"Petal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fresh as a new creation of sunbeams, has power to suppress in one part of its petals all vibrations we call red, in another those we call yellow, and purple, and reflect each of these in other parts of the same tender petal. "Pansies are for thoughts," even more thoughts than poor Ophelia knew. An evening cloud that is dense enough to absorb all the faster and weaker vibrations, leaving only the stronger to come through, will be said to be red; because the vibrations that produce the impression ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... is flecked from you, scales are dashed from your stem, sand cuts your petal, furrows it with hard edge, like flint on a ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... bearings,—all intensely there, and there in beauty of which no one could have dreamed that even flowers or gold were capable, far less parchment or steel. But every change of shade is felt, every rich and rubied line of petal followed; every subdued gleam in the soft blue of the enamel and bending of the gold touched with a hand whose patience of regard creates rather than paints. The jewel itself was not so precious as the rays of enduring light which form it, and flash from it, beneath that errorless ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... here five minutes after you are out," he said, curtly. "You have no message—" He paused to pick up from the floor a petal of his flower that had fallen. Then he walked to the window and looked out. Standing there, with his back to Cartoner, he went on: "No message ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... more than petal's power: A pure heart's blood that blushing flows O'er youth's nobility, is flower ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... came to the white garment lying wet and pale in the half-light she drew a sharp breath. There in the centre lay one minute blue petal. Its very smallness proved to her its magic. It was a faery flower. She took it up reverently and went home solemn as a child in church. When, with blue petal under her pillow, she lay down, she fell asleep in a moment. She dreamt of Reddin, for he had more control over ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... simply large, thin, crimson lozenges bearing admirable designs—flying birds, wading storks, fish, even miniature landscapes. Akira picks out the chrysanthemum, and insists that I shall eat it; and I begin to demolish the sugary blossom, petal by petal, feeling all the while an acute remorse for spoiling ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... the Cosmos, evoked when the "Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters"—an epic printed in stars on blue abysses of illimitable space; in illuminated type of rose leaf, primrose petal, scarlet berry on the great greenery of field and forest; in the rainbows that glow on tropical humming birds, on Himalayan pheasants, on dying dolphins in purple seas; and in all the riotous carnival ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... classifies. The perfumes gathered by the tendrils of violet and rose, in their divine desire for expression, are found in petroleum. Aye, the colors and all the delicate tints of petal, of stamen and of pistil, are in this substance stored in the dark recesses of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... innocent looking flowers really possess powerful weapons in the shape of tiny lassos, which are concealed in lasso-cells. These lasso-cells, which are very small, are carefully hidden in the walls of those petal-like tentacles, or feelers of the Anemone. Still other lasso-cells are hidden in the mouth of the Anemone, and inside its stomach. In the cells the long, slender, thread-like lassos lie coiled up ready for use. The lassos escape from the cells by turning themselves inside out with ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... thing happened to me. I remember the date well. It was the afternoon of Tuesday, June 13th. I was reading, or rather dipping here and there, in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. As I read, I remember that a little unripe apple, with a petal or two of blossom still clinging to it, fell upon the old yellow page. Then I suppose I must have fallen into a dream, though it seemed to me that both my eyes and my ears were wide open, for I suddenly became aware of a beautiful young voice singing very softly somewhere among the leaves. ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... pale moon like a petal Floats in the pearly dusk of spring, Come with arms outstretched to take me, Come with lips pursed ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale
... little use for me to tell you that Hetty's cheek was like a rose-petal, that dimples played about her pouting lips, that her large dark eyes hid a soft roguishness under their long lashes, and that her curly hair, though all pushed back under her round cap while she was at work, stole back in dark ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... his own garden—commonplace things which the experienced naturalist has long since got utterly tired of. But has your rash objector ever lighted upon that rare larva which lives among the periwinkles, and exactly imitates a periwinkle petal? Has he ever discovered those deceptive creatures which pretend for all the world to be leaves of lady's-bedstraw, or dress themselves up as flowers of buttonweed? Has he ever hit upon those immoral caterpillars which wriggle through life upon the false pretence ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... the broad June light On the open bank of the river, In the summer of manhood, young; And over the water bright Is a lair that is overhung With coned pink blooms that quiver And droop, till the water's breast Is of petal and ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... ye?" inquired old Mrs. Bray, sharply. "There's nothin' to whisper about as I know. Did ever you see anything purtier than this pink chiny piece, Myry? It broke so clean, and curved as a petal. And this here piece of George's wife's lemonade-glass—it's handsome as a brooch. See how the flower come out! Why, Myry, I've set here and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... them all. Throughout, I felt the charm and the power of his gentleness, and under its secret influence I yielded up what many another would have sought in vain. Some natures there are which search you as the sun lays bare the flowers, making for itself a pathway to their inmost heart, every petal opening ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... a gay chanson, and then a string of epigrams. All true,—he said,—all flowers of his soul; only one with the corolla spread, and another with its disk half opened, and the third with the heart-leaves covered up and only a petal or two showing its tip through the calyx. The water-lily is the type of the poet's soul,—he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... honor has a rosy cope To shimmer back the tributary stars; And every petal glistens with a hope Where Love hath blossomed in the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... without bending outside, so that the whole looks like an inverted pentapod; but gradually the tips of the arms bend outward as the arms diverge more and more, and when fully expanded the crown has the appearance of a lily of the L. martagon type, in which each petal is curved upon itself, the pinnules of the arms spreading laterally more and more, as the crown is more fully open. I have not been able to detect any motion in the stem traceable to contraction, though there is no stiffness in its bearing. When ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... contemporaries, a meticulous and reserved writer, little inclined to be pleased with his work, and cautious to avoid the snare of improvisation. Hence, though he lived to be older than did Keats or Fergusson, he left a very slender garland of verse behind him, in which there is scarcely a petal which is not of some permanent value. For instance, in the volume of 1911 we found not a few pieces which then seemed crude in taste and petulant in temper; but even these now illustrate a most interesting character of which time ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... her lips brushed his. Faintly, like the touch of a rose petal, and the perfume of her hair seemed ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... a peculiar way, putting one in mind of fat Norman damsels. Temperature in the boat to-day 76 degrees, the sky beautifully clear. The B. pooter seems still the only river, the temperature of which is always below that of the air. One interesting Elaeocarpus occurred—Petal. viridibus apice dentatis; calice griseo viridi, vix valvato. I may remark, that the aestivation of Kydia is scarcely valvate. I saw a, to me, new kingfisher and wood-pecker. The black and white kingfisher, Dalcedo rudus, is not found on the B. pooter beyond the termination ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... round upon me with the solitary petal in her hand, she presented it with a low bow, in elfish mockery of the manner of the ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the window with the full light on her face, somehow oddly defenceless in her extreme embarrassment, and he could see the light powdering of freckles on her nose, as well as that curious, camellia-petal fineness of skin which always escaped notice until the observer came quite close, for there was a tinge of sallowness in the colour which prevented people from admiring ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... P. orientale. 2-4 ft. June. Flowers 6-8 in. across; deep scarlet, with a purple spot at the base of each petal. There are other varieties of ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... is always indicated in Anatole France's writings with brief, clear cut, decisive touches, but "the murmurs and scents" of the great waters, the silences of the shadowy forests are not allowed to cross the threshold of his garden of Epicurus. Each single petal of a rose will have its curves, its colours, its tints; but the mysterious forces of subterranean life which bring the thing to birth are pushed back into the darkness. The marble-cold resistance of Anatole France's classical mind offers a hard polished ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... peignoir, and there was no color in her cheeks. Her skin had the soft whiteness of a rose petal. Her eyes were like stars. As I lay there and looked at her I wondered if it was Anthony's kisses or the memory of Olaf's singing which had made ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... him. The smile not even yet had left her lips. With a lithe movement, infinitely graceful, she drew away, disengaging the hem of her crimson garment.... A crimson petal from the great cluster in her arms fell upon it, to lie upon the hollow whiteness of the upturned ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... asked dreamily, "how I shall match that rose color of her cheek, not havin' her by? I shall taik the innah petal of a rose and maik the little lights the color ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... debauch of sun-lit ether! The sea, too, although it reeled slightly, unsteadily rising only to fall away, what a radiance of color it maintained! Here in the garden the drowsy air would lift a flower petal, as some dreamer sunk in hasheesh slumber might touch a loved hand, only to let it slip away in nerveless impotence. Never had the charm of this Normandy sea-coast been as compelling; never had the divine softness of this air, this harmonious marriage of earth-scents and sea-smells seemed ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... picked river-drivers stood upon the rocks of the upper rapid, pole in hand. And here, watching them with a lack-lustre eye, stood Mamie in the shade of a dogwood tree in full blossom. Now and again a soft white petal would fall upon the water and be swept away. Above the hemlocks soughed softly. At her feet the giant maidenhair raised its delicate fronds till they ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... his eyes. First an odor made itself known to him—an odor of the earliest spring flowers of Paradise. And then a hand soft as a falling petal touched his brow. Bending over him was the woman clothed like the princess of old, with blue eyes, now soft and humid with human sympathy. Under his head on the pavement were silks and furs. With Raggles's hat in his ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... white columbine. Around the amphitheatres of the lake regions and above them to the limit of perennial drifts they gather flock-wise in splintered rock wastes. The crowds of them, the airy spread of sepals, the pale purity of the petal spurs, the quivering swing of bloom, obsesses the sense. One must learn to spare a little of the pang of inexpressible beauty, not to spend all one's purse in one shop. There is always another ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... brothers Commelyn, Dutch botanists, because two of them—commemorated in the two showy blue petals of the blossom—published their works; the third, lacking application and ambition, amounted to nothing, like the inconspicuous whitish third petal! Happily Kaspar Commelyn died in 1731, before the joke was perpetrated in "Species Plantarum." Soon after noon, the day-flower's petals roll up, never ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... a fine azure blue and most singular form, composed of two petals, the upper petal very short and broad, with a whitish mucro or point, the sides of which lap over the base of the other petal; inferior petal about two inches and a half in length, the lower half somewhat triangular, grooved on the two lowermost sides, and keeled at bottom, ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 4 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... chocolate, little companion!" Hunger, too, awoke, and she dropped two sticks of chocolate into the water. "The fire dies down to-night. To-morrow I shall be gone." A petal from the apple blossom on the ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... are not allowed on the professional stage for a similar reason. A flower petal falling on the floor acts as a banana skin would, making a slip and a bad fall possible to anyone on the stage. You'd not like to have your dance spoiled by a wad of gum or a flower petal, and perhaps get put out of commission and have to forfeit a contract ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... think about them. They electrify the atmosphere. I see this girl so distinctly somehow: little, white thing; big, gloomy eyes like storms in deep woods, and thin eyelids—you know, that transparent, flower-petal kind, where you fancy you see the iris looking through, like spirit eyes, always awake while the body's eyes sleep; and—and lots of dark hair without much colour—hair like smoke. I see her a suppressed volcano—but ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the coarse tufts stroked all one way, white and ugly, thickly streaked with mud, no single blade with any sign of life or greenness yet, when we came upon that star of concentrated beauty, more blue than the blue sky overhead, the whole passion of the earth in each pointed petal. A distant avalanche, as though the hills were settling, the bustle of the torrent, the wind in the pines and larches, only marked by contrast the incredible stillness of the heights—then, suddenly, this star of blue blazing ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... had planted, flung sackfuls of bloom at his feet. They poured themselves out in abandoned, open-armed, spendthrift, wasteful—perfectly prodigal—quantities of rose-tinted petal; prodigal as a river which flows full to the brim, never questioning but what there will be plenty ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... the rose of the breaking dawn, as tender as the notes of a cooing dove calling gently to its mate, as soft as the touch of a flower-petal the words drifted through the curtain. With a whispered cry to Allah, his God, the man was upon his feet. With the strength of the oriental, which has its root in patience and its flower in achievement in all that appertains to love, he had uncomplainingly waited through month ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... his keen shafts without stopping for a moment! O amiable and cheerful girl, I have been bitten by Kama who is even like a venomous viper. O thou of swelling and large hips, have mercy on me! O thou of handsome and faultless features, O thou of face like unto the lotus-petal or the moon, O thou of voice sweet as that of singing Kinnaras, my life now depends on thee! Without thee, O timid one, I am unable to live! O thou of eyes like lotus-petals, Kama is piercing me incessantly! O large-eyed girl, be merciful unto me! It becometh thee not, O ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl. And on the top-most spray of the Rose-tree there blossomed a marvellous rose, petal following petal, as song followed song. Pale was it, at first, as the mist that hangs over the river—pale as the feet of the morning, and silver as the wings of the dawn. As the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, as the shadow of a ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... believe it is better to let them first imbibe it unconsciously in their study. Whenever their minds are ready for it, it will be readily understood. The chief difficulty is that they imagine that there is a direct metamorphosis of a leaf to a petal ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... withdraws his lines heavy with eels. Give back to me the blue gleaning under the moon, and my timid and clandestine loves amid the wild sorrel, where I could no longer distinguish the rosy tongue of my beloved from the dew-laden petal of the eglantine which had fallen upon the grass. Give back to me my weakness, oh thou, my dear heart. And go, and say unto God, that I can no longer live ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... your purple (and, by-the-bye, almost the only way to get a satisfactory one, except by a happy accident now and then, is to double gold-pink with blue; this is the only way to get a purple that will vibrate, palpitating against the eye like the petal of a pansy in the sun). Well, you get your purple, and you get your green—not a sage-green, or an "art-green," but a cold, sharp green, like a leaf of parsley, an aquamarine, the tree in the "Eve" window ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... No stir in the air, no stir in the sea Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are Now, now the mirth comes Now ponder well, you parents dear Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white Now the hungry ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing shoes he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... flowers endure; the wide petal of the poppy, which withers between the fingers, lies afloat on the air as the lilies on water, afloat and open to the weight of the heat. The red pimpernel looks straight up at the sky from the early morning till its hour of closing ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... hesitation, a moment's hanging of the graceful head the width of a petal's top nearer to his shoulder—and then ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... not in the majority of wild species. What the causes are that operate in the painting of the skin of an animal no one can say, any more than one can say how particular spots are arranged on the petal of a flower or the wing of a butterfly. That specific liveries have been designed by an all-wise Creator for purposes of recognition I have no doubt, as well as for purposes of deception and protection—in the former case to ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... blowing strongly, all the morning, and the waves were rolling in heavily. Their green tops were crested with white foam which rose high and higher, curved over as softly as a rose petal, balanced for a brief second, then fell with a crash and went flowing up the bank of the beach, circling and twisting in countless eddies that now and then crept to the very awnings and caused a stampede among their inhabitants. A dozen portly matrons sat in the sand, rocking to and fro as the ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... grown to can be gauged nowhere so well as in country lodgings, where the most ordinary things of design and decoration have sifted down and gathered together, so that foolish ornament gains a cumulative force and achieves a conspicuous commonness. Stem and petal and leaf—the fluent forms that a man has not by heart but certainly by rote—are woven, printed, cast, and stamped wherever restlessness and insimplicity have feared to leave plain spaces. The most ugly of all imaginable rooms, which is probably the parlour of a farm-house arrayed for those whom ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... prominent flower solidly in clay, putting on the outer petals separately. The back flower can have the near petals modelled, while the distant ones can be just indicated on plaque with incised lines. Don't attempt to copy every petal in clay, which is an impossibility, but try and get the general effect of the flower in your modelling. Take the prominent petals first, and put them on in their proper positions, and the less important petals can then be filled in in the intervening spaces. ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... more because of my fine physical condition, I was disposed toward a large charity. And yet I could not help wondering how some that I saw could walk among their roses and still look so glum and matter-of-fact. I felt as if I could kiss every velvet petal. ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... bark lifted him off his four feet. Withal something exquisite marked him even among Maltese puppies, which Aurora felt without art to define it. She said he reminded her of the new moon when it is no bigger than a fingernail. If with the tip of his rose-petal tongue he laid the lick of fondness and approval on the end of your nose, you felt two things: that the salute had come directed by the purest heart-guidance, and that the nose had something about it subtly ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... subtle fragrance entering her soul and turning all bitterness there to sweetness? Perhaps the shy spirit of life and loveliness, mother of men and of wild-flowers and grasses, had come to it, bringing a whiter sunshine and the mystic silence of her forests, and touching every flowery petal with her invisible finger to make it burn like fire, and giving a ringing woodland ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... figures, a man dressed as a Pierrot, and a beautiful lady who wore a grey satin domino. She had taken off her mask and pushed back the hood from her hair, which was encircled by a diadem made of something shining and silvery, and a ray of moonlight fell on her face, which was as delicate as the petal of a flower. Pierrot was masked; he was holding her hand and looking into her eyes, which were turned upwards ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... the avenues, and here and there in the flower-beds, were enough to make one feel, as one walked about the garden, as though one were in a realm of tender colours, especially in the early morning when the dew was glistening on every petal. ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... make a languorous gloom, And heavy-headed poppies drip perfume In secret arbours set in garden close; And all the air, one glorious breath of rose, Shakes not a dainty petal from the trees. Nor stirs a ripple on the ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... longer he sat there, watching her changeful face with its lovely mouth and the eyes that some trick of light and shade had deepened to the purple of an iris petal's markings; and the sight seemed to ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... long throat and nervous hands, and the slim, lace-covered arms, were of the same satin-textured duskiness as the heart-shaped face, with its laughing red mouth. Her cheekbones were rather high and touched with colour, as if a geranium petal had been rubbed across them, just under the brown shadows beneath the eyes. Her chin was small and pointed, her forehead low and broad, and this, with the slight prominence of the cheekbones and the narrowing of the chin, gave that heartlike ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... through love to look on thee, Grave heavenliness! nor know they joy of sight, Who deem the wave of rapt desire must be Its wrecking and last issue of delight. Dead seasons quicken in one petal-spot ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... their accommodating nature lies in the fact that within the Hyacinth or Tulip every petal of the coming flower is already stored. During the five or six years of its progressive life the capacities of the bulb have been steadily conserved, and we have but to unfold its beauty, aiming at short stout growth and intensity of colour. ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... one expect when a man has such a little sweetmeat, such a little syrup drop, such a rose petal—Come, come, you would ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... abiding love! What tender language from each petal springs! Affection's tribute! Heart's best offerings! Wanderers, ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... the gods, the divine Vishnu, ardent in the work, sought a birth-place among men. Dividing himself into four parts, he whose eyes resemble the lotus and the pulasa, the lotus petal-eyed, chose for his father Dasaratha the sovereign of men. The divine sages then with the Gandharvas, the Rudras, and the (different sorts of) Apsaras, in the most excellent strains, praised the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... was difficult to tell. "Look," said he, "I have in that Japanese vase two roses gathered yesterday evening in the bud from the governor's garden; this morning they have blown and spread their vermilion chalice beneath my gaze; with every opening petal they unfold the treasures of their perfumes, filling my chamber with a fragrance that embalms it. Look now on these two roses; even among roses these are beautiful, and the rose is the most beautiful of flowers. Why, then, do you bid me desire other ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... suitor appeared to woo the daughter of the King of the Fire-flies until every petal was dotted with them. One after another in a long troop they appeared. Each in his own way, proudly, humbly, boldly, mildly, with flattery, with boasting, even with tears, each proffered his love, told his rank or expatiated on his fortune or vowed his constancy, sang his tune or played ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... tulip-bulbs emerging from the seed, Year after year unknown to sex proceed; Erewhile the stamens and the styles display Their petal-curtains, and adorn the day; The beaux and beauties in each blossom glow With wedded joy, or amatorial woe. 130 Unmarried Aphides prolific prove For nine successions uninform'd of love; New sexes next with softer passions spring, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... softly appealing. He began to note vaguely that her dresses were better, and oftener changed, than they had been at Mallowe. A more observant man might have been touched by the suggestion that she was unfolding petal by petal like a flower, and that each carefully chosen costume was a new petal. He did not in the least suspect the reverent eagerness of her care of herself as an object hoping to render itself worthy of ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... expressing Intelligence and Ignorance in equal measure, symbolizing the Peoples of the World. A gradual development to the higher forms of plant life is expressed upward in the altar tower, the conventionalized lily petal being ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... active, like the willow-wrens, and hops from bough to bough, examining every part for food; it also runs up the stems of the crown-imperials, and, putting its head into the bells of those flowers, sips the liquor which stands in the nectarium of each petal. Sometimes it feeds on the ground like the hedge- sparrow, by hopping about on ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... now and again a tiny yellowish flower dropped on her. Pretty—yes, if you held one of those flowers on the palm of your hand and looked at it closely, it was an exquisite small thing. Each pale yellow petal shone as if each was the careful work of a loving hand. The tiny tongue in the centre gave it the shape of a bell. And when you turned it over the outside was a deep bronze colour. But as soon as they flowered, they fell and were scattered. You brushed them off your frock as ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... other years, old and wistful Drifts my dream. Petal-patined the dream, white-mistful As the dew-sweet haunt of the dim whitebeam Because of memory, a little wind ... It is the gossamer-float of the butterfly This drift of dream From the sweet of to-day to the sweet Of days long drifted by. It ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... was called "Petal" for short) was one of Sandyface's four kittens that had been brought with the old cat from Mr. Stetson's grocery to the old Corner House, soon after the Kenway girls came to live there. Petal was Ruth's particular pet—or, had been, when she was a kitten. Agnes' choice was the ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... from the vase at her side, and began picking it to pieces, floret after floret, with twitching fingers. She was deeply moved. "Well, consider his family history," she burst out at last, looking up at me with her large brown eyes as she reached the last petal. "Heredity counts.... And after ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... sacred dark and green Where many boughs the still pool overlean And many leaves make shadow with their sheen. But presently A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly Upon the bosom of that harmony, And sailed and sailed incessantly, As if a petal from a wild-rose blown Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone And boatwise dropped o' the convex side And floated down the glassy tide And clarified and glorified The solemn spaces where the shadows bide. From the warm concave of that fluted note Somewhat, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... I tell you she is too sweet. She has a round baby face with the loveliest violet eyes in the world and such a skin!—like a velvet rose petal!" His unabashed regard penetrated Sabine who ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... as the whole is, that parts are weak, as when he doubts whether each curvature of the beak of humming-birds is of service to each species. He admits, perhaps too fully, that I have shown the use of each little ridge and shape of each petal in orchids, and how strange he does not extend the view to humming-birds. Still odder, it seems to me, all that he says on beauty, which I should have thought a nonentity, except in the mind of some sentient being. He might have as well said that love existed during the secondary or Palaeozoic ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... flower shuddered at his kiss, and the transparent dewdrop that hung from its petal froze to ice ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... you. Bring me those five boxes on the first row of shelves." I brought the boxes to her room and placed them on the table. She opened the first one and it contained a most beautiful peony made of coral and jade and each petal trembled like a real flower. This flower was made by stringing the petals which were made of coral on very fine brass wire, also the leaves which were made of pure jade. She took this flower and placed ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... sea-plain while the east kindled and glowed. Above us the clouds changed from grey to dove-colour, from that to rose-pink; and then, straight before us, the sun came up and gave us gold for redness. The little purple wild flowers opened, showing us where the night had left a jewel on every petal, and the sleepy soldiers plucked them as they passed and cheered themselves with their faint fragrance. The day, like the night, comes quickly there, and brings with it an even greater change. For in that last week of autumn we tasted ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... shadows, colors, clouds Grass-buds, and caterpillar shrouds Boughs on which the wild bees settle, Tints that spot the violet's petal." ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... place within their lowly hearts—never were their flowers lifted up—their glances were ever bent in sweet humility towards the green sod from which they had sprung, and, as I gazed upon them, I saw that on each lovely petal there ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... lady, as a lady was before the light of that poor worn word went out. Quiet, reserved, gracious, continent, bearing in face and form the fragile beauty of a rose-petal come to its fading on a windless ledge, she moved down the years with the stedfast sweetness of the ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... continually would assuredly drive her mad. But matters now were changed. Day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year, a rose had been unfolding itself at Collingswood, and with every opening petal had grown more and more precious to the blind man, until more than one crone foretold the end; and Grace Atherton, grown fonder of gossip than she was wont to be, listened to the tale, and watched, and wondered, and wept, and still caressed ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... be most fully developed above the spot-zones, thus offering to our eyes a rudely quadrilateral contour. The four great luminous sheaves forming the corners of the square are made up of rays curving together from each side into "synclinal" or ogival groups, each of which may be compared to the petal of a flower. To Janssen, in 1871, the eclipsing moon seemed like the dark heart of a gigantic dahlia, painted in light on the sky; and the similitude to the ornament on a compass-card, used by Airy in 1851, well conveys the decorative effect of the beamy, radiated kind ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... attention to the "resemblance of its nectaries to the heads of pigeons in a ring round a dish, a favourite device of ancient artists" (Dr. Prior); or to "the figure of a hovering dove with expanded wings, which we obtain by pulling off a single petal with its attached sepals" (Lady Wilkinson); though it may also have had some reference to the colour, as the ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... mixed all your greens from the yellows and blues, the picture would be the better. As to the browns, they will put your whole picture out of key. In this palette I am sure you will find every color which is needed. There are few greens, but those given can be used to gray a petal as well as to paint a leaf; therefore there is no likelihood of your using a color in a leaf which is not in tone with ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... garland of wild flowers, fragrant, fair, Which she culled whilst onward leading her flock with patient care; The diamond dew-drops clinging to every petal sweet,— For the mystic Rose of Heaven was it not a ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... trying to see how many of her darlings she can get together in one mountain wreath—daisies, anemones, columbines, erythroniums, larkspurs, etc., among which we wade knee-deep and waist-deep, the bright corollas in myriads touching petal to petal. Altogether this is the richest subalpine garden I ever found, a perfect floral elysium.—John Muir: "Our ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... by itself on a space of some eight acres of garden ground on the hilltop, around which are the dwelling-places of the priests) is built in the shape of a sunflower, with a dome-covered central hall, from which radiate twelve petal-shaped courts, each dedicated to one of the twelve months, and serving as the repositories of statues reared in memory of the illustrious dead. The width of the circle beneath the dome is three hundred feet, the height of the dome is four hundred feet, and ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... moment or another, to the shadowy dreaming-place of graver thoughts. Alice Maud Mutimer was nineteen. For two years she had been thus tall, but the grace of her proportions had only of late fully determined itself. Her work in the City warehouse was unexacting; she had even a faint impress of rose-petal on each cheek, and her eye was excellently clear. Her lips, unfortunately never quite closed, betrayed faultless teeth. Her likeness to Richard was noteworthy; beyond question she understood the charm of her presence, and one felt that the consciousness might, in her case, constitute ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... the pores of the flower, secreted, it would seem, for no other purpose but to attract her—while there she obtains nothing but what nature has provided for her and given her the means of obtaining, and the most delicate petal receives no injury. ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... on slate labels) were sunk in the ground and so arranged as to form a pyramid, at the summit of which rose a certain dragon's-head tulip which Balthazar alone possessed. This flower, named "tulipa Claesiana," combined the seven colors; and the curved edges of each petal looked as though they were gilt. Balthazar's father, who had frequently refused ten thousand florins for this treasure, took such precautions against the theft of a single seed that he kept the plant always in the parlor and often spent whole days in contemplating ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... Now imagine an eyebrow, dark as the raven's quill, overarching such an eye, and contrasting itself with the burning gold of the hair, and a skin of Parian white and purity. Then contemplate a softness beside which the velvet upon the petal of a pansy would seem rigid; and this eye large and timorous, and fringed with long, ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... anemone from a bunch David had brought her, and began to pluck off the petals, alternating 'yes' and 'no.' The last petal fell to 'yes.' ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you off our hands,' said her grandmother, the old queen-dowager. 'Come now, let me adorn you like your other sisters!' and she put a wreath of white lilies round her hair, but every petal of the flowers was half a pearl; then the old queen had eight oysters fixed on to the princess's tail ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... star; but on examining them more closely, we shall find that they are thrown into a group of three magnitudes by the expansion of two of the inner petals above the stamens to a breadth greater than any of the four others; while the third inner petal, on which the stamens rest, contracts itself into the narrowest of the six, and the three under petals remain of one intermediate magnitude, as seen ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... genealogy reaching unbroken through the Flood back to the overhanging blossoms of Eden, have come down to us, as it were, only in their travelling costume, with their best dresses packed away in stamen, or petal, or private seedcase, to be brought out at the end of fifty centuries at the touch of human genius. Those of which Solomon sang in his time, and which exceeded his glory in their every-day array, even "the hyssop by the wall," never showed, on the ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... o'er wastes of lily-haunted field The tired birds had stayed their amorous tune, And broad and glittering like an argent shield High in the sapphire heavens hung the moon, Did no strange dream or evil memory make Each tremulous petal of ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... petals of a marguerite, muttering "he loves me—he loves me not," her heart flutters in momentary anguish with every "not," till the next petal soothes it again. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... infolded, quivers a little, and swiftly, before your eyes, the first of the hundred petals detaches its delicate edges, and springs back, opening towards the water, while its white reflection opens to meet it from below. Many moments of repose follow,—you watch,—another petal trembles, detaches, springs open, and is still. Then another, and another, and another. Each movement is so quiet, yet so decided, so living, so human, that the radiant creature seems a Musidora of the water, and you almost blush with a sense of guilt, in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... my forehead glance and gleam, A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always, Since I have felt the fall, upon my lifetime's stream, Of one rose petal plucked from the roses of ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... silver flute, which he lovingly describes as "a petal on a harmony." He was a member of the Peabody Symphony orchestra of Baltimore, and Asger Hamerik, his director for six years, says of him: "In his hands the flute no longer remained a mere material instrument, but was transformed into ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... white shoe on the carpet with no more noise than a rose-petal falling. Then followed a second of indecision. Should she risk pushing the man aside, and fleeing past him into the hall? No, her touch would break the spell. She must go on with the ghost-play, and ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... it, or as the vaulted azure of a June midnight on the edge of the Milky Way,—a sheaf no Ceres owned, no foodfull garner coveted, but the satiating aliment of beauty, fresh as if God that hour had pronounced them good, and set his sign-manual upon each delicate tremulous petal, that might have been sapphire, save for its wistful translucence. And on the teapoy in the window stood two dainty baskets of clean willow, in which we had that day brought home chestnuts from the wood;—mine was full of nuts, but they were small and angular and worm-eaten, as the fruitage ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... woodland lane to Claygate the great elder-bushes are coming into flower, each petal a creamy-white. The dogwood, too, is opening, and the wild guelder-roses there are in full bloom. There is a stile from which a path leads across the fields thence to Hook. The field by the stile was fed off in spring, and now is yellow with birdsfoot lotus, which tints it because the grass is so ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... as the first wild rose when it hung from its stem with its center of stamens and pistils and its single whorl of pale petals had only begun its course, and was destined, as the ages passed, to develop stamen upon stamen and petal upon petal, till it assumed a hundred forms of ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... stipules to each pair of leaflets. Flowers yellow and red, in racemes on the ends of the branches. Calyx divided almost to the base, with 5 concave parts. Corolla, 5 petals 1' long with short claws, one petal very small and straight, the others larger, with wavy edges. Stamens 10, crimson, 3' long, free, woolly, united at the lower end. Pistil the same length as the stamens. Stigma somewhat concave. Ovary sessile, unilocular, many-ovuled. Pod compressed, with 7 or more seeds ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... To flight! a flower of the fields of air; A jeweled moth; a butterfly, with rare And tender tints upon his downy wings, A moment resting in our happy sight; A flower held captive by a thread so slight Its petal-wings of broidered gossamer Are light as the wind, with every wind astir, Wafting sweet odor, faint and exquisite. O dainty nursling of the field and sky. What fairer thing looks up to heaven's blue And drinks the noontide sun, the dawning's dew? Thou ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... that had fallen into her lap. The fingers that held the petal tingled, and a flush rose in ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... snow; The grassy hills, breeze-haunted on the brow; And sandy deserts hung with stinging stars! Half-vanished hangs the moon, with daylight sick, Wan-faced and lost and lonely: daylight fades— Blooms out the pale eternal flower of space, The opal night, whose odours are gray dreams— Core of its petal-cup, the radiant moon! All, all the unnumbered meanings of the earth, Changing with every cloud that passes o'er; All, all, from rocks slow-crumbling in the frost Of Alpine deserts, isled in stormy air, To where the pool in warm brown shadow sleeps, The ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... were Nancy, soft clear blues and first appleblossom pinks, the colors of a hardy garden that has no need for the phoenix-colors of the poppy, because it has passed the boy's necessity for talking at the top of its voice in scarlet and can hold in one shaped fastidious petal, faint-flushed with a single trembling of one serene living dye, all the colors the wise mind knows and the soul released into its ecstasy has taken for its body invisible, its body of delight most spotless, as lightning takes bright body ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... a chair for her. She was, Woolfolk thought, lighter in spirit on the ketch than she had been on shore; there was the faintest imaginable stain on her petal-like cheeks; her eyes, like olive leaves, were almost gay. She sat with her slender knees crossed, her fine arms held with hands clasped behind her head, and clad in a crisply ironed, crude white dress, into the band of which ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... cast Somewhere alone in a strange place—the life Stirred in him faintly, as at feeble strife With covetous Death for ownership of him. And 'fore his eyes the world began to swim All vague, and doubtful as a dream that lies Folded within another, petal-wise. And therewithal himself but half believed His own eyes' testimony, and perceived The things that were about him as who hears A distant music throbbing toward his ears At noontide, in a flowery hollow of June, And listens till he knows not if the tune And he be one or twain, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... as he had thought again and again, of her artlessness, her ignorance, and her total absence of compunction. It seemed so wonderful. She drifted toward him as the petal of a flower comes on running water, as corn seeds blow through the air, as anything small and light obeying a natural law. She did not in the least understand social conventions. She was not troubled with one thought of right or wrong; ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... not appear altogether to like their lot, or to be so constantly contented with it but that they are always coming off in boats to dine at the neighboring hotels. Doubtless a yacht has a crumpled rose-leaf under it, and possibly the keelless hull of the houseboat feels the irk of a folded petal somewhere. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... frames Some happy lands, that have luxurious names, For loose fertility; a footfall there Suffices to upturn to the warm air Half-germinating spices; mere decay Produces richer life; and day by day New pollen on the lily-petal grows, And still ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... sprinkled with blue flag bloom, over which wild bees clambered, swayed around his feet. Then he turned to the girl. She had worked hard. The same lavender dress she had worn the previous day clung to her in limp condition. But she was as evenly coloured and of as fine grain as a wild rose petal, her hair was really brown, but never was such hair touched with a redder glory, while her heavy arching brows added a look of strength to her big ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... saw at a glance that it was a flower of royal lineage. When spring covered it with buds and full blown blossoms of pink, the true rose color, it spoke of queens' gardens and kings' palaces, and every satiny petal was a palimpsest of song and legend. Its perfume was the attar-of-rose scent, like that of the roses of India. It satisfied and satiated with its rich potency. And breathing this odor and gazing into its deep ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... petal of a flower," said Gertrude, laughing. "I always thought your nose one of your prettinesses, Vanity, and I ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... came from the trees and plants. The airs were always astir, helping the soft designs of Nature, loosening a leaf from its stem and bearing it to the sand, striking a berry from its place and causing it to drop at Domini's feet, giving a faded geranium petal the courage to leave its more vivid companions and resign itself to the loss of the place it could no longer fill with beauty. Very delicate was the touch of the dying upon the yellow sand. It increased the sense of pervading mystery and made Domini more deeply conscious of the pulsing ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... news could be received from outside, but thanks to the United States Minister, who had resolved to remain in Paris, a letter arrived from time to time. It was in this way that I received a thin slip of paper, as soft as a primrose petal, bringing me the following message: "Every one well. Courage. A thousand kisses.—Your mother." This impalpable missive ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... rose or white, Petal by petal, fall On that stretch of mud and sand that lies By the hideous prison-wall, To tell the men who tramp the yard That God's Son ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... small jeweller's box, and was a slender gold neck chain and pendant, representing a four-leafed clover in green enamel on gold, on one petal of which were the figures thirteen in ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... the petal, twisted tight, Above the calyx peers to sight With apex tipped with purple, bright As if the rainbow dyed it. While on the air it vacillates, Its owner's bosom palpitates To see it open, as he waits Impatient ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... sick feeling in the region of his heart. Who was he, Marc Dupre, trapper of the big woods, that he should dare think so often of that woman from Grand Portage, with her wondrous beauty and her tongue that could be like a cold knife-blade or the petal of a lily for softness? And yet he was conscious of a mighty change that had come over him with that day on the flat rock by the stockade when she had talked to him of the trapping,—a change like that which comes to one when he is so fortunate as to be in distant Montreal and sits in the ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... his foot an enigmatical pale object, and stooping, picked up the creamy petal of a rose. He stood with it in his hand, perplexed beyond measure. He perceived a slight disorder of the valence of the dressing-table and linked it with this petal by a ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... of the season. She ventures on the confines of poetry, and if she does not read Mr. Tennyson's Lucretius, she keeps his photograph in her album. She flings herself with a far greater ardor into the mysteries of croquet. She has been known to garden. As petal after petal floats down to earth she becomes artistic. She reads, she talks Mr. Ruskin. She has her own views on Venice and its Doges, her enthusiasm over Alps and artisans. The slow approach of autumn brings her to politics. She ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Its little life to peck and pipe, As long as cherries ripe and ripe, And minister unto the need Of baby-birds that feed and feed. This, Fragoletta, is a flower, Open and fragrant for an hour, A flower, a transitory thing, Each petal fleeting as a wing, All a May morning blows and blows, And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... ghora per argya,"[15] he announced with discreetly lowered lids; while Evelyn, springing up with rose-petal cheeks and a small sound of dismay, must needs try and look as if ladies in evening dress habitually wore their hair hanging loose about ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Petal by petal, Margaret had watched the rose of her youth fading and falling. More than all her sisters, she was endowed with a zest for existence. Her superb physical constitution cried out for the joy of life. She was made to be a great lover, a great mother; and to her, more than ...
— Different Girls • Various |
