"Leafless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was the only thing in the shape of a human habitation to be seen within the bivouac, and this had been secured as the head quarters of the General and his staff—all besides had no other canopy than the clear starry heavens, or, here and there, the leafless and unsheltering branches of some forest tree, and yet, around one large and blazing fire, which continued to be fed at intervals by masses of half decayed wood, that, divested of their snow, lay simmering and dying before ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... the gaily illuminated snow castle through the branches of the leafless trees. The fiery star above it and the lights below shining through the ice-windows, made it very ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... With sacred burning lamps in order long And mournful pomp the corpse was brought to ground Her arms upon a leafless pine were hung, The hearse, with cypress; arms, with laurel crowned: Next day the prince, whose love and courage strong Drew forth his limbs, weak, feeble, and unsound, To visit went, with care and reverence meet, The buried ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... two desolate camellias, with leaves in the same proportion as those on trees in the earlier ages of illumination, and one scraggy, leafless geranium, besides a green and stagnant tank, where a goldfish moved about, flapping and gasping, as the boy disturbed it in his search for the crayfish. He absorbed all the conversation, so that Julius could ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for here, 'tis said, When piping winds are hush'd around, A small note wakes from underground, Where now his tiny bones are laid. No more in lone or leafless groves, With ruffled wing and faded breast, His friendless, homeless spirit roves; Gone to the world where birds are blest! Where never cat glides o'er the green, Or school-boy's giant form is seen; But love, and joy, and smiling Spring Inspire their little ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... their superfluous rags, and drink their gains. It may be added, that he loved to walk in solitary spots; that his chief musing-ground was the banks of the Ayr; the season most congenial to his fancy that of winter, when the winds were heard in the leafless woods, and the voice of the swollen streams came from vale and hill; and that he seldom composed a whole poem at once, but satisfied with a few fervent verses, laid the subject aside, till the muse summoned him to another exertion ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... through the cold of dying day, the sun, over beyond the Rhone, dipping toward the Cevennes; leafless trees, red in low sun-rays; black lines of cypress; in the fields an old woman with a fagot on her head; beside the road an old man scratching under ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... of the Scotch firs and other fortunate evergreens, there was nothing to be seen on all sides but leafless branches standing out sharply against the cold, grey sky. The ground was frozen, and entirely covered with snow, for there had been a heavy fall during the night. The way-marks of field and road were ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... them better Christians than he, set out on a war-party, and, after dragging their canoes over the frozen St. Lawrence, launched them on the open stream of the Richelieu. They ascended to Lake Champlain, and hid themselves in the leafless forests of a large island, watching patiently for their human prey. One day they heard a distant shot. "Come, friends," said Piskaret, "let us get our dinner: perhaps it will be the last, for we must dine before we run." Having dined to their contentment, the philosophic warriors ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... light and readily carried by the wind. The name bulrush is more correctly applied to Scirpus lacustris, a member of a different family (Cyperaceae), a common plant in wet places, with tall spongy, usually leafless stems, bearing a tuft of many-flowered spikelets. The stems are used for matting, &c. The bulrush of Scripture, associated with the hiding of Moses, was the Papyrus (q.v.), also a member of the order Cyperaceae, which was abundant ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... And on the way were scattered trees pulled down by the wind caused by the thighs of that hero endued with the speed of the wind as he rushed after the deer. And proceeding, guided by those marks, to a spot filled with dry winds and abounding in leafless vegetables, brackish and devoid of water, covered with thorny plants and scattered over with gravel, stumps and shrubs and difficult of access and uneven and dangerous, he saw in a mountain cavern his younger brother motionless, caught in the folds ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... walking along the broad road leading to the Marble Arch, between the leafless trees. Suddenly the little Saxon girl exclaimed, in ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... and waited long at the bottom of the valley, where now the stream was brown and angry with the rains of autumn, and the weeping trees hung leafless. But though I waited at every hour of day, and far into the night, no light footstep came to meet me, no sweet voice was in the air; all was lonely, drear, and drenched with sodden desolation. It seemed as if my love was dead, and the winds were ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... regiments, fixed fast amongst the rocks, still waved defiant. The long grey line, "a ragged spray of humanity," plied the ramrod with still fiercer energy, and pale women on the hills round Winchester listened in terror to the crashing echoes of the leafless woods. But the end could not be long delayed. Ammunition was giving out. Every company which had reached the ridge had joined the fighting line. The ranks were thinning. Many of the bravest officers were down, and the Northern regiments, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... A cold wind was beginning to moan among the almost leafless trees, and George West's teeth chattered, and his ill-clad limbs grew numb as he walked along the fields leading to Millwood. "Lucky it's a dark night; this fine wind will fan the flame nicely," he repeated ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Well, I figured I might as well use what was left of daylight in getting down the cliff that bounded Thyle. I found an easy place, and down I went. Mare Chronium was just the same sort of place as this—crazy leafless plants and a bunch of crawlers; I gave it a glance and hauled out my sleeping bag. Up to that time, you know, I hadn't seen anything worth worrying about on this half-dead world—nothing ...
— A Martian Odyssey • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... publication. The book had taken a year and a half in the making; it was a pious attempt to translate into English prose the form and mystery of the domed hills, the magic of occult valleys, the sound of the red swollen brook swirling through leafless woods. Day-dreams and toil at nights had gone into the eager pages, he had labored hard to do his very best, writing and rewriting, weighing his cadences, beginning over and over again, grudging ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... hollows, giving a better glory to the sun itself. For sunshine, on the torrent spray, {60} on the grass of its valley, and entangled among the laurel stems, or glancing from their leaves, became a thousandfold lovelier and more sacred than the same sunbeams, burning on the leafless mountain-side. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... ourselves against her heats and colds, but find her our constant nurse and friend, as do plants and quadrupeds. If our bodies were fed with pure and simple elements, and not with a stimulating and heating diet, they would afford no more pasture for cold than a leafless twig, but thrive like the trees, which find even winter ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... dripping leafless woods, The stirrup touching either shoe, She rode astride as troopers do; With kirtle kilted to her knee, To which the mud splash'd wretchedly; And the wet dripp'd from every tree Upon her head and heavy ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... marshes some years previously. Whenever his constitution weakened, this ague fit would reappear, and for days, sometimes weeks, he would shiver with cold, and alternately burn with fever. As the autumn mists were hanging round the leafless Abbot's Wood, it was injudicious of him to sit in the open, however warmly clothed, seeing that he was predisposed to disease. But his desire for the society of the woman he loved, and the hopelessness of the outlook, rendered him reckless, ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... ground, like soft feathers, and the hay-ricks looked as though each one wore a dunce-cap, like the dull boy in Dame Week's school over by the green. The icicles hung down by the thatch, and the little birds crouched shivering in the bare and leafless hedge-rows. ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... (for indeed she was very feeble) up the Fell-Lane, and threw herself under the leafless thorn, every small branch and twig of which was loaded with rain-drops. She did not see the well-beloved and familiar landscape for her tears, and did not miss the hills in the distance that were hidden behind ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and the fierce northern winds swept through the forests, creaking the leafless limbs of the trees as they swayed them to and fro, anon rending them in twain, and scattering the fragments over the white mantled earth. The wanderers now spent most of their time within the temple, by their ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... men watched her walking swiftly along the terrace till she sank out of their sight, for a row of stone steps led down to an orchard planted with now leafless pear and apple trees, and surrounded with a quickset hedge. A wooden gate, with a strong lock to it, was set in this closely clipped hedge. It opened on a steep path which, after traversing two fields, terminated in the ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... strewed Upon the victim's head, they drew him back, And slew, and flay'd; then cutting from the thighs The choicest pieces, and in double layers O'erspreading them with fat, above them plac'd The due meat-off'rings; these they burnt with logs Of leafless timber; and the inward parts, First to be tasted, o'er the fire they held. The thighs consum'd with fire, the inward parts They tasted first; the rest upon the spits Roasted with care, and from the fire withdrew. Their labours ended, and the feast prepar'd, They ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... drum. At the first sound of that martial call to the place of holy and quiet thoughts, Tobias and Dorothy set forth, each holding a hand of little Ilbrahim, like two parents linked together by the infant of their love. On their path through the leafless woods, they were overtaken by many persons of their acquaintance, all of whom avoided them, and passed by on the other side; but a severer trial awaited their constancy when they had descended the hill, and drew near the pine-built and undecorated house of prayer. Around the door, from which the ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... down stream at the point of a gravel-bar, something that looked like and yet unlike a small cluster of drifting, leafless brush moved slowly into the water. Now it appeared quite distinct, and now it seemed that a film of oil all but blotted it out. I blinked my eyes and peered hard through the baffling yellow glare. Then I reached for the ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... vegetation is much later in beginning, and much more rapid in its operations when they do begin here, than with us. Though the last three days have been as hot as our midsummer weather, the trees are yet leafless and budless—as dry and unpromising-looking as they were in mid-winter; and, indeed, the transition from winter to summer is almost instantaneous here. The spring does not stand coaxing and beckoning the shy summer to the woods and fields as in our country, but while winter yet seems lord ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... a long way. We must cut across." He followed her remorselessly swift feet through the leafless bushes and drifts until they came upon a giant pine in a wide space cleared to give the veteran royal solitude. "That's him," cried Leila, and carelessly cast herself down ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... been successful. They failed to-day only because Lois herself was at the side-door. With a pair of garden shears in her gloved hands she was trimming the leafless vine that grew over the pillars of the portico. Thor could see, as she turned round, that she braced herself to meet the moment's humiliation, speaking on the instant he drew up ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... so exquisitely pure, lay down on the cushion when the children run up to have their laces righted. Yet the pity of it! What floods of weeping! There is a tone about it which strikes me as going well with the grace of these leafless birch-trees against the sky, the pale silver of their bark, and a certain delicate odour of decay which rises from the soil. It is all one half-light; and the heroine, nay! the [38] hero himself also, that dainty ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... believe me." Two men passing by saluted her, and as they went along, she heard them say: "What a pretty girl! Where can she have come from?" With quickened steps she approached the house; but the trees which were hanging last night loaded with fruit were now standing dry and leafless; the house was differently painted, and a new barn had been built beside it. Mary was amazed, and thought she must be dreaming. In this perplexity she opened the door; and behind the table sat her father, between an unknown woman and a stranger youth. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... cap; near them stands the saint's horse, watching the scene with a surprised expression; the dogs are barking and on the mountain, the sides and facets of which are cut to represent crystals, creeps the serpent. You can see its flat head advancing toward some leafless trees that look like cauliflowers. They are the sort of trees one comes upon in old Bibles, spare of foliage, thick and clumsy, bearing blossoms and fruit but no leaves; the symbolical, theological, and devout ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... lichens the apothecia contain very little, if any, of those substances, but a large amount of the lichenoxanthines so characteristic of the class. Looking upon fungi from this chromatological point of view, they bear something like the same relation to lichens that the petals of a leafless parasitic plant would bear to the foliage of one of normal character—that is to say, they are, as it were, the coloured organs of reproduction of parasitic plants of a type closely approaching that of lichens, which, ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... the ground which they had occupied, and the most ruthless of invaders could not have destroyed a country more completely than they had done. Not a blade of grass remained; every tree and shrub was leafless, and their branches were stripped of their bark. We could not help looking with painful amazement on the scene of desolation which those small animals had caused. Not only would they, as Ned Gale said, have eaten us up had they been carnivorous, but they might have devoured Pizarro ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... and he did it softly for fear of waking her. There was all his fruition, the dumb delight which still inflamed his heart without in the least affecting Blanche. Then he deplored the snows of his leafless old age, the poor old man, that he saw clearly that God had amused himself by giving him nuts when his teeth ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... slowly up the incline. It was a windy afternoon in March, and he was returning from a trip to Farrar's mill, which was reached by a lane that branched off a half-mile or so from the cross-roads. A blue sky shone brightly through the leafless boughs above him, and along the little wayside path tufts of dandelion were blooming in the red dust. The wind, which blew straight toward him from the opening beyond the strip of wood in which he walked, brought the fresh scent of the upturned ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... to Dublin, alive or dead, "100 marks, in pure gold." "Every one took care to remember these words," says Creton, "for it was a good hearing." And Richard, moreover, declared that if they did not capture him when the autumn came, and the trees were leafless and dry, he would burn "all the woods great and small," or find out that troublous rebel. The same day he sent out his three troops, the Earl of Rutland, his laggard cousin, arrived at Dublin with 100 barges. His unaccountable delay he submissively apologized for, and was readily pardoned. "Joy and ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... share. The same feeling took possession of me when, wandering over the ruins of the Palaces of the Caesars on a sunny February afternoon, I saw above the hoary masses of stone the rose-tinted bloom of almond-trees. Out of the gray relics of man's highest hour of pride, the leafless almond-rod blossomed as of old in the holy place of the Hebrew Tabernacle; and its miracle of colour and tenderness was like the crimson glow that lingers at sunset upon Alpine heights, telling of a glory that had ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... when I remember the imperceptible rapidity of the hours that filled them. By a miracle of Providence, which does not occur once in ten years, the season seemed to connive at our happiness, and to conspire with us to prolong it. The whole month of October, and half of November, seemed like a new but leafless spring; the air was still soft, the waters blue, the clouds were rosy, and the sun shone brightly. The days were shorter, it is true, but the long evenings spent beside her fire drew us closer together; they made us more exclusively present to each other, and prevented our looks and ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... slowly I went. How bare it looked then! Only leafless trees and dried seed pods rattling on the bushes, the sand frozen, and not a rush to be seen for the thick blanket of snow. A few rods above the bridge was a footpath, smooth and well worn, that led down to the creek, beaten by the feet of children who raced it every day and took a running slide ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... storms were howling o'er the ocean, Leafless trees and sombre landscape cold and drear, Bitter winds, and driving rains, or white commotion Of the whirling snow that drifted far and near; Then my heart, which had been strong, was bowed and broken, I was crushed with sudden sense of loss and fear, Dull as silence passed ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... more feel the breath of soft hated lips warm upon her cheek, no longer feel the breath of an odious mind stifling her own. The bare wintry morning, the chill air, were welcome in their severity: the leafless trees, the sombre hills, were not haunted by the gods of beauty and joy, whose worship she had forsaken ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... crowding and shoving up together in mutual protection against the deep snow and the forest wolves. There is something new in this: most of the houses are shut up; the shop-windows are all bare; the snow is two feet deep in the streets; the mountains on every side are white; the icicles hang upon the leafless boughs, and the rivulets are enchained. All is one drear blank; and except the two-horse diligence which heaves slowly in sight three or four hours past its time, and the post, (which is now delivered ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... being mountain Floras. I fear my notes will hardly serve to distinguish much of the habitats of the Galapagos plants, but they may in some cases; most, if not all, of the green, leafy plants come from the summits of the islands, and the thin brown leafless plants come from the lower arid parts: would you be so kind as to bear this remark in mind, when examining ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... desperate, despairing, hopeless. desfallecer weaken, swoon, fail, give way. desgarrar rend. desgracia f. misfortune, sorrow, unhappiness. desgraciado, -a unfortunate, hapless, miserable. deshacer undo, break. deshojado, -a leafless, petalless, blighted. desierto, -a deserted, lonely. desierto m. desert. desigual adj. uneven, dissimilar. deslizarse glide along, slip along. desmayado, -a faint, swooning. desmayar be ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... avenue—Hardress on one of the brown cobs, Norah on Brunette, the black pony—her favourite mount. It was a perfect hunting morning: mild and still, with almost a hint of spring warmth in the air. The leafless trees bore faint signs of swelling leaf-buds. Here and there, in the grass beside the drive crocus bells peeped out at them—purple, ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... colour. I stepped from the road under the trees, and was at once in a world of incredible fantasy. So far as the eye could see there were peasants; the air was filled with an indescribable din. As I stepped deeper into the shelter of the leafless trees the colour seemed, like fluttering banners, to mingle and spread and sway before my eyes. Near to me were the tub-thumpers now so common to us all in Petrograd—men of the Grogoff kind stamping and shouting on their platforms, surrounded by ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... reward curiosity,' said she, in the same measured tone; then, after a moment, she added, 'I'm sure I never sought to ascribe some hidden motive to you. When you left my plants leafless, I was quite content to believe that you ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... current: I watched the rapid rush of its waves. I desired memory to take a clear and permanent impression of the scene, and treasure it for future years. Grovetown church clock struck four; looking up, I beheld the last of that day's sun, glinting red through the leafless boughs of some very old oak trees surrounding the church—its light coloured and characterized the picture as I wished. I paused yet a moment, till the sweet, slow sound of the bell had quite died out of the air; then ear, eye and feeling satisfied, I quitted the wall and ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... daisies, Oh, the pretty flowers; Coming ere the spring time, To tell of sunny hours, While the trees are leafless, While the fields are bare, Buttercups and daisies Spring up ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... other for wife and husband, and listened to their replies. Androvsky's voice sounded to him hard and cold as ice when it replied, and suddenly he thought of the storm as raging in some northern land over snowbound wastes whose scanty trees were leafless. But Domini's voice was clear, and warm as the sun that would shine again over the desert when the storm was past. The mayor, constraining himself to keep awake a little longer, gave Domini away, while Suzanne dropped tears into a pocket-handkerchief edged with rose-coloured ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the principal characteristic of life on Orcon was an organic ability to thrive under almost any climatic conditions. Many of the huge, crystal clear boulders which covered the beach and the coastal plain which led to the hills, were covered with leafless flowers which had immense, leathery petals and sharp, fang-like spines. Other evidences of swift growing life showed on every hand. Ugly, jelly-like creatures oozed about the ship and everywhere else. In places the very rocks seemed ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... the wall of the wikiup close to Good Indian on the side farthest from Peppajee, a small, leafless branch of sage was thrust out, and waggled cautiously, scraping gently his hand. Good Indian's fingers closed upon it instinctively, and felt it slowly withdrawn until his hand was pressed against the ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... on a wet winter's day was not enlivening. The leafless and dripping hedges looked like bundles of sticks; the huge trees, which in June would be majestic bowers of greenery, now held out great skeleton arms, which seemed to menace both earth and sky. Heavy-faced ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with five soldiers in an armored automobile bringing up the rear. There were other men on the flank and in front, and a captain commanded. The day was wintry and gloomy. Heavy clouds obscured the sky, and the slush was deep in the roads. A desolate wind moaned through the leafless trees, and afar ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... be—what the archaeologists indeed said must be—buried beneath her feet; of the marble limbs and faces pressed into the earth, and all the other ruined things, small and great, mean or lovely, that lay deep in a common grave below the rustling olives, and the still leafless vineyards; and sometimes the mere passive companion of the breeze and the sun, conscious only of the chirping of the crickets, or the loudness of the nightingales, or the flight of a hoopoe, like some strange ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the garden, thinking over the last summer, when Mrs. Hamley's sofa used to be placed under the old cedar-tree on the lawn, and when the warm air seemed to be scented with roses and sweetbrier. Now, the trees were leafless,—there was no sweet odour in the keen frosty air; and looking up at the house, there were the white sheets of blinds, shutting out the pale winter sky from the invalid's room. Then she thought of the day her father had brought her the news of his second marriage: ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... silent, and the birds sang industriously among the leafless trees of our large sunny garden in beautiful Blackheath. (The author is sorry to see he is getting poetical. It shall not happen again, and it was an extra fine day, really, and the birds did ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... for a second illustration. This little annual cruciferous plant is common in the fields of many parts of the United States, though originally introduced from Europe. It has small basal rosettes which develop during summer and winter, and produce numerous leafless flowering stems early in the spring. It is a native of central Europe and western Asia, and may be considered as one of the most common plants, occurring anywhere in immense numbers on sandy soils. Jordan was the first to point out that it is not the same throughout its entire ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... morn, yet overhead The leafless boughs across the lane were knitting: The ghost of some forgotten Spring, we said, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... enough. In the same way when the troubles of life beat upon men we can read clearly what they are. Again, when we go along the road on a summer day we often cannot see the houses that are concealed by the foliage of the trees; but in winter-time, when the trees are bare and leafless, we know what kind of houses are there, whether they are squalid cottages or grand mansions. So in the winter-time of life, when the leaves are blown away, men come out and we know what kind of character they have been building up behind the screen of their ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... off—among the bleak, leafless trees of Badger's Grove—and gazed thoughtfully, even earnestly, upon the little red schoolhouse with its high brick chimney and snow-clad roof. A biting January wind cut through his whiskers and warmed his nose to a half-broiled shade of red. On the lapel of his overcoat glistened his social and ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... viewed apart Uncouth appear, or horrid; ridges black Of shagged rocks, which hang tremendous o'er Some barren heath; the congregated clouds Which spread their sable skirts, and wait the wind To burst th' embosomed storm; a leafless wood, A mouldering ruin, lightning-blasted fields; Nay, e'en the seat where Desolation reigns In brownest horror; by familiar thought Connected to this universal frame, With equal beauty charms the tasteful ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... flashes in the gloomiest sky, And Music in the dullest plain, For there the lark is soaring high Over her flat and leafless reign, And chanting in so blithe a tone, It shames the weary ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... and I am pleased to find that he comes oftener to Elmwood than I at first expected; but I perceive that there is some other attraction besides my sage discourses that draws him so often to the now leafless shades of Elmwood. And he may fancy that either a rose or a lily has taken shelter within its walls. Be that as it may, I shall not say a word; most of my thoughts are more occupied with the best method I can take to do him good to all eternity, and I do not forget to ask aid of ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... leads the van of our Birds of Prey—and there she sits in her usual carriage when in a state of rest. Her hunger and her thirst have been appeased—her wings are folded up in a dignified tranquillity—her talons, grasping a leafless branch, are almost hidden by the feathers of her breast—her sleepless eye has lost something of its ferocity—and the Royal Bird is almost serene in her solitary state in the cliff. The gorcock unalarmed crows among the moors and mosses—the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... neither chastises nor directs. The rider moves without motion, and the horse judges without guidance. It would seem that the man had borrowed the beast's body, and the beast the man's mind. His regiment has formed upon the field, their stout lances erected like a young and leafless grove; but although now in line, it is with difficulty that they can subject the spirit of their warlike steeds. The trumpet has caught the ear of the horses; they stand with open nostrils, already breathing war ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... as he kept his way up the bank. He did not pause when he reached the old leafless oak, that formed with its roots an obstruction very common in American streams; but, throwing his line with involuntary skill as he passed, he not only escaped the various entanglements, but drew forth a fine ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the cup of his soul. He felt that he stood still and waited. The sense of Cuckoo, of all she felt and thought in the darkness, gradually dropped away from him, like leaves from a tree, till every branch was leafless. And this autumnal ravishment, like the ravishment of nature, was but a preparation ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... which just filled the hack, the two boys intensely interested in the novelties of a New England city and suburb, and the father and mother continually exchanging admiration of such aspects of nature as presented themselves in the leafless sidewalk trees, and patches of park and lawn. They found everything so fine, so refined, after the gigantic coarseness of California, where the natural forms were so vast that one could not get on companionable ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... just emerged from a grove of leafless trees that grew on a slope where the tombs were many; and behind her rose a multitude of the barbaric and classic shapes we so strangely strew about our graveyards: urn-crowned columns and stone-draped obelisks, ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... of primroses and violets, and the sweet earthy smell of moss. The birds evidently thought so too, for they came fluttering and flying from all manner of cosy hiding-places, and, undaunted by the sight of the brown branches and the leafless twigs, boldly perched themselves on telegraph wires and trees to survey the scene while they made ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... white, shining, sandy beach, under the leafless sycamore; they look for no shade, they would find no shade; there is neither rock, nor shrub, nor evergreen-tree,—nothing but the white sand, and the dead sycamore, and in the topmost branches the halcyon's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... lone group of dead cotton-woods grew like sentinels close to the rocky walls. Their twisted branches, gaunt and bare, writhed upward as if in dumb supplication. There was about them a something that made Judith come closer to Peter as they passed them by. The night wind sang in their leafless branches with a long-drawn, shuddering sigh. The despair of a barren, deserted thing seemed to ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... the country which lay about Anne Hilton's cottage, that in the lanes which branched from it one seldom thought of any other season than that of spring. Even in winter, when a few shrivelled berries clattered in the leafless hedges, and the old beech leaves dangled until the new ones swelled in the stem, one thought of the beauty of spring, when the hedges would be full of hawthorn, and the banks of cowslips, when cherry-blossom would ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... still; And, when they slept, a vocal strain Bade their hoarse chorus wake again, While loud a hundred clansmen raise Their voices in their Chieftain's praise. 390 Each boatman, bending to his oar, With measured sweep the burden bore, In such wild cadence, as the breeze Makes through December's leafless trees. The chorus first could Allan know, 395 "Roderick Vich Alpine, ho! iro!" And near, and nearer as they rowed, Distinct ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... be rosy with life's happy health. The flowers on her tomb would be twined in the bride's glossy hair, and the tower that now stands half builded would go on to its finishing. The dry fountain would still be in play and the leafless tree would stand green in its beauty and bloom. Who shall read us the riddle of the ordering in this world? Who shall read the riddle, O man of whitened head, O woman whose life is but a memory, who shall read us the ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora! ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... steep, twisting road, Nasmyth glanced with satisfaction to left and right. He had seen wilder and grander lands, but none of them appealed to him like this high, English waste. On one hand dim black hills rose out of fleecy mist; on the other a leafless birch wood, close by, stood out in curiously fragile and delicate tracery against a paling saffron glow, though overhead the sky was barred with motionless gray cloud. A sharp smell of peat-smoke followed them as they clattered past a low white cottage with a yellow glow in one ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... between Domel and Ghari is not beautiful—merely wide and desolate, with steep hills rising from the river, their lower slopes sparsely clad with leafless scrub, their shoulders merging into the dull mist which ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... obscuring the misty light of the winter's morn. How beautiful were those snow-wreaths in their perfect purity! The brown and knotted fences, the dingy out-buildings, were all covered with dazzling drapery; and the leafless trees were bowed beneath the weight of a fantastic foliage that glittered in the clear beams of the rising sun with a splendor that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... channel would not be wide enough to admit our big boat, though it was no doubt sufficient for a light canoe, drawing some two inches of water. We therefore reluctantly turned away and resumed our uneasy coasting voyage, in the course of which we passed some nearly leafless trees, full of white patches, too large for flowers, which afterwards turned out to be booby-birds, who here find a resting-place. They are so numerous that it is hardly possible to walk beneath the trees without treading on ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... heather gave richness of tone, the colouring of the great view was somewhat cold. It dealt in thin, uncertain green, the buff of stubble, in sharp slate-like blues blended in places with indigo, the black purple of hawthorn hedges and grey-brown filigree of leafless trees.—This did her good, she asking to be strengthened and stimulated rather than merely soothed. To feel the harsh, untainted wind break against her, hear it shrill through the dry, shivering grasses of the roadside and sturdy spires ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... refuge, his thoughts went back to her tenderly; for to her they always returned like birds to their tree, from all the regions whither the energetic dispersion of Mr Cupples might have scattered them for their pickings of intellectual crumbs. Now, however, it was but as to a leafless wintry tree, instead of a nest bowered in green leaves. Yet he was surprised to find that he was not ten times more miserable; the fact being that, as he had no reason to fear that she preferred any one ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... stooping a little, she came out, and stood upright, opposite to me in the lonely, leafless orchard. Her face looked so meek and so sad that I felt as if I ought to beg her pardon for my necessarily ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... there were other painters, besides the master-artist, who were similarly encouraged to interpret the Krishna theme.[110] Their style was clearly influenced by that of the master but in their use of slender leafless branches and towering spikes of blossom, they developed a special Garhwal imagery designed to suggest the slender beauty of love-enchanted girls. After the expulsion of the Gurkhas in 1816, a new Raja revived Garhwal painting. Krishna ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... another Spring I'd not plant summer flowers and wait: I'd have my crocuses at once, My leafless pink mezereons, My chill-veined snowdrops, choicer yet My white or azure violet, Leaf-nested primrose; anything To blow at once, ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... no fern that now lives. The frond of Davallia Canariensis, though unlike in its venation, greatly resembles in general outline one of the larger pinnae of Sphenopteris affinis; but these pinnae form only a small part of the entire frond of this Sphenopteris. It was furnished with a stout leafless rachis, or leaf-stalk, exceedingly similar in form to that of our common brake (Pteris aquilina). So completely, indeed, did it exhibit the same club-like, slightly bent termination, the same gradual diminution ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the sun he set forth, and travelled through deserts and over mountains and across rivers, and all befell him which had befallen Kynon, till he stood under the leafless tree listening to the song of the birds. Then he heard the voice, and turning to look found the knight galloping to meet him. Fiercely they fought till their lances were broken, and then they drew their swords, and a blow from Owen ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... brow, Sitt'st behind those virgins gay; Like a scorched, and mildew'd bough, Leafless ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... draw, and to deliver to them, their draughts upon all such persons who stood indebted to their extensive concern. In the words of a celebrated orator[7], "Though they had shaken the tree till nothing remained upon the leafless branches, yet a new flight was on the wing, to watch the first buddings of its prosperity, and to nip every hope of ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... about a mile beyond the city. It was a most peaceful, lovely spot, right up on the hillside with a splendid view from it of valley and mountain and river. A fresh bubbling spring ran through it, and beneath the Judas trees, whose leafless branches were flushed with pink blossoms, stretched great carpets ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... listened to his words, and often turned her wonderful eyes upon him with an answering smile. Never had she seemed so beautiful before; and Tong, watching her face, marked not how the night waned, nor how the fire sank low, nor how the wind sang in the leafless trees without. ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... less picturesque in their winter wraps, as they whirled away under the leafless trees, but they made up for it in merriment. Edward and Helene were secretly glad of the presence of Rose. It was impossible to be frigidly formal with that sunny face beaming up now at one, then at the other. This ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... enchanted gardens of the Arabian Nights. It is then that it is beautiful to walk in the forest at the Hague at sunset, treading on the hardened snow, which crackles under one's feet like powdered marble, in the avenues of large, white, leafless beech trees, which look like one gigantic crystallization, and cast blue and violet shadows, dotted with myriads of points which glisten like diamonds in the paths dyed pink by the setting sun. But nothing compares with ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... than heaps of ruins. My fine cane-fields were altogether destroyed, and the country, which previously had appeared so beautiful, seemed as if it had passed through a long wintry season. There was no longer any verdure to be seen; the trees were entirely leafless, with their boughs broken, and portions of the wood were entirely torn down; and all this devastation had taken place within a few hours. During that and the following day the lake threw up, upon the shore, the bodies of several ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... that it was a gray winter afternoon; dark lowering clouds hung over the drab-colored hills, and a chill north wind scurried over the bare meadows, sending the dead leaves rustling over the heath and moaning through the leafless oaks. What a sad day it was, he thought, as he faced the biting wind: sad as was his life and a fitting one for the deed on which he had determined! Long since he had left the city and was on the country road. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... buff, in birthday suit; in puris naturalibus [Lat.]; with nothing on, stark naked, stark raving naked [Joc.]; bald as a coot, bare as the back of one's hand; out at elbows; barefoot; bareback, barebacked; leafless, napless^, hairless. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... heart. I like to think of it in that way; I like to think that love is eternal. And to love in that way and then go down the hill of life together, and as you go down, hear, perhaps, the laughter of grandchildren, while the birds of joy and love sing once more in the leafless branches of ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... life, he started for New York. It was immediately after the New Year and the ground was covered with snow. He looked out of the window of the train, and there was only the long line of white country broken by the leafless trees and rail-fences and the mansard-roofs and low cottages with their stoops, built up with earth to keep them warm; and the sheds full of cattle; and here and there a sawmill going hard, and factories pounding away and men in fur coats driving the small Indian ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hat on, awaiting their advent in a mood of self-satisfaction at having brought his search to a successful close. The carriage was brought round, and without further delay the trio drove away from the mansion, under the echoing gateway arch, and along by the leafless sycamores, as the stars began to kindle their trembling lights behind the maze of ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... too. In order to do this you've only to remember that they melt like the snows, and, when once gone, they never come back ag'in. The seasons come and go, Judith, and if we have winter, with storms and frosts, and spring with chills and leafless trees, we have summer with its sun and glorious skies, and fall with its fruits, and a garment thrown over the forest, that no beauty of the town could rummage out of all the shops in America. 'Arth is in an etarnal round, the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... What mattered it that leafless trees might rock, Or snow might drift athwart his window-pane? He bare a charmed life against their shock, Secure from cold, hunger, and weather stain; Fixed in his right, and born to good estate, From common ills set by ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... passed through the faubourg of Rendnitz. The general of brigade, Fournier, took command of us and ordered us to oblique to the left. At midnight we arrived at the long promenades which border the Pleisse, and halted under the old leafless lindens, and stacked arms. A long line of fires flickered in the fog as far as Randstadt; and, when the flames burnt high, they threw a glare on groups of Polish lancers, lines of horses, cannon, and wagons, while, at intervals beyond, sentinels ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... that is right," she said, when they reached the road which led to Linwood, and a feeling like guilt crept over her as through the leafless trees and across the meadow land she spied the farmhouse light shining through the drifting snow as if beckoning her to come. "Not yet—not now. I must see Morris first," she answered mentally to that silent invitation, and drawing the buffalo ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... flame-of-the-forest (Butea frondosa). The sub-Himalayan forests become yellow-tinted owing to the fading of the leaves of the sal (Shorea robusta), many of which are shed in March. The sal, however, is never entirely leafless; the young foliage appears as the old drops off; while this change is taking place the minute pale yellow flowers ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... layer of starlit air, Katharine Hilbery was now gazing, although not with a view to the prospects of a fine day for duck shooting on the morrow. She was walking up and down a gravel path in the garden of Stogdon House, her sight of the heavens being partially intercepted by the light leafless hoops of a pergola. Thus a spray of clematis would completely obscure Cassiopeia, or blot out with its black pattern myriads of miles of the Milky Way. At the end of the pergola, however, there was a stone seat, from which the sky could be seen completely swept clear of any earthly interruption, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... its yard of yellow stacks. Beneath our feet the earth was iron, and the sky iron above our heads. Dark curdled clouds, "which had built up everywhere an under-roof of doleful grey," swept on before the bitter northern wind, which whistled through the low leafless hedges and rotting wattles, and crisped the dark sodden leaves of the scattered hollies, almost ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... face flushed, her eyes sparkling, she stopped opposite a point of the island which, forming a curve at this place, was nearest to the mainland. Through the leafless branches of the willows and poplars, La Louve could see the roof of the house, where, perhaps, Martial was dying. At this sight, uttering a fearful groan, she tore off her shawl and cap, and slipping down her robe, keeping on her petticoat, she threw ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... exactly five minutes past five when they reached St. James's Square. The sun, a globe, set in thin lines of yellow light, shone out above the trees, which were dull but not yet leafless. Grey and sulphurous and gold-edged clouds floated in masses on the blue sky. It had been a day of changes—yet it seemed to Sara, whose own moods had been as various, the ordinary passing away ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the strange, sleepless, feverish nights; tired of the long, dull, empty days: tired of watching down the barren, leafless lane: tired of hearkening breathless to each step on the rustling dead leaves; tired of looking always, always, always, into the ruddy autumn evenings and the cold autumn starlight, and never hearing what she listened for, never seeing what she ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... came to a place where things changed their appearance. Hard sand was here, and on every side there arose curiously- shaped coral structures, which resembled more than any thing else a leafless forest. These coral tree-like forms twisted their branches in strange involutions, and in some places formed a perfect barrier of interlaced arms, so that he was forced to make a detour in order to ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... Blondel, "Not roses now,— Leafless thorns befit the brow. In this crowd my voice is weak, But ye force me now to speak. Know ye not King Richard groans Chained 'neath Austria's dungeon-stones? What care I to sing of aught Save what presses on my thought? Over laughter, song, and shout From these windows swelling out, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... each door. There is dust enough here, and mangy-looking pariah dogs, and cocks and hens, and multitudes of bright beady-eyed children with hardly any clothing on. There is plenty of foliage and greenery and a freshness and richness of colouring that is much better than the grey leafless harshness of an Egyptian village, for this land gets plenty of rain. Everyone seems good-humoured and happy, and the children look fat enough; some of them are very black, with woolly heads, of a different type from the others. These are ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... few houses, but now one of the most populous and important parishes of the metropolis, and speedily gained the open country. Even at this dreary season the country had charms, which Mr. Bloundel, after his long confinement, could fully appreciate. His eye roamed over the wide prospect; and the leafless trees, the bare hedges, and the frost-bound fields seemed pleasant ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... forest that was all so grand When pipes and tabors had their sway Stood leafless now, a ghostly band Of skeletons in cold array. A lonely surge of ancient spray Told of an unforgetful sea, But iron blows had hushed for aye ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... this leafless Grove In the near suburbs; not a place for tears Nor for light laughter, for all life is chilled With the unpurposed toil of many years. But once—ah, once!—the accordion's wheezy strains Led my poor heart ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... looking out into the hot spring afternoon, with her lips parted, and panting with the intensity of the question whether she could let him go. She had decided that she could not let him stay, when she saw him at the end of the still leafless avenue, making slowly up towards the house, with his head down and his figure relaxed. She ran impatiently out on the veranda, to the edge of the steps, and imperatively demanded greater haste of him with her will before she ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... scientifically, for the watch-setting; and, soon afterward, all the din and bustle, which had been rife through the livelong day, sank into silence, and she could hear the brawling of the brook below chafing and raving against the rocks which barred its bed, and the wind murmuring against the leafless treetops. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... gathering the tea-cups; but Lady Betty Stafford, having been brought up in the purple, was not to be deterred from speaking her mind by a servant. Her cousin was either more prudent or less vivacious; he did not answer on the instant, but stood looking through one of the windows at the leafless trees and slow-dropping rain in the Mall, and only turned when Lady Betty pettishly repeated ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... Inn grew daily more irksome. There he would sit, in mute despair, drumming the table with his fingers, and biting the quill, whose use he so bitterly contemned. Of winter afternoons he would stare through the leaded window-panes at the gaunt, leafless trees, on whose summits swayed the cawing rooks, until servitude seemed intolerable, and he prayed for the voice of the bearward that summoned him to Southwark. And when the chained bear, the familiar monkey on his back, followed ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... bows the storm. The leafless trees Lash their lithe limbs, and, with majestic voice, Call to each other through the deepening gloom; And slender trunks that lean on burly boughs Shriek with the sharp abrasion; and the oak, Mellowed in fiber by unnumbered frosts, Yields to the shoulder of the Titan Blast, ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... peacocks on the window-sills, knocking with their strong beaks for bread, pleased him; they recalled evenings passed with Helen; she had often spoken of her love for these birds. He went to the window with bread for the peacocks, and the landscape came into his eyes: the clump of leafless trees on the left, rugged and untidy with rooks' nests; the hollow, dipping plain, melancholy of aspect now, misty, gray and brown beneath a lowering sky, dipping and then rising in a long, wide shape, and ringing the sky with a brown ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... and bracing. The scenery for miles, however, was unvarying—everywhere the same gigantic gum-trees were to be seen; but vast as were their limbs, they afforded but little shade. Some were scathed and leafless, from others hung in tatters long strips of bark, giving them a peculiar, ragged appearance. In the evening they reached the hut of a shepherd. On account of the blacks there were two hut-keepers, sturdy fellows, well-armed. They said that further west there were no other white men, and ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... capered alongside the caravan, aiming stones at the sparrows hunched up on the leafless branches of the hedges, or chasing the shy young rabbits that scuttered frightened to their burrows in the mossy bank by the roadside, as the piebalds plodded sedately on their monotonous way. The bear snarled behind his iron bars, ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... from the garden lawn comes, soft and clear, The robin's warble from the leafless spray, The low sweet Angelus of the dying ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... ploughing in a vineyard behind the camp, beyond the edge of the grove. The plough is a crooked stick of wood which scratches the surface of the earth. The vines are lying flat on the ground, still leafless, closely pruned: they look like ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... shaggy boles Of oak and elm, with leafless crowns, Were painted stark upon the knolls; And cots and villages and towns On virgin canvas glowed ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... hard ringing laugh of hers, that reminded northern men of the sound of sharp skates cutting the smooth ice of a frozen river, where leafless birches and frost-bound banks send the notes echoing away between them till they ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... the best things a bird-lover can have in front of his house or cabin is a small dead tree with numerous leafless branches. Many kinds of birds love to perch briefly where they can look around them. I would not exchange the old dead plum-tree that stands across the road in front of my lodge for the finest living plum-tree in the world. It bears a perpetual ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... foot of an ancient, leafless olive-tree I saw a group of people kneeling around a newly opened well. I asked a man who was digging beside the dusty path what this might mean. He straightened himself for a moment, wiping the sweat from his brow, and ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... produced, by it) which we residents would not like to part with. If we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries—the ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top—ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dewdrops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fetes. Through the bars of the arbour and away beyond, the river could be seen in the fields, meandering through the grass in wandering curves. The evening vapors rose between the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their branches. In the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps nor their lowing could be heard; and the bell, still ringing ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... chair near the window which overlooked the entrance to the park and let his eyes gaze blankly at the busy scene. It had snowed during the night, and sleighs were dashing in and out under the leafless arches of the trees. Bells were tinkling, gay plumes of horsehair floating from the front of the Russian sleighs and the turrets of the horses' harness, men and women wrapped in costly furs were being whirled along, laughing and chatting, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... a gracious tree From latest twig to parent root, For when all others leafless stand It gayly blossoms and bears fruit. On certain days a friendly wind Wafts from its spreading boughs a store Of canny gifts that flutter in Like snowflakes at a ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... sat in his room at the back of the Ghyll, with its window looking out on the fell-side and on the river under the leafless trees beneath. The apartment had hardly the appearance of a room in a Cumbrian homestead. It was all but luxurious in its appointments. The character of its contents gave it something of the odor of a by-gone age. Besides books on many shelves, prints, pictures in water and oil, and mirrors ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... were all leafless, and snow-clad the ground, Sweet pleasures at home in our cottage we found; 'Round our bright blazing fire, we'd work, read, or play, And find sweet employment ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... of the scenes alluded to, he ought not, on his return home, to adduce a solitary instance or two as the custom of the country. In roving through the wilds of Guiana I have sometimes seen a tree hollow at heart, shattered and leafless, but I did not on that account condemn its vigorous neighbours, and put down a memorandum that the woods were bad; on the contrary, I made allowances: a thunderstorm, the whirlwind, a blight from heaven might have robbed it of its bloom ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... plains set here and there with the great stretches of woodland and farmsteads, the stubble of which is soon confused by the eye in the distance with the barren heaths around. In winter, the undulating mass of deep and even snow is marked everywhere by the small, brown, leafless trees in their great groupings, and by the pines, as small, and weighted with the burden of the weather; but much the most striking of the things seen in such a landscape are the stretches of black water, or, if the season be hard, ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... continues from year to year. The same couple, or another, as the case may be, occupies it season after season. Repairs are duly made; or, when demolished by storms, it is industriously rebuilt. There was one of these nests, formerly, upon the leafless summit of a venerable chestnut-tree, on our farm, directly in front of the house, at the distance of less than half a mile. The withered trunk and boughs, surmounted by the coarse-wrought and capacious nest, was a more picturesque object than an obelisk; and the flights ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... violet. The world looked near to them, and very great and beautiful, tingling with life even through its winter dress. The keen air, the crisp snow beneath their feet, the quivering stars that seemed to hang among the branches of the leafless trees, all gave them joy. They were healthily tired and heartily hungry; a good supper was just ahead of them, and beyond that a long life full of wonderful possibilities; and they were very glad to be alive. The two ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... modest reminder of the centuries when men had built well because they had time, before they built, to stop and think and remember. The arrested dignity of the past seemed to the young man to hover above the old mansion within its setting of box hedges and leafless lilac shrubs and snow-laden magnolia trees. He saw the house contrasted against the crude surroundings of the improved and disfigured Square, and against the house, attended by all its stately traditions, he saw the threatening figure of Gideon Vetch. "So it has come ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... and looked out. The air was full of raw chill, and he heard the leafless boughs rustling in the winter wind. All around him was the dark wilderness, and, natural hunter and warrior though he was, he was glad to have the shelter, the fire, and his comrades. He turned back and closed the door tightly, ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... ash, is the sign of a long journey; and of an oak, prognosticates long life and prosperity. To dream you strip the bark off any tree, is a sign to a maiden of an approaching loss of a character; to a married woman, of a family bereavement; and to a man, of an accession of fortune. To dream of a leafless tree, is a sign of great sorrow; and of a branchless trunk, a sign of despair and suicide. The elder-tree is more auspicious to the sleeper; while the fir-tree, better still, betokens all manner of comfort and prosperity. The lime-tree ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... earnestness, began to stride out the number northerly, but the sycamore did not disappear; its long bare boughs were still seen throwing out their leafless and haggard extremities against ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Castanospermum, two fabaceous trees, and others of which neither flowers nor fruit were observed. Two palms, Seaforthia elegans, and Livistona inermis, also occur here. By far the most remarkable vegetable productions are the larger kinds of climbers. The principal of these, with a leafless and almost branchless cable-like stem, sometimes two or three hundred yards in length, rises over the summits of the tallest trees, and connects one with another in its powerful folds, occasionally ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... which has caused here, as at St. Helena, and at some of the Canary islands, almost entire sterility. The broad, flat-bottomed valleys, many of which serve during a few days only in the season as water-courses, are clothed with thickets of leafless bushes. Few living creatures inhabit these valleys. The commonest bird is a kingfisher (Dacelo Iagoensis), which tamely sits on the branches of the castor- oil plant, and thence darts on grasshoppers and lizards. It is brightly coloured, but not so beautiful ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... door, looking out through the darkness and praying silently for the return of her loved ones. The wind was rising and driving across the sky black masses of clouds which looked like misshapen specters of evil. The blast whistled through the leafless trees and howled round the cabin. Hours passed, and still the sorrowful wife and mother sat gazing into the gloom as if her eyes would pierce it and lighten ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... sound behind and stand again listening to the marvellous echo from the wooded hill on the other side of the valley. Nor would I care to go again in search of that small ancient lost church in the forest. It would not be early April with the clear sunbeams shining through the old leafless oaks on the floor of fallen yellow leaves with the cuckoo fluting before his time; nor would that straggling procession of villagers appear, headed by an old man in a smock frock with a big book in his hand; nor would I hear for the first time ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... snowy fields gleamed unnaturally—westward while the sun above showed only as a crimson ball, an orb of blood, travelling westward too. At Bristol it glared through a murky veil of smoke, at Exeter and through the frozen pastures and leafless woodlands of Devon dropped swiftly towards my goal, beckoning with blood-stained hand across the sky. Past the angry sea we tore, and then again into the whitened fields now growing dim in the twilight. In the carriage the talk was unceasing—talk ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
