"Plumy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to-night No sweet young voice is ringing, And through its silent rooms no light. Free, childish step is springing. The wild winds rave O'er baby's grave Where plumy pines are rocking And crossed at rest On marble breast The hands ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... living thing to pass, unless it might be the soft and silent owl that turned its head almost to dislocation in watching us, ere it flitted vaguely away. Farther on, the deep, cool forest was luxurious with plumy ferns; we trod on moss-covered roots, finding the emerald steps so soft we scarcely knew that we were ascending; every breath was aromatic; there seemed infinite healing in every fragrant drop that fell upon our ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... was so striking-looking, from her long, graceful head to her plumy tail, that Toni could not resist a second look; and the dog's master had a good view of the girl whom he guessed to be the young mistress of Greenriver, the house which he had often admired as he passed by in his boat during ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surf is in my ear; I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud-rack; I can feel the spirit of its woody solitudes, I hear the plashing of the brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... beside the lilac bushes, her arms still uplifted and fingers outstretched as if beckoning to the plumy sprays above her Head. "Isn't it queer how such things will happen when if I'd been trying to make poetry in my dairy I couldn't have thought of those words for an hour? I guess it was the lilacs that did it. ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... sat on the fence, and, as they watched, a huge collie dog, with a beautiful plumy tail, came ...
— Brother and Sister • Josephine Lawrence
... filled with waving plumes in every variety of attitude and motion. (See Frontispiece.) The bird itself is nearly as large as a crow, and is of a rich coffee brown colour. The head and neck is of a pure straw yellow above and rich metallic green beneath. The long plumy tufts of golden orange feathers spring from the sides beneath each wing, and when the bird is in repose are partly concealed by them. At the time of its excitement, however, the wings are raised vertically over the back, the head is bent down and stretched out, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... leading from Calebasse over long meadowed levels two thousand feet above the ocean, into the woods of La Couresse, where it begins to descend slowly, through deep green shadowing, by great zigzags. Then, at a turn, you find yourself unexpectedly looking down upon a planted valley, through plumy fronds of arborescent fern. The surface below seems almost like a lake of gold-green water,—especially when long breaths of mountain-wind set the miles of ripening cane a-ripple from verge to verge: the illusion is marred only by the road, fringed ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... creek they bounded, Pearl and old Nap, and up the other hill where the silver willows grew so tall they were hidden in them. The goldenrod nodded its plumy head in the breeze, and the tall Gaillardia, brown and yellow, flickered unsteadily ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... a boy's dissembled face; That when, amidst the fervor of the feast, The Tyrian hugs and fonds thee on her breast, And with sweet kisses in her arms constrains, Thou may'st infuse thy venom in her veins." The God of Love obeys, and sets aside His bow and quiver, and his plumy pride; He walks Iulus in his mother's sight, And in the ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... it shaved close. Katy made a pretty silk-lined cap for her to wear, but the girls at school laughed at the cap, and that troubled Johnnie very much. Then, when the new hair grew, thick and soft as the plumy down on a bird's wing, a fresh affliction set in, for the hair came out in small round rings all over her head, which made her look like a baby. Elsie called her "Curly," and gradually the others adopted the name, till at last nobody used any other except the servants, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... reminding me, by the lightness and buoyancy of their movements, of a flock of white plumy birds. Some of them threw themselves in half-reclining positions on the sofas and ottomans: some bent over the tables and examined the flowers and books: the rest gathered in a group round the fire: all talked in a low but clear tone which seemed ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... it was to see the sky paley blue through the groinery of countless date-bearers, very patriarchs of their kind, so numerous and old, and of such mighty girth, so tall, so serried, so wide of branch, each branch so perfect with fronds, plumy and waxlike and brilliant, they seemed enchanters enchanted. Here was the grass coloring the very atmosphere; there the lake, cool and clear, rippling but a few feet under the surface, and helping the trees to their long life in old age. Did the Grove of Daphne excel this one? And the palms, as ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... of us to help you, you'd better get things started yourself,' said old Mr. Skunk, carefully combing out his big, plumy tail. ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... of the presence and prosperity of the Templers, the spirit of the scene through which we passed was essentially Oriental. The straggling hedges of enormous cactus, the rows of plumy eucalyptus-trees, the budding figs and mulberries, gave it a semi-tropical touch and along the highway we encountered fragments of the leisurely, dishevelled, dignified East: grotesque camels, pensive donkeys carrying incredible loads, flocks ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... entirely glorious sunset, unmatched in beauty since that at Abbeville,—deep scarlet, and purest rose, on purple gray, in bars; and stationary, plumy, sweeping filaments above in upper sky, like 'using up the brush,' said Joanie; remaining in glory, every moment best, changing from one good into another, (but only in color or light—form steady,) for half an hour full, and ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... its rivers, whereon now no sail glinted in the sunlight, no tug puffed vehemently with plumy jets of steam, no liner idled at anchor or nosed its ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... place, full of scent of flowers and sound of fountains for the burning afternoons; a belvedere tower also, on which to seek a breeze on stifling nights, when the very stars seem faint for heat, and the dim plumy heads of cypress and poplar are motionless against the misty blue sky. In front a broad terrace, whence to look down towards the beloved city, a vague fog of roofs in the distance; on the side and behind, elaborate garden walks walled with high walls of box ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... plumy curtaine she doth draw, A chrystall mirror sparkles in thy breast, In which her fresh aspect when as she saw, And then her ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... streaming back Unto the steadfast dwelling of their joy. Faces had they of flame, and wings of gold; The rest was whiter than the driven snow. And as they flitted down into the flower, From range to range, fanning their plumy loins, Whisper'd the peace and ardour, which they won From that soft winnowing. Shadow none, the vast Interposition of such numerous flight Cast, from above, upon the flower, or view Obstructed aught. For, through the universe, Wherever merited, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... back, hat pulled over his upper face, he had been lying motionless there, for the best part of an hour. Now, stretching, he got to his feet in leisurely fashion, brushed perfunctorily at his rumpled clothes, and turned his steps toward the double line of plumy Australian pines which bordered the lane between hotel grounds ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... along he picked a large bunch of the wayside flowers as an offering to Phoebe—purple knapweed and betony, the plumy dead-pink heads of hemp-agrimony, and tufts of strong yellow fleabane, all squeezed together in his hot little hand. The air seemed alive with butterflies and moths, white and brown and red, and clouds of the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... back much later and put another pussy in from behind the portrait. I woke some time in the night, oh, hours after, because the moonlight was 'way across the room, and sitting in it, washing its face, was the prettiest little half-grown kitten. It was a perfect beauty, white with a plumy tail. I spoke to it very softly so as not to wake either of you, and it looked at me and purred but would not come. I watched it chase its tail for a little and then it jumped in a big chair and ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... into which looked the library, dining-room, and front hall, as well as several of the upper chambers. It was designed to be closed in with glass, to serve as a conservatory in winter; and meanwhile we had filled it with splendid plumy ferns, taken up out of the neighbouring wood. In the centre was a fountain surrounded by stones, shells, mosses, and various water-plants. We had bought three little goldfish to swim in our basin; and the spray of it, as it rose in the air and rippled back into the water, ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... body was so slight, It seemed she could have floated in the sky, And with the angelic choir made symphony; But in her cheek's rich tinge, and in the dark Of darkest hair and eyes, she bore a mark Of kinship to her generous mother-earth, The fervid land that gives the plumy palm-trees birth. ...
— How Lisa Loved the King • George Eliot
... Greece, Italy and Spain, laid like pieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer to them, with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing softly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed among masses of laurel, and orange and plumy palm, that abate with their grey-green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of the ledges of porphyry sloping under lucent sand. Then let us pass farther towards the north, until we see the orient colors ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... going to the school I like best," he answered, waving a plumy spray of asters as if pointing out the lovely autumn world about them, full of gay hues, ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... pavement with their coursers' feet: The greedy sight might there devour the gold Of glittering arms, too dazzling to behold: 450 And polish'd steel, that cast the view aside, And crested morions, with their plumy pride. Knights, with a long retinue of their squires, In gaudy liveries march, and quaint attires. One laced the helm, another held the lance: A third the shining buckler did advance. The courser paw'd the ground with restless feet, And snorting ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the valley from the north. The snow-horses went racing over the wrinkled ice, over the Don Flats, and over the marsh toward the lake, white, for they were driven snow, but on them, scattered dark, were riding plumy fragments of partridge ruffs—the famous rainbow ruffs. And they rode on the winter wind that night, away and away to the south, over the dark and boisterous lake, as they rode in the gloom of his Mad Moon flight, riding and ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... paler, a bit tighter than usual; he was only a trifle slower and more fastidious in his speech. It was midnight when he left Clifford peacefully slumbering in somebody's arm-chair, with a long suede glove dangling in his hand and a plumy boa twisted about his neck to protect his throat from drafts. He walked through the hall and down the stairs, and found himself on the sidewalk in a quarter he did not know. Mechanically he looked up at the name of the street. The name was not familiar. He turned and steered his course ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... grand and forceful in their impression than those above Niagara. They are broken up into narrow channels by numerous bold and naked islands of trap. Through these the water roars, boils, and, striking projections, spouts upward in jets whose plumy top blows off in sheets of spray. It is tormented into whirlpools; it is combed into fine threads, and strays whitely over a rugged ledge like old men's hair; it takes all curves of grace and arrow-flights of force; it is water ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... followed through the yellow sunshine, attendant always on her caprice, ready for any sudden whim. So when she wheeled to the left and lifted her mare over a snake-fence, he was ready to follow; and together they tore away across a pasture, up a hill all purple with plumy bunch-grass, and forward to the edge of a gravel-pit, where she whirled her mare about, drew bridle, and flung up a warning hand just in time. His escape was narrower; his horse's hind hoofs loosened a section of undermined sod; the animal stumbled, sank back, strained with every muscle, and dragged ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... the swinging door between the pantry and the sitting room, and came in, a question in his bright eyes, his great plumy tail beating the floor as he lay down at Peter's side. Presently the dog laid his nose on Peter's knee and poured forth a faint sound that was not quite a whine, not quite a sigh, and rose restlessly, and went to the closed door of Alix's room, and pawed ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... at once, his plumy tail began to wave. Into his sad eyes sprang a flicker of warm friendliness. Unbidden—oblivious of everyone else—he trotted across to where the Mistress sat. He put one tiny white paw in her lap and stood thus, looking up lovingly into her face, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... think the world is nothing else; troops, societies, hierarchies—S.T.C., a supreme hierarch; look at his face; think of meeting him at moonlight between Stowey and Alfoxden, like a great white owl, soft and plumy, with eyes ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Rushbrooke Grange under the guidance of Mrs. Honeybone, the old housekeeper; but Esther perversely insisted upon seeing the garden at any rate, giving as her excuse that the Rector would like them to pay the visit. By now it was a pink and green May dusk; the air was plumy with moths' wings, heavy with ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... classical enrichment. But the Gothic fullness of thought is not therefore left without expression; at the edge of each leaf is an animal, first a cicala, then a lizard, then a bird, moth, serpent, snail—all different, and each wrought to the very life—panting—plumy—writhing—glittering—full of breath and power. This harmony of classical restraint with exhaustless fancy, and of architectural propriety with imitative finish, is found throughout all the fine periods of the Italian Gothic, opposed to the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... School of Instruction at the back of the Western Front set in a valley of green meadows bordered by files of plumy poplars and threaded through by a silver ribbon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... ear, And Mr. Walpole's pretty dear. He laughs and cries with mirth or spleen; He does not speak, but thinks, 'tis plain. One knows his little Guai's as well As if he'd little words to tell. Coil'd in a heap, a plumy wreathe, He sleeps, you hardly hear him breathe. Then he's so nice, who ever saw A drop that sullied his sofa? His bended leg!-what's this but sense?- Points out his little exigence. He looks and points, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... iron brow There speeds the fruitful crooked plow; While on the soft west wind come odors Of plumy pine and ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... both purple and white, and golden bushes of citisus or Cape broom, load the air with fragrance. By the side of every "spruit" or brook one sees clumps of tall arum lilies filling every little water-washed hollow in the brook, and the ferns which make each ditch and water-course green and plumy have a separate shady beauty of their own. This is all in Nature's own free, open garden, and when the least cultivation or care is added to her bounteous luxuriance a magnificent garden for fruit, vegetables ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... Stig, And hither from Sonderbrook rides he; Each plumy swain in his galloping train Is like a bonny grey ...
— Marsk Stig - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... brim pointed ambitiously skyward. Stout boots completed the costume criticised and laughed over by the merry maidens who yet stood in wholesome awe of the presence of the wearer. With what a wealth of gorgeous wild flowers and plumy ferns the pilgrims came laden on their return! Quoting from "Society in America," page 253, Miss Martineau says, "The scene was like what I had always fancied the Norway coast, but for the wild flowers, which grew ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... gown and Panama hat and the dusky Egyptian, whose dark skin and closely-swathed robes gave her the look of some Old Testament character, a look borne out by the surroundings of reed-fringed river and plumy, tufted palms. In the third photograph Iris was on horseback; but it was the fourth and last which brought the blood to Anstice's brow, made his heart beat quickly with an emotion in which delight, regret, wild happiness and over-mastering ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... bell-shaped flowers; a circle of wee pink toadstools, which indeed seemed fit for the elfin folk; a wild grapevine with a most delightfully arranged swing on which the two girls "teetered" away in great joy; shining pebbles, bits of rose-colored quartz, a forest of plumy ferns, and all such like things, over which the city child ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... in its old place; but it looked very beautiful in its Christmas dress. Beneath it lay a carpet of pure white. The snow was clustered in exquisite shapes upon its plumy branches; wrapping the tree top with its little cross shoots, as a white robe might wrap a figure with ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of the neighbouring isles, Bedarra, has less than a square mile of superficial area; the smallest but 4 or 5 acres. The smaller are made up of confused masses of granite, for the most part so overgrown with fig trees, plumy palms, milkwoods, umbrella-trees, quandongs, eugenias, hibiscus bushes, bananas and lawyer vines, as to be unexplorable without a scrub-knife; for the soil among the rocks is soft and spongy, the purest of vegetable ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... man he saw was the grandest-looking man he had ever seen. Indeed, he looked more like a bird than a man—a big bird with a big black crest. He was very tall. His feet were broad and white, like the feathered feet of some plumy bird, his legs were bare and brown and hairy. He was clothed in many colours. He had fur in front, which swung as he walked, and silver and shining stones about him. He held his head very high and from it drooped great black plumes. ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... common pretty Purple-fringed Orchid, whose dense cylindrical spikes of plumy blossoms occasionally empurple whole marshes, we have an arrangement quite similar to the H. orbicularis just described, with the exception that the pollen-pouches are almost parallel, and not noticeably spread at the base (Fig. 11). In this case the ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... The plumy helmet, and the martial mien, Might dignify Minerva's awful charms; But more resistless far the Idalian queen— Smiles, graces, gentleness, her ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... irregularly and at various angles, there is a tendency in all to stoop less and less as they near the top of the tree. This structure, typified in the simplest possible terms at c, Fig. 17., is common to all trees, that I know of, and it gives them a certain plumy character, and aspect of unity in the hearts of their branches, which are essential to their beauty. The stem does not merely send off a wild branch here and there to take its own way, but all the branches share in one great fountain-like impulse; each has a curve ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Mamie," came another loud hail from up the path toward the house and down came the General at top speed, with a plumy setter frisking in his wake. "Aunt Viney says for you to come there to her this minute. They is a-going to be the party and it's right by the Bible to have it, some for Mr. Mark, too. Tobe Poteet said 'shoo' when I told him he couldn't come, 'cause they wasn't ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in Siargao, that the earthquakes need not shake them down, but built, in this case, upon the ground. A man to whom even the snakes of the forest were submissive, as they were to this man, had no need to perch in trees, as the rest of us must do, in order to sleep in safety. Above the house the plumy tops of a group of great palm trees waved in the air. Birds, more beautiful than any I had ever seen on the island, flirted their brilliant feathers in the trees around the house, and in the vines which laced the tops of the palm trees together a troop of monkeys was chattering. ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... haughty maidens used to be, In pride of plume, where plumy Death had trod, Trailing their gorgeous velvets wantonly, Most unmeet pall, over the holy sod; There, gentle stranger, thou may'st only see Two sombre Peacocks. Age, with sapient nod Marking the spot, still tarries to declare ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... ferns tied by a little wreath of pansies; nothing could be more beautiful. The third was a fantastic mixture of pine-tassels and acorns. I thought it quite ugly, but Nat insisted on it that it would be pretty for a summer muslin; and so it was the next year, when it was worn by everybody, the little plumy pine-tassels of a bright green (which didn't wash at all), and the acorns all tumbling about on your lap, all sides up ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... through the rippling daisies. Sweet and clear her voice calls father and brother, And one whose name her shy lips will not utter. But a chorus of leaves and grasses speaks her heart And tells his name: the birches flutter by the wall; The wild cherry-tree shakes its plumy head And whispers his name; the maple Opens its rosy lips and murmurs his name; The marsh-marigold sends the rumor Down the winding stream, and the blue flag Spread the gossip to the lilies in the lake: All Nature's eyes and tongues conspire In the unfolding ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... exclaimed he whom she addressed, in the accents of wonder. "It is impossible!—I watched her green mantle —I watched her plumy bonnet as I saw her hurried from the field, and felt my own inability to follow to the rescue; nor did force or exertion altogether leave me till the waving of the robe and the dancing of the feathers were lost to my eyes, and all hope of ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... tea-rose buds at the bosom, and a ruche, reconciled Meg to the display of her pretty, white shoulders, and a pair of high-heeled silk boots satisfied the last wish of her heart. A lace handkerchief, a plumy fan, and a bouquet in a shoulder holder finished her off, and Miss Belle surveyed her with the satisfaction of a little girl with a ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... rank in glory lie the transverse, plumy bars; Tranquil beauty rules the union which disorder ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... wide world so fills the mind with awe and admiration. Description may convey an idea of the height and breadth[129]—the vast body of water[130]—the profound abyss—the dark whirlpools—the sheets of foam[131]—the plumy column of spray[132] rising up against the sky—the dull, deep sound that throbs through the earth, and fills the air for miles and miles with its unchanging voice[133]—but of the magnitude of this idea, and the impression, stamped upon the senses by the reality, it is vain ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... to his crew, that sat consulting, brought Joyless triumphals of his hop't success, Ruin, and desperation, and dismay, Who durst so proudly tempt the Son of God. 580 So Satan fell and strait a fiery Globe Of Angels on full sail of wing flew nigh, Who on their plumy Vans receiv'd him soft From his uneasie station, and upbore As on a floating couch through the blithe Air, Then in a flowry valley set him down On a green bank, and set before him spred A table of Celestial Food, Divine, Ambrosial, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the weight of her fur tippet, the pale face under the plumy hat took an unusual pink bloom; her eyes shone with a moist radiance. Rupert, glancing up at her, as, bent upon one knee, he sought for stray violets amid the thick green leaves, thought it was thus a maiden looked who ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... nicely!" Harriet, always happiest in the water, was sitting on the edge of the float, with her feet idly splashing. A glorious September sun blazed down upon the water, there was absolute silence up and down the curving shore. Above the plumy tops of the trees, rising abruptly from the beach with its weather-burned bath houses, the gables and porches of the new home showed here and there. There were other country mansions scattered up and down beside the blue waters of the Sound, but the Carters ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... with its booming—the great chestnut-tree under which they played at houses—their own little river, the Ripple, where the banks seemed like home, and Tom was always seeing the water-rats, while Maggie gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds, which she forgot and dropped afterward—above all, the great Floss, along which they wandered with a sense of travel, to see the rushing spring-tide, the awful Eagre, come up like a hungry monster, or to see the Great Ash which had once wailed and groaned like a man—these ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... and plumy?" she asked, as she took the bunch he offered and laid the purple flowers against the white ones she held in her hand. "These are so much darker than Mrs. Mayberry's ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... still endured; but it had already changed from gold to silver, and was changing from silver to gray. The long plumy shadows of the one or two trees in the garden faded more and more upon a dead background of dusk. In the sharpest and deepest shadow, which was the entrance to the house by the big French windows, Rosamund ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... of a mother who is forcing herself to be cheerful in the face of danger, for the peace of those she loves. Laodice understood the tender deception and when a sharp turn of the street cut off the sight of the plumy trees of the garden, she covered ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... mem!" said the maid and Mistress Blatherwick who was close at hand, came; to which Maggie humbly but confidently making her request had it as kindly granted, and followed her to the barn to fill her pock with the light plumy covering of the husk of the oats, the mistress of Stonecross helping her the while and talking to her as she did so—for the soutar and his daughter were favourites with her and her husband, and they had not seen either of them ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... The plumy helmet and the martial mien Might dignify Minerva's awful charms; But more resistless far the Idalian queen— Smiles, graces, gentleness, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... borders nurse the fragrant wreath, My fountains murmur, and my zephyrs breathe; Slow slides the painted snail, the gilded fly Smooths his fine down, to charm thy curious eye; On twinkling fins my pearly nations play, 20 Or win with sinuous train their trackless way; My plumy pairs in gay embroidery dress'd Form with ingenious bill the pensile nest, To Love's sweet notes attune the listening dell, And Echo sounds her ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... through th' advancing year, To see unnumbered growing forms appear; What leafy-life from Earth's broad bosom rise! What insect myriads seek the summer skies! What scaly tribes in every streamlet move; What plumy people sing in every grove! All with the year awaked to life, delight, and love. Then names are good; for how, without their aid, Is knowledge, gain'd by man, to man convey'd? But from that source shall all our pleasures flow? Shall ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... his idea. His mood was such that talking to any person to whom he could not unburden himself would be wearisome. However, before he could put any inclination into effect, the young man saw from amid the trees a bright light shining, the rays from which radiated like needles through the sad plumy foliage of the yews. Its direction was from the centre of ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... thy mighty herds, Tame and free-livers; Doubt not, thy music too In the deep rivers; And the whole plumy flight Warbling the day and night— Up at the gates of light, See, the ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... picture, half of the swans are a plumy raft for her, and row her through the air with their sweeping wings. Another relay, more tired, perhaps, make a canopy over her, and fan her as they fly. Their outstretched gaze sees only the island. But the princess, as she lies facing backward, sees the danger. In despairing, motionless ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... white shawl wrapped about her shoulders. Her shining hair was gathered into a satiny brown coil at the back of her head and pinned with a silver arrow, while a few naturally curling locks lay lightly on her forehead. The dark, moss-grown rock was behind her; the softly waving plumy boughs of the pine tree above her, a carpet of tender green beneath ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... toned by the graces of Eastern civilization, were a strange contrast to the shaggy, elfish, ruddy-faced throng about them. This Christmas Eve they were telling the monks wonderful stories of the Holy Land; its beautiful, vine-clad hills; its tropical, luscious fruits; its towering, plumy palms and hoary cedars; the long lines of caravans that wound over the silent, pathless deserts to bring to its cities the riches of Oriental commerce; the palaces and heathen temples of those cities, and the traditional glory of the Temple, ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... was taken off when used.[3] At a short distance from the beech, inland, was a lake of some extent, nearly surrounded by lofty, densely-wooded hills. Some wild ducks were seen, and a gun being fired at them, the report raised numbers of the 'plumy tribe,' filling the air with their screams, alarmed at a noise to which they had been unaccustomed. Several native graves were observed, which were very neat; a stone was placed at the head and the grave neatly covered over by plaited sections of the cocoa-nut ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... ground; the bamboo, shooting to the height of sixty feet and upward, with branches gracefully drooping; the generous, kind banana; fairy forests of ferns of a thousand forms; tall grasses, with their pale and plumy blossoms; the many-trunked and many-rooted banyan; the boh, sacred to Buddha,—all combine to form a garden that Adam might have dressed and kept, and ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... attractiveness of drooping foliage, soft turf, and star-sprinkled, violet sky. In full view, and lit up by the reflected radiance flung out from the dome, a rushing waterfall made sonorous surgy music of its own as it tumbled headlong into a rocky recess overgrown with lotus-lilies and plumy fern,—here and there, small, white and gold tents or pavilions glimmered invitingly through the shadows cast by the great magnolia trees, from whose lovely half-shut buds balmy odors crept deliciously through the warm air. The sound of sweet pipes ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... elms; that lane, where the wild bank, clothed with fern, and tufted with furze, and crowned by rich berried thorn, and thick shining holly on the one side, seems to vie in beauty with the picturesque old paling, the bright laurels, and the plumy cedars, on the other;—down that shady lane, until the sudden turn brings us to an opening where four roads meet, where a noble avenue turns down to the Great House; where the village church rears its modest spire from amidst its venerable yew trees: and where, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... as she drew a long white glove over her elbow, her face shadowed by her plumy hat, "you remember you said it might be worse, and I insisted it couldn't be? You were right, ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... glasses," replied Gethryn, giving them to her again, at the same time opening her big plumy fan and waving it to and fro ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... of the primeval pine forest having been preserved, the trees had attained gigantic height, thrusting their plumy heads heavenward, as their lower limbs died; and year after year the mellow brown carpet of reddish straw deepened, forming a soft safe nidus for the seeds that sprang up and now gratefully embroidered it with masses of golden rod, starry white asters, and tall, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... curving in accordance with its position, which was a beautiful consideration, and difficult to execute; not to mention that the same lion has short wings on its shoulders, with feathers so soft and plumy, that it seems almost incredible that the hand of a craftsman could have been able to imitate nature so closely. Besides this, he painted there a building that curves in a circular form after the manner of ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... walked through smiles That hung like lamps above their march, And lit their swart and straggling files, While bending elm and plumy larch Shaped into broad ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... with flowers that have been scattered to the tune of singing children's voices, while below the peaceful river floats out broadly; and far across its stream, over all the turfy terraces and above the plumy treetops that hide the arched and columned bases of its snowy splendor, the dome of the country's Capitol rises—a shining guardian of the slumbers of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... features of the landscape. Conspicuous on every hillside are the groves 'where the mango apples grow,' their mass of dense rounded foliage looking not unlike our maples, and giving a pleasant sense of home to the northern sojourner. The feathery bamboo, most gigantic of grasses, runs in plumy lines across the country. Around the negro cottages, here and there, rise groups of the cocoanut palms, giving, more than anything else, a tropical character to the landscape. On a distant eminence may perhaps be seen a lofty ceiba or cotton tree, its white trunk rising sixty ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... painted snail, the gilded fly Smooths his fine down, to charm thy curious eye; On twinkling fins my pearly nations play, Or win with sinuous train their trackless way; My plumy pairs, in gay embroidery dressed, Form with ingenious bill the pensile nest, To love's sweet notes attune the listening dell, And Echo sounds her ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... silence seemed cheerful there in the flecked sunlight. The spotted wood-gnats gyrated merrily, chased by dragon-flies; the shy wood-birds hopped from branch to twig, peering at us in friendly inquiry; a lithe, gray squirrel, plumy tail undulating, rambled serenely around the cage, ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... behind his sad face, and what distant scene his vacant eye was dreaming of. Were his thoughts with his heart, ten thousand miles away, beyond the billowy wastes of the Pacific? among the ricefields and the plumy palms of China? under the shadows of remembered mountain peaks, or in groves of bloomy shrubs and strange forest trees unknown to climes like ours? And now and then, rippling among his visions and his dreams, did ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... me that I remember something about Padua with a sort of romantic pleasure. There was a certain charm which I can dimly recall, in sauntering along the top of the old wall of the city, and looking down upon the plumy crests of the Indian-corn that nourished up so mightily from the dry bed of the moat. At such times I could not help figuring to myself the many sieges that the wall had known, with the fierce assault by day, the secret attack by night, the swarming foe upon the plains ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... upper edge of a bank overlooking a hill stream which was pouring noisily down in a flood made turgid by the rain, and the "rough bit of bog and boulder" was a sort of natural bridge across the torrent, formed by heaps of earth and rock, out of which masses of wet fern and plumy meadow-sweet sprang in tall tufts and garlands, which though beautiful to the eyes in day-time, were apt to entangle the feet in walking, especially when there was only the uncertain glimmer of the stars by which to grope one's way. Helmsley's ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... thus describes the courtship of Dendryphantes elegans: "While from three to five inches distant from her, he begins to wave his plumy first legs in a way that reminds one of a windmill. She eyes him fiercely, and he keeps at a proper distance for a long time. If he comes close she dashes at him, and he quickly retreats. Sometimes he becomes bolder, and when within ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... place on Buzzard's Bay she has fifteen cats, mostly Angoras, Persians, and coons, with several dogs. These cats follow her all about the place in a regular troop, and a very handsome troop they are, with their waving, plumy tails tipped gracefully over at the ends as if saluting their superior officer. Among the dogs is a spaniel named Gyp that is particularly friendly with the cats. There are plenty of hens on the farm, and one spring a couple of bantams were added to the stock. The cats immediately ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... as the dust of plumy fountains blowing Across the lanterns of a revelling night, The tiny leaves of April's earliest growing Powder the trees—so vaporously light, They seem to float, billows of emerald foam Blown by the South on its bright airy tide, Seeming less trees than things beatified, Come from the world of ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... down at the new pet, who wagged his plumy tail as if to deprecate the punishment of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... of the graves, something dark and wild with plumy tail slunk away into the shadows, and seemed a part of the place. The girl stopped a moment to gain courage in full sight of the graves, and the horse snorted, and stopped too, with his ears a-quiver, and ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... are rising. There is a rustling tumult of women's dresses, a shaking out of handkerchiefs, light gusts of laughter, and fragments of conversation. The handsome women move about like birds, with a plumy, elastic motion, waving their fans, smelling their bouquets, and listening through them to tones that are very low. The Prince of the house is every where, smiling, sinuous, dark ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the steadfast dwelling of their joy. Faces had they of flame, and wings of gold: The rest was whiter than the driven snow; And, as they flitted down into the flower, From range to range, fanning their plumy loins, Whispered the peace and ardor, which they won From that soft winnowing. Shadow none, the vast Interposition of such numerous flight Cast, from above, upon the flower, or view Obstructed aught. For, through the universe, Wherever merited, celestial light Glides freely, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... cheek the blush of beauty swims, And nerves Herculean bend her sinewy limbs; With frolic eye she views the affrighted throng, 190 And shakes the meadows, as she towers along, With playful violence displays her charms, And bears her trembling lovers in her arms. So fair THALESTRIS shook her plumy crest, And bound in rigid mail her jutting breast; 195 Poised her long lance amid the walks of war, And Beauty thunder'd from Bellona's car; Greece arm'd in vain, her captive heroes wove The chains of conquest with the ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... of course the skunk did not like it. He ruffled up his cold black nose, and elevated his bushy tail—his beautiful, plumy tail. I opened the door of his cage and, snatching the puppy, fled. The skunk was a wise and good animal, really a gentleman, if treated politely. He appreciated my efforts on his behalf. He forbearingly lowered his tail, composed his fur, and walked out of the cage and into ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... one passes into the barbaric splendor of a souk hung with innumerable plumy bunches of floss silk—skeins of citron yellow, crimson, grasshopper green and pure purple. This is the silk-spinners' quarter, and next to it comes that of the dyers, with great seething vats into which the raw ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... beautiful, passionate things, If plumy or plumeless—without, or with wings, Beware, lest ye break, in some hazardous hour, Your vials of wrath, ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... morning, when the sun rose yellow and bright, Bessie came into the woods with a basket and a trowel. It was nearly winter, and she knew that soon the snow would fall and cover all the pretty growing things. So she dug up, very carefully, roots of plumy fern and partridge berries with their leaves, and wintergreen and boxberry plants, to grow in her window-garden in the winter. She took the Violet too, bringing away so much of the earth around her roots that the little thing scarcely felt that she had been moved. As Bessie ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... realised the promise of its youth, a fate which happens to few trees in a forest. From its first majestic upward sweeping limbs to its tufted top reigned solemn and perpetual night. The wind scarcely swayed its dense and plumy branches. It merely turned up the silvery sides of the five-fingered clusters of needles which responded with a low melancholy voice like an aeolian harp, or those minor chords composed under its shade by my friend ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... com'st unwelcom'd by a smile of joy; To me! slow with'ring to that silent grave Where all is blank and dreary! Yet once more The Spring eternal of the soul shall dawn, Unvisited by clouds, by storms, by change, Radiant and unexhausted! Then, ye buds, Ye plumy minstrels, and ye balmy gales, Adorn your little hour, and give your joys To bless the fond world-loving traveller, Who, smiling, measures the long flow'ry path That leads to death! For to such wanderers Life is a busy, pleasing, cheerful dream, And the last hour unwelcome. ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... the horizon line a ball of smoke as black as your hat and the size of your hat, which meant a grenade of high explosives. Then right behind it would blossom a dainty, plumy little blob of innocent white, fit to make a pompon for the hat, and that, they told us, would be shrapnel. The German reply to the enemy's guns issued from the timbered verges of slopes at our right hand and our left; and these German shells, so far as we might ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... thing that if Alex had no other engagement, she was to take supper at the Wilburs' on Fridays. She stood before Miss Virginia pulling off her long gloves, looking indeed unusually handsome in a gown of pale gray and a plumy black hat, which she had made herself with a sort of ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... charming in repose. She was in a delightful green habit; she wore a plumy kind of hat; she rode an almost perfect little mare belonging to Lord Talgarth, and her big blue, steady eyes roved slowly round her as she went, seeing nothing. It was, in fact, the almost perfect little mare who first gave warning ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... "Aunt Plumy begs me to stay over Christmas, and I have consented, as I always dread the formal dinner with which my guardian celebrates ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... for he came a pace nearer and waved his plumy tail tentatively. For the dog she felt a glow of friendliness at once, but for the man she suddenly, and most unreasonably, of course, conceived one of her ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... On every hand the advancing season was giving promise of heightened activity. The dark, plumy foliage of the china trees was getting a golden edge. The burnished green of the great magnolias was spotted brilliantly with hundreds of bursting cones, red with their pendent seeds. Here and there, as the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... seriously. I don't want to be so aloof, but—I don't like to touch other people. It is rather horrid of me I suppose to be like those silky, plumy, luxurious Angora cats who never are civil to you and who always jump out of your arms at the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the garden. Bright yellow and scarlet dahlias bloomed around him; plumy lavender and rose colored asters nodded cheerfully in the chill breeze of this first of November. The water in the fountain rippled as musically as in those ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... and the pair started up Fifth Avenue. The day was a brave one; the sky was stuffed with plumy clouds and the rich colors of a reverberating sunset. The two healthy beings sniffed the crisp air, talked of themselves as only selfish young people can, and at Fifty-ninth street, Ellenora becoming tired, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... spite of looking as if he belonged to all the clubs, and, much to my delight, I saw one sitting on the eggs while the mother walked out and took the air. Ostriches and Arabs do women's work with an admirable disregard of Mrs. Grundy. Ostriches have an irresistible way of waving their lovely plumy wings, and one old fellow twenty-five years old actually imitates the dervishes. The keeper says to him, "Dance," and although he is about ten feet tall, he sits down with his scaly legs spread out on each side of him, and, shutting ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... (dentaria laciniata) is sometimes known as the pepper-root, and every school boy and girl living near the woods is familiar with the taste of its tubers and the appearance of its cross-shaped flowers. The plumy dicentra, or Dutchman's breeches, seems so feminine as to be grossly misnamed until we remember that it was first discovered in the Rip Van Winkle country. The wild ginger with its two large leaves and its queer little blossoms close to the ground is another ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... her fortune to win the affections of this man, to take her place, here among her old friends, as their leader and head, to entertain in the old house with the cupola, under the plumy maple and locust trees—? If Teddy might grow to a happy boyhood, here with Sally's children, and friendly, gentle little Ruth Frost might find a real mother in her father's ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... of the yellow saw-dust. No picture could possibly tell you the life story of yon big tree, the warrior of the woods who had beaten down all competitors and enemies and wore his purple cones like the tasseled honor badges of a soldier, with pendulous moving, plumy arms: yet to the eye of the Forester, the life history was there, in the fluted grooved columnar bark, in the knot scars where branches had been discarded to send the main trunk towering above its fellows for light and air, in ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... mentioned, and that he did draw a deep breath, and did look out of the window, set high up in the court house, and that he did see the elm trees covering a home which, despite all his perfidy and neglect was full of love for him—love that needed no high sleeves nor great plumy hats, nor twinkling silver bangles, nor jangling gold chatelaines, to make it beautiful. But let us make it of record and set it down here, in this instrument that the court rose, looked into the great brown eyes and the fair face, and seeing the rich, shameless mouth and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... sat, there came my cousin Dorothy to the porch to look for me, fanning her flushed face with a great, plumy fan, the warm odor of roses still clinging to ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... plumy feather fan to and fro, Sibyl looked across it at her companion, and answered in a ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... when Phyllis came to the castle with a big bunch of plumy purple lilac. She was earlier than usual, and it was not quite dark, and—wonder of wonders—the door of the castle was open. Still more wonderful, Sir Christopher ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... And once again When he met Hector singly, man to man, Not by your bidding, but the lottery's choice, His lot, that skulked not low adown i' the heap, A moist earth-clod, but sure to spring in air, And first to clear the plumy helmet's brim. Yes, Aias was the man, and I too there Kept rank, the 'barbarous mother's servile son.' I pity thee the blindness of that word. Who was thy father's father? A barbarian, Pelops, the Phrygian, if you trace him far! And what was Atreus, thine own father? One ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... horses were hitched to the mowing machine, and Peter drove out to the meadow. The plumy heads of the tall timothy swayed on their slender stalks as they bowed before the breeze that swept over the meadow, making it look in the sunshine like the rippling surface of ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... leather casque that guards the Fireman's brow, A bolder, sterner glance shines out than plumy crest can show; And oft shall ply the Fireman's axe, though rude and rough it be, Where sabre, lance, and bayonet, right ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... their ledge from a sky of misty blue, and she had thrown aside her hat, uncovering her thick waves of hair, blue-black in the hollows, with warm rusty edges where they took the light. Cicely dragged down a plumy spray of traveller's joy and wound it above her friend's forehead; and thus wreathed, with her bright pallour relieved against the dusky autumn tints, Justine looked like a wood-spirit who had absorbed into herself the last golden juices of ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... he'd been waked out of a nice dream and say: 'Hello, old coffee mill! What do you want to wake me up for when I'm trying to get a nap?' Then he would laugh a big laugh and make another leap, and lie down and pretend again, with his fine plumy tail ...
— How Mr. Rabbit Lost his Tail • Albert Bigelow Paine
... presently the dog came back with something in his mouth, which he laid down beside his master, and bolted off. It was only a rough wicker-basket which she had filled with damp plushy moss, and half-buried in it clusters of plumy fern, delicate brown and ashen lichens, masses of forest-leaves all shaded green with a few crimson tints. It had a clear woody smell, like far-off myrrh. The Doctor laughed as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... evidently not yet seen her and paused as if uncertain whether to advance. She stood in the open space beside the bench, just off the pathway leading from the gate to the house, along which he must advance should he decide to proceed farther. A pale, plumy spray of tamarisk intervened between them, otherwise he must have seen her. For some time he stood silent and motionless as if uncertain what to do, then he began to advance ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... gallant heart is strongly stirred By clink of plate or flight of bird, He has a plumy tail; At night he treads on stealthy pad As merry as Sir ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... little fellow. Joan starts to her feet in excitement. Darby does exactly as he had planned—makes a sudden clutch at the coveted prize. The object of her desire is really within her reach, Joan believes, and she shouts aloud in her delight. There is a flash of bead-like eyes, a waving of plumy tails, a scurry of flying feet, a chorus of queer, chattering cries, and, lo, the squirrels have disappeared, some up one tree, some up another—all except one, the very one which Darby desired to possess, and it scampered along the pathway, seeming too frightened to know where it ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... I went at once, and he came directly in, after a long stare at me, and a few wavings of his plumy tail. It was evidently the right place, and, following me into the parlor, he perched himself on the rug, blinked at the fire, looked round the room, washed his face, and then, lying down in a comfortable sprawl, he burst into a cheerful purr, as if ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... dog who came trotting after a carriage. The good creature stopped to say a friendly word in his dumb fashion, looking up at Bab with benevolent eyes, and poking his nose into Ben's hand before he bounded away with his plumy tail curled ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... lapped his new milk as usual at Uncle Roger's dairy door and then sat blandly on the flat stone before it, giving the world assurance of a cat, sleek sides glistening, plumy tail gracefully folded around his paws, brilliant eyes watching the stir and flicker of bare willow boughs in the twilight air above him. That was the last seen of him. In ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the still west saith, with plumy flames bestrewn; Heaven's body sapphire-clear, at stirless height of noon; The cloud where lightnings ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... eaves at Littleholme A latticed casement peeps above still gardens Into a crown of druid-solemn trees Upon a knoll as high as a small house, A shapely mound made so by nameless men Whose smoothing touch yet shows through the green hide. When the slow moonlight drips from leaf to leaf Of that sharp, plumy gloom, and the hour comes When something seems awaited, though unknown, There should appear between those leaf-thatched piles Fresh, long-limbed women striding easily, And men whose hair-plaits swing with ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... porcupine, was scornful of man and feared but one beast, the one who now advanced toward him along the wall. That long, silky fur, jet black save for two broad white stripes running down the back, and that plumy tail, could belong to but one creature. The skunk, returning from a neighborly visit to the Hermit's cabin, probably with a view to a meal of fat chicken, advanced with its usual air of owning the earth. This time the porcupine did not dispute the passage. Instead, he curled up and dropped to ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... a pretty woman, moving with graceful flirts of ruffling skirts; her clear-cut, nervous face, as delicately tinted as a shell, looked brightly from the plumy brim of a black hat at Mrs. Emerson in the window. Mrs. Emerson was glad to see her coming. She returned the greeting with enthusiasm, then rose hurriedly, ran into the cold parlour and brought out one of the best rocking-chairs. She was just in time, after drawing ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... that sail a silver sea, Caverned by plumy groves of sunny palm, Broke on my startled vision suddenly; When as but quickly parted, sweet and calm, That long forgot yet ever haunting psalm Floated from lips that flew to greet me home. A meteor flamed; I woke in rude alarm; Above me ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... Hector, high above the rest, Shakes his huge spear, and nods his plumy crest: In throngs around his native bands repair, And groves of lances ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... though his coloring was similar. A politely disposed person would have called him a retriever, and his curly back and general appearance might have carried this off, but for his tail, which, instead of being straight and rat-like, was as plumy as the Prince of Wales's feathers, and curled unblushingly over his back, sideways, like a pug's. "It was a good one to wag," his master said, and, apart from the question of high breeding, it was handsome, and Rufus himself seemed proud ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... breadth of prime The gentle airs of eve. His straw-decked thatch, where doves bask in the sun, And play, and hop, invites to sweeter rest Than golden halls of state Or beds of down afford. To him the plumy people Chatter and whistle on his And from his quiet hand Peck crumbs or peas ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... said the Princess; "flat miles on miles of slim pines melting into grayness, sunlight sifting through their plumy tops, with gray birds wheeling in flocks, or troops of red-headed woodpeckers, and underfoot nothing but needles and gray sand. Far ahead on every side the pines draw together, but where one walks they are wide apart, so that one seems always about to approach a forest and never finds ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... Gay birds' wings, plumy pampas grass, strings of wampum, and pretty work in beads, bark, and feathers, pleased the girls. Minerals, arrow-heads, and crude sketches interested the Professor; and when the box was empty, ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Trees' color,—a beautifully bright cinnamon-brown, which gives peculiar gayety to the forest, "making sunshine in the shady place"; also, their typical figure, which is a very lofty, straight, and branchless trunk, crowned almost at the summit by a mass of colossal gnarled boughs, slender plumy fronds, delicate thin leaves, and smooth cones scarce larger than a plover's egg. Perhaps the best idea of their figure may be obtained by fancying an Italian stone-pine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... The plumy people streak their wings with oil, To throw the lucid moisture trickling off, And wait th' approaching sign, to strike, at once, Into the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... conscious of a little pain at her heart, as she waited, following him with her eyes until the cavalcade was lost to view under the plumy shadows of the distant cypress-trees. Was it thus that kings should spend long summer days when there were rumors of discontent in the air—rumors definite enough to have reached the palace circle in mysterious undertones, quickly repressed when ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... taste still the sting of checkerberry and woodsy flavor of the fragrant birch. When fields of corn are shimmering in the sun, we know exactly how it would seem to run through those dusty aisles, swept by that silken drapery, and counselled in whispers from the plumy tops so far above our heads. The ground-sparrow's nest is not strange to us; no, nor the partridge's hidden treasure within the wood. We can make pudding-bags of live-forever, dolls' bonnets, "trimmed ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... their plumy leafage hung over the road from each side, meeting and overlapping in the center until they formed an archway so dense that the tropical sun now high in the heavens penetrated it only at intervals. At times the wagon sank ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... to her. Why in the world should she not cross the little north yard, step over the low hedge, and go into that lily-garden? She knew that it would be beautiful there. She looked forth into the crystalline light and the soft plumy shade,—she would go over into the Ware garden. With all this, there was no ulterior motive. She had seen the man who lived in the house, and she admired him as one from afar, but she was a girl innocent not only in fact, but in dreams. Of course she ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... he wrote; And he brushed up his coat; And he shook out his tail, which was plumy and fine: At first break of day He galloped away, At some ...
— The Nursery, May 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 5 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... in her silvery tones, looking at him now and then with her pretty, faint smile. The folds of the delicate mauve gown trailed over the rich carpet. She leant lazily back in her chair, waving a plumy fan, sometimes, with a soft, ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... downy seed-vessels, mingling quaint brown punctuation, and dusty tremors of dancing grain, with the bloom of the nearer fields; and casting a gossamered grayness and softness of plumy mist along their surfaces far away; mysterious evermore, not only with dew in the morning, or mirage at noon, but with the shaking threads of fine arborescence, each a little belfry ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... different dimensions; some hilly, divided into several peaks, and two or three hundred toises in length, others small, low, and like mere shoals. These islands divide the river into a number of torrents, which boil up as they break against the rocks. The jaguas and cucuritos with plumy leaves, with which all the islands are covered, seem like groves of palm-trees rising from the foamy surface of the waters. The Indians, whose task it is to pass the boats empty over the raudales, distinguish every shelf, and every rock, by a particular name. On entering from the south you find first ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... been given over to weeds, tin cans, rags, and broken dishes, she lavished loving care and made it the blooming, fragrant heart of her home. In the centre was a locust tree of lusty growth, plumy of foliage and brilliant of color; and underneath the tree a little fountain shot upward a thin stream, which broke into a diamond shower and fell plashing back into a pool whose rim was outlined by a circle ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... her eyes the next morning it was with a delicious sense of well-being, which increased as she looked about her. It may have been the satiny smoothness of the sheets, the silk eiderdown quilt, with its plumy yellow chrysanthemums, the pale yellow scrim curtains, across whose lower borders young brown ducks followed each other in stately procession; the home-made table with its gray linen runner, across which a few larger ducks ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... his very ears. Then the anguish of thundering wheels, until his cracked brain reeled and he was mercifully unconscious. How long? His eyes opened on a clean white wall, flowers hung from the windows in plumy festoons, birds sang in the yellow dazzling sunlight. What could it mean? Was he at home? Surely there was nothing of war in these comfortable surroundings. His left arm was free, there was no one lying ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Friends, whom I may never meet again, On springy heath, along the hill-top edge Wander delighted, and look down, perchance, On that same rifted Dell, where many an ash Twists its wild limbs beside the ferny rock Whose plumy ferns forever nod and drip, Spray'd by the waterfall. But chiefly thou My gentle-hearted Charles! thou who had pin'd And hunger'd after Nature many a year, In the great City pent, winning thy way With sad yet bowed soul, through evil and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... both my presents suit me exactly," said Christie, wrapping the fleecy shawl about her, and admiring the nosegay in which her quick eye saw all her favorites, even to a plumy spray of the little wild asters which ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... across the sands without the wall, And lost itself in finding out the sea: Within, it floated swans, white splendours; lay Beneath the fairy leap of a wire bridge; Vanished and reappeared amid the shades, And led you where the peacock's plumy heaven Bore azure suns with green and golden rays. Ah! here the skies showed higher, and the clouds More summer-gracious, filled with stranger shapes; And when they rained, it was a golden rain That sparkled as it ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald |
