"Aspen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... elegant lightness of drapery in Mrs. Birch's dress, but poor Lady Aspen had certainly a very trifling way with her in shaking continually her leaves, which sounded as if she was tittering at everything around. Old Lord Elm was hurt at it, and often hinted to her ladyship how improper such behaviour would have been deemed in former times. ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... when the children were wondering if that were the end, "we have come to the most interesting tree of the whole species—the aspen, or trembling poplar. It is a small, graceful tree with rounded leaves having a wavy, toothed border, covered with soft silk when young, which remains only as a fringe on the edge at maturity, supported ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... many oaks were covered with their green pendants, and they hung from the sycamores. Except the chestnuts, whose bloom can hardly be overlooked, the flowering of the trees is but little noticed; the elm is one of the earliest, and becomes ruddy—it is as early as the catkins on the hazel; willow, aspen, oak, sycamore, ash, all have flower or catkin—even the pine, whose fructification is very interesting. The pines or Scotch firs by the Long Ditton road hang their sweeping branches to the verge ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... trees. Much credulity was at one time attached to the tradition that the tree on which Jesus Christ was crucified was an aspen, and that, thenceforth, all aspens were afflicted with a peculiar shivering. Botanists, scientists, and matter-of-fact people of all sorts pooh-pooh this legend, as, indeed, many people nowadays pooh-pooh the ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... early September when they crossed the Geikie and struck up the western shore of Wollaston Lake. The first golden tints were ripening in the canoe-birch leaves, and the tremulous whisper of autumn was in the rustle of the aspen trees. The poplars were yellowing, the ash were blood red with fruit, and in cool, dank thickets wild currants were glossy black and lusciously ripe. It was the season which Jolly Roger loved most of all, and ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... deep snore had gradually lengthened out, so as to vouch for his forgetfulness, and Bang, Ricardo, Dr Pavo Real, and the ladies, had all subsided into the most perfect quietude, when I noticed, and I quaked and trembled like an aspen leaf as I did so, a long black paw, thrust through, and down from the dark aperture immediately over Padre Carera's head, which, whatever it was, it appeared to scratch sharply, and then giving the caput a smart cuff, vanished. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... to put up through life with the unceasing clatter of the tongue of Misticoosis, she will be from this time the unbeautiful aspen tree, while her tongue shall be the leaves that will never again be still even in the gentlest breeze. The leaves of other trees shall rest at times, but the aspen leaves, now the tongue of Misticoosis, shall ever be restless ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... with the breathing of the gentle wind, An aspen leaf but shaked on the tree, If bird or beast stirred in the bushes blind, Thither he spurred, thither he rode to see: Out of the wood by Cynthia's favor kind, At last, with travel great and pains, got he, And following on a little path, he heard A ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... laughing, weeping and showering blessings on "the boys," is frantically shaking hands with man after man. So, too, is Black Jim. And then, half carried, half led, by two stalwart soldiers, Captain Gwynne is borne, trembling like an aspen, into their midst, and, kneeling on the rocky floor, clasps his little ones to his breast, and the strong man sobs aloud his thanks to God for ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... populous town, Has crushed ten thousand with one tread, and men Expect the second; all were mute but one, That fairest child, who, bold with love, alone Stood up before the King, without avail, 4500 Pleading for Laon's life—her stifled groan Was heard—she trembled like one aspen pale Among the gloomy pines of a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Accurs'd be he that first invented war! They knew not, ah, they knew not, simple men, How those were hit by pelting cannon-shot Stand staggering like a quivering aspen-leaf Fearing the force of ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... spring. Its banks were seven or eight feet high, and densely covered with white and black spruce,—which, I think, must be the commonest trees thereabouts,—fir, arbor-vit, canoe, yellow, and black birch, rock, mountain, and a few red maples, beech, black and mountain ash, the large-toothed aspen, many civil-looking elms, now imbrowned, along the stream, and at first a few hemlocks also. We had not gone far before I was startled by seeing what I thought was an Indian encampment, covered with a red flag, on the bank, and exclaimed, "Camp!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... she said. And still he stood: stood, his hands clenched and his lips drawn back from his teeth, while she dipped the spoon again, and—though her arm shook now like an aspen and there were tears of pain in her eyes—let the dreadful stuff fall ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... as his eyes fastened upon that name, whilst the hand, to which no peril ever brought a tremor, shook now like an aspen. Feverishly he spread the letter on his knee, and with a glance, from dull that it had been, grown of a sudden fierce and cruel, ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... to the number of two hundred and seventy-five. Nothing could be of suggestion more tragic than the wasted and helpless power of this poor wandering vessel, around whose stolid mass myriads of wavelets, busy as aspen-leaves, bickered with a continual weltering splash that was quite loud to hear. I sat a good time that afternoon in one of her steely port main-deck casemates on a gun-carriage, my head sunken on my breast, furtively eyeing the bluish turned-up ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... could I doubt any longer? The truth was clear to all of us. But I was ready to sink into the earth in my shock and horror. I was about to say to the rector that he must prepare to follow me, when he himself spoke to me, pale and trembling like an aspen leaf. "Appearances are against me," he said, "but this is the work of the devil and his angels. There is One above who will bring my innocence to light. Come, judge, I will await my fate in fetters. Comfort my daughter. Remember that ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... deputations if they would return punctually at half-past three a.m. In the meantime, Peard was in an inner room, engaged in cannonading Naples with telegrams. He had sent for the telegraph master, who came trembling like an aspen, and from whom it was elicited that he had already telegraphed to the Home Office at Naples, and to the general commanding at Salerno, that Garibaldi was in the town. Peard remarked casually that ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... rid of the upper strata of white lace and fine linen, artfully done up so as to tremble like aspen leaves with Lucia's mad trills, Margaret proceeded to butter her face thoroughly. It occurred to her just then that all the other artists who had appeared with her were presumably buttering their faces at the same ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... thus the origin not only of all broad, mighty, and calm conception, but of all that is divided, delicate, and tremulous; "variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made." To them, as first leaders of ornamental design, belongs, of right, the praise of glistenings in gold, piercings in ivory, stainings in purple, burnishings in dark blue steel; of the fantasy of the Arabian roof—quartering of the Christian ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... for myself, I trembled like a leaf upon an aspen-tree—so violently that at times I feared the howling wretches would see the quivering of my limbs, and understand that already was I getting a foretaste of the death which they would have dealt out but for the ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... trembled like an aspen leaf, and seemed more dead than alive. She wept, wrung her hands—for God's sake what could she do? how could she talk on such a matter? Let the abbess see to it, if ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... very taper-pointed, and usually truncate or nearly so at the broad base, irregularly twice-serrate; both sides smooth and shining, when young glutinous with resinous glands; leafstalks half as long as the blades and slender, so as to make the leaves tremulous, like those of the Aspen. Fruit brown, cylindrical, more or less pendulous on slender peduncles. A small (15 to 30 ft. high), slender tree with an ascending rather than an erect trunk. Bark chalky or grayish white, with triangular dusky spaces below ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... brothers. The life he led now was much like the one he had led after that dark day. Perhaps for the same reason. If he had had a family of his own all might have been different. As he limped along one morning, seeking among the barren aspen groves for a few roots, or the wormy partridge-berries that were too poor to interest the Squirrel and the Grouse, he heard a stone rattle down the western slope into the woods, and, a little later, on the wind was borne the dreaded ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... sat down on a little hillock, beneath the cooling shade of a grove of young aspens that grew near the hut. Pleased with the dancing of the leaves, which fluttered above her head, and fanned her warm cheek with their incessant motion, she thought, like her cousin Louise, that the aspen was the merriest tree in the forest, for it was ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... he cries, as he blows a cloud of incense into Krishna's face. The medium quivers like an aspen leaf; the dead woman's brothers crawl forward and lay their foreheads upon his feet; he shakes more violently as the spirit takes firmer hold upon him; and then with a wild shriek he rolls upon the ground and lies, rent with paroxysms, his face stretched upwards to the winnowing-fan. Louder and ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... Osgar himself, that began the day so swift and so strong, at the last he was like leaves on a strong wind, or like an aspen-tree that is falling. But when he saw the High King near him, he made for him like a wave breaking on the strand; and the king saw him coming, and shook his greedy spear, and made a cast of it, and it went through his body and brought him ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... down, he caught a gleam among the trees that he knew was water, and again he was encouraged. Here was a certainty of one thing that was an absolute necessity. Soon he was in the valley, which he found exceedingly narrow and almost choked with a growth of pine, ash, and aspen, a tiny brook flowing down its center. He was tired and warm from the long descent and knelt down and drank from the brook. Its waters were as cold as ice, flowing down from the crest of one of the great peaks clad, ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made: When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... me, Tommy,' she says when we bid good-by on the beach. 'Ay,' I answers; 'when you give the word.' And I kissed her, white-man- fashion and lover-fashion, till she was all of a tremble like a quaking aspen, and I was so beside myself I'd half a mind to go up and give the uncle a ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... to be done for her! A decent dowry, of course, as befitting a daughter of the house, but she would need no more, for Maria was eighteen, as white as a lily and as slender as an aspen, with big, dark eyes like strange pools of night in her ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... and hazel mingled there; The primrose pale and violet flower Found in each cliff a narrow bower; Foxglove and nightshade, side by side, Emblems of punishment and pride, Grouped their dark hues with every stain The weather-beaten crags retain. With boughs that quaked at every breath, Gray birch and aspen wept beneath; Aloft, the ash and warrior oak Cast anchor in the rifted rock; And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung His shattered trunk, and frequent flung, Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high, His boughs athwart the narrowed sky. Highest of all, where ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... in very truth doe I, if it were an Aspen Leafe: I cannot abide Swaggerers. Enter Pistol, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Volga, that flashed in the glories of the morning sky. From the elevation we had reached we could survey the whole country; and it may easily be conceived with what admiration we gazed upon the calm majestic river, and on its multitude of islands, fringed with aspen and alder. On the other side, the steppes, where the Kirghiz and Kalmuks encamp, extended as far as the eye could reach, till limited by a horizon as smooth and uniform as that of the ocean. It would be difficult ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... now As in holt is the aspen; As the fir-tree of boughs, So of kin am I bare; As bare of things longed for As the willow of leaves When the bough-breaking wind The ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... there since Noes flood. [Sidenote: The towne of Yemps.] And thus proceeding forward the nineteenth day in the morning, I came into a town called Yemps, an hundred verstes from Colmogro. All this way along they make much tarre, pitch and ashes of Aspen trees. [Sidenote: Vstiug.] From thence I came to a place called Vstiug, an ancient citie the last day of August. At this citie meete two riuers: the one called Iug, and the other Sucana, both which fall into the aforesaid ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... mingled there; 215 The primrose pale and violet flower, Found in each cliff a narrow bower; Fox-glove and night-shade, side by side, Emblems of punishment and pride, Grouped their dark hues with every stain 220 The weather-beaten crags retain. With boughs that quaked at every breath, Grey birch and aspen wept beneath; Aloft, the ash and warrior oak Cast anchor in the rifted rock; 225 And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung His shattered trunk, and frequent flung, Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high, His bows athwart the narrowed sky. Highest ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... niece, that mean is cut from thee; A craftier Tereus, cousin, hast thou met, And he hath cut those pretty fingers off That could have better sew'd than Philomel. O, had the monster seen those lily hands Tremble, like aspen leaves, upon a lute, And make the silken strings delight to kiss them, He would not then have touch'd them for his life! Or had he heard the heavenly harmony Which that sweet tongue hath made, He would ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... was beautiful. In the blue sky, not a cloud; on earth, all the charming, graceful things the soil offers in the month of May. The trees planted ten years earlier on the banks—weeping willows, osier, alder, ash, the aspen of Holland, the poplars of Italy and Virginia, hawthorns and roses, acacias, birches, all choice growths arranged as their nature and the lay of the land made suitable—held amid their foliage a few fleecy vapors, born of the waters, which rose like a ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... single, livid glance, and then her courage broke, and burying her face in her hands she stood shaking like an aspen. ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... window pane, and with the sound of falling glass, so suggestive of riot and devastation, Schomberg reeled out after us in a state of funk which had prevented his parting with his brandy and soda. He must have trembled like an aspen leaf. The piece of ice in the long tumbler he held in his hand tinkled with an effect of chattering teeth. "I beg you, gentlemen," he expostulated thickly. "Come! ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... was locked up from the light of day in the coal-house, surrender. After hearkening at the door for a while, and finding all quiet, we gave a knock to rouse him up, and see if we could bring any thing out of him by speering cross-questions. Tommy and Benjie trembled from top to toe, like aspen leaves, but fient a word could we make common sense of at all. I wonder who educates these foreign creatures? it was in vain to follow him, for he just gab-gabbled away, like one of the stone masons at the Tower of Babel. At first I was completely bamboozled, and almost dung stupid, though I ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... whut he name is Mose he jump' 'most outen he skin. He open' he eyes, an' he 'gin to shake like de aspen-tree, 'ca'se whut dat a-standin' right dar behint him but a 'mendjous big ghost! Yas, sah, dat de bigges', whites' ghost whut yever was. An' it ain't got no head. Ain't got no head at all! Li'l' black Mose he jes drap' on he knees an' he beg' ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... nail. What passed betwixt them the Lord in heaven knows; but when the doctor came forth, he looked wild and haggard as if he had seen a ghost, his face as white as paper, and his lips trembling like an aspen-leaf. 'Parson,' said the knight, 'what is the matter?—how dost find my son? I hope he won't turn out a ninny, and disgrace his family?' The doctor, wiping the sweat from his forehead, replied, with some hesitation, 'he ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... burst from the seamen appeared to lift the decks of the vessel, and the affrighted frigate trembled like an aspen with the recoil of her own massive artillery, that shot forth a single sheet of flame, the sailors having disregarded, in their impatience, the usual order of firing. The effect of the broadside on the enemy ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... widening toward the sea. A cold green glacier filled the valley between two mountains with its peaks of beauty. Toward the shore, which swept in toward the river's mouth in a sheltered cove, were clumps of trees, giant fir, aspen, and hemlock, green and beautiful, while seaward swept the waves ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... themselves privileged to giggle at the expense of their elder sister. Now, though there may be a degree of peevishness (and it is not to be wondered at) amongst the sisterhood, yet with them you will find the most sensitive tenderness of heart, a delicacy that quivers, like the aspen leaf, at a breath, and a kindliness of soul that a mother might envy—or rather, for envy, shall I not write imitate? But ah! if their history were told, what a chronicle would it exhibit of blighted affections, withered hearts, secret tears, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... midnight-soothing melancholy bird, That send'st such music to my sleepless soul, Chaining her faculties in fast controul, Few listen to thy song; yet I have heard, When Man and Nature slept, nor aspen stirred, Thy mournful voice, sweet vigil of the sleeping And liken'd thee to some angelic mind, That sits and mourns for erring mortals weeping. The genius, not of groves, but of mankind, Watch at this solemn hour o'er millions keeping. In Eden's bowers, as mighty poets tell, Did'st thou ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... in a passion, knock'd down Mr. Rock; Mr. Stone like an aspen-leaf shivers; Miss Pool used to dance, but she stands like a stock Ever since she became Mrs. Rivers. Mr. Swift hobbles onward, no mortal knows how, He moves as though cords had entwined him; Mr. Metcalf ran off upon meeting a cow, With pale Mr. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... to him that we were going north-east when we should have gone south-west, and that we were ascending instead of descending. "Oh, it's all right, and we shall soon come to water," he always replied. For two hours we ascended slowly through a thicket of aspen, the cold continually intensifying; but the trail, which had been growing fainter, died out, and an opening showed the top of Storm Peak not far off and not much above us, though it is 11,000 feet ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... flew open before the tempest, and impelled by a strong curiosity I looked out. The sun stood opposite to me, pale, watery, without beams; but the whole firmament around me seemed to burn; a glow of fire passed over all things. Before me stood a tall aspen, whose leaves trembled and crackled, whilst sparks of fire darted forth from them. Upon one twig of the tree sate a huge black bird, looking on me with a fiery glance, and singing hoarsely and tunelessly, while the tempest and flame rioted around him. I heard the voices of my adopted mother ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... in that grove reclined, To shun the noon's bright eye, And oft he wooed the wandering wind, To cool his brow with its sigh, While mute lay even the wild bee's hum, Nor breath could stir the aspen's hair, His song was still "Sweet air, oh come?" While ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... garden and in it brilliant beds of flowers glowed with their richest lights, poppies folded their gorgeous robes closely about them, Arab fashion, to keep out the heat; hollyhocks stood in their stateliness flecked with changing shadows from the aspen tree near by. Beds of tiger lilies, pinks, larkspur, sweetwilliams, canterbury bells, primroses, gillyflowers, lobelia, bloomed in a luxuriance that the methodical box which bordered them could not restrain. But the garden was by no means a blaze ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... form contains a soul as mighty, As that which lives within a giant's frame; These slender limbs, that tremble like the aspen At summer evening's sigh, uphold a spirit, Which, roused, can tower to the height of heaven, And light those shining windows of the face With much ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... woman, in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... President ceased speaking he turned away and sank upon a rock, pressing his hands upon his throat to suppress the sobs that broke forth despite his efforts. His form shook like an aspen. ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... explosion, the remaining occupants of the cabin rushed up on deck. Colonel Armytage was the least agitated, but even he did not attempt to quiet the alarm of his wife and daughter. Father Mendez trembled like an aspen leaf. The usual calmness of his exterior had disappeared. The danger which threatened was strange, incomprehensible. So occupied were the officers and crew, that none of the party were observed. The spectacle which soon after met their sight was not ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... grew a branching aspen, On the borders of the cornfield, And in twain he broke the aspen, And the tree completely severed, 470 With the magic salve he smeared it, Carefully the ointment tested, And he spoke the words which ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... is changed. I see it all once more: The vine-clad arbor with its rustic seat.... The waterjet still plashes silver sweet, The ancient aspen rustles ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... my dear, now we are in a room where we need not fear interruption—sit down, and don't tremble like an aspen leaf," said Lady Frances Somerset, who saw that at this moment, reproaches would have ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... an hour and ate luncheon, his eyes now and then scanning the back reach of the lake. But he saw nothing, and from an aspen thicket scarce half a mile away Alex ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... convulsively grasping the rock with one hand and the ladder with the other; while a Greek, who stood underneath, was endeavouring to force him onwards. There he hung, in perfect safety, though unable to assist himself; trembling like an aspen leaf, pale as death, and crying like a child. After we had drawn him up, he sat down for some time, to recover his scattered senses; and, positively, I could hardly refrain from laughing as he made his piteous complaint. It ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... spot. Just inside the wall was a row of aspen poplars that always talked in silvery whispers and shook their dainty, heart-shaped leaves at him. Beyond them, under scattered pines, was a rockery where ferns and wild things grew. It was almost as good as a bit of woods—and Jims loved the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... farmhouse of my dream. Two tall honey locusts stood like faithful guardians on each side of the porch. An elm drooped over the farther end of the piazza. In the dooryard the foliage of two great silver poplar or aspen trees fluttered perpetually with its light sheen. A maple towered high behind the house, and a brook that ran not far away was shadowed by a weeping willow. Other trees were grouped here and there as if Nature had planted them, and ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... wood of the northern poplar (large-toothed aspen) is a favorite for cooking fires, because it gives an intense heat, with little or no smoke, lasts well, and does not blacken the utensils. Red cedar has similar qualities, but is rather hard to ignite and must be fed fine ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... following was when her feet slipped along a naked root, and she would have plunged headlong into unknown depths had she not come into sudden contact with his supporting shoulder. Faint and dizzy, and trembling like the leaf of an aspen, she crept forward onto a somewhat wider ledge of thin rock, and lay there quivering painfully from head to foot. A moment of suspense, and he was outstretched beside her, resting at full length along the very outer edge, his hand ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... trembling moon. It rose—for the guardian zephyrs had flown, And left the valley that night alone. No sigh was borne from the leafy hill, No murmur came from the lapsing rill; The boughs of the willow in silence wept, And the aspen leaves in that sabbath slept. The valley dreamed, and the fairy lute Of the whispering reed by the brook was mute. The slender rush o'er the glassy rill, As a marble shaft, was erect and still, ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... wandered to other things, and a picture of his native country flashed over him—Little Russia in the languid embrace of summer—green and blue and golden. The soft notes of the balalaika at twilight came to him, and the dim shapes of dancing peasants, whirling like aspen-leaves in a fresh breeze. He remembered the noonday laughter of skylarks; the pear-trees bending patiently beneath their harvest; the placid river winding its willow-hedged way, cutting the plain ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Looking up to see the cause, as well as that of a sudden crashing noise, I saw the little girls gazing in speechless amazement at the great chestnut tree, and again, without apparent cause, I beheld the huge branches shake and quiver like an aspen tree in the storm. I sprang across the stream, and stood before the little girls. From between the branches there appeared and disappeared a horrible head, with glittering eyes and forked tongue, and, as I gazed still more the whole tree seemed to me to ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... said, "my dearest lady," grasping Eveline's hand, while she addressed her; "you will not drive your Rose from you? If I am less high-minded than one of your boasted race, I am bold and quick-witted in all honest service.—You tremble like the aspen! Do not go into this apartment—do not be gulled by all this pomp and mystery of terrible preparation; bid defiance to this antiquated, and, I think, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... windows — and out of both, heels over head they tumbled, as expecting every moment the points of our bayonets. The house was quickly cleared of every soul except Johnson and his lieutenant, one Lunda, who both trembled like aspen leaves, expecting a ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... took the stiff incline leisurely, for he knew Keller could come down only this way, and he had no mind to let himself get so breathed as to disturb the sureness of his aim. The aspen grove ran like a forked tongue up the ridge for a couple of hundred yards. As Healy emerged from it he saw a rider just disappearing over the shoulder of the hill in front of him. For an instant he had an ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... thought that she had dreamed a very evil dream, till by degrees all the truth came back to her, and she shivered at its memory, yes, even as the weight of it rolled off her heart she shivered and whitened like an aspen in the wind. Then she rose and thanked God for His mercies, which ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... who still trembled like an aspen, went down the ladder, and I followed him; but in descending the second ladder his foot slipped, and he fell down the hatchway ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... woman—shook with her passion as an aspen shakes and whitens in the wind. Aunt Butson laid a hand on ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a fringe of elms, of all trees the tree of most established principle, bordered the stretch of turf between the gravel drive and road; and these elms were the homes of rooks of all birds the most conventional. A huge aspen—impressionable creature—shivered and shook beyond, apologising for appearance among such imperturbable surroundings. It was frequented by a cuckoo, who came once a year to hoot at the rules of life, but seldom made ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... declared that she would always hold them like that, so that nobody could hide stolen gold under them again. And she taught all the little poplars she knew to stand the same way, and that is why Lombardy poplars always do. But the aspen poplar leaves are always shaking, even on the very calmest day. ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... among these giant members of the forest permitted an inferior tree to struggle upward toward the light, and to lift its modest head nearly to a level with the surrounding surface of verdure. Of this class were the birch, a tree of some account in regions less favored, the quivering aspen, various generous nut-woods, and divers others which resembled the ignoble and vulgar, thrown by circumstances into the presence of the stately and great. Here and there, too, the tall straight trunk of the pine pierced the vast field, rising high above it, like some grand monument reared ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... poplars, the broad Gave murmurs on over shingly shallows, between aspen-fringed islets, grey with the melting snows; and beyond her again rise broken wooded hills, dotted with handsome houses; and beyond them a ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... common tree in the taiga is the larch, which best resists the winter frost and summer chills. But the Siberian woodlands also include most of the trees common to temperate Europe—the linden, alder, juniper, service, willow, aspen, poplar, birch, cherry, apricot—whose areas are regulated according to the nature of the soil, the elevation or aspect of the land. Towards the south-east, on the Chinese frontier, the birch is encroaching on the indigenous species, and the natives regard this as a ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... of leaves in that aspen bower, There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree, There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower, And a laugh from the brook that ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... to render the remainder of the journey attractive to either the rider or the pedestrian, and to us the drive up the broad zigzags, planted with plane trees, silver beech, ash, polonia, aspen, arbutus, burberis, and innumerable other handsome trees and shrubs, was a pleasant one indeed. One rocky bit on the right of the way, completely overhung with beautiful ivy, seemed to us especially picturesque. ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... in the shadow, one to either side, almost afraid to breathe, I cursing because the rifle quivered in my two hands like the proverbial aspen leaf. The prospect of shooting a white man—even such a thorough-paced blackguard white as Schillingschen—made me as nervous as a school-girl at a ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... nature wore her most cheerful and delightful aspect, and Flora celebrated her nuptials with Phoebus. The winter corn was half a foot in height, and the barley had just shot out its blade. The birch, the elm, and the aspen-tree began to put ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... lies the railway. By turning aside from it, walking through a field, fording a river, penetrating first through a dark aspen grove, then through a red pine belt, skirting some ravines, threading a way across a village, trudging wearily through dried-up river-beds and on through a marsh, the village of Pochinki ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... When they have placed it to their mind they turn round and give it a smart blow with their flat tail. In the act of diving they give a similar stroke to the surface of the water. They keep their provision of wood under water in front of the house. Their favourite food is the bark of the aspen, birch and willow; they also eat the alder, but seldom touch any of the pine tribe unless from necessity; they are fond of the large roots of the Nuphar lutea, and grow fat upon it but it gives their flesh a strong rancid taste. In the season of love their ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... an aspen leaf," he said, bending over her in serious alarm. "My child, when did this come on? and what ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... of sin to be so great, that the moment his holy and spotless Son representatively takes the sinner's place, he smites him and pours out upon him a tidal sweep of wrath in a terror of relentless judgment and indignation so immense, that the earth quivers like an aspen, rocks to and fro, reels in its orbit till the sun of day refuses to shine, and the moon of night hangs in the startled heavens like a great clot ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... WELL ENOUGH WHERE IT IS', said the North Wind; 'once in my life I blew an aspen-leaf thither, but I was so tired I couldn't blow a puff for ever so many days after. But if you really wish to go thither, and aren't afraid to come along with me, I'll take you on my back and see if I can blow ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light, quivering aspen made,— When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... from the town the carriage plunged suddenly into the soft darkness of an aspen wood, amidst the rustling of invisible leaves, the fresh moist odour of the forest, with faint patches of light from above and a mass of tangled shadows below. The moon had already risen above the horizon, broad and red like a copper shield. Emerging ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... and resounding acclaim, such as a man could hope would envelope and uplift his name but once in a life-time. And he? There he stood, strong, Saxon, fair, debonair, yet white as new snow, and trembling like an aspen. It seemed too much, this sudden storm of applause and enthusiasm for him, the new idol, the coming President; yet who may say that through his exultant, yet trembling heart, that moment shot the presaging pang of ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... half a mile of the point where the second runaway commenced, and there there was an embankment twenty or more feet deep on the opposite side of the pike. I got the horses stopped on the very brink of the precipice. My new horse was terribly frightened and trembled like an aspen; but he was not half so badly frightened as my companion, Mr. Payne, who deserted me after this last experience, and took passage on a freight wagon for Maysville. Every time I attempted to start, my new horse would commence to kick. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Isaac Walton's Dove; and which, branching out of one strong current above the city, and uniting again after they have eddied through its streets, are bordered, as they flow down, (fordless except where the two Edwards rode them, the day before Crecy,) to the sands of St. Valery, by groves of aspen, and glades of poplar, whose grace and gladness seem to spring in every stately avenue instinct with the image of the just man's life,—"Erit tanquam lignum quod plantatum ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... morning of my return to Court, I was utterly unable to help myself. I was so overcome with fright and emotion,—with the alternating feelings of despair and hope—that I could not stand still long enough to dress myself. I trembled like an aspen leaf; so I sent a message to Mrs. Lacy to request permission for me to go to her room, that she might assist me in dressing. I had done a great deal of sewing for Mrs. Lacy, for she had showed me much kindness, and was a good Christian. She gladly assisted ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... command. The knocking continued, with more voices joining in the exhortations. The girl pointed to the door, and the silent command was obeyed. Trembling like an aspen, the little maid opened it, and the burly form of a house ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... glorious gift of heaven would have been the style of Ruskin, for instance, could he but have contained himself, and put forth only half his strength, instead of always planting, in the words of old Fuller, "a piece of ordnance to batter down an aspen-leaf"! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... in preference on young wood of the birch, aspen, and poplar tree[6]; but, in defect of these, on any other tree, those of the pine and fir kinds excepted. These latter it employs only for building its dams and houses. In wide meadows, where no wood is to be found, it resorts, for ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... behind the house, and entered and hid herself in the woods. Mr. Raleigh had loved her mother. Of course, then, there was not a shadow of doubt that her mother had loved him. Horrible thought! and she shook like an aspen, beneath it. For a time it seemed that she loathed him,—that she despised the woman who had given him regard. The present moment was a point of dreadful isolation; there was no past to remember, no future to expect; she ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... Constance, frantic for the loss of her son—then look at Lear, maddened by the ingratitude of his daughters: why it is the west wind bowing those aspen tops that wave before our window, compared to the tropic hurricane, when forests crash and burn, and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... cheering outside, and felt the votes slipping away with every cheer. She cast her eyes up to the pulpit, and there, through a haze, saw old Parson Polsue rubbing his spectacles and shaking like an aspen. Her wits only came back to her when the Tory candidates, in the pew before her, reached for their hats and prepared to follow the mob. Dr. Macann was actually fumbling with the button of the door. Quick as thought then she seized a hassock, sprang on ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it? Have you not made a perfect rattery of yourself, yawning at every possible chink and crumbling at the underpinning, and keeping me awake night after night by the tramp of a whole brigade of the Grand Army that slaughtered Bishop Hatto? Whenever a breeze comes along stout enough to make an aspen-leaf tremble, don't you immediately go into hysterics, and rock, and creak, and groan, as if you were the shell of an earthquake? Don't you shrivel at every window to let in the northeasters and all the snow-storms that walk abroad? Whenever a needle, or a pencil, or a penny drops, don't you open ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... scarcely seen him, let alone gotten acquainted with him. And on this ride he was far behind with our load of baggage. We arrived at the edge of the foothills about noon. It appeared to be the gateway of a valley, with aspen groves and ragged jack-pines on the slopes, and a stream running down. Our driver called it the Stillwater. That struck me as strange, for the stream was in a great hurry. R.C. spied trout in it, ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... I wish you could see Arizona canyons in their gorgeous colors. We have had frost right along and the mornings are great. There's a broad zigzag belt of gold halfway up the San Francisco peaks, and that is the aspen thickets taking on their fall coat. Here in the canyon you'd think there was blazing fire everywhere. The vines and the maples are red, scarlet, carmine, cerise, magenta, all the hues of flame. The oak leaves ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... trembled and quivered like the aspen leaf, which doubtless did not look as if he had yet possessed himself of the attributes of an honest man. They had by this time arrived at the gardens, and Gomez Arias was exceedingly surprised when he observed that the strange Moor had followed them thither, though keeping ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... garrulity by making any gap in the dam of silence, Flint sat idly inspecting his fishing-tackle, shutting it up, then drawing it out, and finally topping it with the last, light, slender tip, quivering like the outmost delicate twig of an aspen as he shook it over the side of the carryall. In fancy, he saw it bending beneath the weight of a black bass such as haunted the translucent depths of a freshwater pond a mile or two away. In fancy, he could feel the twitch at the end of the line, then the run, then the steady pull, growing weaker ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... white and shaking like an aspen. "Sir, I'm not the man I was since I saw my best friend, Jimmie, with his head blown off and lying in his hands. It's kind of got me. I can't face up ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... party of Indians, he met no soul upon the way. For the most part the rough wagon trail led him through a forest of lofty, slender aspen-trees, with snowy ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... against anything which interrupted its flow. It is agreeable to find that imbecility and terror did not rule unchallenged over the Upper House that day. One account, that of Walpole, who is always malicious, represents Lord Mansfield as sitting upon the woolsack trembling like an aspen. Another, more creditable and more credible, declares that Lord Mansfield showed throughout the utmost composure and presence of mind. About the gallantry of Lord Townshend there can be no doubt. When he heard that Lord Boston was in the hands of the mob, he turned to the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... happy-go-lucky Lakers, and the effects of the issue and sale of scrip certificates were soon manifest in our neighbourhood. The traders' booths were thronged with purchasers, also the refreshment tents where cigars and ginger ale were sold; and, in tepees improvised from aspen saplings, the sporting element passed the night at some interesting but easy way of losing money, illuminating their game with guttering candles, minus candlesticks, and presenting a picture worthy of an ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... in an immense and beautiful variety of trees[165] and shrubs. Among the timber trees, the oak, pine, fir, elm, ash, birch, walnut, beech, maple, chestnut, cedar, and aspen, are the principal. Of fruit-trees and shrubs there are walnut, chestnut, apple, pear, cherry, plum, elder, vines,[166] hazel, hickory, sumach, juniper, hornbeam, thorn, laurel, whortleberry, cranberry, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Walt supposes, he has finished, the ex-Ranger rises to his feet and stands awaiting the answer, his huge frame trembling like the leaf of an aspen. He continues to shake all the while Conchita's response is being delivered; though her first words would assure, and set his nerves at rest, could he but understand them. But he knows not his fate, till it has passed through the tedious transference from one language ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... shoulder, and Billy Louise tightened the reins instinctively while she stared at what lay revealed beneath. The head of the gulch was blocked with a corral—small, high, hidden from view on all sides save where she stood, by the jagged walls of rock and heavy aspen ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... Birches. Illinois, 140 feet high and Dogwood. 8 feet thick at the butt [A]; does Pine. not transplant well; best rais'd the Elm. from seeds—the lumbermen Chesnut. call it yellow poplar.) Linden. Sycamores. Aspen. Gum trees, both sweet and sour. Spruce. Beeches. Hornbeam. Black-walnuts. Laurel. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... unnerved her—she seemed upon the point of swooning. Divining what would soonest calm her, Landless hurried her out of the wood and down the shore to the bank, beneath which lay the sleeping slaves. Here she sank upon the sand, her frame quivering like an aspen. "That dreadful face!" she said in a low, shaken voice. "It is burned upon my eyeballs. How came it there? ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... if she would have fled; but suddenly the person who sat beside her was no longer an infirm old man. He who a minute before had scarcely strength to mutter out a few sentences, and reclined against the arbour trembling like an aspen, sprang up with the force of a giant, and drew her back ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... Harding?" you ask. He points to an obscure path—"trail" he calls it—which seems to throw itself over an edge. You approach that point, and there, to your wonder and your surprise, at your feet nestles the loveliest of smiling canyon-like valleys, filled with trees, aspen, oak, and pine, with here and there a tent or red roof gleaming through the green, and a noisy brook hurrying on its way downhill. By a steep scramble you reach the lower level, birds singing, flowers tempting on every side, and the picturesque, narrow trail leading you on, around ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... string. But just as he was about to pull the fatal cord, a man that was nearest him rushed forward and stayed his arm. At that instant we stood before them, and immediately held forth our hands; all of them trembled like aspen-leaves; the chief looked up full in our faces, kneeling on the ground; light seemed to flash from his dark rolling eyes, his body was convulsed all over, as though he were enduring the utmost torture, and with a timorous, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... the falls an aspen quivered. John DeWitt stepped into view. Haggard and wild-eyed, he stared at Rhoda. She raised her finger to her lips, but too late. Kut-le too looked up, and raised his gun. Rhoda hurled herself toward him and struck ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... by the baton of the leader, struck with some force upon the desk over my head. I was aware, at the same time, of a whispering all around my ears, and an incessant noise, like that of aspen leaves in a summer breeze, which, in spite of its softness and delicacy, overpowered the sound of the loud orchestra. When I was able to recover myself, I began to find that I had indeed placed myself in the centre of the house; ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... live in West England They see the Severn strong, A-rolling on rough water brown Light aspen leaves along. They have the secret of the rocks, And the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... side he was plainly expiring—his golden head was slowly turning from side to side, and his mouth was slightly open. I called to Ayesha to hold his head, and this she managed to do, though the woman was quivering from head to foot, like an aspen-leaf or a startled horse. Then, forcing the jaw a little more open, I poured the contents of the phial into his mouth. Instantly a little vapour arose from it, as happens when one disturbs nitric acid, and this sight did not increase my hopes, already faint ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... manager are no losers. Well! when I said what I thought wise, of all this—when I spoke as if my course were a settled and decided thing, the grim old man asked me if he was to be an automaton in his own house. He assured me he had no feeling for Dick—all the time he was shaking like an aspen; in short, repeated much the same things he must have said to you last night. However, I defied him; and the consequence is, I'm forbidden the house, and, what is more, he says he will not come to the office ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... in eagerly every word, and, as Letcher proceeded, he turned pale as death, and, great as he was in intellect, trembled like an aspen leaf, not from fear or cowardice, but from the consciousness of guilt. He was the arch traitor, who like Satan in Paradise, "brought death into the world and all our woe." Within one week he came into the Senate and voted—voted for every section of Mr. Clay's bill—and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... the river there is a slightly dimpled plateau diversified with aspen and willow groves and mossy meadows. At "Wilson's," one and a half miles from the river, the ground is carpeted with dwarf manzanita and the blessed Linnaea borealis, and forested with small pines, spruces, and aspens, the tallest fifty to sixty ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... conscious that he was trembling like an aspen. He suppressed a wild desire to laugh. ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... giving a piano lesson to a young lady, I heard a ring at the entry-door, as if the whole bell apparatus would rattle down; then a noise as of wild hordes breaking in and a roar; 'Forward! Forward! Now I have it! Forward!' My pupil trembled like an aspen leaf. My wife in the next room was frightened out of her wits. But when the door flew open and Bjrnson stood there, glad and shining like a sun, there was a general jubilee, and we were the first to ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... watching every form that passed in the horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. She listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert |
