"Leafless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... others are occasionally seen. These plants all have long rod-like stems which are cylindrical or angular. These stems often reach a height of 10 to 30 ft., and they need support. They should be trained along a pillar or tied to a stake. They are uninteresting leafless things during a large part of the year; but in midsummer, after they are three or more years old, they throw out their great tubular flowers, which open at nightfall and wither and die when the light ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... late in autumn, when the sharp winds were already giving signals of the coming winter, of leafless trees and frozen ground, feeling the usual sadness which accompanies this season of the year, I walked out upon the piazza in front of the house, looking down upon the street. I thought the keen air would put my blood in more active circulation, and thus dispel from my mind the brown and yellow ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... the strange, sleepless, feverish nights; tired of the long, dull, empty days: tired of watching down the barren, leafless lane: tired of hearkening breathless to each step on the rustling dead leaves; tired of looking always, always, always, into the ruddy autumn evenings and the cold autumn starlight, and never hearing what she listened for, never seeing what she sought; tired as a child ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... wait to see the Old Year out and the New Year in. Come, Mr. Hayes, it's almost luncheon-time," she added, glancing at her watch; and they turned back toward the house, which was just visible through the leafless trees. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... indeed very lonely as he drove through the bare March fields and leafless woods on his way to town. The sky had clouded again, like his prospects, and he had the dreary sense of desolation which overwhelms a quiet, domestic man who feels that his home and all to which he clings are slipping from him. His lot was hard enough at best, ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... turned toward the leafless grove. We had not walked many steps in that direction, when the very animal we were in search of appeared on the ground before us. It was quite three feet long, thick, broad in the back, and arched from the nose to the ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... season. Cedar-birds show themselves irregularly. One March morning, when the ground was covered with snow, a flock of perhaps a hundred collected in one of the taller maples in the Garden, till the tree looked from a distance like an autumn hickory, its leafless branches still thickly dotted with nuts. Four days afterward, what seemed to be the same company made their appearance in the Common. Of the flycatchers, I have noted the kingbird, the least flycatcher, and the phoebe. The two former stay to breed. Twice in the fall I have ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... not know that the exudation of water into the earth, through the bark or at the extremities of these latter organs, has been proved, but the other known modes of carrying off the surplus do not seem adequate to dispose of it at the almost leafless period when it is most abundantly received, and it is possible that the roots may, to some extent, drain as well as flood the water-courses of their stem. Later in the season the roots absorb less, and the now developed leaves exhale an increased quantity of moisture into the air. In any event, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... flakes that when, a, mile from Williamsburgh and at some little distance from the road, MacLean beheld a ring of figures seated upon the Gounod beneath a giant elm, he stopped to observe who and what they were that sat so still beneath the leafless ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... in the afternoon, they stepped out of the timber into a little clearing, in which the blurred outline of a cabin showed under the wide arms of a leafless tree. ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... is perhaps the most fragrant flower we have. In a warm, moist atmosphere, its odor is almost too strong. It is a plant with a slender, leafless stalk or scape less than a foot high, with two or more large yellow hood or helmet shaped flowers. It is not common, and belongs pretty well north, growing in sandy swamps and along the marshy margins of lakes and ponds. Its perfume is sweet and spicy in an eminent degree. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... rear, and the sun, from his rising to his setting, smiled upon that abode of simple greatness. The house was faded and worn by wind and weather, and was in perfect harmony with its surroundings—the brown grass sod that peeped from under the snow, the dull-colored, leafless elms, and the gray, worn stone steps leading up ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... sacred burning lamps in order long And mournful pomp the corpse was brought to ground Her arms upon a leafless pine were hung, The hearse, with cypress; arms, with laurel crowned: Next day the prince, whose love and courage strong Drew forth his limbs, weak, feeble, and unsound, To visit went, with care and reverence meet, The buried ashes ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... silently, all day long, all night long, on the mountains, on the meadows, on the roofs of the living, on the graves of the dead! All white save the river, that marked its course by a winding black line across the landscape; and the leafless trees, that against the leaden sky now revealed more fully the wonderful beauty ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... Singing to worlds where dreamers are, That makes upon the leafless bough A solitary vernal vow— Sing, lyric soul! within thy song The love that lures the ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... for the simple joys of their labor, the big rough fellows cut the meagre growth of leafless trees at the spring in the small ravine, and gathered evergreen mountain-tea that grew in scrawny clusters here and there ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... great earnestness, began to stride out the number northerly, but the sycamore did not disappear; its long bare boughs were still seen throwing out their leafless and haggard extremities against ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... limit himself to half-a-pint of liquor. This scrupulosity was so well understood by the landlord that the whole company was served in cups of that measure. They were all exactly alike—straight-sided, with two leafless lime-trees done in eel-brown on the sides—one towards the drinker's lips, the other confronting his comrade. To wonder how many of these cups the landlord possessed altogether was a favourite exercise of children in the marvellous. ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... great sun was on its clifted height, Scattering golden shadow, like a mirror; But the gigantic billows sprung in terror Upon its rock-built and eternal shore, With silver foams that fell in fury o'er A thousand sunny breakers. Far above, There stood a wild and solitary grove Of aged pines, all leafless but their brows, Where a green group of tempest-stricken boughs Was waving now and then, and to and fro, And the ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... morning, at daybreak, I went on deck, and saw the shores of England. Only a few days before, we had left America behind us, brown and leafless, just emerging from the long gloom of winter; and now the slopes of another world arose green and inviting in the flush of spring. There was a bracing breeze; the dingy waters of the Mersey rolled up in wreaths of beauty; the fleets of ships, steamers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... and pale-beaming sun. I was a mile from Thornfield, in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter delight lay in its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath of air stirred, it made no sound here; for there was not a holly, not an evergreen to rustle, and the stripped hawthorn and hazel bushes were as still as the white worn stones ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... which she cannot share. The same feeling took possession of me when, wandering over the ruins of the Palaces of the Caesars on a sunny February afternoon, I saw above the hoary masses of stone the rose-tinted bloom of almond-trees. Out of the gray relics of man's highest hour of pride, the leafless almond-rod blossomed as of old in the holy place of the Hebrew Tabernacle; and its miracle of colour and tenderness was like the crimson glow that lingers at sunset upon Alpine heights, telling of a glory that had long vanished from ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... to find his most spiritual exhortations seized upon with the eager comprehension of a nature innately poetic and ideal: Nay, it sometimes seemed to him as if the suggestions which he gave her dry and leafless she brought again to him in miraculous clusters of flowers, like the barren rod of Joseph, which broke into blossoms when he was betrothed to the spotless Mary; and yet, withal, she was so humbly unconscious, so absolutely ignorant of the beauty of all she said and thought, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... in a Wonderful Stranger who was coming into their slow, steady lives. They fell to dreaming of the surprising pageant they would blazon forth upon the world a little later. And while they dreamed, the wind of night passed moaning through their leafless branches, and Time flew noiselessly ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... the young children in the sorrow, Why their tears are falling so? The old man may weep for his to-morrow Which is lost in long ago; The old tree is leafless in the forest, The old year is ending in the frost, The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest, The old hope is hardest to be lost; But the young, young children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they stand Weeping sore before the bosoms ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... weird the solemn twilight gleameth in the dreary sky, Dusky shadows growing deeper, sad night-breezes sorrowing by, Sighing 'mid the leafless bushes bending o'er the sullen stream, Wailing 'mid the fire-stained ruins darkly rising 'gainst the gleam Of the wild unearthly twilight. In the shivering evening air Cheerless lie the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... heart of every forest tree The blood is all aglee, And there's a look about the leafless bowers As ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... rode on in high spirits. In spite of the heat the air felt pure and bracing. The scenery for miles, however, was unvarying—everywhere the same gigantic gum-trees were to be seen; but vast as were their limbs, they afforded but little shade. Some were scathed and leafless, from others hung in tatters long strips of bark, giving them a peculiar, ragged appearance. In the evening they reached the hut of a shepherd. On account of the blacks there were two hut-keepers, sturdy fellows, well-armed. ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... hills beyond the water seemed not so far-away as usual. The glistening spire of the church on the hill, and the gleaming grave-stones, seemed strangely near. It looked but a step over to the village, whose white houses were quite visible among the leafless trees, and many farm-houses, which one could never see in summer for the green leaves, were peeping out everywhere from between ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... consideration of the value and blessings of a temperate; and well-spent life; it induces a thoughtful reflection that a life of goodness alone insures an end of peace. The holly, the mistletoe, the ivy, the acorn shell, the leafless branch, and the fruitless vine encircle the brow-fit emblems of the period which marks an exchange of time for eternity. All the figures are rendered complete by a carved lion's foot, at the bottom of each, and above the feet ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... rags, and drink their gains. It may be added, that he loved to walk in solitary spots; that his chief musing-ground was the banks of the Ayr; the season most congenial to his fancy that of winter, when the winds were heard in the leafless woods, and the voice of the swollen streams came from vale and hill; and that he seldom composed a whole poem at once, but satisfied with a few fervent verses, laid the subject aside, till the muse summoned him to another exertion of fancy. In a little back closet, still existing in the farm-house ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... after another went by, until the darkness of night lay over the camp. The snow came down as thickly as ever and the wind shrieked dismally through the leafless trees. Time and again the two boys had gone to the doorway to look out, and Snap had even run down to the very edge ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... corner of the earth and still be a respectable Pharisee. One may never move a dozen miles from the village of his birth and yet be of the happy company of romantics. Jeff could find in a sunset, in a stretch of windswept plain, in the sight of water through leafless trees, something that filled his ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... this year it is worse than ever, and now the young plantations suffer most, the large timber being comparatively free. Park Hill, Oaken Hill, Nag's Head, Barn Hill, Stapledge, &c., and especially all the higher parts of them, are leafless, except where a beech or a chesnut shows its green foliage amidst the brown oaks. I saw a few rooks in Russell's to-day, and last year I noticed great numbers. They seem to be drawn to the Forest ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... pleasure of the spring shall tell, When on the leafless stalk the brown buds swell, When the grass brightens and the days grow long, And little birds break ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... last morning of the year—broke fine and bright, and the view seen through the long windows of the dining-room was almost as beautiful as in summer itself. The park showed the same stretch of velvet green, a belt of evergreens and tall Scotch firs filled up the far distance, while the leafless boughs of elms and beeches made a lace- like tracery against the sky. To the right the old cedar stood calm and unmoved, as it had stood while generations of Percivals had lived, and loved, ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... faint gleam of sunshine tried to penetrate the thin haze brooding over the Gardens. Although it was the last day of October, the air was mild; but, contrary to his usual custom, Malcolm failed to notice the effect of the clinging mist round the leafless trees, the nebulous distances, and the faint golden streaks of sunshine; his mind was full of the approaching interview and the difficult work that lay ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... palo-verde bushes now gave place to the columns of the giant sahuaro. The fluted, leafless stems of these high-towering cactus candelabras bristled with fierce thorns, yet each was crowned with the glory ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... by the constant autumnal downpours, were covered with a thick carpet of fallen leaves which extended beneath the shivering bareness of the almost leafless poplars. She went as far as the shrubbery. It was as sad as the chamber of a dying person. A green hedge which separated the little winding walks was bare of leaves. Little birds flew from place to place with a little chilly cry, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... and then I felt that fourteen or fifteen pairs of very keen eyes were on me, seeing me very plainly indeed, for in my curiosity and excitement I had come out from the thicker bushes to place myself behind a ragged, almost leafless shrub, which afforded the merest apology for a shelter. Putting a bold face on the matter, although I did not feel very easy, I came out and advanced to them, removing my battered old hat on the way, and bowing ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... time to see her movements. Though she was wearing a green dress and hood, to be less easily distinguished, the rapidity of her almost distracted step enabled him to follow her with his eye through the leafless hedges, and to guess the point towards ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... excavated its basin. The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in its pure depths; the winds ruffle its glassy surface, and the sun fills it with throbbing spangles, while its waves begin to lap and murmur around its leafless shores,—sun-spangles during the day and reflected stars at night its only flowers, the winds and the snow its only visitors. Meanwhile, the glacier continues to recede, and numerous rills, still younger than the lake itself, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... rose to depart, a fog had settled on the mountain, making movement upon it doubtful and even to a slight degree dangerous. The lake, some six miles by ten, and abounding in islets, lay smiling under the bright, wintry sun, its shores clad with leafless forests mingled with evergreens, save the barren slopes of the volcano itself; beneath the distant lava stream of which we were told seventeen hundred people lay, buried by the last eruption. The scene tempted me more than most to description, for the brilliant stillness of a ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... stained, and faded yellow-stuccoed houses, its dazzling white canvas awnings, its church and campanile, and its life that seems to pass entirely in the street: men in their shirt sleeves, lounging, smoking, spitting (else the land were not Italy!), or perhaps playing cards at a table under the leafless bush of the wine-shop; women gossiping over their needlework, or, gathered in sociable knots, combing and binding up their sleek black hair; children sprawling in the kindly dirt; the priest, biretta on head, nose in breviary, drifting slowly ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... her head fall confidingly on his breast, then silence settled upon them, and upon all nature, the gathering twilight deepening, till the last glow disappeared from the heavens above and from the circle of leafless trees which enclosed this ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... one of the blinds, and stood silently looking out upon the night. Instinctively we all joined her, with the exception of Amy, and looked out also. The skies were very dark; a faint moaning wind stirred the tops of the leafless trees; but there was no rain. A dry volcanic heat pervaded the atmosphere—in fact we all felt the air so stifling, that Heliobas threw open the window altogether, saying, as ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... straight, but here and there a branch thrusting itself out irregularly, and one tree, a pine, leaning over,— not bending,—but leaning at an angle over the brook, rough and ragged; birches, alders; the tallest of all the trees an old, dead, leafless pine, rising white and lonely, though closely surrounded by others. Along the brook, now the grass and herbage extended close to the water; now a small, sandy beach. The wall of rock before described, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ejaculations, embraces, and other irrelative matter. But the two women slept well after that talk; and when the night-lamp went out with a splutter, and the sun rose gloriously over the purple hills, and the birds began to sing and pipe cheerfully amidst the leafless trees and glistening evergreens on Fairoaks lawn, Helen woke too, and as she looked at the sweet face of the girl sleeping beside her, her lips parted with a smile, blushes on her cheeks, her spotless bosom heaving and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cross-head of a side-lever steam-engine, and holding the whip quietly arched over the neck of the other. The mechanical monotony of the movement seemed less in contrast than in harmony with the profound stillness of the wintry forest: the leafless branches heavy with rime frost and glittering in the sun: the deep repose of nature, broken now and then by the traversing of deer, or the flight of wild birds: highest and loudest among them the long lines of rooks: but for ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... space four to five miles broad at the place we found them. We then came upon the ground which they had occupied, and the most ruthless of invaders could not have destroyed a country more completely than they had done. Not a blade of grass remained; every tree and shrub was leafless, and their branches were stripped of their bark. We could not help looking with painful amazement on the scene of desolation which those small animals had caused. Not only would they, as Ned Gale said, have eaten us up had they been carnivorous, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... met among the great brakes of a sandy wood edge, where white leafless wands of its cousin, star-grass, or colic root, wave above it, and the tall late meadow-rue and white angelica ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... descend the side of the defile, and before long came upon a fine grove of ancient planes, upon some of whose leafless limbs tall long-necked storks were standing, placidly gazing down at them unmoved; and it was not until the party were close by that they spread their wings, gave a kind of bound, and floated off, the protection accorded to them making them fearless ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... the night, Usurping darkness shares the day; Her mists restrain the force of light, And Phoebus holds a doubtful sway. By gloomy twilight, half reveal'd, With sighs we view the hoary hill, The leafless wood, the naked field, The snow-topp'd cot, the frozen rill. No musick warbles through the grove, No vivid colours paint the plain; No more, with devious steps, I rove Through verdant paths, now sought in vain. Aloud the driving tempest ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... upon the leafless tree; He whispers to the tiny flower. His touch awakes the slumbering bee, And each obeys th' ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... as we took our way off the road and lined up in the field that, stretching out in front and flanks, lost itself in formless mistiness under the loom of the encircling hedgerows. Here and there in the distance trees stand up gaunt and bare, holding out their leafless branches as if in supplication to the grey sky; a slight whisper of wind moaned along the ground and died away ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... all are hidden away in the dark. So our joys and treasures, were they sufficient did they last, cannot last. After a summer's day comes a summer's night, and after a brief space of them comes winter, when all are killed and the leafless trees stand silent. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and high above black mountain peaks. The keen March wind is sweeping harsh and dry across a dreary sheet of bog, still red and yellow with the stains of winter frost. One brown knoll alone breaks the waste, and on it a few leafless wind-clipt oaks stretch their moss-grown arms, like giant hairy spiders, above a desolate pool which crisps and shivers in the biting breeze, while from beside its brink rises a mournful cry, and sweeps down, faint and fitful, amid the howling of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... has entirely a dream-like colour. I stepped from the road under the trees, and was at once in a world of incredible fantasy. So far as the eye could see there were peasants; the air was filled with an indescribable din. As I stepped deeper into the shelter of the leafless trees the colour seemed, like fluttering banners, to mingle and spread and sway before my eyes. Near to me were the tub-thumpers now so common to us all in Petrograd—men of the Grogoff kind stamping and shouting on their platforms, surrounded ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... the leafless thicket Close beside my garden gate, Where, so light, from post to wicket, Hops the Sparrow, blithe, sedate; Who, with meekly folded wing, Comes to sun ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... into the garden, thinking over the last summer, when Mrs. Hamley's sofa used to be placed under the old cedar-tree on the lawn, and when the warm air seemed to be scented with roses and sweetbrier. Now, the trees were leafless,—there was no sweet odour in the keen frosty air; and looking up at the house, there were the white sheets of blinds, shutting out the pale winter sky from the invalid's room. Then she thought of the day her father had brought her the news of his second marriage: the thicket ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... through the long summer with the scent and the hum of bee and flower! Still the long line of the Canadas admits of a varied spring. When the trees are green at Lake St. Clair, they are scarcely budding at Kingston, they are leafless at Montreal, and Quebec is white with snow. Even between Montreal and Quebec, a short night's steaming, there exists a difference of ten days in the opening of the summer. But late as comes the summer to Quebec, it comes in its loveliest ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... occupies, as most of my readers must be aware, a large portion of the year in that region. For months together—that is to say, from the middle of October till late in May—during the whole period, the ground is covered with snow; the rivers are frozen over; the trees are leafless; every drop of water exposed to the air congeals. The atmosphere is very clear, the air pure and exhilarating, the sun shines brightly from the unclouded sky, and when no wind is blowing existence out of doors ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... with sullen brow Sitt'st behind those virgins gay, Like a scorch'd and mildew'd bough, Leafless 'mid the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... pounded barley cakes in their upraised hands, and praying to Jupiter to grant them victory in the approaching battle. After the prayer the ox was killed, and the carcass cut into pieces. Portions of the flesh were then burned on leafless billets, while other portions were roasted ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... above the orchard, the stock of an old and leafless vine, showing here and there over the purple flush of flowering marjoram and the more scattered gold of St. John's-wort, told the story of the perished vineyard. For centuries a rich wine had flowed from these slopes, but at length the phylloxera ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... sandy height I watch them swiftly come and go, Or round the leafless wood, Like flurries of wind-driven snow, Revolving in perpetual flight, A ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... early spring, of hearing old Cuff, the farm-dog, barking vociferously before it was yet light. When we got up we discovered him, at the foot of an ash-tree standing about thirty rods from the house, looking up at some gray object in the leafless branches, and by his manners and his voice evincing great impatience that we were so tardy in coming to his assistance. Arrived on the spot, we saw in the tree a coon of unusual size. One bold climber proposed ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... now under the trees, which albeit leafless yet screened us partly from the road. He drew rein, ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... mark the spot,—nothing but ashes! And these, ere many days, the autumn winds would scatter, and the leafless branches on which they fell would shake them off lightly, never dreaming that they hid the soul of a home. Nothing ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... pray. When the children cried for food, Father de Smet took down the rifle from the wall and went out with it, coming back only when he could feed the hungry. There were places where the prairie was black with buffalo, and the shy deer showed their delicate heads among the leafless willows of the Papillion. When they—the children—were cold, this young man brought in baskets of buffalo chips from the prairie and built them a fire, or he hung more skins up at the entrance to the tepees. If he wanted to cross a river and had no boat at ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... commenced with a prelude more sweetly and profoundly melancholy than even the wailing of the night wind among the leafless trees of the forest. This was followed by—an ode shall I call it?—or a hymn?—for it was not what we mean by a song. Nor was the music like any other music I had ever heard, but much more full of passion; broken, wild, plaintive, triumphant by turns, it stirred all the deepest ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... little girl,—when long talks banished turkeys and apples and sliding,—when new books or sleigh-rides crowded out the old games,—when the two days of John's yearly visit were half-spent in the leafless, sunny woods, gathering mosses and acorn-cups, delicate fern leaves, and clusters of fire-moss, and red winter-green berries, for the pretty frames and baskets Lizzy's skilful fingers fabricated,—when he shook hands at coming and going, instead of kissing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... the woods are comparatively bare and lifeless, even the Brambles and Woodbine, which straggle over the tangle of underwood being almost leafless. ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... picturesque in their winter wraps, as they whirled away under the leafless trees, but they made up for it in merriment. Edward and Helene were secretly glad of the presence of Rose. It was impossible to be frigidly formal with that sunny face beaming up now at one, then at the other. This deep young person had made up her mind that she would spare ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... inverted year, Thy scatter'd hair with sleet like ashes fill'd, Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeks Fringed with a beard made white with other snows Than those of age; thy forehead wrapt in clouds, A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne A sliding car indebted to no wheels, And urged by storms along its slippery way; I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st, And dreaded as thou art. Thou hold'st the sun A prisoner in the yet undawning East, Shortening ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... beginning to seem long when, on the third day, they set out from Vercelli toward the hills. The cold increased as they rose; and Odo, though he had often wished to see the mountains, was yet dismayed at the gloomy and menacing aspect of the region on which they were entering. Leafless woods, prodigious boulders and white torrents foaming and roaring seemed a poor exchange for the pleasantly-ordered gardens of Pianura. Here were no violets and cowslips in bloom; hardly a green blade pierced the sodden roadside, and snowdrifts lingered ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... desert. Trees and bushes were leafless; from the workshop window one could look right through them, and over other gardens beyond, and as far as the backs of the houses in East Street. There were no more games in the garden; the paths were buried in ice and melting ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... still that she could hardly believe it to be the place. The only vestige of any scuffle or violence was a trail on the dust, as if somebody had been lying there, and then been raised by extraneous force. The little birds were beginning to hop and twitter in the leafless hedge, making the only sound that was near and distinct. She crossed into the field where she guessed the murderer to have stood; it was easy of access, for the worn, stunted hawthorn-hedge had many gaps in it. The night-smell of bruised grass came up from under ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... quiet street the leafless trees made a gray vista that melted into transparent mist. The sunshine stretched in pale gold bars from sidewalk to sidewalk, and overhead the sky was of a rare Italian blue. But for the frost in the air and the naked boughs, it might have ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... like birds to their tree, from all the regions whither the energetic dispersion of Mr Cupples might have scattered them for their pickings of intellectual crumbs. Now, however, it was but as to a leafless wintry tree, instead of a nest bowered in green leaves. Yet he was surprised to find that he was not ten times more miserable; the fact being that, as he had no reason to fear that she preferred any one ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... thoughts repose again after this interruption, we find ourselves gazing up at the leaves, and comparing their different aspects,—the beautiful diversity of green, as the sun is diffused through them as a medium, or reflected from their glossy surface. We see, too, here and there, dead, leafless branches, which we had no more been aware of before than if they had assumed this old and dry decay since we sat down upon the bank. Look at our feet; and here, likewise, are objects as good as new. There are two little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... (Butea frondosa). The sub-Himalayan forests become yellow-tinted owing to the fading of the leaves of the sal (Shorea robusta), many of which are shed in March. The sal, however, is never entirely leafless; the young foliage appears as the old drops off; while this change is taking place the minute pale yellow ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... life is cramped by the "chill north-easters" in which Mr. Kingsley revelled. The unchanged vegetation, the background of dark olive woods, the masses of ilex, the golden globes of the orange hanging over the garden wall, are all so many distinct gains to an eye which has associated winter with leafless boughs and a bare landscape. One has almost a boyish delight in plucking roses at Christmas or hunting for violets along the hedges on New Year's Day. There are chill days of course, and chiller nights, but cold ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... the sight of my great-grandfather pacing slowly up and down the tiny garden at The Vine, his hands behind him, and followed sedately by Thomas. Now and then he would stop to gaze, with infinite contentment in his eyes, at the delicate blue-grey mist behind the leafless trees (which in that spring sunshine were, no doubt, of much more complex and beautiful colour to him than mere brown), or drinking in the blue of the scillas in the border with a sigh of satisfaction. When he paused, Thomas ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... proved that a dark body placed against a luminous body is enveloped and altogether covered by the lateral rays of the remaining part of that body, and thus remains invisible; as may be proved when the sun is seen through the boughs of a leafless tree at a long distance, the boughs do not hide any portion of the sun from our eyes. The same thing occurs with the above-mentioned planets, which, though they have no light in themselves, do not, as has been said, hide any portion of ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... dry wild parsnip, or "gicks," five feet high, stands dead and dry, its jointed tube of dark stem surmounted with circular frills or umbels; the teazle heads are brown, the great burdocks leafless, and their burs, still adhering, are withered; the ground, almost free of obstruction, is comparatively easy to search over, but the old sportsman is too cunning to bury his wine twice in the same place, and it is no use to look about. No birds in last year's nests—the ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... deserted streets. In an open carriage we were driven to Pont St. Esprit, and noticed the long lines of mulberry trees on each side of the roads; the driver explained that they are planted to feed the silkworms, and that in two months they would be leafless. We took the steamer again at Pont St. Esprit, late in the following day, for Avignon. In the morning of Sunday we all went to hear High Mass in the Cathedral, then to the Palace of the Popes, and round ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... leaf its folded panoply, And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes, Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise, And violets getting overbold withdraw From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless haw. ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... my evergreens. What winter-garden can compare for them with mine? True, I have but four kinds—Scotch fir, holly, furze, and the heath; and by way of relief to them, only brows of brown fern, sheets of yellow bog-grass, and here and there a leafless birch, whose purple tresses are even more lovely to my eye than those fragrant green ones which she puts on in spring. Well: in painting as in music, what effects are more grand than those produced ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... dreams; and then Down from the sunny atmosphere I stole And nestled in her bosom. There I slept From moon to moon, while in her eyes a thought Grew sweet and sweeter, deepening like the dawn, A mystical forewarning! When the stream, Breaking through leafless brambles and dead leaves, Piped shriller treble, and from chestnut-boughs The fruit dropped noiseless through the autumn night, I gave a quick, low cry, as infants do: We weep when we are born, not when we die! So was it destined; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Operations. First Settlement. Escaped Convict. His residence with the Natives. Sail for King Island. Examine Coast to Cape Otway. King Island. Meet Sealers on New Year Islands. Franklin Road. Solitary Residence of Captain Smith. Soil. Advantageous position for a Penal Settlement. Leafless appearance of Trees. Examine West Coast. Fitzmaurice Bay. Stokes' Point. Seal Bay. Geological Formation. Examine Coast to Sea Elephant Rock. Brig Rock. Cross the Strait to Hunter Island. Strong Tide near Reid's Rocks. Three Hummock Island. Rats. The Black ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... set out on her daily ride, and Miss Murray was gone in the carriage with her mamma to pay some morning calls. But it struck me that I ought to leave these selfish pleasures, and the park with its glorious canopy of bright blue sky, the west wind sounding through its yet leafless branches, the snow-wreaths still lingering in its hollows, but melting fast beneath the sun, and the graceful deer browsing on its moist herbage already assuming the freshness and verdure of spring—and go to the ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... of the fire, Dick left the den, and rejoined the old outlaw, who stood awaiting him under the leafless oaks, and was already beginning to be powdered by the falling snow. Each looked upon the other, and each laughed, so thorough and so droll was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the way, shoving aside the leafless underwood, and we reached Tom. The slender youth, groom or poacher—he might answer for either—with his short coat and gaitered legs, was sitting on a low horizontal bough, with his shoulder against ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the sea-walls the island lay flat and low, and it was one bleak waste of boulder and shingle, lifeless and waterless save for the rain in the pitted surfaces of the stones; but in the midst of the waste there stood, dead and leafless, a vast gaunt tree, which at one time must have been a goodly show. When the Sea-farers reached it, they found lying on the dead turf about its roots the white bones of yet four ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... On gazing around, our first feeling was one of awe, to find ourselves actually ascending that majestic stream, that great artery of the greatest valley in the world, leading into the very heart of a continent. The weather was very cold; the trees on the river's bank were leafless; and the aspect of nature on every hand told it was winter. What a change! But a fortnight before we were panting under an almost vertical sun. We found the Mississippi much narrower than we had anticipated. ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... Oh, canst thou think so poorly of me? Yes, I would marry him, though our scanty Fortune Cou'd only purchase us A lonely Cottage, in some silent Place, All cover'd o'er with Thatch, Defended from the Outrages of Storms By leafless Trees, in Winter; and from Heat, With Shades, which their kind Boughs wou'd bear anew; Under whose Covert we'd feed our gentle Flock, That shou'd in gratitude repay us Food, And mean ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... Two boys at the thills and two more pushing behind, they softly trundled it down the yard, stopping at every unusually loud squeak. It was almost as light as day; only in the yard the trees cast a slight shadow of tangled branches, leafless as they were. ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... was both by fits and starts. Light fleecy clouds were constantly passing over the heavens, now gathering densely together and completely hiding the stars, and now breaking up and revealing between the rifts then shining points. A low wind softly moaned through the leafless trees on the banks of the Severn, sadly chiming in with the murmur of the tide, which rose quite up to the Falls of the Yaupaae. In the indistinct light, just enough to stimulate and keep in active play the imagination, softening away all those ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the vicarage to help Mrs. Ambrose with some work she had in hand for her poor people, but Mrs. Goddard had a slight headache and had stayed at home in consequence. The weather was very bad; heavy clouds were driving overhead and the north-east wind howled and screamed through the leafless oaks of the park, driving a fine sleet against the cottage windows and making the dead creepers rattle against the wall. It was a bitter January day, and Mrs. Goddard felt how pleasant a thing it was to stay at home with a book beside her blazing fire. She was all alone, and Nellie would not ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... the fire in the steel grate. One of the windows opened wide to the garden, and let in a scent which was less of flowers than of the promise of flowers—a scent of earth and green leaves, of the leafless daphne still a-bloom in the shrubbery, of hyacinths and daffodils and tulips and primroses still sheathed in their buds and awaiting a ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to fall, and the fierce northern winds swept through the forests, creaking the leafless limbs of the trees as they swayed them to and fro, anon rending them in twain, and scattering the fragments over the white mantled earth. The wanderers now spent most of their time within the temple, by ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... through the cold of dying day, the sun, over beyond the Rhone, dipping toward the Cevennes; leafless trees, red in low sun-rays; black lines of cypress; in the fields an old woman with a fagot on her head; beside the road an old man scratching under the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... I have no recollection, for when I slowly regained knowledge of things around me, I found myself lying beneath a bare, leafless hedge in a grass field. I managed to struggle to my feet, and discovered myself in a bare, flat, open country. As far as I could judge it was midday. I got to a gate, skirted a hedge, and gained the main road. With difficulty I walked to the ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... murmuring in his Ear: On rifted Rocks, the Dragon's late Abodes, The green Reed trembles, and the Bulrush nods. Waste sandy Vallies, once perplexd with Thorn, [8] The spiry Fir and shapely Box adorn: To leafless Shrubs the flow'ring Palms succeed, And od'rous Myrtle to the noisome Weed. The Lambs with Wolves shall graze the verdant Mead [9] And Boys in flow'ry Bands the Tyger lead; The Steer and Lion at one Crib shall meet, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... way were scattered trees pulled down by the wind caused by the thighs of that hero endued with the speed of the wind as he rushed after the deer. And proceeding, guided by those marks, to a spot filled with dry winds and abounding in leafless vegetables, brackish and devoid of water, covered with thorny plants and scattered over with gravel, stumps and shrubs and difficult of access and uneven and dangerous, he saw in a mountain cavern his younger brother motionless, caught ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... The roses still bud and bloom in the hedges, the emerald of the meadows is not a whit paler, the sun looks down lovingly as yet, and there are only the white helmets of some of the Appenines, with the leafless mulberries and vines, to tell us that ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... of the scenes alluded to, he ought not, on his return home, to adduce a solitary instance or two as the custom of the country. In roving through the wilds of Guiana I have sometimes seen a tree hollow at heart, shattered and leafless, but I did not on that account condemn its vigorous neighbours, and put down a memorandum that the woods were bad; on the contrary, I made allowances: a thunderstorm, the whirlwind, a blight from heaven might have robbed it of ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... the fruit in the orchards about, and had even destroyed many of the trees by eating the bark, and now they were stripping the briers of foliage. In one orchard we passed, the apricot, plum, and peach-stones hung naked on their leafless trees as evidence of their ravages. It was too hot to indulge in any but the most desultory conversation. We dawdled along. A tiger-snake crossed our path. Harold procured a stick and killed it, and Stanley hung it on ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... the Mother Superior was not the least of his troubles. The promise of the morning had not been maintained, overhead the sky was leaden, and a high wind drove rain in sharp splashes against the glass of the cab. The pavements were running with water and the leafless trees in the avenues swayed and creaked dismally. The appearance of the streets was chill and depressing. Craven shivered. He thought of the warmth and sunshine that he had left in Japan. The dreariness of the present outlook contrasted sufficiently with the gay ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... quite so bad when the weary winter weather is come, when the flowers are dead, and the hedgerows are bare, and the trees stand out leafless against the gray sky, and the birds are all silent, and the fields are brown, and the vine clings round the cottages with skinny, fleshless arms, and they alone of all things are unchanged, they alone of all the forest are green, they alone of all the verdant ...
— Evergreens - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... houses; it is Royan. Here already are the sea and the dunes; the right of the village is buried under a mass of sand; there are crumbling hills, little dreary valleys, where you are lost as if in the desert; no sound, no movement, no life; scanty, leafless vegetation dots moving soil, and its filaments fall like sickly hairs; small shells, white and empty, cling to these in chaplets, and, wherever the foot is set, they crack with a sound like a cricket's chirp; this place is the ossuary ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... they slept, a vocal strain Bade their hoarse chorus wake again, While loud a hundred clansmen raise Their voices in their Chieftain's praise. Each boatman, bending to his oar, With measured sweep the burden bore, In such wild cadence as the breeze Makes through December's leafless trees. The chorus first could Allan know, 'Roderick Vich Alpine, ho! fro!' And near, and nearer as they rowed, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... light on a row of as terrifically looking countenances as ever gleamed on human forms. This sudden illumination, with its accompanying accessories, had the effect to startle all the white spectators, though Peter looked on the whole with a calm like that of the leafless tree, when the cold is at its height, and the currents of the wintry air are death-like still Nothing appeared to move HIM, whether expected or not; though use had probably accustomed his eye to all the aspects in which ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... into small pieces and threw it behind the heap of snow at the back of the seat upon which she sat. Then she rose, looked at the bunch of violets still lying where she had laid them, and walked slowly away. She glanced over her shoulder at the old man sitting beneath the leafless trees at the other side of the broad avenue. He sat huddled within the high collar of his coat and heeded nothing. There was no one near to the seat that she had just vacated, and Martin was now going towards it. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... only I long for lustre,— Tired of the greys and browns and leafless ash. I would have hours that move like a glitter of dancers, Far from the angry guns that ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... shot, and the trail of white fire it left behind melted into the night silently like snowflakes. There was no wind. The moon rose out of the sea, and lent the sandy isle her own pallor. Here and there, back amongst the dunes, the branches of a low and leafless tree writhed upward like dark fingers thrust from out the spectral earth. The ocean, quiet now, dreamed beneath the moon and cared not for the five lives it had cast upon ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... row of a dozen poles, each surmounted by a human skull, planted upright in the ground before it—we halted at a distance of some twenty paces from the entrance, with our backs turned toward the crucifixion tree, the leafless branches of which ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... in the gloomiest sky, And Music in the dullest plain, For there the lark is soaring high Over her flat and leafless reign, And chanting in so blithe a tone, It shames the weary ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... like the autumn leaf That trembles in the moon's pale ray; Its hold is frail,—its date is brief, Restless,—and soon to pass away! Yet ere that leaf shall fall and fade, The parent tree will mourn its shade, The winds bewail the leafless tree,— But none shall ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... halting in the lee of a rock for shelter, or to gaze and listen. Even when the grand anthem had swelled to its highest pitch, I could distinctly hear the varying tones of individual trees—Spruce, and Fir, and Pine, and leafless Oak—and even the infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my feet. Each was expressing itself in its own way—singing its own song, and making its own peculiar gestures—manifesting a richness of variety to be found in no other forest I have yet seen. The coniferous woods of Canada ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... for her, and, above all, to see that she was properly clothed, and that she was warm. He thought of that forest of Montfermeil; they had traversed it together, Cosette and he; he thought of what the weather had been, of the leafless trees, of the wood destitute of birds, of the sunless sky; it mattered not, it was charming. He arranged the tiny garments on the bed, the fichu next to the petticoat, the stockings beside the shoes, and he looked at them, one after ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... slowly pressed the trigger. The bear gave a deep, angry growl, and bit for the wound,[4] which told me my bullet was well placed; but she kept her feet and made a dash for the thicket. I was well above, and so commanded a fairly clear view as she crashed through the leafless alders. Twice more I fired, and each time with the most careful aim. At the last shot she dropped with an angry moan. My hunters shook my hand, and their faces told me how glad they were at my ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... home in the tributary stream of a neighbouring valley. So, when the snows had melted and the rime no longer touched with fairy fingerprints the tracery of the leafless boughs, and when Olwen the White-footed had come once more into the valley called after her name, Lutra forsook the broad river in which she had spent her early life, and, with her companion and a promising family, lived contented under the frowning Rock of Gwion, secure in ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... said than done. They flew swiftly over the now broad expanse of water, rolling in a powerful stream, bordered by a wild and harsh-looking forest. A few tall and leafless trunks in a cluster contained, high among the bare boughs, a huge nest. From it, aroused from his sleep, ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays |
