"Parterre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the gallos about three o'clock. The plaza was crowded, and the ladies in their boxes looked like a parterre of different-coloured flowers. But whilst the Senoras in their boxes did honour to the fete by their brilliant toilet, the gentlemen promenaded round the circle in jackets, high and low being on the same curtailed footing, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... parterre of flowers they surrounded her Majesty, and awaited her pleasure with perfect decorum, when, having saluted them with affability she thus addressed them—"Lovely ones—ladies distinguished by the particular attention of your sovereign ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... upon her for calling herself anything but the nicest flower in the world; and she contended that she was nothing better than a parrot-tulip, stuck up in a parterre; and just as the discussion was becoming a game at romps, Dr. May came in, and the children shouted to him to say whether his humming-bird were a daisy or ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... sockets, whence verged small hollow golden tubes, resembling in shape and size the stalks of a flower. At the drooping ends of these, were lamps shaped and coloured to imitate the most beauteous flowers of the parterre. This bouquet of light had been designed by Mr. Graeme. Few novelties had acquired greater celebrity than the Graeme astrale. The room was warmed by heating ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... mind resembled a fertile, but thin soil. There was a quick, but not a strong vegetation, of whatever chanced to be thrown upon it. No deep root could be struck. The oak of the forest did not grow there; but the elegant shrubbery and the fragrant parterre appeared in gay succession. It has been generally circulated and believed that he was a mere fool in conversation[1216]; but, in truth, this ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... residence is 22 Rue de Rivoli, and that I am at home to my friends every Saturday evening. So now, you are both forewarned." The young men bowed, and quitted the box. Upon reaching their stalls, they found the whole of the audience in the parterre standing up and directing their gaze towards the box formerly possessed by the Russian ambassador. A man of from thirty-five to forty years of age, dressed in deep black, had just entered, accompanied by a young woman dressed after the Eastern style. The lady was surpassingly beautiful, while the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... parterre," said Dick. Then he turned to Cicely and took hold of her chin between his thumb and finger. "Look here, don't you worry any more, old lady," he said kindly. "You've been a little fool, and you've had a knock. ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... instances, and there is really no reason they should not live for ever unless, as is generally the case with them in captivity, they be killed by errors in cultivation." Sir Trevor was addressing an assemblage of authorities—a parterre of kings in the empire of botany—or he might have enlarged upon ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... ever once enjoyed the pleasure of knowing this fairest flower in the parterre of England's aristocracy of beauty, would, in a spirit of revenge and disappointed avarice, have had the grossness to insult her as the Marquis of Papon—the depository of all her secrets—has insulted the Countess of Landsfeld ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... leaning out I saw in full the enclosed demesne which had hitherto been to me an unknown region. It was a long, not very broad strip of cultured ground, with an alley bordered by enormous old fruit trees down the middle; there was a sort of lawn, a parterre of rose-trees, some flower-borders, and, on the far side, a thickly planted copse of lilacs, laburnums, and acacias. It looked pleasant, to me—very pleasant, so long a time had elapsed since I had seen a garden of any sort. But it was not only on Mdlle. Reuter's ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... tablecloth, snuff-coloured curtains, and a wall paper with a brown background and yellow snakes on it, you would like your quarters very well indeed. Rooms are usually let by the month, except in watering-places, where weekly prices prevail. In Leipzig you can get a room for 10s. a month. It will be a parterre or a fourth-floor room, rather gloomy and rather shabby, but a possible room for a student who happens to be hard up. For L1 a month you can get a room on a higher floor, and better furnished, while for L1, 10s. a month in Hamburg I myself ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... grand parterre, laid out in regularly-shaped borders, each containing a mass of one kind of flower, flaming elscholchias, dazzling verbenas, azure nemophilas, or sober heliotrope, the broad walks, the great pile ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the vending of eggs and chickens, but also in driving hard bargains with the gardener about flower-roots, seeds, and slips of plants; that functionary having orders from Mrs. Reed to buy of his young lady all the products of her parterre she wished to sell: and Eliza would have sold the hair off her head if she could have made a handsome profit thereby. As to her money, she first secreted it in odd corners, wrapped in a rag or an old curl-paper; but some of these hoards having been discovered ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the farm-house, a two-storeyed house, without any pretence at architecture, and with a slate covering: the house was surrounded by stables, pig-sties, a small garden and a conservatory. In front of the house was a parterre, most tastefully arranged with flowers which surrounded an immense fuschia, five feet in height and covering an area of ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... they had helped themselves, they were unwilling to let their prey go until they had also ravished from him some specimens of the airy mintage whence they had issued. Accordingly the Catholic vagabonds seated themselves on the ground, a fuliginous parterre to look upon, and called upon G—— for a song. A rock which projected itself from the side of the hill served for a stage as well as the "green plat" in the wood near Athens did for the company of Manager ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... had been the theme of journals and the boast of party. Neither did he ever, as men who talk easily at their own hearths are prone to do, speak of projects in the future, even though the projects be no vaster than the planting of a tree or the alteration of a parterre,—projects with which rural life so copiously and so innocently teems. The past seemed as if it had left to him no memory, the future as if it stored for him no desire. But did the past leave no memory? Why then at intervals would the book slide ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a parterre are daily be-rhymed in verse, and vaunted in prose, but the beauties of a vegetable garden seldom meet with the admiration they might claim. If you talk of beets, people fancy them sliced with pepper and vinegar; if you mention carrots, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... look upon a Tree in all its Luxuriancy and Diffusion of Boughs and Branches, than when it is thus cut and trimmed into a Mathematical Figure; and cannot but fancy that an Orchard in Flower looks infinitely more delightful, than all the little Labyrinths of the [more [1]] finished Parterre. But as our great Modellers of Gardens have their Magazines of Plants to dispose of, it is very natural for them to tear up all the beautiful Plantations of Fruit Trees, and contrive a Plan that may ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... gay rivals of parterre and field May freely drink the sunshine and the dew, But only unto thee does heaven yield The pure reflection of her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... been the needle only. But it was nothing of this ornate description that I was about to undertake. I was to have neither arbor nor trellis,—no sweet-scented honeysuckle clustering over an elaborate framework,—no parterre of beautiful flowers, glorious to behold, but producing no profit,—not even marigold or lady's-slipper. There was to be no fancy-work, but everything was to be practical. I was now in search of profit, trusting that the future would enable me ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... perfect parterre of flowers and foliage, intertwined with the flags of all nations, and enclosed under an awning, which latter had a canvas screen all round to keep out the prying eyes of the bluejackets ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... he, 'we have played some pretty tableaux vivants for your amusement, and you can thank me for that nice seat in the front row of the parterre.' ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... recesses. Of these, three or four of the largest constituted the play-ground. It was level, and covered with fine hard gravel. I well remember it had no trees, nor benches, nor anything similar within it. Of course it was in the rear of the house. In front lay a small parterre, planted with box and other shrubs; but through this sacred division we passed only upon rare occasions indeed—such as a first advent to school or final departure thence, or perhaps, when a parent or ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and he had a certain rough skill at music, and a rare gift at the culture of plants, and made his little home bright within the winter-time with melody, and in the summer gay without as a king's parterre. ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... when all the wildness of this little world will be overrun and tamed into the trimness of a civilized parterre; when the last trail will have been trodden, the mystery of the last forest bared, and the last of the savage peoples penned into a League of Nations to die of unnatural peace. What will our children do then, I wonder, for their books of high romance? How satisfy their thirst ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... all that display of openwork dressmaking and cut glass exhibit without so much as battin' an eyelash. She was takin' it all in, too, from the bargain hats in the fam'ly circle, to the diamond tummy warmers in the parterre, but you'd never guessed that she'd just escaped from a Dago back district where they have one mail a week. If I hadn't seen her chumming with a hold-up gang that couldn't have bought fifteen cent lodgings on the Bowery, I'd bet the limit ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... It was a perfect spot for the middle period of a Sunday in June, and its felicity seemed to come partly from an antique sun-dial which, rising in front of us and forming the centre of a small, intricate parterre, measured the moments ever so slowly, and made them safe for leisure and talk. The garden bloomed in the suffused afternoon, the tall beeches stood still for an example, and, behind and above us, a rose-tree of many seasons, clinging to the faded grain of the brick, expressed the whole character ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... fragrance of the garden, so imbued the musky air, Every dew-drop, ere it reaches earth, is turned to attar rare; O'er the parterre spread the incense-clouds a canopy right fair: Gaily live! for soon will vanish, Biding not, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... her property which incloses Jackson Square, the principal public place in New-Orleans, she built some forty elegant houses, and then assuming the government of the municipality, she succeeded in inducing the authorities to cut down the old trees on the square, and to have it laid off in the parterre style. The 'Woodman spare that tree' sentiment strongly opposed this reform; but it was vain to resist the Countess. The trees obstructed the view of her fine rows of houses, and down they must come, and down they did come, very much to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... then the favored breeze That dallied with your flowing hair, Begrudged the songsters in the trees And longed to be a flow'ret fair— Some favorite blossom like heartease— Within your miniature parterre. ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... pass a day, Where all cry out, "What sums are thrown away!" So proud, so grand; of that stupendous air, Soft and agreeable come never there. Greatness, with Timon, dwells in such a draught As brings all Brobdingnag before your thought. To compass this, his building is a town, His pond an ocean, his parterre a down: Who but must laugh, the master when he sees, A puny insect, shivering at a breeze! Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around! The whole, a laboured quarry above ground; Two Cupids squirt before; a lake behind Improves the keenness of the northern ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... and the fluttering parterre, I sought relief in solitude. Never was solitude so grateful to me. I indulged in a thousand reveries. Gay hope exhibited all her airy visions to my fancy. I formed innumerable prospects of felicity, and each more ravishing ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... has become of him?" said Constance, with her comic impatience. "My dear Fleda! if my eyes cannot rest upon that development of elegance, the parterre is become a ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... you like to go into the flower-garden, the parterre? You shall see the roses—they have over-run everything, even the old paths are all covered with them. Or would you like the orchard better? I can only crawl into it on my hands and knees, the boughs ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... proud and happy man when, at the appointed hour, he looked down upon the parterre of youthful faces before him, thinking of the 'little gardens' in which he had hopefully and faithfully sowed good seed years ago, and from which this beautiful harvest seemed to have sprung. Mr March's fine old face shone with the serenest satisfaction, ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... been entwined for the lovers of song and sentiment. It is culled from Liverpool, (next to our own metropolis) the most literary city in the empire; but many of its flowers have been gathered from our metropolitan parterre. Thus, in addition to the respected names of Roscoe, Currie, and Shepherd, (of Liverpool), we have among the contributors those of Hemans, Bowring, Howitt, Opie, with Mitford, Montgomery, and Wiffen. The editorship has passed into different hands, and "the introduction of religious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... wall of some deep tidal pool, thickly studded with the long and slender stems of Tubularia, surmounted by the bright rose-coloured heads, is like the gay parterre of a garden. Equally beautiful is the dense growth of Campanularia, covering (as I have seen it in Plymouth Sound) large tracts of the rock, its delicate shoots swaying to and fro with each movement ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... gray stone with the rest, but in the style of the seventeenth century, and a good deal modernised upon that. A great plate-glass window looked out on the river in the east front, which projected nearly as far as did the Lady Chapel, the space between being, as before said, laid out in a formal parterre, with stone steps leading down ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe— Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That gave out, in return for the love-light, Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death— Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted By thee, and by the poetry of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... heroines of the past, converse not only with dramatic appropriateness, but with rhetorical force—with amplitude of thought and spontaneity of image. By the side of such a wonderful flower-show (as one of our poets said of a selection from a brother poet's lyrics), Lyttelton's trim parterre shows, no doubt, but dimly; nevertheless, to that accomplished nobleman there is due something more than the small credit of having been Landor's predecessor in this form of English composition. Of that form Lyttelton says, in the ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... guilty in the affair of the note. She had been very friendly to both the sisters of late; and when Clover carried in her album and asked for an autograph, she waxed quite sentimental and wrote, "I would not exchange the modest Clover for the most beautiful parterre, so bring it back, I pray thee, to your affectionate teacher, Marianne Nipson;" which effusion quite overwhelmed "the modest Clover," and called out the remark from Rose,—"Don't she wish she may get you!" Miss Jane said twice, "I shall miss you, Katy," a speech which, to quote Rose again, ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... chief source of revenue of Madame Grambeau, an old French lady, remarkable in many ways. She kept the stage-house hard by, with its neat picketed inclosure, its overhanging live-oak trees and small trim parterre, gay at this season with various annual flowers, scarce worth the cultivation, one would think, in that land of gorgeous perennial bloom. But Queen Margarets, ragged robins, variegated balsams, and tawny marigolds, have their associations, doubtless, to ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... ingenious industry, or rustic simplicity. Some of them were occupied in forming the shapeless stone into graceful embellishments for elegant houses, and others in disposing, with botanic taste, the fragrant parterre. After spending four very delightful days in this agreeable city, I bade adieu to my very worthy companion, captain W. C——, whose intention it was to spend some time here, and those friends, from whom ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... complexion was beautifully fair, with the slightest tint of carnation suffused over the cheek. Her lips! sweet lips! "that make us sigh even to have seen such." Her glossy hair, which was bound with a kalemkeir or painted handkerchief, representing a whole parterre of flowers, fell in loose curls upon her shoulders, and down her back: she wore a short black velvet jacket, embroidered with gold lace; trowsers of sky blue silk; an under-jacket of pink crape, ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... points of the compass by 183 low long steps, very massively overlaid with smooth molten gold—not forming a continuous flight, but broken into threes and fives, sixes and nines, with landings between the series, these from the top looking like a great terraced parterre of gold. It is thus an Assyrian palace in scheme: only that the platform has steps on all sides, instead of on one. The platform-top, from its edge to the golden walls of the house, is a mosaic consisting of squares of the glassiest clarified gold, and squares of the glassiest jet, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... eyes to the patch of sky where her son had passed in his shining metal sarcophagus. Sirius blossomed there, blue-white and beautiful. She raised her eyes still higher—and beheld the vast parterre of Orion with its central motif of vivid forget-me-nots, its far-flung blooms of Betelguese and Rigel, of Bellatrix and Saiph ... And higher yet—and there flamed the exquisite flower beds of Taurus and Gemini, there burgeoned the riotous ...
— Star Mother • Robert F. Young
... a grin of happiness, Pinchas stumbled through the dim parterre, barking his shins at almost every step. Arrived at the orchestra, he found himself confronted by a chasm. He wheeled to the left, to where the stage-box, shrouded ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... is also a fine plant: when cultivated in a moist soil its beautiful yellow flowers afford a pleasing accompaniment to the flower border and parterre in the spring of the year. It is easily raised by parting ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... exhibit in the fullness of their splendor the most luxurious and extravagant women in the world. And it was filled tonight from coifed and jewelled orchestra to highest balcony, where plainer people with possibly jewelled souls clung like flies. Not a box was empty. Clavering's glance swept the parterre, hoping it would be occupied for the most part by the youngest set, less likely to be startled by the resemblance of his guest to the girl who had sat among their grandmothers when the opera house was new. But there ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... but subscribed for Le Figaro), and as she knew Gisela to be a member of her own class, the new connection was harmonious; and Heloise at last experienced something like real liberty in the tiny garden house of the parterre apartment of Gisela Doering on ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... less gayly-dressed cousin tends in some sense to commend him the less to you, since we all like the homage of the "inferior animals," birds or voters. You half dislike the independence of the robin, who is equally at home in the parterre or the forest, on the gravel-walk or in the upper air. On the other you have more hold. He is rarely seen higher than twenty feet above ground, and is strictly an appendage of the shrubbery and the orchard. Even in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... dollars; in Rome, Florence or Munich I could live like a prince on half the sum. I am paying apparently forty-five thousand dollars each year for the veriest frills of existence—for geranium powder in my bath, for fifteen extra feet in the width of my drawing room, for a seat in the parterre instead of the parquet at the opera, for the privilege of having a second motor roll up to the door when it is needed, and that my wife may have seven new evening dresses each winter instead of two. And in reality these luxuries mean nothing to me. I do not want them. I am not a whit ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... caparisoned horses, formed a strange contrast in the middle of the night with the melancholy and almost funereal disappearance of the two shadows of Aramis and Porthos. Athos went towards the house; but he had hardly reached the parterre, when the entrance gate appeared in a blaze; all the flambeaux stopped and appeared to enflame the road. A cry was heard of "M. le Duc de Beaufort"—and Athos sprang towards the door of his house. But the duke had already alighted from his horse, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... it, without a border or parterre, unvisited, and left alone, the orchard has acquired an atmosphere of peace and stillness, such as grows up in woods and far-away lonely places. It is so commonplace and unpretentious that passers-by do not notice it; it is merely a corner of meadow dotted with apple trees—a place that ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... including a fleet of gondolas to remind the queen-mother of her Italian days—the ancestors perhaps of the solitary gondola which to-day floats idly by the river-bank just before the grand entrance to the chateau. From parterre and balustrade, and from the clipt yews of the ornamental garden, fairy lamps burned forth and dwindled away into dim infinity, as the long lines of soft light gradually lost themselves in the forest. It was a grand affair and idyllic in its ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... more could be said, I saw Monsieur de Lavedan and the Vicomtesse approaching hurriedly across the parterre. The Vicomte's brow was black with what might have appeared anger, but which I rightly ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... and full of humour and frankness, and there was a quaint decorative style in all the tableaux and in the actors' movements that made me think rather of Persian figures in decorations than of India. There was a parterre and a wide gallery, in which we got back seats; the audience were all men and well-dressed, and laughed heartily at the points. These I was fortunate enough to have most patiently described to me by ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... visited the house a few days since, before the arrival of the governor, and was delighted with the splendid taste displayed in the fresco of the ceiling, the stucco of the walls, and indeed with every article of furniture with which the rooms were supplied. On the parterre, or lower roof, was a little gem of a garden, with raised beds, blooming with beautiful plants and flowers, while in the middle was a fountain and on each side a miniature arbor of grapes. Really, nothing could be more charming ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... Lady Nora," says the goddess Flora, "I've many a rich and bright parterre; In Brady's towers there's seven more flowers, But you're the fairest lady there: Not all the county, nor Ireland's bounty, Can projuice a treasure that's ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... grander than the bird's-eye view of the garden of the Tuileries on the evening of this auspicious day, the grand parterre, encircled by illuminated colonnades from arch to arch of which were festooned garlands of rose-colored lights; the grand promenade outlined by columns, above which stars glittered; the terraces on each ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... rendering some entirely new broderies, with which she produces great effect, but not in the same way as Paganini. Perhaps the cause lies in this, that hers is a smaller genre. She seems to exhale the perfume of a fresh bouquet of flowers over the parterre, and, now caresses, now plays with her voice; but she rarely moves to tears. Radziwill, on the other hand, thinks that she sings and acts the last scene of Desdemona in Othello in such a manner that nobody can refrain from weeping. To-day I asked her if she would sing ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... fountains, blocks of carven marble, fluted pillars uprearing antique temples, vases and urns in unexpected places, bridges of stone, bridges of wood, arbours and statues, and a flood of flowers everywhere, new flowers, rare flowers, parterre after parterre of flowers. Indeed, the roses bloom at Malmaison. It is youth, youth untrammeled and advancing, trundling a country ahead of it as though it were a hoop. Laughter, and spur janglings in tessellated vestibules. Tripping ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... "Spectator." "The music of the French," he says, "is indeed very properly adapted to their pronunciation and accent, as their whole opera wonderfully favors the genius of such a gay, airy people. The chorus in which that opera abounds gives the parterre frequent opportunities of joining in concert with the stage. This inclination of the audience to sing along with the actors so prevails with them that I have sometimes known the performer on the stage to do no more in a celebrated ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... heather pined amidst the heaven's own dew, Think ye the parterre's wasting heat its freshness could renew? And thus, 'mid shady glens and streams, was my young life begun, And now, my frame exhausted sinks ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... No Union Jack Floats on the Stables at the back! No Toffs escorting Ladies fair Perambulate the Gay Parterre. A 'Scutcheon hanging lozenge-wise And draped in crape appals his eyes Upon the mansion's ample door, To which he ...
— More Peers Verses • Hilaire Belloc
... Briscoe's rejoinder, and until then Lillian had not noticed the employ of her hostess. The gardener was engaged in the removal of the more delicate ornamental growths about the porte-cochere and parterre to the shelter of the flower-pit, for bright chill weather and killing frosts would ensue on the dispersal of the mists. Mrs. Briscoe herself was intent on withdrawing certain hardier potted plants merely from the verge of the veranda ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... brother, and master, and lord, and king, Though vice's roses and raptures did not spring In thy poetic garden's trim parterre; Though thou wert fond of sunshine and sweet air, More than of kisses, that burn, and bite, and sting; Some living love our England for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... announced the opera for the ensuing evening. Scarcely had this subsided, when a buzz ran through the house; at first subdued, but gradually getting louder—extending from the boxes to the balcone—from the balcone to the parterre—and finally even to the galleries. Groups of people stood upon the benches, and looked fixedly in one part of the house; then changed and regarded as eagerly ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... in the parterre, near Joseph. There was a row of seats slightly elevated and made of common plank, called loges; one of these nearest the stage was adorned by a golden eagle, from which some pitiful drapery was suspended; this was called the king's loge, but, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... another of the lesser poets, was unfortunate in having Dr. Johnson for his biographer. It is hard to conceive of a man who would show less of tenderness for an elaborate parterre of flowers, or for a poet who affectedly parted his gray locks on one side of his head, wore a crimson waistcoat, and warbled in anapaestics about kids and shepherds' crooks. Only fancy the great, snuffy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... with curved walks and ornamented ground.*** On the Lachlan under lofty mounds of earth, seats being made around them. On the Murrumbidgee and Murray the graves are covered with well thatched huts containing dried grass for bedding and enclosed by a parterre of a particular shape, like the inside of a whale-boat.**** On the Darling, as above stated, the graves are in mounds* covered with dead branches and limbs of trees, and are surrounded by a ditch, which here we found encircled by a fence of dead ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... of simple note, Who by her side struts in a herald's coat; The tulip, idly glaring to the view, Who, though no clown, his birth from Holland drew; 250 Who, once full dress'd, fears from his place to stir, The fop of flowers, the More of a parterre; The woodbine, who her elm in marriage meets, And brings her dowry in surrounding sweets; The lily, silver mistress of the vale; The rose of Sharon, which perfumes the gale; The jessamine, with which the queen of flowers, To charm her god, adorns his favourite ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... cloudy, and the water was rushing over Little Holland. We did not get indoors without wetting our feet. After drinking a parting glass I shook his hand heartily, bade him cheer up, and said that study would soon put him in the parterre of pianists. He looked gloomy, and nodded good-night. I went to my room. As the water was likely to invade the cellar and even the ground floor, the bedrooms were all on the second floor. I soon got to my bed, for I was tired, and the sadness of this strange household, the moaning ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... that morning was by no means light, for Laura was fond of pictures, in a frivolous amateurish kind of way; and she ran from one canvas to another, like a fickle-minded bee that is bewildered by the myriad blossoms of a boundless parterre. But she fixed upon a picture which she said she preferred to anything she had ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the Queen Marie Antoinette, on whose towering curls clustered tufts of white plumes; or else diminutive men-of-war unfurled the net-work of their sails; or else, for variety's sake, on that royal head was arranged a garden, a parterre adorned with flowers and fruits, with ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... and they were noting, with little mean smiles, how he had shown himself self-conscious while there was talk of some honorary degree-giving or other; it would, I have no doubt, please him greatly if his work were to flower into a crimson gown in some Academic parterre. Why shouldn't it? But that is incidental vanity at the worst; he goes on anyhow. Most ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells |
