two bravos to beat him with clubs, and they beat him so sore that "all his flesh fell from his bones," ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... caught. In that glance nature had stamped her enigma—for Sarah Austen was a child of nature. Hers was the gentle look of wild things—but it was more; it was the understanding of—the unwritten law of creation, the law by which the flowers grow, and wither; the law by which the animal springs upon its prey, and, unerring, seeks its mate; the law of the song of the waters, and the song of the morning stars; the law that permits evil and pain and dumb, incomprehensible suffering; the law that floods at sunset the mountain lands ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to the mature product. Never springing, Minerva-like, to full stature at once, truth may suffer all the hazards incident to generation and gestation. Much of history is a record of the mishaps of truths which have struggled to the birth, only to die or else to wither in premature decay. Or the germ may be dormant for centuries, awaiting the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... farther.' 'Countryman,' said the witch, 'who are you? and what is your business?' 'I am,' said he, 'a messenger sent by the king to find the finest salad that grows under the sun. I have been lucky enough to find it, and have brought it with me; but the heat of the sun scorches so that it begins to wither, and I don't know that I can carry ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... put the cattle together tightly and held them. Mick was riding a bright chestnut gelding with high wither and an intelligent head, whose name was Hermes and who was reputed to be a famous camp-horse.[1] Signalling to his boys to be ready, Mick rode straight into the mob of cattle. Almost at once he saw an unbranded steer and pointed his whip ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... Knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has wither'd from the lake, And ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... when sound again, the hurt shall be forgotten. He drops a month—in extreme cases, a year or years—on a grief, or a bereavement, and it becomes as if it had never been. So he lets the sun in on prejudices and hates, and they wither, and where they were, we go and gather the fruits and flowers of admiration, respect—ay, Princess, of love. Now, in this cause, I have chosen Time for my best friend; he and I ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... air in the dress, which was woven of a cunning compound of silk and asbestos, would instantly expand with irresistible force, burst the covering, and expose the limbs of the explorers to a cold which would be infinitely more destructive than the hottest of earthly fires. It would wither them ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... heart a need That mine cannot fulfil? One chord that any other hand Could better wake or still? Speak now—lest at some future day my whole life wither and decay. ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... thee. To this thou wilt answer, that my happiness is Lygia. True, my friend. Because I love her immortal soul, and because we both love each other in Christ; for such love there is no separation, no deceit, no change, no old age, no death. For, when youth and beauty pass, when our bodies wither and death comes, love will remain, for the spirit remains. Before my eyes were open to the light I was ready to burn my own house even, for Lygia's sake; but now I tell thee that I did not love her, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... gestures are literally high, wide and handsome. His wing-spread, so to speak, is much larger than that of either Mr. Stokowski or Mr. Toscanini, and he has a greater repertoire of unpredictable motions than both of them put together. Time cannot wither, nor custom stale, the infinite variety of his ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... as a double lesson. As God "made the gourd to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief," so he would deliver from their grief those who now trusted in him; but as he also made the gourd to wither, so that "the sun beat upon the head of Jonah that he fainted and wished in himself to die," it was for them to remember their utter dependence on the will of God, to prepare themselves for the sorrows as for the joys of life. Nor was this all; the story of Jonah ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the young father sat in his shirt sleeves, looking down on her with a loving but anxious look. Her mother, his wife, had died of consumption, and he was in mortal terror lest biting winds and scanty food should wither this sweet flower too, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... for the man the sanctities of life have perished. And so it has been with Islam. It has reformed and lifted savage tribes; it has depraved and barbarized civilized nations. At the root of its fairest culture a worm has ever lived that has caused its blossoms soon to wither and die. Were Mohammed the hope of man, then his state were hopeless; before him could only ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... the Amaranth said to her neighbour, "How I envy you your beauty and your sweet scent! No wonder you are such a universal favourite." But the Rose replied with a shade of sadness in her voice, "Ah, my dear friend, I bloom but for a time: my petals soon wither and fall, and then I die. But your flowers never fade, even if they are cut; for ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... sweetest tone: "The gardener sprays his plants and trees To drive out lice and stop disease. After the spraying, fruit is grown Ruddy and plump. The shortened eyes Of men can see this end, although Leaves wither or a whole tree dies From what the gardener does to grow Apples and plums of sweeter flesh. The gardener lives outside the tree; The gardener knows the tree can see What cure is needed, plans afresh An end foreseen, ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters |
