"Primrose" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Stepchild Wedlock Ghostly Haggard Bridal Pioneer Pluck Noon Neighbor Jimson weed Courteous Wanton Rosemary Cynical Street Plausible Grocer Husband Allow Worship Gipsy Insane Encourage Clerk Disease Astonish Clergyman Boulevard Realize Hectoring Canary Bombast Primrose Diamond Benedict Walnut Abominate Piazza Holiday Barbarous Disgust Heavy Kind Virtu Nightmare Devil Gospel Comfort Whist Mermaid Pearl Onion Enthusiasm Domino Book Fanatic Grotesque Cheat Auction Economy Illegible Quell Cheap Illegitimate Sheriff Excelsior ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... its appearance is always a pleasant surprise. I fancy, however, the new moon always comes as a surprise even to those who are familiar with her time-tables. And it is the same with the coming in of spring and the waves of the flowers. We are not the less delighted to find an early primrose because we are sufficiently learned in the services of the year to look for it in March or April rather than in October. We know, again, that the blossom precedes and not succeeds the fruit of the apple-tree, but this does not lessen our amazement at the ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... within the wood, The snowdrop peeps from its milky bell, The motley Thora bends her hood, Whilst beauteous wild flowers line the dell; The wildbrier rose its fragrance breathes, The violet opes her cup of blue, The timid primrose lifts its leaves, And kingcups wake, all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... trees lay long upon the grass. There were breaches in the garden walls where they had crumbled into ruin, and through these openings, beyond dark masses of all-covering ivy, sight might be had of old trees set in alleys, of primrose-yellowed downs, and of a distant cliff-head where sheep grazed, while far below gleamed a sapphire line of sea. Tender quiet, fair stillness, marked the spot. Day mused as she was going: Evening, drawing ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... gather about him for his delight the entire gamut of roses from the Maryland to the American Beauty, the violet and its college-bred descendant the pansy, the heliotrope, the gladiolus, the carnation, the primrose, the chrysanthemum, the sweet pea, the aster, and the orchid. But, if he can reach the high plane of the lily-of-the-valley, in all its daintiness, delicacy, chastity, and fragrance, he will have ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... said then. 'If there's nothing, after all, in this climb-though-the-rocks-be-rugged stuff, no great harm done. I'm still young. But why waste more valuable time? I'll try Broadway,' I said. 'I'll have a whirl at the primrose path.' ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... dawn was beginning to flame across the sky in sheets of primrose and of gold, or rather it was little Tota who woke me by kissing me as she lay between sleep and waking, and calling me "papa." It wrung my heart to hear her, poor orphaned child. I got up, washed and ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... is the primrose pale, Rifled of virgin sweetness by the gale, Mary! The wretch who thee remorseless slew, Will ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... Youth and beauty came also, and returned no more. This, where the white rose-bush grows untended, was the young daughter of a squire in far-off days: too young to have known the pangs of love or the sweet desire of Death, save that, in primrose time, he always paints himself so fair. I have thought the inscription must have been borrowed from another grave, in some yard shaded by yews and silent under the cawing of the rooks; perhaps, from its stiffness, ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... not help telling one in familiar talk of Clumber or some other great house where he had been visiting; he was intoxicated with his own popularity, a little surprised, perhaps, to find that he had won fame so easily and on the primrose path, but one could forgive him everything, for he talked more delightfully ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... white mist of dust. It was drawn by a pair of white mules, who whisked their long tails as they trotted briskly, urged on by a cracking whip. A big boy with heavy brown eyes was the coachman. By his side sat a very tall young negro with a humorous pointed nose, dressed in primrose yellow. He grinned at Batouch out of the mist, which accentuated the coal-black hue of ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... 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
... sight to see those little creatures, playing about like so many fairies in that lovely green place. You should have seen the little flower-spirits start up to look at them, as they frisked about among the trees. Little Primrose threw kisses to them, and Violet offered them a dew-drop in her deepest purple cup; but the merry mice thought nothing of the flower spirits and neither saw ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... the reports of criminal cases in the weekly newspapers, looked at the man from New Scotland Yard with a feeling of surprise. He knew Detective-Sergeant Starmidge well enough by name and reputation. He was the man who had unravelled the mysteries of the Primrose Hill murder—a particularly exciting and underground affair. It was he who had been intimately associated with the bringing to justice of the Camden Town Gang—a group of daring and successful criminals which had baffled the London police for two years. Neale had read all ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... within wheel, the circle within circle expand and ascend until the last circumferential line sweeps around all the world of created being, even taking in, upon the common radius, the highest and oldest of the angels. From the primrose peering from the hedge to the premier seraph wearing the coronet of his sublime companionship; from the lowest forms of vegetable existence to the loftiest reaches of moral nature this side of the Infinite, this everlasting law of co-working rules the ratio of progress and development. ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... when south winds blow, And gently shake the hawthorn's silver crown, Wafting its scent the forest-glade adown, The dewy shelter of the bounding Doe, Then, under trees, soft tufts of primrose show Their palely-yellowing flowers;—to the moist Sun Blue harebells peep, while cowslips stand unblown, Plighted to riper May;—and lavish flow The Lark's loud carols in the wilds of air. O! not to Nature's glad Enthusiast cling Avarice, and pride.—Thro' ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, I'll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack The flow'r that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor The azur'd hare-bell, like thy veins, no, nor The leaf of eglantine, which not to ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... absorption. The copper beech and the green beech, for example, take in different rays. But the very growth of the tree is due to some of the rays thus taken in. Are the chemical rays, then, the same in the copper and the green beech? In two such flowers as the primrose and the violet, where the absorptions, to judge by the colours, are almost complementary, are the chemically active rays the same? The general relation of colour to chemical action is worthy of the application of the ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... a more whimsical surprise than having been once detected—by a familiar damsel—reclined at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera), reading—Pamela. There was nothing in the book to make a man seriously ashamed at the exposure; but as she seated herself down by me, and seemed determined to read in company, I could have ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... shalt not lack The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor The azured harebell like thy veins; no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... me in my best suit of pale-lilac silk, with flapped waistcoat of primrose stiff with gold, and Cato was powdering my hair; when Sir Lupus waddled in, magnificent in scarlet and white, and smelling to heaven of French ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... time might open the eyes of the public; when the murder of Godfrey completed the general delusion, and rendered the prejudices of the nation absolutely incurable. This magistrate had been missing some days; and after much search, and many surmises, his body was found lying in a ditch at Primrose Hill: the marks of strangling were thought to appear about his neck, and some contusions on his breast: his own sword was sticking in the body; but as no considerable quantity of blood ensued on drawing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... of Friends, or Quakers. The author tells Primrose's experiences among very strict Quakers, and then ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... material than in colour, of the dresses which they now wore. While Mrs. Vesey and Miss Halcombe were richly clad (each in the manner most becoming to her age), the first in silver-grey, and the second in that delicate primrose-yellow colour which matches so well with a dark complexion and black hair, Miss Fairlie was unpretendingly and almost poorly dressed in plain white muslin. It was spotlessly pure: it was beautifully put on; but still it was the sort ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... the beautiful, the sweet, delicious scenery of nature:—"how delightful in the early spring, to wander forth by some clear stream, to see the leaf bursting from the purple bud, to scent the odours of the bank, perfumed by the violet, and enamelled as it were with the primrose, and the daisy; to wander upon the fresh turf below the shade of trees, whose bright blossoms are filled with the music of the bee." Mr. Worlidge, in his Systema Agriculturae, says, that the delights ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... and hurdled over nine doubtful readings and seven lacunae in the text of Aristotle's 'Poetics' in 17-1/2 minutes. Two firsts went to Ramsdell, who made only two errors in Protective Colouration and one error in explaining the mutations of the Evening Primrose." ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... one of the two guests conducted by the Reverend Mother herself. Nominally this learned gentleman existed for the purpose of impressing upon the world the beauties of Latin poetry, but he was best known to fame as an orator on the platforms of the Primrose League, and a writer of magazine articles on Irish questions. He was a man who owed his success in life largely to his faculty for always keeping beside the most important person present. The Lord Lieutenant, being slightly indisposed, had been unable to make an early start, so the most honourable ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... background to needlework. Olive-green, sea-green, pea-green, emerald-green, and sage-green,—Nature teaches us how these harmonize together and with all other colours. Only arsenical green is impracticable and repulsive. Yellow, pale as a primrose, glowing as gold, or tender as butter, is always beautiful; but one tint we would exclude from our list, called "buff," which never can assimilate with any other colour, and is often the refuge of the weak-minded man that cannot face the responsibility of choosing an atmosphere in ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... ask 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 ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... the fire, all of them and Tangle-wood itself would turn into cinders and vanish in smoke up the chimney—even the present chronicler saw the point; though, at the same time, he somehow could not help believing in the reality of Primrose, Buttercup, Dandelion, Squash-blossom, and the rest. Thus early did he begin to grasp the philosophy of the ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... their own purposes. The Bishops were either politicians or theological polemics collecting trophies of victory over free-thinkers as titles to higher preferment. The inferior clergy as a body were far nearer in character to Trulliber than to Dr. Primrose; coarse, sordid, neglectful of their duties, shamelessly addicted to sinecurism and pluralities, fanatics in their Toryism and in attachment to their corporate privileges, cold, rationalistic and almost heathen in their preachings, if they preached at all. The society of the ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... uncomeliness of plants of this sort; he even begins to have a peculiar and kindly interest in them. A piece of "waste ground," as it is called, an untidy garden, a wayside thicket of golden-rods and asters, pig-weed and evening primrose,—these come to be almost as attractive a sight to him as a thrifty field of wheat is to an agriculturalist. Taking his cue from the finches, he separates plants into two grand divisions,—those that shed their seeds in the ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... And in the wood, where often you and I, Vpon faint Primrose beds, were wont to lye, Emptying our bosomes, of their counsell sweld: There my Lysander, and my selfe shall meete, And thence from Athens turne away our eyes To seeke new friends and strange companions, Farwell sweet play-fellow, pray thou for vs, And good lucke grant thee thy Demetrius. Keepe ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... and in the absence of the owner, a great moneyed man, they were open to all those who did not make themselves obnoxious to the keepers; and these, under an absentee proprietor, gave a free interpretation to rights of way. Thither were the Ogilvies bound, in search of primrose banks, but their way led them past two or three houses on the hill-top, one of which, being constructed on supposed Chinese principles of architecture, was known to its friends as "the Pagoda," to its foes as "the Folly." It had been long untenanted, but this winter it had been put into ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he saw the Lone Tower standing dark against the pink and primrose of the East, and about its base the sullen swirl of black water, and he heard the wonderful roar of it. So he hung off and on, all that day and for six days besides. And when he had watched seven days he knew something. For you are certain to know something ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... said Annora, running up and throwing herself down on the primrose bank, "I have been to the cell, but I have not ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... little knoll Sheba looked down upon the top of the stage three hundred yards below her, and while she stood there the promise of the new day was blazoned on the sky. It came with amazing beauty of green and primrose and amethyst, while the stars flickered out and the heavens took on the blue of sunrise. In a crotch between two peaks a faint golden glow heralded the sun. A circle of lovely rose-pink flushed ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks; Throw hither all your quaint-enamelled eyes, That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... Jacob Bell, Satellite, Primrose, and Currituck, convoyed the transports up and down the river, and the Jacob Bell covered the landing at Carter's Creek. These vessels of the Potomac flotilla were under the ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... some flowers that never see the sun. One of the most curious is the "evening primrose." About six o'clock it suddenly bursts open, with a popping sound, and at six next ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous
... he ordered, not even noticing the flabbergasted look on the jehu's face, who was not accustomed to carrying people thither from the primrose path of ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... 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 ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... great elm, ash, and oak skeletons were restored to majestic life; woodland plants sprang up profusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled its hollows, and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of its wild primrose plants: I have seen their pale gold gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre. All this I enjoyed often and fully, free, unwatched, and almost alone: for this unwonted ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... golden-crown—the three notes of poignant beauty and mystery that were linked indissolubly with the summer twilights of Kon Klayu. Out over the reefs the sun had gone down splendidly into the sea. Broad ribbons of clear jade streaked the primrose of the sky. Beneath, bands of amethyst, amber and rose merged slowly into a flame of crimson, and while the violet dusk crept over the sea, the stars came out. Blowing across the bare brown reefs the night wind brought the scent of kelp and ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... 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 of a certain kind will reason in this way. But alas! that ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... said Smith. "I once heard some one may as it would take a long time to cut through Primrose Hill with a mustard spoon, and I can't help thinking as it would take as long to make ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... no wrongs to redress, no malice to work out against mankind, and nothing to seek of enjoyment save a cannie hour and a quiet grave,—what use could the fellowship of fiends, and the communion of evil spirits, be to her? I know Jenny Primrose puts rowan-tree above the door-head when she sees old Mary coming; I know the good wife of Kittlenaket wears rowan-berry leaves in the headband of her blue kirtle, and all for the sake of averting the unsonsie glance ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... a politico-Conservative organisation founded in 1883 in memory of Lord Beaconsfield, and so called because the primrose was popularly reported to be his favourite flower. It includes a large membership, nearly a million, comprising women as well as men; is divided into district habitations; confers honours and badges in the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... pressed bravely on, though the storms of hail often beat on her face, and then the cloud breaking, great fields of deepest blue sky appeared in the rifts, and now and again the sun shone out brightly on the young leaves and primrose banks, as if to reassure them that the present cold was but an afterthought of winter, and that spring and May would ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... covered with brown dead leaves, and he tried to see the rabbit rustling among them, or the hasty springing of a squirrel. The long branches of the briar entangled his feet; and here and there, in sheltered corners, blossomed the primrose and the violet He listened to the chant of the birds, so joyous that it seemed impossible they sang in a world of sorrow. Hidden among the leaves, aloft in the beeches, the linnet sang with full-throated melody, and the blackbird and the thrush. In the distance a cuckoo ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... steep road, overhung with trees, at whose roots grew clusters of large primrose leaves, showing what a lovely walk it must be in spring; then higher, till all this vegetation ceased, leaving only the short grass cropped by the sheep, the purple thistles, and the furze-bushes, yellow and cheerful all the year round. They then drove along a high ridge ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... lady, you're as dainty as your namesake, and as sweet. Ah, Sylph, you beauty!" he continued, as a calf like a young fawn approached the gate, "you can't rest away from your mammy, can you? Primrose, have you any aspirations, or are you content simply to eat and drink? You have a good time of it now, but what if you were kicked and cuffed and starved? You are sensitive, for I saw you shrink and shiver when Bill Wright,—the scoundrel!—dared to strike you. ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... any rate to the remembrances of his own life, tells us much of the story of this newspaper in Lovel the Widower. "They are welcome," says the bachelor, "to make merry at my charges in respect of a certain bargain which I made on coming to London, and in which, had I been Moses Primrose purchasing green spectacles, I could scarcely have been more taken in. My Jenkinson was an old college acquaintance, whom I was idiot enough to imagine a respectable man. The fellow had a very smooth tongue and sleek sanctified exterior. He was rather a popular preacher, ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... they like the romance of the wood; and naturalists haunt it, too; for it is a wild spot even here, what there is of it; for it does not go far to the south: it goes from here northward and west right over Paddington and a little way down Notting Hill: thence it runs north-east to Primrose Hill, and so on; rather a narrow strip of it gets through Kingsland to Stoke-Newington and Clapton, where it spreads out along the heights above the Lea marshes; on the other side of which, as you know, is Epping Forest ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... we have a bank of Dendrobiums, so densely clothed in bloom that the leaves are unnoticed. Lovely beyond all to my taste, if, indeed, one may make a comparison, is D. luteolum, with flowers of palest, tenderest primrose, rarely seen unhappily, for it will not reconcile itself to our treatment. Then again a bank of Cattleyas, of Vandas, of miscellaneous genera. The pathway is hedged on one side with Begonia coralina, an unimproved ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... 545 That variegate the eternal universe; Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, That leads to azure isles and beaming skies And happy regions of eternal hope. Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on: 550 Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom, Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth, To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower, That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, 555 Lighting the green wood ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... merry As the light-hearted fairy? His nectar he sips From the primrose's lips, With a hey, and ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... arch of the Opera House large faces and lean ones, the powdered and the hairy, all alike were red in the sunset; and, quickened by the great hanging lamps with their repressed primrose lights, by the tramp, and the scarlet, and the pompous ceremony, some ladies looked for a moment into steaming bedrooms near by, where women with loose hair leaned out of windows, where girls—where children—(the long mirrors ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Bring the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansie freakt with jet, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... wealth of a village is reckoned. The Italians set great store by a little bit of bella pianura, or level ground; to them it is as precious as a hill or rock is to a Londoner out for a holiday. The peasantry are as blind to the beauties of rough unmanageable land as Peter Bell was to those of the primrose with a yellow brim (I quote from memory). The people complain of the climate of Dalpe, the snow not going off before the end of March or beginning of April. No climate, they say, should be colder than that of Faido; barley, however, and potatoes do very well at Dalpe, ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... her window and saw Gretchen and her lover pacing up and down the primrose path in the moonlight, a horrible laugh would break from the great lady's ripe, ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... evening hour would bring To the round table its expected ring, And while the punch-bowl's sounding depths were stirred,— Its silver cherubs smiling as they heard,— Our hearts would open, as at evening's hour The close-sealed primrose frees its ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... rose in a mining-camp, and Hal was deeply moved. The primrose path of dalliance stretched fair before him, here in the soft summer night, with a moon overhead which bore the same message as it bore in the Italian gardens of the leisure-class. But not many minutes passed before a cold fear began to steal over ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... destruction, the rocks of Biarritz are very barren in sea-beasts and sea-weeds. But there is one remarkable exception, where the pools worn in a hard limestone are filled with what seem at first sight beds of china-asters, of all loveliest colours—primrose, sea-green, dove, purple, crimson, pink, ash-grey. They are all prickly sea-eggs (presumably the Echinus lividus, which is found in similar places in the west of Ireland), each buried for life in a cup-shaped hole which ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... 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 vast, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... 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 give to the eyes, proclaimed a ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... the truth, Mr. Narkom, I came within an ace of doing the very thing you speak of," replied Cleek. "It's full moon, for one thing, and it's primrose time for another. Happily for your desire to catch me, however, I—er—got interested in the evening paper, and ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... take a primrose. Here the mother and father elements are found in the same flower. At the base of the flower, packed in a delicate casket, which is called the ovary, lie a number of small white objects no larger than butterfly-eggs. These are the eggs or ova ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... and studied with a keen but generous criticism the various theories of writers on the science, from the earliest age to the time of the immortal Linne. Of every plant he met with, even to the daisy and primrose, the whole physiological structure was thoroughly investigated; he discovered, or rather observed, what it was which enabled some plants to endure great changes of temperature, while others perished—the formation which enabled some to live in water, while others ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... the express purpose of driving to ask about her. The journey took time, for she lived in the north-west district, in the neighbourhood of Primrose Hill. My apprehension that I should be too late was justified in a fuller sense than I had attached to it—I had only feared that the house would be shut up. There were lights in the windows, and the temperate tinkle of my bell ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... 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. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... about in her strange state of depression, pretending to enjoy the glorious green of the spring, and seeing only light and darkness, cold and desolation, in primrose banks and ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... 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 ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... novel-writing, and I ventured to say: "How is it that not one of the English novelists has ever drawn any high or adequate character of the clergyman? Walter Scott never gave us anything beyond the respectable official. Goldsmith's Dr. Primrose is a good man, the best we have in your English fiction, but odd and amusing rather than otherwise. Then Dickens has given us Chadband and Stiggins, and you Charles Honeyman. Can you not conceive," I went ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... mother, and of the dear deanery among its meadows, floating fragments of the poetry her father had loved, of the prayers her mother had taught her in childhood, hovered in her mind. She seemed to see the primrose woods where she had wandered, and to hear the sound of brooks and birds in Spring. A vague smile was on her lips. She thought of Sir Hugh as of a radiance lighting all. She was the ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... him. Cf. chap. iii. of the Vicar of Wakefield, where this anecdote is referred to. Indeed Hooker is there alleged to have been the "great ancestor" of George Primrose. ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... cuckoo-flowers for whom the cuckoo's voice Hails, like an answering sister, to the woods? Is not the maiden blushing in the rose? Shall not the babe and buttercup rejoice, Twins in one meadow? Are not violets all By name or nature for the breast of Dames! For them the primrose, pale as star of prime, For them the wind-flower, trembling to a sigh, For them the dew stands in the eyes of day That blink in April on the daisied lea? Like them they flourish and like them they fade And live beloved and loving. But for thee— For such a bevy how ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... handsome nor young was ready to take ship from Tower Stairs if worse came of it. But those hopes were quenched now, down in the dust, extinguished forever. No harm could come to the House of Hanover, no harm could come to the King of England, if at Lady Primrose's house in St. James's Square a party should be interrupted by the entrance of an unexpected guest, of a man prematurely aged by dissipation and disappointment, a melancholy ruin of what had once been fair and noble, and in ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the highway a little till he came to a place where was a footbridge over into the meadow. He crossed thereby and went swiftly till he reached a rising ground grown over with hazel-trees; there he sat down among the rabbit-holes, the primrose and wild-garlic blooming about him, and three blackbirds answering one another from the edges of the coppice. Straightway when he had looked and seen none coming he broke the threads that were wound about the scroll and the arrow, and ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... Lady of the Manor, I also met. She went out of her way to be as sweetly gracious as possible. I presume she inferred from Frances' departure that I had taken her hint and had removed the disturbing influence from her nephew's primrose-bordered path. At each of our meetings she spoke of the "invitation golf tournament," several times postponed and now to be played within a fortnight. She insisted that I must take part in it. At last, having done everything ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... bringing upon himself pained remonstrances from his own family, remonstrances which, Satherwaite acknowledged, were quite justifiable. His bags stood beside the door. He had spent the early afternoon very pleasurably in packing them, carefully weighing the respective merits of a primrose waistcoat and a blue-flannel one, as weapons wherewith to impress the heart of Phil's sister. ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... kiss the girl's rosy cheek, then swiftly turned the talk to linen and lace. Always quick to observe, Juliet had acquired little graces of tone and manner, softened her abruptness, and, guided by loving tact, had begun to bloom like a primrose in ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... that anywhere in the country villages there was anything approaching to a panic. Only a novice would be led astray by what he might read occurred at Coltishall. Five brothers named Gritlof and two other brothers named Primrose, being nativi, i.e., villeins born, and so the property of the lord, had decamped whither none could tell; the court solemnly adjudicated upon the case, and decreed that the seven runaways should be attached per corpora, whatever that may mean. But Coltishall is barely five miles from ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... pretty Primrose, In shady lanes it grows; And early in the pleasant spring, In gardens ...
— A Little Girl to her Flowers in Verse • Anonymous
... winds are gone, See how brightly shines the sun; The violet sweet and primrose pale, Now adorn ...
— The Keepsake - or, Poems and Pictures for Childhood and Youth • Anonymous
... 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, ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... to brag of in bronze or marble, though in that I do not say they are worse than other kings. I think, but I am not sure, that there are rather more public men of inferior grade than kings, though this may be that they were more impressive. Most noticeable was the statue of Disraeli, which, on Primrose Day, I saw much garlanded and banked up with the favorite flower of that peculiarly rustic and English statesman. He had the air of looking at the simple blossoms and forbearing an ironical smile, or was ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... sprang upon the mast thwart and, with his left arm flung round the splintered stump to steady himself, proceeded to wave his coat energetically. Luckily for the pair in distress, they were to the westward of the approaching ship, with the evening sky, in which still lingered a pale primrose glow, behind them, and against this background their figures and that of the boat stood out black as silhouettes cut in ebony. It is possible that, even with this advantage, they might have escaped notice, had not Phil thought of ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... have always imagined myself capable of founding Primrose Leagues, and becoming a real political force? Spend the afternoon with me Sunday, and we'll ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... war chief who has charge of our wanderin's is strictly stern an' hard. An' I reckons now he's the last gent to go makin' soft allowances for any warmth of yooth, or puttin' up with any primrose paths of gentle dalliance, of any an' all who ever buckles on a set of side arms. It thus befalls that when he discovers on the mornin' of the second day that this Mexican boy is a Mexican girl, he goes ragin' into the ambient air like ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... looks after the cows is a very valuable friend. He may even let you try to milk, which only specially gifted children ever succeed in doing at all well; and he will teach you the cows' names (in some farms these are painted up over each stall—Primrose, Lightfoot, Sweetlips, Clover, and so on); and perhaps he will give you the task of fetching them from ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Manor Court The primrose pushed its head When, on a day at last, report Arrived of him ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... predecessor, in St. Paul's Church-yard, of Messrs. Grant and Griffith, who first published this story. Mr. Absolon's graphic sketches add greatly to the interest of the volume: altogether, it is as pretty an edition of the 'Vicar' as we have seen. Mrs. Primrose herself would ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... understand natural philosophy very well, wife; I doubt not the flesh has got the better of the spirit in you. Look ye, madam! every man's wife is his vineyard; you are mine, therefore I wall you in. Ods budikins, ne'er a coxcomb in the kingdom shall plant as much as a primrose ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... in his 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 that is good ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... schooling, irregular as it was? Far by her own confession to me, her education had been obtained, while it lasted, in schools as good as any in the land, if, indeed, all were as excellent as Mrs. Pardee's Young Ladies' Seminary in Albany, or the school kept by the Misses Primrose. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Guildford, who had been familiarised to rustic scenes from his earliest infancy, he could see no beauty in the various objects that each instant delighted the little Londoners' eyes and ears; for, like the hero of Wordsworth's verse, "the primrose by the river's brim" was but a primrose and nothing more ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... (false gilia) Tr. Heterotheca subaxillaris Tr. Kallstroemia laetevirens Tr. Lupinus sparsiflorus (lupine) Tr. Martynia altheaefolia (small devil's-horns) 12 Mollugo verticillata (carpetweed) 324 Oenothera primiverus (evening primrose) 15 Opuntia discata (prickly pear) 15 Loeflingia pusilla Tr. Lepidium lasiocarpum (peppergrass) Tr. Plantago ignota (plantain) 818 Polygala puberula (milkwort) Tr. Portulaca suffrutescens (purslane) Tr. Prosopis velutina (mesquite) 1,570 Sida diffusa ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... you are telling the truth," said the fairy. "Your mother is sick and poor, and you want to help her. Now look at this, Lisbeth," she continued, giving the child a blossom from her basket like those upon her head, "this is a primrose. Take it, and as you walk along follow the primrose blossoms until you come to the walls of ...
— The Enchanted Castle - A Book of Fairy Tales from Flowerland • Hartwell James
... the cause, and the next day the conspirators made a trip to the florist's shop. They were dismayed but not discouraged by the exorbitant price of flowers; they scornfully dismissed the florist's suggestion of a "neat" little primrose plant—they were equally disdainful of carnations. Patricia favored roses, and when the florist offered them a bargain in some rather wilted Lady Ursulas, she wanted to buy them and put them in salt and water overnight, to revive them. Finally they decided upon a ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... he himself felt shy of professing the full sweetness of the taste of leisure, and there were others when he found himself feeling as if his passages of interchange with the lady at his side might fall upon the third member of their party very much as Mr. Burchell, at Dr. Primrose's fireside, was influenced by the high flights of the visitors from London. The smallest things so arrested and amused him that he repeatedly almost apologised—brought up afresh in explanation his plea of a previous grind. He was aware at the same ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... will weep, The primrose's pale cheek to deck; The dew no more will sleep, Nuzzled in the lily's neck. Much rather would it tremble here, And leave them ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... The sonnet's primrose path Is all too tempting for thy feet to tread. Not on this journey shalt thou earn thy bread, Because the sated reader roars in wrath: 'Little indeed to say the singer hath, And little sense in all that he hath said; Such rhymes are lightly writ but hardly read, And naught but stubble ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... '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! ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... primrose wreath enwove, With fingers deft, and eyes with tears bedimmed: No lovelier face the painter's art e'er limned, No poet's thought e'er ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... through a little copse to her ladyship's own area of experimentation. A gate of old Florentine scrolled iron opened suddenly upon a blaze of yellow in all the shades from the orange velvet of the wallflower through the shaded saffron of azalias and a dozen tints of tulip to the palest primrose and jonquil. ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... from 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
... have bestowed on him, but he left me comfortless; and yet who can say what good he may not have done me? Paths made too smooth leave the feet unprepared for rougher roads. To step always in the primrose way is death to the higher desires. Yet oh, for the hours I spent over that poor rejected story, beautifying it (as I fondly, if erroneously, believed), adding a word here, a sentiment there! So conscientiously minded was I, that even ...
— How I write my novels • Mrs. Hungerford
... triumphos." But somehow, the knowledge that these were indeed the milk-white bullocks of Clitumnus failed amid so much dust to arouse her enthusiasm. She would have been better pleased just then with a yellow English primrose. ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... spring freshness. The 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 Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it be for every generous thought Spring scents are sweeter yet. For every task with high endeavour wrought Earth's gems are fairer set— Primrose ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... have been essentially different if someone else had told it, perhaps Mrs. Primrose, ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... its full. There was a flat with the reddest of new carpets, tasselled portieres and six steins with pewter lids arranged on a ledge above the wainscoting of the dining-room. The wonder of it was yet upon them. Neither of them had ever seen a yellow primrose by the river's brim; but if such a sight had met their eyes at that time it would have seemed like—well, whatever the poet expected the right kind of people to see in it besides ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... broad Beech tree I sate 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 cave, near to the brow of that Primrose hil; there I sate viewing the Silver streams glide silently towards their center, the tempestuous Sea, yet sometimes opposed by rugged roots, and pibble stones, which broke their waves, and turned them into some: and sometimes viewing the harmless ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... into magnificent purple, and the amber rays of the yet unrisen sun were shooting up, streamer-like, with intervals between, through the parting clouds, as they broke away with a passing shower, that fell like a veil of silver gauze between us and the first primrose-coloured streaks of a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Child cared nothing at all about the looking-glass; but as soon as the first sunbeam glided softly through the casement, and kissed his sweet eyelids, and the finch and the linnet waked him merrily with their morning songs, he arose, and went out into the green meadow. And he begged flour of the primrose, and sugar of the violet, and butter of the buttercup; he shook dewdrops from the cowslip into the cup of a harebell; spread out a large lime-leaf, set his little breakfast upon it, and feasted daintily. Sometimes he invited a humming-bee, ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... coloring with pleasure. Here seemed the first pale primrose of the coming spring—an invitation to ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the gate-keeper, seating himself by the fountain—which was not a fountain at all, but only an imitation very skillfully done in aquamarine—"you are to stay here a year. Then, when the spring comes you are to be changed into a primrose, if you will consent to it, and grow up out of the ground like other flowers. Hidden deep within the woods, you must wait patiently, through sunshine and rain, till some one finds you, and breaks you from the stem. Whoever he may be, rich or poor, young ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... were nieces of Mr Justice Roberts, and daughters of Mr Roberts of Primrose Croft, who was owner of the works of which Roger Hall was manager. Theirs was one of the aristocratic houses of the neighbourhood, and themselves a younger branch of an old county family which dated from the ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... so different from anything she had expected, that she felt as if she could have cried for pure happiness. The sun was shining outside; through the window she could see the deer wandering in the park. It was good to know that the old dark past was gone, and that the primrose path of happiness lay shining before them. Presently, as they wandered out in the sunshine, Vera came on the terrace and watched them. There was no need to tell her that the interview with the master of the house had been ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... is much more than a yellow primrose at present," said Mrs. Grinstead, picking out the few spared from political purposes. "Clement will want his button-hole, to ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "LUCAS MALET," has a strange theme—no less than the deliberate wooing, by a sensitive unhappy woman, of a more unhappy ghost. Lord Oxley had lived in this odd villa on Primrose Hill a hundred years ago with a noted stage beauty who had finally jilted him. One of his descendants, Frances Copley, banished from Grosvenor Square by her husband's financial failure and conscious of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... respond to?" "My life?" he sigh'd. "Nay, My life hath brought forth only evil, and there The wild wind hath planted the wild weed: yet ere You exclaim, 'Fling the weed to the flames,' think again Why the field is so barren. With all other men First love, though it perish from life, only goes Like the primrose that falls to make way for the rose. For a man, at least most men, may love on through life: Love in fame; love in knowledge; in work: earth is rife With labor, and therefor, with love, for a man. If one ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... if you want something first-rate. Belongs to a millionaire who went broke before he'd had his auto a week. Best American on the market, and better than new. She's found herself. Come and have a look at her." Nick went. "She" was a beauty, inside and out a pale primrose yellow. ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... fingers cropt full feateously The tender stalks on high. Of every sort which in that meadow grew They gather'd some; the violet, pallid blue, The little daisy that at evening closes, The virgin lily and the primrose true: With store of vermeil roses, To deck their bridegrooms' posies Against the bridal day, which was not long: Sweet Thames! run softly, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... 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 Soap that ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... ye have called me long; I come o'er the mountains, with light and song; Ye may trace my step o'er the waking earth By the winds which tell of the violet's birth, By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass, By the green leaves ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... 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 be ignored; and yet, for a citizen who took his citizenship seriously, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... soiling your fingers for; there is nothing in them all that will pay you for the loss of your innocence. There is nothing in them all except a fair outside with poison at the core. You see the 'primrose path'; you do not see, to use Shakespeare's solemn words, 'the everlasting burnings' to which it leads. And so I plead with you all, young men and women, to lay this question to heart; and I beseech you to credit me ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thus? Although the duke was enemy to him, Yet he most Christian-like laments his death; And for myself, foe as he was to me, Might liquid tears or heart-offending groans Or blood-consuming sighs recall his life, I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans, Look pale as primrose with blood-drinking sighs, And all to have the noble duke alive. What know I how the world may deem of me? For it is known we were but hollow friends. It may be judg'd I made the duke away; So shall my name with slander's tongue be wounded And princes' ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... seemed haunted by her memory. Uncle Max once said to me that he could have constructed a romance out of her poor little history. 'She came from a place called Ecclesbourne Hall,' he said, one day. 'She was an heiress; old Ralph Combermere knew what he was about when he transplanted the pale primrose. Do you know, Ursula, this room is supposed to be haunted? And one of the maids told me seriously that Mistress Combermere walks here on windy nights with her babe in her arms. Fancy such a report in ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... our country has got along, perhaps, as well as one could have expected, considering what it has had to contend with: pressure of debt; primrose paths; pelf; party; patrio-Prussianism; the people; pundits; Puritans; proctors; property; philosophers; the Pontifical; and progress. I will not disguise from you, however, that we are far from perfection; and it may be that on your next visit, thirty-seven years hence, ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... 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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... the hope of heavenly reward in payment for goodness here on earth and countless millions of men (and women, too, for that matter) have kept in the straight and narrow path because they were afraid to step out of it. It may be that they were, intrinsically, no better men than the ones who trod the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire, but they were much easier to live with. And the man who is courteous, who is a gentleman, whatever his motives, is a more agreeable citizen than the ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... like to pick some,' said Evangeline. She stopped the ponies, and at the same moment the two boys sprang to the ground and stood very stiffly at their heads. Sister Agatha and Mary got out of the carriage and, stooping by the roadside, plucked primrose after primrose, whilst the three dogs sniffed about as if they wanted to make a meal off the ...
— The Bountiful Lady - or, How Mary was changed from a very Miserable Little Girl - to a very Happy One • Thomas Cobb
... he always loved to be in the open air to the very last moment of the day, watching the colours of the sky as they changed and melted into twilight. On this particular evening the heavens were streaked with primrose, and pale iris, and delicate limpid green; and so absorbed was he in gazing at this splendour of dissolving beauty that he forgot all about his appetite, and had to be called twice over before he could ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... She was one of those gentle beings, who seem created only to love and to be loved. A shade of melancholy softened her character. She shunned the glare of daylight and of society, and wished to be alone. Like the evening primrose, her heart opened only after sunset; but bloomed through the dark night with sweet fragrance. Her mother, on the contrary, flaunted in the garish light of society. There was no sympathy between them. Their souls never approached, never understood each other, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... years' wife, and not yet fair? Blame let the man, not Nature, bear! For, as the sun, warming a bank Where last year's grass droops gray and dank, Evokes the violet, bids disclose In yellow crowds the fresh primrose, And foxglove hang her flushing head, So vernal love, where all seems dead, Makes beauty abound. Then was that nought, That trance of joy beyond all thought, The vision, in one, of womanhood? Nay, for all women holding good, Should marriage such a prologue ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... and more swiftly through the sleeper's veins. I have spent many a night in the desert, and when waking on the wide silent grassy plain, the first whiteness in the eastern sky, and the fluting call of the tinamou, and the perfume of the wild evening primrose, have seemed to me like a resurrection in which I had a part; and something of this feeling is always associated in my mind with the first far-heard notes ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... "I have thought this thing to a finish. I want you to turn the Tigmores over to my cousin, Bruce Steering. Let him start at once on the jack trail, that primrose path of dalliance. As for me, my dear sir, by the time this reaches you, I shall be on the long trail. You needn't blow any trumpets about it, for B. G. will have no funeral. The name that I gave you as the name that I live here under is good enough to die here under. The certain fact for ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... try this little joke on a score of people, by the time the twentieth is arrived at he will then discover why the happiest quartette of youngsters in the immediate vicinity of Primrose Hill ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... ting! I wish I were a primrose;" and then another of dear William Allingham's, which had been her own pet song when ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... Calls to her purple heaths, and blushing bowers, Bursts her green gems, and opens all her flowers; O'er the bright Pair a shower of roses sheds, And crowns with wreathes of hyacinth their heads.— —Slow roll the silver wheels with snowdrops deck'd, And primrose bands the cedar spokes connect; Round the fine pole the twisting woodbine clings, And knots of jasmine clasp the bending springs; 400 Bright daisy links the velvet harness chain, And rings of violets join each silken rein; Festoon'd behind, the snow-white lilies bend, And tulip-tassels ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... Or hoard of apples, laid in hay or heath. Wincing* she was as is a jolly colt, *skittish Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt. A brooch she bare upon her low collere, As broad as is the boss of a bucklere. Her shoon were laced on her legges high; She was a primerole,* a piggesnie , *primrose For any lord t' have ligging* in his bed, *lying Or yet for any good yeoman ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... enjoyed itself with its pretty little delicate wings, like the most minute flower—enjoyed itself in the warm air, which was so fragrant with the sweet perfumes of the clover-fields, of the wild roses in the hedges, and of the elder-flower, not to speak of the woodbine, the primrose, and the wild mint. The scent was so strong that the ephemeron was almost intoxicated by it. The day was long and pleasant, full of gladness and sweet perceptions; and when the sun set, the little insect felt a sort of pleasing languor creeping over it after all its enjoyments. Its wings would ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... all she could to lose her own warm blushes, and prayed that bees might sting her and so change her hues; but the bees were of low taste, and kept their pearl-powder and rouge and other pigments for the use of common flowers, like the evening primrose or the butter-cup and borage, and never came near to do her any good in ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... create this impression; if so, he has succeeded. Hannah More had fifty times more fun in her life than all these courtesans and criminals put together. The note of jollity is entirely absent. It was no primrose path these unhappy women traversed, though that it led to the everlasting bonfire it were unchristian to doubt. The dissatisfaction I confessed to at the beginning returns upon me as a cloud at the end; but, for all that, I rejoice the book ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell |
