"Primrose" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leading through conflict, privation, and ceaseless labor to no repose but death. On the contrary, his foot was hardly on the first step of that difficult ascent which was to rise before him all his lifetime. He was still among the primrose paths. He was rich, powerful, of sovereign rank. He had only the germs within him of what was thereafter to expand into moral and intellectual greatness. He had small sympathy for the religious reformation, of which he was to be one of the most distinguished champions. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that broad highway eons before. On leaving Hell, presumedly forever to carry on their work among men, they had done a mighty good job of the original construction. But time had worked its ravages with the primrose-lined path, and it was not surprising that on starting his sabbatical leave, Nick had ordered his chief engineer to repair the road as a first step in his plan ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... how Shakespeare or Fletcher came to write of the "bells" of a primrose. Mr. W.J. Linton proposed "With harebell slim": although if we must read "harebell" or "harebells," "dim" would be a pretty and proper word for the color of that flower. The conjecture takes some little plausibility ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... son drowned and staring; and a little further on, just under the Dean, three or four bodies cast up on the shore, one of them a small drummer-boy, side-drum and all; and nearby part of a ship's gig, with 'H.M.S. Primrose' cut on the sternboard. From this point on the shore was littered thick with wreckage and dead bodies—the most of them marines in uniform—and in Godrevy Cove, in particular, a heap of furniture from the captain's cabin, and among it a water-tight box, not much damaged, and full of ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... and its own dogmas. It "has no figures, nor no fantasies," but "those which busy care draws in the brains of men," or which set off its own superior acquirements and wisdom. It scorns to "tread the primrose path of dalliance"—it shrinks back from it as from a precipice, and keeps in the iron rail-way of the understanding. Irish oratory, on the contrary, is a sort of aeronaut: it is always going up in a balloon, and breaking ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... not concern us. The old woman, plain and brown and wrinkled though she was, was the wisest and kindest old lady anywhere to be found, which is reason enough for her being in the story; and as for the little girl, you have already guessed that she is Lady Primrose; but how she came to be Lady Primrose is ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and then he noticed her hand. It was large, white and strong; it was not the hand of a woman who dallied, who idled in primrose paths. ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... but to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet— With, the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet! For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want, And the walk that ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... time waving his wand over the fire. Immediately the flames rose towards the sky, the snow began to melt and the trees and shrubs to bud; the grass became green, and from between its blades peeped the pale primrose. It was Spring, and the ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... no hypocrite. The attitude of the Primrose Sphinx who bowed his head in the Church of England Chapel—the Jew who rose to the highest office Christian England had to offer—and repeated Ben Ezra's prayer, was not the attitude of Newton. Darwin ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... There is Nancy Primrose. I have good reason to remember her. She was, in my childhood, always held up to me as a pattern. She used to come to school with such smooth, clean pantalets, while mine were splashed with mud, drabbled by the wet grass, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... actor had gone into the luggage van—how I trembled for Kinko!—and there, with Popof's assistance, had got out of one of his boxes a somewhat free-and-easy costume, but one certain of success at a wedding: A primrose coat with metal buttons, and a buttonhole, a sham diamond pin in the cravat, poppy-colored breeches, copper buckles, flowered waistcoat, clouded stockings, thread gloves, black pumps, and white beaver hat. What a number of bridegrooms and uncles of ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... Jews—with the tragedy of his race pictured on his furrowed face, a face like an ancient weather-worn statue on whose countenance grief has petrified—has summed up the character of Disraeli as no other man ever has or can. I will not rob the reader by quoting from "The Primrose Sphinx"—that gem of letters must ever stand together without subtraction of a word. It belongs to the realm of the lapidary, and its facets can not be transferred. Yet when Mr. Zangwill refers to the Mephistophelian curl of Lord Beaconsfield's lip, the word is used advisedly. No character in history ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... met at dinner, Mrs. Dean Falconer was an altered person—her unseemly morning costume and well-worn shawl being cast aside, she appeared in bloom-coloured gossamer gauze, and primrose ribbons, a would-be young lady. Nothing of that curmudgeon look, or old fairy cast of face and figure, to which he had that morning been introduced, but in their place smiles, and all the false brilliancy which rouge can ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... sparkling with consciousness of youth and beauty, Sybil stood, Hebe Anadyomene, rising from the foam of soft creplisse which swept back beneath the long train of pale, tender, pink silk, fainting into breadths of delicate primrose, relieved here and there by facings of June green—or was it the blue of early morning?—or both? suggesting unutterable freshness. A modest hint from her maid that "the girls," as women-servants call each other ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... this first of the Primrose Dames, Abigail Masham, quarrelled with her cousin Harley about the share which this lady of High Church principles was to receive out of the profits ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... he goes so far as to assert that the particular plant 'Crinum capense' is much more fertile when crossed by a distinct species than when fertilised by its proper pollen! On the other hand, the famous Gaertner, though he took the greatest pains to cross the primrose and the cowslip, succeeded only once or twice in several years; and yet it is a well-established fact that the primrose and the cowslip are only varieties of the same kind of plant. Again, such cases as the following are well established. The female of species A, if crossed with the male ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... we went, till at last the east began to blush like the cheek of a girl. Then there came faint rays of primrose light, that changed presently to golden bars, through which the dawn glided out across the desert. The stars grew pale and paler still, till at last they vanished; the golden moon waxed wan, and her mountain ridges stood out against her sickly face like the bones on the cheek of a dying man. Then ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... be as bad as that. Surely sometimes some of you win back to womanhood? You yourself do not look so far gone but what some deed of abnegation, some strong love if you could but conceive it would set you right again. Surely you of the primrose robes ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... ancient example of patchwork is a coloured gazelle hide presented in the Museum of Cairo. The colours of the different pieces of skin are bright pink, deep golden yellow, pale primrose, bluish green, and pale blue. This patchwork served as the canopy or pall of an Egyptian queen about the year 960 B. C. She was the mother-in-law of Shishak, who besieged and captured Jerusalem shortly after the death of Solomon. On its upper border ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... months," said father, after careful consideration and much counting on his fingers. "He'll be sixteen next April, on 'Primrose Day,' ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... for, on reaching the top of the staircase, he suddenly caught sight of a young and trim-looking girl of pleasing appearance, clad in a uniform of primrose-yellow, with white apron and cap. She issued from his father's bedroom with an enamelled basin in her hand, smiled at Miss Clifford for a brief instant, and rapidly vanished down the hall towards the back stairs. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... simply fancy there One little flower—a primrose fair, Just opening into sight; As in the days of infancy, An opening primrose seemed to me A source of ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... the feathery tuft there grows a single tall stem with whorls of four, five, or six pale purple flowers occurring at intervals. Its English name is water-violet,—not a fitting name for it, because this plant is not at all related to the violet tribe, but is one of the primrose family; so we should more correctly call it water-primrose. Its Latin name is Hottonia palustris; it is called Hottonia in honour of a German botanist, Professor Hotton, of Leyden. Willy will tell us that the word palustris means "marshy," in allusion to the places where ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... Primrose springs. Surveying run. Sent Muller to the north to a distant range, and Strong to the north-east to look for springs. Towards evening both returned without being successful. They passed over plenty of ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... "pah! There may have been a short space of time during which the fellow's long hair and windy rhetoric impressed her. But I flatter myself I've put my spoke in Mr. Jocelyn's wheel. Why, damme, sir, she's consented to stand for Grand Dame of the Bermondsey Branch of the Primrose League next year. What's Jocelyn to ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... powers. Even the most intentionally dry of philosophers has his prejudices, perhaps against competitive sports or against efficiency as a chief test of good citizenship; and after childhood the most wayward of artists has some general principles to guide him along his primrose path. The actions of all men are the resultant of these two forces of feeling and reason. Since in most cases where we are arguing we have an eye to influencing action, we must keep both the forces in mind as possible means ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... wi' daisies buskit, Kirtle o' the primrose hue, And her e'e sae like my laddie's, Glancing, laughing, loving blue! How we meet on hill and valley, Children sweet as fairest flowers, Buds and blossoms o' affection, Rosy wi' the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... primrose and violet to spend for you Their smell and hue, And the bold, trembling anemone awhile to spare Her flowers starry fair; Or the flushed wild apple and yet sweeter thorn Their sweetness to keep Longer than any fire-bosomed flower born ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... contained them all. The hillside below him was all aglow with the yellow fire of the mimosa. But his was not one of those emotional natures to which the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. A primrose by the river's brim a simple primrose was to him—or not so much a simple primrose, perhaps, as a basis for a possible Primrosina, the ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... in wire netting, and over this they climbed into their primrose paradise. Several partridges rose from the children's feet, and whirred noisily away, to the huge delight of the boys but to Avery's considerable dismay. However, Marshall was evidently not within earshot, and they settled down to the serious ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... North-Western Railway, particularly when you have worked yourself up to the "top of the tree." I could tell you many anecdotes of this railway, on which I lived for many years; but we must not forget the "Wild Irishman" has run through Camden Town, and is even now in the Primrose ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... all the colour of gold, which, even unalloyed, is not a bright yellow. That shows that delightful yellows are not very positive, and that, as aforesaid, they need gleaming materials to help them. The light bright yellows, like jonquil and primrose, are scarcely usable in art, save in silk, whose gleam takes colour from and adds light to the local tint, just as sunlight does to the yellow blossoms which are so common in Nature. In dead materials, such as distemper ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... grounds of a friend, to soak my calotype papers in, subsequent to having brushed them over with the solution of iodide of silver, according to the process recommended by SIR W. NEWTON. One-half of the batch was removed in about two hours and a half, being beautifully clean, and of a nice light primrose colour; and in consequence of an unexpected call and detention longer than I had anticipated, the other half was left floating from two o'clock P.M. until seven or eight in the evening (nearly six hours), when, much to my chagrin, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various
... of outline, and impossibility of perspective, they are not unlike the woodcuts in old books; but they were oil-paintings, and the artist, like the painter of the Primrose family, had not been sparing of his colours. In one, a lady was having a toe amputated—an operation which a saintly personage had sailed into the room, upon a couch, to superintend. In another, a lady ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... rise and drink the fresh sweet air: Each draught a future bud of Spring; Each glance of blue a birth of green; I will not mimic yonder oak That dallies with dead leaves ev'n while the primrose peeps. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the west grows momently more pale, the eastern heavens flush with afterglow, suffuse their spaces with pink and violet. Daffodil and tenderest emerald intermingle; and these colours spread until the west again has rose and primrose and sapphire wonderfully blent, and from the burning skies a light is cast upon the valley—a phantom light, less real, more like the hues of molten gems, than were the stationary flames of sunset. Venus and the moon meanwhile are silvery clear. Then the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... sap in each root and rhizome, Primrose yellow and snowdrop cold, Windyflowers when the chiffchaff flies home, Lenten lilies with crowns of gold. Soon the woods will be blithe with bracken, April whisper of lambs at play; Spring will triumph—and our old black hen (Thank ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... little hall, then found herself in a very large room draped with ivory colored cretonne patterned with butterflies in vivid shades. The furniture was ivory colored wood, and the carpet gray, with clusters of wild flowers, primrose, poppies, cornflowers ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... when it was "fit to travel," as Gretchen said. The green of the landscape was brilliant and uniform; the turf sown with primrose, violet, anemone, veronica, and buttercups. It was time for me to leave; neither could I be persuaded to stay till the meeting of the Landsgemeinde. It was sad to leave them, and the little Gretchen was only pacified by my assurance that, if possible, I would return at ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... of a painter is that he can't paint every detail of things as they are in nature. A primrose, when you first see it, is just a little yellow spot. When you hold it in your hand you find it made up of petals round a tiny centre with little things in it. If you take a magnifying glass you can see all its details multiplied. If you ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... Swinburne uses very little else but animal matter in the composition of his dishes, which it must be confessed are somewhat unwholesome in consequence: whilst the late Mr. Wordsworth, on the contrary, confined himself almost exclusively to the confection of primrose pudding, and flint soup, flavoured with the lesser-celandine; and only now and then a beggar-boy boiled down in it to give it a colour. The robins and drowned lambs which he was wont to use, when an additional piquancy was needed, were employed so sparingly that ...
— Every Man His Own Poet - Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book • Newdigate Prizeman
... delightfully European, we thought we could detect three strands of sentiment. In the first place, Paaaeua had a charge of souls: these were young men, and he judged it right to withhold them from the primrose path. Secondly, he was a public character, and it was not fitting that his guests should countenance a festival of which he disapproved. So might some strict clergyman at home address a worldly visitor: "Go to the theatre if you like, but, by your leave, not from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a la Primrose.—Take a pound of veal cutlet; cut it up into small cutlets the size of a dollar, and perfectly round. Put two ounces of butter (which has been first melted to let the curd separate) into a saucepan, with three onions, two ounces of bacon ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... carts; but rarely so traversed, and, for the most part, little else than a narrow strip of untilled field, separated by blackberry hedges from the better cared-for meadows on each side of it: growing more weeds, therefore, than they, and perhaps in spring a primrose or two—white archangel—daisies plenty, and purple thistles in autumn. A slender rivulet, boasting little of its brightness, for there are no springs at Dulwich, yet fed purely enough by the rain and morning dew, here trickled—there loitered—through the long grass beneath the hedges, and expanded ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... disturbed individual appeared to be Queen Therese. Her attitude was one of placidity itself. But perhaps she was, by this time, accustomed to the dalliance of her Ludwig along the primrose path. Also, she probably knew by experience that it was not the smallest use making a fuss. The milk was spilled. To cry over it now would be a ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... his shyness would have prevented his deliberately running the risk of meeting her eyes. Yet immediately he had passed her he saw her again, quite clearly: the pale oval face, the brown shoes, and, between them, the little fawn gloves folded one over the other. All down the Broad Walk and across Primrose Hill, he saw her silhouetted against the sinking sun. At least that much of her: the wistful face and the trim brown shoes and the little folded hands; until the sun went down behind the high chimneys of the brewery beyond Swiss ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... as well as the last or cowslip (P. veris, vel officinalis), and the primrose (P. vulgaris, vel acaulis) have been considered by some botanists as varieties of the same species. But they are all three undoubtedly distinct, as will be shown in the next chapter. The present species resembles to a certain extent in general appearance ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... Iohn Hannam. Captaine Richard Stanton. Captaine Martine Frobusher Viceadmirall, a man of great experience in sea faring actions, & had caried chiefe charge of many shippes himselfe, in sundry voyages before, being novv shipped in the Primrose. Captaine Francis Knollis, Rieradmirall in the Gallion Leicester. Maister Thomas Venner Captaine in the Elizabeth Bonaduenture vnder the Generall. Maister Edvvard Winter Captaine in the Aide. Maister Christopher Carleill the Lieftenant generall, Captaine in the Tygar. Henry White Captaine of ...
— A Svmmarie and Trve Discovrse of Sir Frances Drakes VVest Indian Voyage • Richard Field
... the three ranks: the man who perceives rightly, because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose, because he does not love it. Then, secondly, the man who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to whom the primrose is anything else than a primrose: a star, or a sun, or a fairy's shield, or a forsaken maiden. And then, lastly, there is the man who perceives ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Smatterton, of Smatterton Hall; Lord Spoonbill, his son; Sir George Aimwell, of Neverden Hall; Penelope Primrose, the heroine, who is placed by her father under the care of Dr. Greendale, whilst Mr. Primrose seeks to repair his fortune in the Indies; and Robert Darnley, Penelope's suitor, also for sometime in the Indies, who is thwarted in his views by Lord Spoonbill, and a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... the primrose ring—reach across it to Bridget and let her give you back again the heart of a child which you may have lost somewhere ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... were red-tipped daisies. There was besides, in the very heart of it, one plant of the finest pimpernels I have ever seen, and this was my introduction to the flower. Nor were these all the treasures of the spot. A late primrose, a tiny child, born out of due time, opened its timid petals in the same hollow. Here then we regathered red-tipped daisies, large pimpernels, and one tiny primrose. I lay and looked at them in delight—not at all inclined to pull them, ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... "The primrose path" was, of course, open to Peter. He was popular enough, at the beginning of that Autumn term, to do anything, and, had he followed the "closed-eyes" policy of his predecessor, smiling pleasantly upon all crime and even gently ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... as in every other German town, there are a vast number of literary characters, of whom our young friend quickly became the chief. They set up a literary journal, which appeared once a week, upon light-blue or primrose paper, and which, in compliment to the lovely Ottilia's maternal name, was called the Kartoffelnkranz. Here are a couple of her ballads extracted from the Kranz, and by far the most cheerful specimen of her style. For in her songs she never would ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... grass in the fields was beginning to grow up, the hedges were sprouting with tender greens and reds, the polished stems of the celandine were opening to the sunshine in the banks, with here and there a primrose. Birds were singing all round, and a lark overhead—most delightful pleasures to those so long shut up in a town. It was the side of a hill, where the fields were cut out into most curious forms, probably to suit the winding of a little brook or the shape of the ground; and ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were a Primrose, A bright yellow Primrose, blowing in the spring! The stooping bough above me, The wandering bee to love me, The fern and moss to creep across, And the ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... shadow of the greenwood Buds the gay primrose i' the balmy spring time; Where never silent, Philomel, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... studious and quiet, people say He is grouchy, he is old before his time; If he's frivolous and flippant, if he treads the primrose way, Then they mark him for a wild career ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... spread above and before us like a great blot of ghostly grey against the starlit sky, began perceptibly to pale and brighten until it stood out clear and distinct, bathed in richest primrose light, with the shadow of the mast drawn across it in ebony-black. Striking the top of the sail first, the light swept gradually down; and in less than a minute the whole of the boat, with the crew and ourselves, were completely bathed in it. I looked behind me to ascertain the cause ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... enquiries, the passage in Thackeray's lecture occurred to me where he mentions having been shown Eliza's Diary by a "Gentleman of Bath." I wished to find out who this was, when my faithful friend wrote to the novelist and sent me his reply, which began, "My dear Primrose"—his charmingly appropriate nick or pet name for Elwin, who was the very picture of the amiable vicar. It resulted in the gentleman allowing me ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... downy Purplish-white Rich woods; Lancaster, Pa. American ipecac Rose-color Deep woods; N. Y., Pa., and West. Arrow-wood White, light blue berries Wet places. Common North. Bell-shaped sullivantia White Limestone cliffs; Ohio, Wis. Bird's-eye primrose Pale lilac Shores of Western lakes; Mt. Kineo, Me. Black snakeroot Greenish-yellow Copses, open glades. Common. Black huckleberry Reddish, berries black Woodlands. Common. Blue-tangle White, berries dark blue Low copses; New England. ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 'Oh! Dear little Primrose would be nice enough, but what should we do with that Halfpenny woman? If we had the other girls, I suppose they would be at school all day; but surely some might go to Beechcroft. And mind, Jane, I will not have you overtasking yourself! Do not take any ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dependent, so well aware that the drudgeries of such honest work as is within their reach are likely enough to lead them eventually to lung disease, premature death, and domestic desertion or brutality, that they would still see reason to prefer the primrose path to the strait path of virtue, since both, vice at worst and virtue at best, lead to the same end in poverty and overwork. It is true that the Board School mistress will tell you that only girls ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Easter Monday and Tuesday there was to be a gathering of the people in favour of the ballot, and that on Wednesday there was to be a procession with a petition which Mr. Turnbull was to receive from the hands of the people on Primrose Hill. It had been at first intended that Mr. Turnbull should receive the petition at the door of Westminster Hall on the Thursday; but he had been requested by the Home Secretary to put aside this intention, and he had complied with the request ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... became dim and purple; the blue went out of the waters of the lake, they became the hue of steel touched with iridescence of gold; and above the hills, vapour that had before been almost invisible in the sky, now hung in upright layers of purple mist, blossoming into primrose yellow on the lower edges. A few moments more and grey bloom, such as one sees on purple fruit, was on these vast hangings of cloud that grouped themselves more largely, and gold flames burned on their fringes. Behind ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... of his church. He improved his farm, paid his debts, and kept his faith. He had no sentiment about things and was quite unconscious of the beauties of nature over which we make such an ado. "The primrose by the river's brim" would not have been seen by him at all. This is true of most farmers; the plough and the hoe and the scythe do not develop their aesthetic sensibilities; then, too, in the old religious view the beauties of this world were vain ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... English in me that loves the soft, gray weather— The little mists that trail along like bits of wind-flung foam, The primrose and the violet—all wet and sweet together, And the sound of water calling, as it ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... that its delicate fabrication owed more to her than superintendence. Then the ale, and the cyder with rosemary in the bowl, were incomparable potations; and to the gooseberry wine, which would have filled Mrs. Primrose with envy, was added the more generous warmth of port which, in the Squire's younger days, had been the talk of the country, and which had now lost none of its attributes, save "the original brightness" of ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fruited; or to fields in bloom; Or briary fallows, like a mighty room, Through which the winds swing censers of perfume, And where deep blackberries spread miles of fruit;— A splendid feast, that stayed the ploughboy's foot When to the tasseling acres of the corn He drove his team, fresh in the primrose morn; And from the liberal banquet, nature lent, Took dewy handfuls as he whistling went.— A boy once more I stand with sunburnt feet And watch the harvester sweep down the wheat; Or laze with warm limbs in the unstacked straw Nearby the thresher, whose insatiate maw ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... Allen's injury, his haggard father with the rifle. The valley was serenely beautiful; doves were calling from the eaves of the barn; a hen clucked excitedly. The western sky was a single expanse of primrose on which the mountains were jagged ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... her on the dusty street, And daisies spring about her feet; Or, touched to life beneath her tread, An English cowslip lifts its head; And, as to do her grace, rise up The primrose and the buttercup! I roam with her through fields of cane, And seem to stroll an English lane, Which, white with blossoms of the May, Spreads its green carpet in her way! As fancy wills, the path beneath Is ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... his tardy summons, the door of her house opened to him. He went in and stood in the faded drawing-room, where the damask curtain folds were drawn against the primrose dusk and a single light glimmered like a star high among the pendant prisms ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... Helen, from the years Of childhood's golden joys and passing tears, Were friends and playmates; and together they Across the lawn, or through the woods, would stray. While he was wont to pull the lilies fair, And weave them, with the primrose, round her hair;— Plait toys of rushes, or bedeck the thorn With daisies sparkling with the dews of morn; While she, these simple gifts would grateful take—- Love for their own and for the giver's sake. Or, they would chase the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... position would have preferred the primrose path of dalliance to the steep heights of duty; but Lord Arthur was too conscientious to set pleasure above principle. There was more than mere passion in his love; and Sybil was to him a symbol of all ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... late Rev. Dr. Primrose (of Wakefield, vicar) wrote me a little note from his country living this morning, and the kind fellow had the precaution to write "No thorn" upon the envelope, so that, ere I broke the seal, my mind might be relieved of any anxiety lest the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be seen from these notes on social history that the Loyalists had no primrose path. But after the first grumblings and discontents, poured into the ears of Governor Haldimand and Governor Parr, they seem to have settled down contentedly to their lot; and their life appears to have been on the whole happy. Especially ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... beech-tree I sat down, when I was last this way a-fishing; and the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to have a friendly contention with an echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow tree near to the brow of that primrose-hill. There I sat viewing the silver streams glide silently towards their centre, the tempestuous sea; yet sometimes opposed by rugged roots and pebble-stones, which broke their waves, and turned them into foam; and sometimes I beguiled time by viewing the harmless ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... which hung Narcissus-like over their own graceful quivering images. Profound quiet brooded in the warm, hazy air, burdened with balsamic odors; but once a pine burr full of rich nutty mast crashed down through dead twigs, bruising the satin petals of a primrose; and ever and anon the oboe notes of that shy, deep throated hermit of ravines—the russet, speckled-breasted lark—thrilled through the woods, like antiphonal echoes in some ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... it yesterday I saw you, cool and sweet in your soft primrose gown? or was it long ago before the shadows fell? Ah, love—your eyes! your hair! And always in the darkness the sound of your voice—the touch of your ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... the fresh, the soft and tender bed Of her still mother, gentle night out flew, The fleeting balm on hills and dales she shed, With honey drops of pure and precious dew, And on the verdure of green forests spread The virgin primrose and the violet blue, And sweet-breathed Zephyr on his spreading wings, Sleep, ease, repose, rest, peace ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... Vale from a Farmers' Ordinary, where one had been exposing Lord Beaconsfield's nonsense about the "Three Profits" of agricultural land, to a turbulent meeting in a chapel or a barn (for the use of the schoolroom was denied to the Liberal candidate). As we drove through the primrose-studded lanes, or past the village green, the bell was ringing from the grey tower of the Parish Church, and summoning the villagers to the daily Evensong of Holy Week. The contrast was too violent to ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... goodness he's gone!—but what an ordeal! I really must part with CLARKSON. And—whatever the Primrose League Council may say—I shall have to tell them I must give up canvassing. I don't think I can do it any ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... little garden, which was shifted to that corner by the influence of Joseph's complaints. I was comfortably revelling in the spring fragrance around, and the beautiful soft blue overhead, when my young lady, who had run down near the gate to procure some primrose roots for a border, returned only half laden, and informed us that Mr. Heathcliff was coming in. 'And he spoke to me,' she added, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... small jib, deeply loaded as she was, was doing a knot less than ourselves, and we soon passed and slid ahead of her; while away down in the north-eastern board, broad on our starboard quarter, the topsails and upper canvas of the barque shone primrose-yellow above the ridges of the swell as she stood away from us, heading about nor'-north-east, close-hauled on ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... eggs into his hand; and from that moment he could not endure it out of his sight, but had it placed morning and evening beside his sofa or bed, near his other treasure, the Picture of the King, on the other side of which stood the primrose, planted in one of Mrs. ...
— Wikkey - A Scrap • YAM
... she looked anxiously at his dress. He had on bright yellow kid gloves, primrose he would have called them, but, if there be such things as yellow gloves, they were yellow; and she wished that she had the courage to ask him to take them off. This was beyond her, and there he sat, with his gloves almost as conspicuous as Mr Maguire's eye. Should she, however, ever become ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... happily ever after." But he was not. He was the King of France; so he pursued the royal road that his antecedents had blazed before him; and the way was made easy and pleasant for him. In treading the "primrose path of dalliance" he allowed no grass ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... are few, and in the end they make Some devilish escapade or stir, which shows That even the purest people may mistake Their way through virtue's primrose paths of snows; And then men stare, as if a new ass spake To Balaam, and from tongue to ear o'erflows Quicksilver small talk, ending (if you note it) With the kind world's amen—'Who ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the bright morning star, day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her The flowering May, who from her green lap throws The yellow Cowslip and the pale Primrose." ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... weather-beaten mouldings. But life, too, is fresh and young; the stern thought in the stone becomes more cold and grim as the centuries pass away. In the crevices at the foot of another cross wallflowers blossomed, and plants of evening primrose, not yet in flower, were growing. Under a great yew lay the last decaying beam of the stocks. A little yew tree grew on the top of the church tower, its highest branch just above the parapet. A thrush perhaps planted ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... thought, And swallowing therefore without pause or choice The total grist unsifted, husks and all. But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer, And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs, And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root, Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth, Not shy, as in the world, and to be won By slow solicitation, seize at once The roving thought, and ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... was arrested. Consequently, Triffitt was not expected to make up a half or a whole column of recent and sensational Herapath news every morning. And so he gladly took this Sunday for a return to the primrose paths. He and Carver met their sweethearts; they took them to the Albert Hall Sunday afternoon concert—nothing better offering in the middle of winter—they went to tea at the sweethearts' lodgings; later ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... than the proudest monument. There children set about their playmate's grave The pansy. On the infant's little bed, Wet at its planting with maternal tears, Emblem of early sweetness, early death, Nestled the lowly primrose. Childless dames, And maids that would not raise the reddened eye— Orphans, from whose young lids the light of joy Fled early,—silent lovers, who had given All that they lived for to the arms of earth, Came often, o'er the recent graves to strew ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... Lord Primrose [19] from whom the whole detail came, sent us also an account of his gaieties, he and his father had been a tour in Scotland and had not neglected to visit at Drummond Castle with which he was enchanted, which he could not well fail being, as the lady of the Castle [20] ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... cathedrals were interspersed; and, in the midst of them, and larger than any of them, a silhouette of Mr Grey, with the eyelash wonderfully like, and the wart upon his nose not to be mistaken. Then there was Charles the First taking leave of his family; and, on either side of this, an evening primrose in water-colours, by Mary, and a head of Terror, with a square mouth and starting eyes, in crayon, by Fanny. Mrs Grey produced some gay border which the paper-hanger had left over when the attics were last furnished; and Sydney cut out in white paper a huntsman with ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... glory of the day, And mine the primrose in the lowly shade: Mine? ah, not mine! amisse I mine did say: Not mine, but His which mine awhile her made; 235 Mine to be-his, with him to live for ay. O that so faire a flowre so soon should fade, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... and gay clothing and smiling faces. It was the express wish of Sophia that none of the company should wear white. "That distinction," she said, "ought to be reserved for the bride;" and among the maids in pink and blue and primrose, she stood a very lily of womanhood. Her diaphanous, floating robe of Dacca muslin; her Indian veil of silver tissue, filmy as light; her gleaming pearls and feathery fan, ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... author of "The Deserted Village." The exquisite style, the delicate choice of words, the amiability of sentiment, so peculiarly his own, and so well suited to express the simple beauty of his thoughts, give a charm to the work which familiarity can only endear. Dr. Primrose, preserving his simplicity, his modesty, and his nobility of character alike when surrounded by the pleasures of his early and prosperous home, when struggling with the hardships of his ruined fortune, and when rewarded at last by the surfeit of good-fortune which follows his trial, stands ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... had been hurt somewhat seriously in a carriage accident, frequent in travelling through such wild lands as Ireland and the south of Scotland. People averred that he would find himself safer on the Mall or climbing the slopes of Primrose Hill. ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett |
