"Withers" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... under its shade. The juice of which the camphire is made exudes from a hole bored in the upper part of the tree, is received in a vessel, where it thickens to a consistency, and becomes what we call camphire; after the juice is thus drawn out, the tree withers and dies. ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... seest thou neither art mark'd out or named, And therefore only to thyself art shamed." J. Withers's Abuses strict ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the hunger of a long sea voyage, elbowed aside by some brawny armed woman, who clamored loudly of the children she had left fast locked up in her little place, that she could but just pay the rent for. Here, too, were young girls, children with an aged, worn look, like the fruit that withers to half its size before it ripens. Most heartrending of all, persons of real refinement were mingled up with this rude mass; poor wretches who had indeed seen better days, and their helpless, broken-hearted looks, the remnants of early sensitiveness, that ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... a fruit among professors that withers, and so never comes to be ripe; a fruit that is smitten in the growth, and comes not to maturity; and this is reckoned no fruit. This fruit those professors bear that have many fair beginnings, or blossoms; that make many fair offers of repentance and amendment; that begin to pray, to resolve, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... believe in broken hearts, and the possibility of dying of disappointed love! I do not, however, consider it a malady often fatal to my own sex; but I firmly believe that it withers down many a lovely woman into an early grave. So is it the nature of woman to hide from the world the ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... this mean?" she said; "what has been poured on the leaves of this flower? If I am not mistaken, I know a liquid which withers roses in this manner." She threw aside the bouquet, shuddering as ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... to him then, with bloodless lip, What had befallen her on board the ship; But youthful Harrald listen'd undismay'd, And merely gripp'd the handle of his blade. "My son," she murmur'd, when her tale was told, "Fear withers me, but thou look'st blythe and bold." The youth uplifted then his sparkling eye, And said, whilst gazing on the ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... by malice in the breasts of the labourers because the farmers pinched them in their wages; the riots may be called an effort to recover their former rate of wages, and answered their object. [Robert Withers, Land Agent.] ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... did George, from the rear, see the drivers, with a simultaneous gesture, twist their heads very sharply to the right, raise their whips, and fling the thongs over the withers of the hand-horses, while ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... interesting, moreover, to trace the same idea in Greek and Roman mythology. Thus Ovid[17] tells a beautiful story of Erisicthon's impious attack on the grove of Ceres, and it may be remembered how the Greek dryads and hamadryads had their life linked to a tree, and, "as this withers and dies, they themselves fall away and cease to be; any injury to bough or twig is felt as a wound, and a wholesale hewing down puts an end to them at once—a cry of anguish escapes them when the cruel ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... growing strong to cast off altogether, with the husk of its own enveloping age, that of its family, its country, its world as well. Age is not all decay: it is the ripening, the swelling of the fresh life within, that withers and ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... into the Nettleton station, the descending mob caught them on its tide, and they were swept out into a vague dusty square thronged with seedy "hacks" and long curtained omnibuses drawn by horses with tasselled fly-nets over their withers, who stood swinging their depressed heads drearily from ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... to find in me its source and goal. Mine was a sacred love and pain mingled with my maternal tenderness when he revealed himself to me as seeking from me the lesser things of love, the things I could not give, that elemental soil of sense and passion without which a man's devotion so strangely withers,—I could give him water from the wells and light from the air; I could not give him earth. My friend, he was here when Karen came, and, already I had seen it, his love was passing from me. Her youth, her guilelessness, her courage ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of the firing at Philippa, and, in disguise, accompanied by a countrywoman, returned to Philippa, on foot, to see what had been the result. They moved about among the enemy without being detected or molested in the least degree. Going into one of the houses, they found James Withers, of the Rockbridge Cavalry, who had concealed himself there to prevent the enemy from capturing him. These ladies immediately told him that they would effect his rescue, if he would trust to them. He ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... faith, then it makes marriage the most perfect union on earth,—the sweetest and most blessed companionship; but when it is a mere gust of fire, bright and fierce as the sudden leaping light of a volcano, then it withers everything at a touch,—faith, honor, truth,—and dies into dull ashes in which no spark remains to warm or inspire man's higher nature. Better death than such a love,—for it works misery on earth; but who can tell what horrors ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... air of abstraction through the dirty window. Some London houses have a melancholy little plot of ground behind them, usually fenced in by four high whitewashed walls, and frowned upon by stacks of chimneys: in which there withers on, from year to year, a crippled tree, that makes a show of putting forth a few leaves late in autumn when other trees shed theirs, and, drooping in the effort, lingers on, all crackled and smoke-dried, till the following season, when it repeats the same process, and perhaps, if the weather ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... nothing in the saddles to distinguish Norah's mount, for she, too, rode astride. Mr. Linton had a rooted dislike to side saddles, and was wont to say he preferred horses with sound withers and a daughter whose right hip was not higher than her left. So Norah rode on a dainty little hunting saddle like Jim's, her habit being a neat divided skirt, which had the double advantage of looking nice on horseback, ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... the thin layer of earth which covers a ledge of stone. Seed which falls into such soil springs up most quickly because warmed by the underlying rock; but as the roots cannot strike downward, the grain soon withers beneath the scorching sun. So there are hearers who receive with joy the message of life, but when subjected to the persecution and trials which followers of Christ must endure, ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... in this school was George Huxley, a tall, dark, rather full-faced man, quick tempered, and distinguished, in his son's words, by "that glorious firmness which one's enemies called obstinacy." In the year 1810 he had married Rachel Withers; she bore five sons and three daughters, of whom one son and one daughter died in infancy; the seventh and youngest ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... themselves ride with a simple halter and a stick, yet sometimes travel, at least in the larger island, at a desperate gallop. As the horses usually have panniers, the rider sits sideways over the withers, and if the panniers are empty they go at full speed in this position ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... now seen how a plant springs up, feeds itself, grows, stores up food, withers, and dies; but we have said nothing yet about its beautiful flowers or how it forms its seeds. If we look down close to the bottom of the leaves in a primrose root in spring-time, we shall always find three or four little green buds nestling in among the leaves, and day by day we may see the stalk ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... In the first place, on Christianity—'on the passionate acceptance of an exquisite fairy tale,' said the dreaming spectator to himself, 'which at the first honest challenge of the critical sense withers in our grasp! That challenge Elsmere has never given it, and in all probability never will. No! A man sees none the straighter for having a wife he adores, and a profession that suits him, between him and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it observed by a profound adept in human physiology, that if a woman waxes fat with the progress of years, her tenure of life is somewhat precarious, but if haply she withers as she grows old, she lives forever. Such promised to be the case with William the Testy, who grew tough in proportion as he dried. He had withered, in fact, not through the process of years, but through the tropical fervor of his soul, which burnt like a vehement rush-light in ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... would hardly believe these activities capable of classification into two general classes. He notes the germination of the plant seed and its early growth, step by step approaching a stage of maturity; it blossoms, produces seed, and if it is an annual plant, withers and dies. If it is a perennial plant its leaves only, wither and die at the approach of winter, the plant passing into a resting stage from which it awakes the following spring to repeat again its ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... version is transcribed. The discovery however, by Mr. Collier, of the First Part in a MS. temp. Jac. I., with the initials G. W. affixed to it, has disposed of Erskine's claim to the honour of the entire authorship. G. W. is supposed to be George Withers; but this is purely conjectural; and it is not at all improbable that G. W. really stands for W. G., as it was a common practice amongst anonymous writers to reverse their initials. The history, then, of the poem, seems to be this: that the First Part, as it ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... love developed and grew strong and active, a legitimate channel for the affections of her nature was denied her, and wedded love was extinguished in grave physical and mental sufferings. Add to this that she now felt for her husband that pity closely bordering upon contempt, which withers all affection at last. Even if she had not learned from conversations with some of her friends, from examples in life, from sundry occurrences in the great world, that love can bring ineffable bliss, her own wounds would have ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... little. Then she laughed, hung the bridle back on the rusty spike, and took down the saddle blanket. "We'll play I'm Robert Grant Burns," she said. "I'll tell you what to do: Lay the blanket on straight,—it's shaped to Pard's back, so that ought to be easy,—with the front edge coming forward to his withers; that's not right. Maybe I had better do it first, and show you. ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... live more constantly and habitually under the constraining influence of the love of Jesus. Selfishness withers and dies ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... horse's withers, he vaulted upon its back, before the animal had time to kneel, and a ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... hearing, thought that the Duchess had intended to allude to the servile nature of their position; and Mr. Boffin, who heard it, rejoiced within himself, comforting himself with the reflection that his withers were unwrung, and thinking with what pleasure he might carry the anecdote into the farthest corners of the clubs. Poor Duchess! 'Tis pitiful to think that after such Herculean labours she should injure the cause by one slight unconsidered word, more, perhaps, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... him by the throat, and dragged him in a grip of iron on to the withers of his horse. Still he managed to utter a cry, and the other rascal, taking the alarm, whipped his horse round, and in a second got a start of twenty paces. Colet, a light man and well mounted, was after him in a trice, and we heard them go ding-dong, ding-dong, through the darkness ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... give them their part in his work, though in a state of comparative apathy to them at the time. He is but carving and gilding, and must not turn aside to weep; but he knows that hell is burning on, for all that, and the smoke of it withers his oak-leaves. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... dew, which sometimes withers buds, was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls, stood now within the pretty flow'rets' eyes, like tears, that ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Alexis withers in the tomb, Untimely fades, nor sees a second bloom; Ye hills and groves no more your landscapes please, Nor give my soul one interval of ease; Delight and joy forever flee your shades,— And mournful care ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... up of "Carteret! Carteret! Wake up, Carteret! Don't give it away!" And the Waler's rider, as if startled by the cry, suddenly and convulsively slashed the animal's withers. ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... famines may be owing to the nature of the products, particularly to that of rice. This grain, the staff of life in China, though it yields abundant returns in favourable seasons, is more liable to fail than most others. A drought in its early stages withers it on the ground; and an inundation, when nearly ripe, is equally destructive. The birds and the locusts, more numerous in this country than an European can well conceive, infest it more than any other kind of grain. In the northern provinces, where ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... day's ride,—but a swamp! Ugh! the horrible treacherous thing, so green and innocent looking, with here and there a quicksand or a peaty morass, in which, without a moment's warning, your horse sank up to his withers! It was dreadful, and when we came to such a place Helen used to stop dead short, prick her pretty ears well forward, and, trembling with fear and excitement, put her nose close to the ground, smelling every inch, before she would place ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... No one gets wounded in the war against caricatures of belief and skeletons of opinion of which the German onslaughts upon 'relativismus' consists. Refuse to use the word 'opinion' abstractly, keep it in its real environment, and the withers of pragmatism remain unwrung. That men do exist who are 'opinionated,' in the sense that their opinions are self-willed, is unfortunately a fact that must be admitted, no matter what one's notion of truth in general ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... he was a Royalist, but belongs to the literary school of Withers. He is best known by his collection of moral and religious poems, called Divine Emblems, which were accompanied with quaint engraved illustrations. These allegories are full of unnatural conceits, and are many of them borrowed from an older source. He ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... must be hired, a stage or pulpit must be erected; benches must be arranged, and hand-bills distributed throughout the city. What if the reading succeeds to the height of his wishes? Pass but a day or two, and the whole harvest of praise and admiration fades away, like a flower that withers in its bloom, and never ripens into fruit. By the event, however flattering, he gains no friend, he obtains no patronage, nor does a single person go away impressed with the idea of an obligation conferred upon him. The poet has been heard with ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... thanked them for their solicitude, but utterly slighted the prediction: the event occurred, and in the following year the Spanish friar spread his own fame in a new almanac. I have been occasionally struck at the Jeremiads of honest George Withers, the vaticinating poet of our civil wars: some of his works afford many solemn predictions. We may account for many predictions of this class without the intervention of any supernatural agency. Among ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... For those who survive are not the sons of the Romans, but of the slaves, scullions, the idlers and camp-followers whom the years of Roman glory could not use and did not destroy. War blasts and withers all that is worthy ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... which of us isn't an omnibus hack, With galls on his withers and sores on his back,— Buckled to circumstance, driven by fate, And chain'd on the pole of a oar that we hate— Yon ponderous Past which we drag fast or slow On the coarse-mended Present, this dull road we go, Hard-curb'd on the tongue and no bearing-rein slack, Ah! who ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... terrified, emaciated and sick, and it was evident that they must have treated her as executioners do, and had she remained longer in their terrible hands she would have withered and perished as a little flower withers and perishes ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... General Marion ordered Captain Withers to take Sergeant Macdonald, with four volunteers, and search out the intentions of the enemy in Georgetown. On the way they stopped at a wayside house and drank too much brandy. Sergeant Macdonald, feeling the effects of the potion, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... affections. For this there can be no substitute. This deep and steady current of truth and thought, is to the mind in connection with the Spirit's operations, what showers are to the earth. If there are none, it soon becomes parched, and verdure withers; if they descend frequently and copiously, the ground is filled with moisture, vegetation blooms, and fruits ripen; springs burst forth, the streams dash along the valleys, sweep through the meadows, and pouring into the ocean, roll their mountain ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... not know us intimately; but there is all the difference between such superficial good manners and those which are real, that there is between the cut bouquet of flowers which delights for an hour or two and then withers away, and the living, growing plant which constantly delights us with ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... and Terry gradually drew ahead. He must overtake Malabanan before nightfall.... Ledesma had not put his confidence into words, but he had looked it—had trusted him ... the pony's head and neck dripped, a welt of lather fringed the saddle blanket over the withers and down both shoulders. The Sergeant, seeing his men fall behind, galloped up into the lead and cursed them on with graphic phrases culled from the English, Spanish and Malay tongues. But it was useless: the gray pony carried its desperately anxious rider ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... to Summer; The sun is fierce and high; The city shrinks, and withers Beneath the burning sky. Ailantus trees are fragrant, And thicker shadows cast, Where berry-girls, with voices shrill, And ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... "My withers are unwrung," he said, not without bravado. "You don't understand, my dear. Do I want to do the elder generation any damage? Not at all! But it is time the elder generation withdrew to the chimney-corner and ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you didn't mean the whole. Don't fret so, lad; you'll have Roger trampin' me down, next thing. Martha and me talk o' walkin' over to Polly Withers's. She promised Martha a pa'tridge-breasted aloe, and they say you've got to plant it in pewter sand, and only water it once't a month, and how it can grow I can't see; but never mind, all the same—s'pose we say Friday afternoon about three o'clock, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... In rarely or never becoming perfectly straight, these cotyledons differ remarkably from the ultimate condition of the arched hypocotyls or epicotyls of dicotyledons. It is, also, a singular circumstance that the attenuated extremity of the upper bent portion invariably withers ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... anger. He flung round without a word, tugging at the buckle until Betty, who was patient but girth-galled, pulled away in protest. As it yielded Norah laid his saddle on the mare's withers, and slipped her own away. Their eyes met for a moment as she did so—the child's steady and a little scornful, the young man's shifty. Then Norah lifted her saddle across to Bobs, and girthed him ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... consigned to the grave together—all alike conscious that every day which sent its light through their melancholy casements, only brought them nearer to a death of misery! But I must say no more of this. My heart withered within me as I looked at the towers of the Temple. It almost withers within me, at this moment, when I think of them. They are leveled long since; but while I write I see them before me again, a sepulchre; I see the mustering of that crowd of more than savages before the grim gate; and I see the pale glimmer of that floating lamp, which was then, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... in Locksley Hall, wrote the line declaring that "the individual withers and the world is more and more," he might have been inditing a prophecy summing up those modern tendencies which have engaged our attention in preceding chapters. And there are perhaps few more important ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... some of his descendants must still reside. It appears that they became deeply involved in the Indian wars which the Shawnees kept up on the frontiers of Virginia. In this struggle they took an active part, and were visited with the severest retribution by the marauding Indians. It is stated by Withers that, between 1770 and 1779, not less than fifteen of this family, men, women, and children, were killed or taken prisoners, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... family, wheeling suddenly in his tracks, had thrown himself into a cause which was all sacrifice, courage, and unselfish patriotism—a holy warfare. The last bitter thrust of the Duke had touched no raw flesh, his withers were unwrung. Gifted to thrust in return, and with warrant to do so, he put aside the temptation, and answered his kinsman with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Clara stared at him. 'Here is a man who started with a grand heroic purpose to redeem the estate, not for himself, but for her and his brother; he exiles himself, he perseveres, till this one pursuit, for which he denies himself home, kindred, wife or child, absorbs and withers him up. He returns to find his brother dead; and the children, for whom he sacrificed all, set against ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... She saw Garnache raise his foot to the stirrup and hoist himself to the saddle. Then he held down a hand to her, bade her set her foot on his, and called with an oath to Rabecque to lend her his assistance. A moment later she was perched in front of Garnache, almost on the withers of his horse. The cobbles rattled under its hooves, the timbers of the drawbridge sent up a booming sound, they were across—out of Condillac—and speeding at a gallop down the white road that led to the river; after them pounded ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... of the Mameluke oppressors, or keeps them in repair; and within them there are no more chants, no prayers to Allah. Night after night they pass in an infinity of silence. Piety contents itself with not destroying them; leaving them there at the mercy of time and the sun and the wind which withers and crumbles them. And all around are the signs of ruin. Tottering cupolas show us irreparable cracks; the halves of broken arches are outlined to-night in shadow against the mother-of-pearl light of the sky, and debris of sculptured stones are strewn about. ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... device for destroying the Moslems; so bide ye quiet and content. I have cozened and captured their Sultan and the Wazir Dandan; and then I returned to their camp and acquainted them therewith, whereby their pride had a fall and their withers were wrung. And I have so wrought upon the host 'leaguering Constantinople that they have sent ten thousand men under the Emir Tarkash to succour the capitves, of whom there be now left but few; it is therefore my object that ye sally forth against them ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... art, and what thou wouldst be, let No "If" arise on which to lay the blame. Man makes a mountain of that puny word, But, like a blade of grass before the scythe, It falls and withers when a human will, Stirred by creative force, sweeps ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Tropically: This Play is the Image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is the Dukes name, his wife Baptista: you shall see anon: 'tis a knauish peece of worke: But what o'that? Your Maiestie, and wee that haue free soules, it touches vs not: let the gall'd iade winch: our withers are vnrung. Enter Lucianus. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the fearful possibilities hidden away in the womb of the future. Any day may snatch from our life its light. One moment we were happy in the possession of some dear object, about which to twine the tendrils of the heart; the next, we cower and shiver in the chill gloom of a bereavement that withers the soul and makes existence an intolerable burden! To-day all nature smiles with a sunny warmth, and life spreads before us a wilderness of sweets; to-morrow-we lose ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... out of the valley and out upon them, barely four hundred yards away, came a band of forty or fifty Comanche warriors, crouching low on their horses' withers, madly plying quirt and heel to urge their mounts to their ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... fine relatively far less great than the fines every day inflicted in the police courts upon multitudes of push cart peddlers and other petty offenders, whose woes never extort one word from the men whose withers are wrung by the woes of the mighty. The stockholders have the control of the corporation in their own hands. The corporation officials are elected by those holding the majority of the stock and ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... of long growth in this world; it requires the dew and sunlight of heaven to nourish it, and it soon withers, removed from its native skies. The cholera visited the remote village. It smote the strong man in the pride of his strength, and the matron in the beauty of her prime; while it spared the helpless and the aged, the infant of a few days, and the parent of many years. Both ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Bronston secured a change in the city charter to facilitate this object. The act provides that the library shall be under the control of a board of five trustees and was intentionally worded to make women eligible. Mayor Joseph Simrall appointed two of the club women, Mrs. Mary D. Short and Mrs. Ida Withers Harrison. This is the first free library ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... and glee and music before his coming, dies in her throat, how the little ones, full of merriment all day long, tremblingly hide in the corner, or withdraw from the room; see how the intrusion of this grim spectre of malcontent shuts the door upon domestic peace and happiness, and withers every pious resolve to make home the dearest, sweetest, most contented and most sacred spot on earth, and then calculate how long, under such disheartening surroundings, woman will be able all by herself, and without any man to help ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... would, the man clung fast to his heaving sides and to his flying mane, silent, motionless, inexorable, letting him do what he would, but fixed as Fate upon his purpose. Over Hankley Down, through Thursley Marsh, with the reeds up to his mud-splashed withers, onward up the long slope of the Headland of the Hinds, down by the Nutcombe Gorge, slipping, blundering, bounding, but never slackening his fearful speed, on went the great yellow horse. The villagers of Shottermill heard the wild clatter of hoofs, but ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... voice of hope, that came whispering Its story of strength and life. It told me that seasons of vigor and mirth Follow the night of pain; And the heaven-born soul, like the flowers of earth, Withers, to live again! ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... enjoy'st the fair one's presence; Then undertake my cause, and plead it to her With all the strength and heat of eloquence Fraternal love and friendship can inspire. Tell her thy brother languishes to death, And fades away, and withers in his bloom; That he forgets his sleep, and loathes his food; That youth, and health, and war, are joyless to him; Describe his anxious days, and restless nights, And all the torments ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... Sheet 24. A hollow cup-shaped vesicle from the brain grows out towards an at first hollow cellular ingrowth from the epidermis. The cavity within the wall of the cup derived from the brain is obliterated, [and the stalk withers,] the cup becomes the retina, and -its stalk- [thence fibres grow back to the brain to form] the optic nerve. The cellular ingrowth is the lens. The remainder of the eye-structures are of mesoblastic origin, except the superficial epithelium of the ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... for the purpose of removing, by its own strong scent, the bad smell of the spot where the bodies were burnt, and also of the bodies themselves. It was also said to be so used, because, when once its bark is cut, it withers, and is consequently emblematical of the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... look upon that the happier Rose that dies in a Man's Hand; there delighting the Sight and Smell, than that which withers away upon the Bush, for it would die there, if it were let alone. As that Wine has the most Honour done it; that is drank before it grows dead: Though this is to be said, that the Flower of a Maid does not presently ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... pride. Sir Reginald's every thought was for his daughter—for her aggrandizement. In vain. She seemed only to endure him, and while his affection waxed stronger, and entwined itself round her alone, she withered beneath his embraces as the shrub withers in the clasping folds of the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... friend, how stronger far than I; As from Experience—that sure port serene— Thou look'st; and straight, a coldness wraps the sky, The summer glory withers from the scene, Scared by the solemn spell; behold them fly, The godlike images that seem'd so fair! Silent the playful Muse—the rosy Hours Halt in their dance; and the May-breathing flowers Pall from the sister-Graces' ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Here, Withers, rest! thou bravest, gentlest mind, Thy country's friend, but more of human kind. O! born to arms! O! worth in youth approv'd! O! soft humanity in age belov'd! For thee the hardy vet'ran drops a tear, And the gay courtier feels ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... starts from Jericho at dawn; and if we meet it I shall have my camel-drivers round me asking pertinent questions and may be compelled to return with them to Jericho. Come, Jesus, thine ass seems willing to amble down this long incline; and dropping the reins over the animal's withers, and leaning back, holding a puppy under each arm, Jesus allowed the large brown ass he was riding to trot; it was not long before he left far behind the heavy weighted white ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... is! That's just it. My exotic flower of optimism withers at your feet. It's all exactly the muddle you say it is. Pray Heaven for a clear way out! Meantime thank whatever ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... Once more the gleams Of your lost Eden haunt our dreams, Where Evil, at the touch of Good, Withers in the Enchanted Wood: Fairies, come back! Drive gaunt Despair And Famine to their ghoulish lair! Tap at each heart's bright window-pane Thro' merry ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... sordid and mercenary deliberation maintaining a fair appearance? The tender apple-blossom, rather than Pretence, is surely a reminder of Eden and the fall of love's devotion into inflated worldliness. The poppy which flaunts its violent colours athwart the bearded corn, and which frets and withers like the Second Mrs. Tanqueray so soon as you bring it to the shelter of a decent home, is made the symbol of Repose. One might almost think Aime Martin and the other great authorities on this subject wrote in a mood ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... destroys all feeling as it arises in him. Which is the stronger? The man or the disease? One has need be a great man, truly, to keep the balance between genius and character. The talent grows, the heart withers. Unless a man is a giant, unless he has the thews of a Hercules, he must be content either to lose his gift or to live without a heart. You are slender and fragile, you will give way," he added, as he turned into ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... is that one big heart-ache withers up all the little ones and the joy of years as well. With this terror upon me, even Sada's desperate trouble has faded and grown pale as the memory of a dream. Jack is ill and I must get to him, though my body is racked with ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... that the question struck the girl as lightning strikes a fair white rose and withers and blights it with its awful ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... clearing. Rain had ceased dripping from the bulging black clouds, and a slender rod of golden sunlight pierced through and marked a path upon the red bricks of the inn courtyard. Hazy in the green-and-purple distance could be glimpsed the yellow withers of the western range. Cooking smells, the sour odor of fish-and-rice chow, were wafted from the braziers ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... rider was a dark, ill-favoured man, whose pale flaccid cheeks and drooping form betrayed the utmost fatigue. A bolster was bound across the withers of his horse and another on the croup, so that he sat as in a sort of chair, but he seemed hardly able to support himself even with this artificial assistance, and his body swayed from side to side as his horse bounded over the sharp curve at ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... thought there should be a visitation of the sick for it, and a funeral service, and an extreme unction, and an abi in pace. It has its course, like all mortal things—its beginning, progress, and decay. It buds and it blooms out into sunshine, and it withers and ends. Strephon and Chloe languish apart; join in a rapture: and presently you hear that Chloe is crying, and Strephon has broken his crook across her back. Can you mend it so as to show no marks of rupture? Not all the priests ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... present, resolved to drop the whole affair as soon as I should get clear of her company; with this view, I uttered some civil things, and in particular desired to know the name and condition of the lady who had honoured me so much. She told me her name was Withers, that she lived with Sir John Sparkle in quality of governess to his only daughter, in which situation she had picked up a comfortable sufficiency to make her easy for life; that she had the pleasure of seeing me at church, where my appearance and ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... White as white clouds, floated from sky to sky. Oh! pleasant breast of waters, quiet bay, Like to a quiet mind in the loud world, Where the chafed breakers of the outer sea Sunk powerless, even as anger falls aside, And withers on the breast of peaceful love, Thou didst receive that belt of pines, that fledged The hills that watch'd thee, as Love watcheth Love,— In thine own essence, and delight thyself To make it wholly thine on sunny days. Keep thou thy name of 'Lover's bay': See, Sirs, Even now the Goddess of ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the self is all that man can know Of Beauty, all the wonder, all the power, All the unearthly colour, all the glow, Here in the self which withers like a flower; Here in the self which fades as hours pass, And droops and dies and rots and is forgotten Sooner, by ages, than the mirroring glass In which it sees its glory still unrotten. Here in the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... might exclaim, "is utterly extravagant; the transformation by hypnotism of the absolutely tone-deaf girl into the unutterably peerless singer is unthinkable and absurd." The admirers of "Trilby" may very well grant this, and yet feel that their withers are unwrung. It is not in the hypnotic device and its working out that they find the charm of the story; it is not the plot that they are mainly interested in; it is not even the slightly sentimental love-story of Trilby and Little Billee. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... ye neglect the tree, and take no thought for its nourishment, behold it will not get any root; and when the heat of the sun cometh and scorcheth it, because it hath no root it withers away, and ye pluck it up and cast ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... ground, led the three big brothers in that direction one May morning, and, on turning the corner, they found the little girl leaning convulsively against the old straw stack for support, while in front of her, blinded by a big, red handkerchief, and with a long bolster full of hay across her dappled withers, was the blue mare, making stiff, wild plunges into the air, with arched back and head held low. For the little girl was breaking her ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... before. Every thing that can be said on this subject has been said, and well said, not only by Mr. Pitman, but by a host of writers and lecturers, among whom I might mention Mr. Alexander J. Ellis, Dr. Latham, Professors Haldeman, Whitney, and Hadley, Mr. Withers, Mr. E. Jones, Dr. J. H. Gladstone, and many others. The whole matter is no longer a matter for argument; and the older I grow, the more I feel convinced that nothing vexes people so much, and hardens them in their unbelief and in their dogged resistance to reforms, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... decay the leaf, So her cheeks' rose is perish'd by her sighs, And withers in the sickly breath of grief; Whilst unacquainted rheum bedims her eyes, Tears, virgin tears, the first that ever leapt From those young ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Robert, earl of Sunderland; John, earl of Melfort; Roger, earl of Castlemain; Nathaniel, lord bishop of Durham; Thomas, lord bishop of Saint David's; Henry, lord Dover; lord Thomas Howard; sir-Edward Hales, sir Francis Withers, sir Edward Lutwych, sir Thomas Jenner, sir Nicholas Butler, sir William Herbert, sir Richard Holloway, sir Richard Heath, sir Roger l'Estrange William Molineux, Thomas Tynde-sly, colonel Townley, colonel Lundy, Robert Brent, Edward Morgan, Philip Burton, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the Restoration was obliged to surrender his gains, was impeached, and committed to the Tower. In his later years he wrote many religious poems and hymns, coll. as Hallelujah. Before his death his poems were already forgotten, and he was referred to by Pope in The Dunciad as "the wretched Withers". He was, however, disinterred by Southey, Lamb, and others, who drew attention to his poetical merits, and he has now an established place among English poets, to which his freshness, fancy, and delicacy of ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Elisha Withers was born in Stafford county, Va., on the 10th of August, 1762. His first service in the Revolutionary war was in 1780, acting for twelve months as Commissary in furnishing provisions for the soldiers stationed at Captain Robert Alexander's, ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... differs from a sailing-ship. On the sailing-ship, indeed, the preliminary stages are the same. The seed roots as strongly, and grows and flowers with equal vigour; but here comes the melancholy part—it withers and decays with equal rapidity. The voyage is too long. Too much is mutually revealed. The matrimonial iron cannot be struck while it is hot, and long before the weary ninety days are over it is once more cold and black, or at the ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... Celebes, Sumba, and Philippines. Other breeds are specified by Zollinger in the 'Journal of the Indian Archipelago' volume 5 page 343 etc.) Some of the breeds present great differences in size, shape of ears, length of mane, proportions of the body, form of the withers and hind quarters, and especially in the head. Compare the race- horse, dray-horse, and a Shetland pony in size, configuration, and disposition; and see how much greater the difference is than between the seven or eight other living species of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... who were young when Shakespeare, or when Byron, died, would not have been exactly in their dotage if, forty years later, they had extolled the literature of their nonage. One does not care to dwell long on such a point: but it may just be observed that the present writer's withers are hardly even pinched, let alone wrung, by the strictest application, to his case, of this rather idle notion. For some of what he is praising as the best novels were written before he was born; many while he was in the nursery; most before he had left ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... long enough to notice the flesh-marks. The calf was a dark red except for a white stripe which covered the right side of his face, including his ear and lower jaw, and continued in a narrow band beginning on his withers and broadening as it extended backward until it covered his hips. Aside from his good color the ranchman was pleased with his sex, for a steer those days was better than gold. So the cowman rode away with a pleased expression on his face, but there is a profit and loss ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... than gall with keen lampoon Cassius the rake and Maenius the buffoon, When each one, though with withers yet unwrung, Fears for himself, and ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... cultivated with great care and success by some of the most zealous flower-fanciers amongst our countrymen in India. But it is a delicate plant in this clime, and requires most assiduous attention, and a close study of its habits. It always withers here under ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... means Bottomless Spring. There's a little trading-post, the last and the wildest in northern Arizona. Withers, the trader who keeps it, hauls his supplies in from Colorado and New Mexico. He's never come down this way. I never saw him. Know nothing of him except hearsay. Reckon he's a nervy and strong man to hold that post. If you want to go ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... the turbid river, But Time is crumbling its battered towers; And the slow light withers a despot's powers, And a mad king's curse is not ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... 1866.—We spent Sunday at Kandango's village. The men killed a hippopotamus when it was sleeping on the shore; a full-grown female, 10 feet 9 inches from the snout to the insertion of the tail, and 4 feet 4 inches high at the withers. The bottom here and all along southwards now is muddy. Many of the Siluris Glanis are caught equal in length to an eleven or a twelve-pound salmon, but a great portion is head; slowly roasted on a stick stuck in the ground ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... Platte's sais had put the new saddle-pad on the mare, the butts of the terrets would not have worked through the worn leather, and the old pad into the mare's withers, when she was coming home at two o'clock in the morning. She would not have reared, bolted, fallen into a ditch, upset the cart, and sent Platte flying over an aloe-hedge on to Mrs. Larkyn's well-kept lawn; and this tale would never have been written. But the mare did all these things, and while ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... where are classified the humbler insects, crabs, and snails. The young of Boltenia promises everything in its tiny backbone or notochord, but it all ends in promise, for that shadow of a great ambition withers away, and the creature is doomed to a lowly and vegetative life. If we soften the hard scientific facts which tell us of these dumb, blind creatures, with the humane mellowing thought of the oneness of all life, we ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... them. Patience! Why grudge an hour, a month, a year, To plant my ladder and to gain the round That leads my footsteps to the heaven of fame, Where waits the wreath my sleepless midnights won? Not the stained laurel such as heroes wear That withers when some stronger conqueror's heel Treads down their shrivelling trophies in the dust; But the fair garland whose undying green Not time can change, nor wrath ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... example, may have exhibited an adumbration of a state of things which, for the world at large, is still in the future,—still to be remotely hoped for. The rich complexity of modern social achievement is attained at the cost of individual many-sidedness. As Tennyson puts it, "The individual withers and the world is more and more." Yet the individual does not exist for the sake of society, as the positivists would have us believe, but society exists for the sake of the individual. And the test of ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... below the withers, where the long, hard muscles rippled back and forth. She was full of running, her gallop as light as the toss of a bough in the wind, and now as he pulled her back to a swinging canter her head went high, with pricking ears. Suddenly his heart went out to her; she ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... and Sherman! But Hobart Ward's 38th New York, which Wilcox has ordered up to support the 1st Michigan, on our extreme right, in this flanking movement, has been misdirected, and is now attacking the Enemy's centre, instead of his left; and Preston's 28th Virginia—which, with Withers's 18th Virginia, has come up to the Rebel left, from Cocke's Brigade, on the Enemy's right—finding the 1st Michigan broken, in the woods, attacks it, and wounds and captures Wilcox. Withers's Regiment has, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... general, full two inches taller than any Esquimaux dog we have seen; but those met with in 1818, in the latitude of 76°, appear to come nearest to it in that respect. The tallest dog at Igloolik stood two feet one inch from the ground, measured at the withers; the average height was about two inches ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... this was thine: to lose thyself in me, Relive in my renewal, and become The light of other lives, a quenchless torch Passed on from hand to hand, till men are dust And the last garland withers ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... goats, together with a few cows, contrive to exist. It rains very seldom, but during a short portion of the year heavy torrents fall, and immediately afterwards a light vegetation springs out of every crevice. This soon withers; and upon such naturally formed hay the animals live. It had not now rained for an entire year. When the island was discovered, the immediate neighbourhood of Porto Praya was clothed with trees, [1] the reckless destruction of which has caused ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... said, "God be merciful to me a sinner," was the one that God looked upon with favor, not the Pharisee, who thanked God that he was not as the other people were. And, if there is any class in the New Testament that Jesus scathes and withers with the hot lightning of his scorn and his wrath, it is these infallible people, who are perfectly right in their ideas, and who look with contempt upon people who are outside of the pale of their own inherited infallible ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... success, and the years had gone by with no desire on his part to assume the risk. What he saw was not the life he wanted. Just what he did want he was not sure; but years of contact with much that blights and withers had not killed his belief in certain old-fashioned things, and if they could not come true the journey ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... I again thine own. Beggar, did he say! then is the world turned upside down, beggars are kings, and kings are beggars! I would not change the rags he wears for the imperial purple. The look with which he begs must, indeed, be a noble, a royal look, a look that withers into naught the glory, the pomp, the triumphs of the rich and great! Into the dust with thee, glittering baubles! (She tears her pearls from her neck.) Let the rich and the proud be condemned to bear the burden of gold, and silver, and jewels! Be they condemned to carouse at the tables ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... withers banged and bumped the kettledrums draped in crape, and on his back, very stiff and soldierly, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... distended, and sides moving in breathless agony, they can scarce, when unyoked, crawl to the stable. 'Tis true they are well fed; the interest of their owners secures that. They are over-well fed, in order that a supernatural energy may be exerted. The morrow comes when their galled withers are again to be wrung by the ill-cushioned collars, and the lumbering of the wheels. But we do not witness all the misery of the noble and the generous steed. When the shades of night impend, the reproaches of the feeling, or the expostulations of the timid traveller ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... wrong way? Why not conform to these laws and concentrate our effort in the right direction? A prodigious amount of energy is wasted in efforts to beat the game. One may scheme and contrive until all ambition withers and hope fades, but no one will ever find a satisfactory substitute for hard work. Many lives have been frittered away in the foolish attempt to find the "easy road." It is doing the little things of life conscientiously that counts. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being. It is not only when Lydgate misallies himself with Rosamond Vincy, but when Ladislaw marries above him with Dorothea, that this may be exemplified. The air of the fireside withers out all the fine wildings of the husband's heart. He is so comfortable and happy that he begins to prefer comfort and happiness to everything else on earth, his wife included. Yesterday he would have shared his last shilling; to-day "his first duty is to his family," and is fulfilled in ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... offense, it appears, to some of the gensd'armes of the Press, by his satirical sketches of the literary profession. Those whose withers are unwrung will admit the truth of many pages and laugh at the caricature in the rest. In the last number of the North British Review is a clever article upon the subject, written with good temper and good sense. Hitherto publishers have been ridiculed and declaimed against as "tyrants" ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... trouble patience grows. The weakly blossom, warm in summer bower, Some tints of transient beauty may disclose; But ah, it withers in the chilling hour. Mark yonder oaks! Superior to the power Of all the warring winds of heaven, they rise, And from the stormy promontory tower, And toss their giant arms amid the skies, While each assailing ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... any pedant, because he thinks proper to vex and entangle his own brain with doubts, to force his gloomy dogmas upon me? Let those who love sack-cloth wear it. Must I be made miserable, because an over-curious booby bewilders himself in inquiry, and galls his conscience, till, like the wrung withers of a battered post-horse, it shrinks and shivers at the touch of a fly's foot? What, shall I not enjoy the free air, the glorious sun, the flowers, the fruits, the viands, the whole stores of nature? Who shall impede, who ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... said that it was fifteen minutes past six, which she considered an unearthly hour for rising. She pulled up the covers and tried to sleep again. The day would be long enough, at best. There was nothing to do, unless she took that queer old horse with withers like the breastbone of a lean Christmas turkey and hips that reminded her of the little roofs over dormer windows, and went for a ride. And if she did that, there was nowhere to go and nothing to do ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... a year—the dark months, by the way,—is not electricity and the many benefits it provides worth having eight months in the year? My garden provides fresh vegetables four months a year. Because it withers and dies and lies covered with snow during the winter, is that any reason why I should not plow and manure and plant my garden when spring ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... elephant killed was of the small variety, and only 5 feet 8 inches high at the withers. The forefoot was in circumference 3 feet 9 inches, which doubled gives 7 feet 6 inches; this shows a deviation from the usual rule "twice round the forefoot the height of the animal." Heart 1-1/2 foot long, tusks 6 feet 8 inches ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... to such a size that a hundred men could shelter under one of them with ease. The sap flows from an incision made high up in the tree into a vessel hung there to receive it, and soon hardens into the substance called camphor, but the tree itself withers up and dies when ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... country, which any one would have expected to find most healthy, being very much the contrary. I have described the bare and open plains as supporting, during a few weeks after the rainy season, a thin vegetation, which directly withers away and dries up: at this period the air appears to become quite poisonous; both natives and foreigners often being affected with violent fevers. On the other hand, the Galapagos Archipelago, in the Pacific, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... tried, fagots are passed about, and by the eerie light of burning salt and alcohol, ghost stories are told, each concluding his installment as his fagot withers into ashes. Sometimes the cabbage stalks used in the omens ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... 'all that generation' has vanished. The old trees are all cleared off the ground, and everywhere their place is taken by the young saplings. The web is ever being woven at one end, and run down at the other. 'The individual withers, but the race is more and more.' How solemn that continual play of opposing movements is, and how blind we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... and trembled receives the sun instead. All the shadows on the spirit when fears and dreams were strong, All perdition, all redemption, blind rain-stars watched so long, Love whose root was fear, thanksgiving that cowered beneath the rod, Feel the light that heals and withers: night weeps upon her God. All the names wherein the incarnate Lord lived his day and died Fade from suns to stars, ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... is so utterly cruel that when it cannot kill animals by its baleful gaze, it turns upon herbs and plants, and fixing its gaze on them withers them up. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... is our reward then for deserving well of our country? Gratitude may wreath a chaplet of laurel, but trust me, Christine, it withers unless ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... pr'ythee, Tom, beat Cut's saddle, put a few flocks in the point; the poor jade is wrung in the withers out of ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... not a little tremulous as the great muscles that lifted the legs of the horse knotted and relaxed against his legs, and he cowered towards the withers, grasping with his hands the bit of mane worn short by the collar; but when his father looked back at him, saying once more, "Sit up, Diamond," he let the mane go and sat up, notwithstanding that the horse, thinking, I suppose, ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... came, when it seemed that even the above supposition, in the case of a woman who has been married, is shameful to her, a sin against her lover, and should be obliterated under floods of scarlet. For, if she has pride, she withers to think of pushing the most noble of men upon his generosity. And, further, if he is not delicately scrupulous, is there not something wanting in him? The very cold wave passed, leaving the sentence: better dream ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... land of gallant hearts, The land of lovely forms, The island of the mountain-harp, The torrents and the storms; The land that blooms with freeman's tread, And withers with the slave's, Where far and deep the green woods spread, And wild the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... way, Mr. Withers: here's the holler, and here's the stomped place where the sheep have camped, and the cattle trails getherin' from everywheres to the water, and the young rabbit brush that's sprung up since the plains was burnt over. If this ain't Pilgrim Station, we're lost pilgrims ourselves, I guess. We ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... contemporary, F. P. A., is not disturbed by the steel strike, as he uses a gold pen; and for a like reason our withers are unwrung. Eugene Field of fragrant memory used a steel pen. A friend of ours was speaking of having dropped in on the poet just as he was fitting a new pen to the holder. "You can't write anything new," said Field, "unless you ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... staff and pay the surplus money away both in leaving Exhibitions and in gratuities to the Scholars at the School by way of encouragement. There is a letter extant addressed in November, 1794, by the Clerk to the Governors to Mr. Clough, who was requested to lay the whole matter before Mr. Withers and get ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... world with the music of the clouds and forests. But, you man of riches, your wealth has no part in the simple grandeur of the sun's glad gold and the mellow gleam of the musing moon. The blessing of all-embracing sky is not shed upon it. And when death appears, it pales and withers and ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman |
