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Wither   Listen
verb
Wither  v. i.  (past & past part. withered; pres. part. withering)  
1.
To fade; to lose freshness; to become sapless; to become sapless; to dry or shrivel up. "Shall he hot pull up the roots thereof, and cut off the fruit thereof, that it wither?"
2.
To lose or want animal moisture; to waste. "This is man, old, wrinkled, faded, withered." "There was a man which had his hand withered." "Now warm in love, now with'ring in the grave."
3.
To lose vigor or power; to languish; to pass away. "Names that must not wither." "States thrive or wither as moons wax and wane."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wither" Quotes from Famous Books



... preceding the wedding-day arrived. It was a lovely evening in summer, and Martha and he and I wandered far away into the fields—they to taste the freshness of nature, I, to wonder the flowers did not wither beneath our tread; for we were all alike evil and abandoned. In our way, we visited a mill that was soon to become the property of Barnard in right of his bride. In passing through the different lofts into which it was divided, we paused in one to admire the immense and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... other Name Of Him who rent thy kingdom, and will destroy it, Touch me not yet! Almighty Purity, Dread Essence Increate; Behold concentrate, in this wicked form, The universal spirit of iniquity. Come quickly in thy majesty, O Lord! Wither him here within the awful flame Of Thy bright Holiness! Shrivel his frame Into an atom, and blow the lifeless dust Beyond the farthest star. And, if in his destruction my soul should share Through close proximity, spare not! Then will Thy servants ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith

... Is hoisted to the gladly gushing gale, That bosom'd its fair canvass with a breast Of silver, looking lovely to the west; And at the helm there sits the wither'd one, Gazing and gazing on the sister nun, With her fair tresses floating on his knee— The beautiful, ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart

... blossoms and perfumes sweet, Cometh the round world's royal noon time, The red midsummer of blazing heat. When the sun, like an eye that never closes, Bends on the earth its fervid gaze, And the winds are still, and the crimson roses Droop and wither and die ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... fresh sap, which the roots, in their turn, pump up from the soil. This process goes on till the plant blossoms and bears fruit, which terminates its summer career: but when the cold weather sets in, the fibres and vessels contract, the leaves wither, and are no longer able to perform their office of transpiration; and, as this secretion stops, the roots cease to absorb sap from the soil. If the plant be an annual, its life then terminates; if not, it remains ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... having rooted up or cut down all that kept it from the eyes and admiration of the world. But after some continuance, it shall begin to lose the beauty it had; the storms of ambition shall beat her great boughs and branches one against another; her leaves shall fall off, her limbs wither, and a rabble of barbarous nations enter the field and cut ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... to be a tree, then you could wither in peace. Why don't you cry out like every living thing that suffers. You don't know how your calmness racks me. Even the trees cry and moan in ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson

... Serbia down to Saloniki, was the only line of communication and transportation between the main Serbian armies and the Allies. Cut this, and they would wither like a flower separated ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... names of Shakespeare and Swedenborg is eminently well. They are Titans both. In the presence of such giants, small men seem to wither and blow away. Swedenborg was cast in heroic mold, and no other man since history began ever compassed in himself so much physical science, and with it all on his back, made such daring voyages ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... bed, under his own humble roof. That consolation was to be denied her; the shadow of the poorhouse had advanced until it stood now at her door. One step and it would envelop her; the taint of its blight would wither her heart. ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... waste and wither up with doubt The blessed fields of heaven where once my faith Possessed itself serenely safe from death; If I deny the things past finding out; Or if I orphan my own soul of One That seemed a Father, and make void the place Within me where He dwelt in power ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... in its lead-coloured pall, Not a bird utters the least little tone; The blossoms about me wither and fall; The change must be in me—and ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart

... from the mountain tops, 'mid the roar of torrents, their plaintive sounds issuing from deep caverns.... And this heart is now dead; no sentiment can revive it. My eyes are dry, and my senses, no more refreshed by the influence of soft tears, wither and consume my brain. I suffer much, for I have lost the only charm of life, that active sacred power which created worlds around me, and it is no more. When I look from my window at the distant hills and behold the morning sun breaking through the mists and illuminating the country ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... a change in his appearance that would have been evil but that it was to last for a while only. She made his skin wither, and she dimmed his shining eyes. She made his yellow hair grey and scanty. Then she changed his raiment to a beggar's wrap, torn and stained with smoke. Over his shoulder she cast the hide of a deer, and she put into his hands a ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum

... expect or believe in a higher existence hereafter. All his great mental faculties had been lost; only hard days, pain, and disappointment had been his lot. He was like a rare plant torn from its native soil, and thrown upon the sand, to wither there. And was the image, fashioned in God's likeness, to have no better destination? Was it to be merely the sport of chance? No. The all-loving God would certainly repay him in the life to come, for what he had suffered and lost ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... but how long will your beauty last? In ten years' time it will be gone. Nay, more, your loveliness may not even last so long as ten years if you continue to live as you are living now, for those damsels who stint themselves of the joys of life, wither the quickest——" ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... leaves of the winter wither and sink in the forest mould To colour the flowers of April with purple and white and gold: Light and scent and music die and are born again In the heart of a grey-haired woman who wakes ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... sadness over her face, a shadow that only vanished at the terrible age when a woman first discovers with dismay that the best years of her life are over, and she has had no joy of them; when she sees her roses wither, and the longing for love is revived again with the desire to linger yet for a little on the last smiles of youth. Her nobler qualities dealt so many wounds to her soul at the moment when the cold of the provinces seized upon her. She would have died of grief like the ermine ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... hundred and forty thousand were put in, making a net loss of fifty thousand. The last days, I gathered, the days of John Stanley, were not so bright; the champagne had ceased to flow, the population was already moving elsewhere, and Silverado had begun to wither in the branch before it was cut to the root. The last shot that was fired knocked over the stove chimney, and made that hole in the roof of our barrack, through which the sun was wont to visit slug-a-beds towards afternoon. A noisy last shot, to inaugurate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sequestered mead, Where silver-streamlets flow, I saw a rose and lily twine, And in love and beauty grow; Again to that lone, peaceful spot, From worldly cares I hied— But the flowers that lately bloom'd so fair, Had wither'd, drooped, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... rejoinders: 'You can change all that, Mr. Beamish, if you like, and you know you can. Oh, yes, you can. But you like being a butterfly, and when you've made ladies pale you're happy: and there they're to stick and wither for you. Never!—I've that pride. I may be worried, but I'll never sink to green and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... conflagration. The 'arth is moist, hereaway, and the grass has been taller than usual. This miserable beast has been caught in his bed. You see the bones; the crackling and scorched hide, and the grinning teeth. A thousand winters could not wither an animal so thoroughly, as the element has done ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... hear the wind laugh, and murmur, and sing Of a land where even the old are fair, And even the wise are merry of tongue; But I heard a reed of Coolaney say, 'When the wind has laughed and murmured and sung, The lonely of heart must wither away!' ...
— The Land Of Heart's Desire (Little Blue Book#335) • W.B. Yeats

... is not on earth a breast, but turns with joy to thee. From the cold wither'd years of age, to smiling infancy. Thou claimest smiles from ev'ry lip, and praise from ev'ry tongue; Such sympathy each happy heart ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various

... disappeared in an instant, and he seemed absolutely to wither before the keen flashing eye which was ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... the biting cold, which would otherwise destroy them. More than anything else we have to dread a snowless winter; then truly the earth is shut up by an iron grasp, and tall trees, and shrubs, and plants wither and die under its malign influence. The earth, deprived of its usual covering, the ruthless cold deeply penetrates it, and man and beast and creeping things suffer from its effects. Oh, yes, we have reason to pray earnestly to be delivered from a ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... full, piercing eye on the culprit, whom it seemed to scorch and wither. Brigson winced back, and said nothing. "As I thought," said ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... tree, An usher that still grew before his lady, Wither'd at root: this, for he could not wooe, A grumbling ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... God! the rope, the rack, the thumbscrew, the stake, the fire. If we move not now, Spain moves, bribes our nobles with her gold, and creeps, creeps snake-like about our legs till we cannot move at all; and ye know, my masters, that wherever Spain hath ruled she hath wither'd all beneath her. Look at the New World—a paradise made hell; the red man, that good helpless creature, starved, maim'd, flogg'd, flay'd, burn'd, boil'd, buried alive, worried by dogs; and here, nearer home, the Netherlands, Sicily, Naples, Lombardy. I say ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... and H. missouriensis. Its native range extends across North America in longitude, and covers many degrees of latitude. It likes a dry soil. In wet soil and wet seasons the flower-stalk is apt to wither in the middle, and the bud falls ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various

... "They can never take the ramp by frontal attack! The right thing to do is hold the flanks, and wither 'em as they cone!" ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... of house or city, the other at once enters and abides. And in time these two build nests in the hearts of men, and quickly rear a progeny only too legitimate: and the ruin within the man is gradually consummated as the sublimities of his soul wither away and fade, and in ecstatic contemplation of our mortal parts we omit to exalt, and come to neglect in nonchalance, that within us ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... the valley and coast wild-flowers bloom and ripen their seeds before the dry summer begins. Such plants die and wither away in the heat, but their seeds are safe on the warm ground till fall rains soak the earth and set them growing again. In the high mountains a thick blanket of snow covers the sleeping seeds till May or June, and then sunshine wakes ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

... over, The vision has flown; Dead leaves are lying Where roses have blown; Wither'd and strown Are the hopes I cherished,— All ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... no compassion, the maniac will seek; Cold and hunger awake not her care: Through her rags do the winds of the winter blow bleak On her poor wither'd bosom, half bare; and her cheek Has the ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... imagined tomb, Weeping, by moonlight pale, she strewed fair flowers, To wither o'er him, emblems of his bloom So soon departed from these lovely bowers. Once plucked, these buds will never bless the showers, Sweet charities, by wearing wonted charms, But lose for aye their balm for summer hours; So all her showery grief him no more charms, To spring and ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley

... between us, when some of this bunch goes I'll easily be persuaded to come back and cook for you. I was hunting round in the big refrigerator with a candle, thinking maybe some little token of food had been left over from last summer's rush—something in a can that time can not wither nor custom stale, as the poet says—and away up on the top shelf, in the darkest corner, ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... mirth the toilsome hour? Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er, Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor; From thence a length of burning sand appears, Where the thin harvest waves its wither'd ears; Rank weeds, that every art and care defy, Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted rye. There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar, And to the ragged infant threaten war; There poppies nodding, mock the hope of toil, There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil; Hardy and ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe

... that strange outbudding of our whole English Existence, which we call the Elizabethan Era, did not it too come as of its own accord? The 'Tree Igdrasil' buds and withers by its own laws,—too deep for our scanning. Yet it does bud and wither, and every bough and leaf of it is there, by fixed eternal laws; not a Sir Thomas Lucy but comes at the hour fit for him. Curious, I say, and not sufficiently considered: how everything does cooeperate with ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... for such a woman," he soliloquized. Then the hotel scene in Surabaya recurred to him, and his teeth clicked sharply. "And such a flower shan't wither in filthy paws ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... his pleasure in; but do not mock me with the hope of a new affection for some unknown object. The first look of yours brought me to your side. The first tone of your voice sunk into my heart. From this moment my life must wither out or bloom anew. My home is desolate. Come under my roof and make it bright once more,—share my life with me,—or I shall give the halls of the old mansion to the bats and the owls, and wander forth alone without a hope ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... me: for I have known The luscious sweets of plenty; every night Have slept with soft content about my head, And never wak'd, but to a joyful morning; Yet now must fall, like a full ear of corn, Whose blossom 'scap'd, yet's wither'd in the ripening. ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway

... eat, 'Twould grow as tiresome as sweet: The pretty flowers would quickly wither; And, all day flying hither, thither, My wings would ache: I'm glad that I ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... quietly, and his hand moved under his frock-coat, as the half-breed, eyeing the central pile of counters in triumph, closed his fingers over it. They were dashed off by Kelley, who looked expectantly across at Cutler, and seeing the scout's face wither into sudden old age, cried out, "For God's sake, Jarvis, where's your gun?" Kelley sprang for the yellow curtain, and reeled backward at the shot of Toussaint. His arm thrashed along the window-sill as he fell, sweeping over the ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister

... they wither, and grow dry in the very keeping; however, I shall have a warmth for you, and an eagerness, every time I see you; and, if I chance to ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... absently to the trousers, down one leg and up the other; superciliously jumped over the waistcoat and paused the infinitesimal part of a second on the necktie. Mauville learned in that moment how the eye may wither and humble, without giving any ostensible reason for offense. The attitude of this mincing fribble, as he danced twittingly away, was the first intimation Mauville had received that he would soon be relegated to the ranks of gay adventurers thronging the city. He who ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... great stone vases, that are ranged along the terrace, there flourished a beautiful and rare rose. I forget its name. Some of my readers will remember. It is first to bloom—first to wither. Its fragrant petals were now strewn upon the terrace underneath. One blossom only remained untarnished, and Dorcas plucked it, and with it in her fingers, she returned to the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... to-night; brace up and carry on. Where's the tool? (Producing knife.) Ah, here she is; and now for the chest; and the gold; and rum—rum—rum. What! Open?... old clothes, by God!... He's done me; he's been before me; he's bolted with the swag; that's why he ran: Lord wither and waste him forty year for it! O Christopher, if I had my fingers on your throat! Why didn't I strangle the soul out of him? I heard the breath squeak in his weasand; and Jack Gaunt pulled me off. Ah, Jack, that's another I owe you. My ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson

... said Caligula at last, and now his voice sounded more firm, even whilst his hands released their grip on the praefect's arm and his short body straightened itself out upon his trembling limbs. "I'll come with thee, but may thy flesh wither on thy bones, thy hands be palsied and thine eyes become sightless if thou hast a ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... of the night sees the rose flourish joyously beneath the breath of the breeze, he flaps his wings and sings: when he sees her wither beneath the hurrying blast of the storm, he hides his head under his wing and shudders. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... their complexions, the brightness of their eyes and hair. Others grow heavy, solid; stout or flabby; the muscles of the face and neck loosen and sag, the features alter. I seemed slowly to dry up—wither. There was no flesh to hang or loose skin to wrinkle, but it seemed to me that I had ten thousand lines. I thought it a horrid fate. I could not know that Nature, meaning to be cruel, had given me the best chance for the renewal ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... They cared much more to economise their little store of intelligence than to renew it. In order to purify it they had withdrawn it from circulation. The result was that it ceased to be perceived. The common life passed on its way without bothering its head further, leaving the artist caste to wither in a make-believe refinement. The violent storms at the time of the excitement about the Dreyfus Case did rouse some minds from this torpor, but when they came out of their orchid-house the fresh air turned their heads and they threw themselves into the great ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... but I must read it with more prayer for light and understanding. Oh, may it be my meat and drink! May I meditate on it day and night! And then I shall bring forth fruit in season; my leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff

... Time with happy haste Bring wail and triumph to a waste, And war be done; The battle flag-staff fall athwart The curs'd ravine, and wither; naught Be left of trench or gun; The bastion, let it ebb away, Washed with the river bed; and Day In ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... the voice went on, "You see, my son, it has taken me eight years to repair the ship. And in eight years a man can wither up and die by inches if he does not have a growing son to go adventuring with him in ...
— The Calm Man • Frank Belknap Long

... the trees did not wither, but grew prodigiously. In all that expanse of turbulent sea—and only those who have seen the North Sea in a storm know how turbulent it can be—there had not been a foot of ground on which the birds, storm-driven across the water-waste, could rest in their ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok

... except a total lack of energy. The old men go to the workhouse, the young men go, the women and the children; if they are out one month the next sees their return. These again are but broken reeds to rely upon. The golden harvest might rot upon the ground for all their gathering, the grass wither and die as it stands, without the touch of the scythe, the very waggons and carts fall to pieces in the sheds. There is no work to be got ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... word of God endures for ever. What is flesh and blood is corruptible, like the grass which is yet green, so that it blooms; so whatever is rich, strong, wise and fair, and thus is flourishing (which all belongs to the bloom), yet you observe its bloom wither; what was young and vigorous will become old and ugly; what is rich will become poor, and the like. And all must fall by the word of God. But this seed ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

... together as his thin beak of a nose would permit, and his ears were long and narrow and set flat against his head. He was tall and he was lank and he was honest to his last bristling hair. He did not swear—though he could wither one with vituperative epithets—and he did not smoke and he did not drink—er—save a wee nip of Scotch "whusky" to break up a cold, which frequently threatened his hardy frame. He was harshly religious, and had there been a church in the Black Rim country you would have seen ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... saved: but the knee was locked stiff. The fear now was lest the lower leg should wither, or cease to grow. There must be long-continued massage and treatment, daily treatment, even when the child left the nursing home. And the whole of the expense was ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... that the passionate dreams of youth break up and wither. Vanity becomes tempered with wholesome pride; and passion yields to the riper judgment of manhood,—even as the August heats pass on, and over, into the genial glow of a September sun. There is a strong growth in the struggles against mortified pride; and then only does the youth get ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... mourn O'er the wither'd hopes of youth, But the flowers so rudely shorn Still leave the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... uncommonly sultry and oppressive, so that even the plants and trees appeared to droop and wither, and all about the city were hot and tired people lagging homeward as if every energy were utterly exhausted. Archie had been working unusually hard, so that the old pain had seized his back again, making him miserably despondent lest he should be wholly crippled, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... that Jesus, who was gentle and kind, should pronounce a curse on this fig-tree, and cause it to wither away. Why did He do so? Because He wished to impress upon His disciples the terrible danger of unfruitfulness. If we are the disciples of Jesus, we must bear good fruit; we must be loving, kind, and gentle, and try, like Him, to be always ...
— Mother Stories from the New Testament • Anonymous

... but little past the prime of life, was in the full vigor of energy and usefulness. A worker himself, he infused others with his spirit; droneishness wilted under the scorching rays of his perpetual activity, as weeds wither in the noon-day sun. He had accomplished wonders in his parish, and many another, less efficient than himself, might have supposed nothing more was to be done. Not so, thought Father Duffy. Literally and figuratively hills were to be brought down, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... it stands in the narrow, dingy street, a beautiful, dreamy stranger, an exquisite foreign lady whose grace is a joy to the eye, the incense of whose breath makes the air enamored. May the hand wither that touches her ungently! ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... and fifteen in breadth; and this plateau lies so high above the other mountains that the peaks surrounding it appear to give birth to the lesser mountains. Four seasons may be counted on this plateau: spring, summer, autumn, and winter; and the plants there wither, the trees lose their leaves and the fields dry up. This does not happen in the rest of the island, which only knows spring-time and autumn. Ferns, grass, and berry bushes grow there, furnishing undeniable proof of the cold temperature. Nevertheless the country is agreeable ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... Tavistock, the first book of whose pastoral epic, Britannia's Pastorals, had appeared the previous year. Besides seven eclogues from his pen, the volume contained one by Christopher Brooke, one by Sir John Davies, and two by George Wither. These last two were republished in 1615, with three additional pieces, in Wither's collection entitled The Shepherd's Hunting. With the exception of one or two of Browne's, these fourteen eclogues all deal with the personal relation of the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... flower so impetuously to his mouth, that its tender leaves were crushed and tarnished. He laughed scornfully. "Thus is it," he exclaimed, "with woman's love; as fair and as fragile as this poor blossom. Begone, then! Wither, and become dust, thou perishable emblem of frailty!" Approaching the open window, he was about to throw away the flower, when something flew into the room, struck his breast, and rolled upon the ground. Federico ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... tower hung half-mast high Smote old and young with grief. A death it told. They long had watched her wither like a leaf; Her warm hands too had grown of late so cold. So young, so fair, so good. Alas! that she ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer

... heart, there is nothing that has such unconquerable vitality as love; but it must be true love, not self-love, not sentimentality, not passion, not any of the spurious emotions that masquerade under the name of love, and which wither ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... the ocean in great fury, and will be terrified at its roar as, surging and foaming, it throws its mighty waves high in the air. Then the sun will grow red and begin to darken; a horrid glare will spread over the earth, beginning to burn up. Then, says the Holy Scripture, men will wither away for fear of what is coming; they will call upon the mountains to fall and hide them; they will be rushing here and there, not knowing what to do. Money will be of no value then; dress, wealth, fame, power, learning, and all else will be useless, for at that moment all men will be ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead

... thought, and afterward by levity and an artificial tone,—produced in Herrick and Waller some charming pieces of more finished art than the Elizabethan: until in the courtly compliments of Sedley it seems to exhaust itself, and lie almost dormant for the hundred years between the days of Wither and Suckling and the days of Burns and Cowper.—That the change from our early style to the modern brought with it at first a loss of nature and simplicity is undeniable: yet the far bolder and wider scope which Poetry ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... from Toledo, of the state after which it was named, all appear to be congenially situated insofar as environment is concerned until the nuts are actually harvested and cured. The nuts of each variety appear normal when they drop from the trees, but during the process of curing, the kernels wither up too badly to be marketable. The Thomas from southeastern Pennsylvania is somewhat better able to adjust itself to Ithaca conditions, but it is far from being a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... Prof. Batalin informs us in a letter, dated February, 1879, the leaflets of Oxalis acetosella may be daily exposed to the sun during many weeks, and they do not suffer if they are allowed to depress themselves; but if this be prevented, they lose their colour and wither in two or three days. Yet the duration of a leaf is about two months, when subjected only to diffused light; and in this case the leaflets never sink ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... come, to close the window, hither, At twilight, when the sun was down, And Fear my very soul would wither, Lest ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

... people and pay your acquaintance all round; but the welcome, the friendly spirit, the kindly heart? Believe me, these are rare qualities in our selfish world. We may bring them with us from the country when we are young, but they mostly wither after transplantation, and droop and perish ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... with plighted faith, not merely with the ordinary rules of humanity and justice, but also with that great law of filial piety which, even in the wildest tribes of savages, even in those more degraded communities which wither under the influence of a corrupt half civilization, retains a certain authority over the human mind. A pretext was the last thing that Hastings was likely to want. The insurrection at Benares had produced disturbances in Oude. These disturbances ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... from every consideration of self-interest, such as this would be. Even the greatest of moral principles are indebted to self-interest for their success, and without it the sublimest of creeds, the loftiest of principles would soon wither and die for lack of support. With every blessing that heart could wish in the present, and with no hope through change of bettering their condition in a practical point of view in the future, the idea of a great Southern ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... then would cease To blast, with dark suggestions, virtue's peace; No more would spleen, or passion banish rest And plant a pang in fond affection's breast; By one harsh word, one alter'd look, destroy Her peace, and wither every op'ning joy; Scarce can her tongue the captious wrong explain, The slight offence which gives so deep a pain! Th' affected ease that slights her starting tear, The words whose coldness kills ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams

... necessary to Elsie's health and happiness as sunshine to the flowers, and even as the keen winds and biting frosts of winter wilt and wither the tender blossoms, so did all this coldness and severity, the gentle, sensitive spirit of ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley

... no cries of Vive la nation! except from here and there some ragged boy in a red cap, who, from habit, associated this salutation with the appearance of a carriage. In every place where there are half a dozen houses is planted an unthriving tree of liberty, which seems to wither under the baneful influence of the bonnet rouge. [The red cap.] This Jacobin attribute is made of materials to resist the weather, and may last some time; but the trees of liberty, being planted unseasonably, are already dead. I hope this will not prove emblematic, and that the power of the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... air; The fruit-trees died, or barren ceased to bear; The male plants kiss their female plants no more; And pollen on the winds no longer soar To carry their caresses to the seed Of waiting hearts that unavailing bleed, Until they fold their petals in despair, And dying, drop to earth, and wither there. The growing grain no longer fills its head, The fairest fields of corn lie blasted, dead. All Nature mourning dons her sad attire, And plants and trees with falling leaves expire. And Samas' light and moon-god's soothing ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... easily to the supposition that it must have preceded all else. By quenching thirst, it quickens life; as the dew and the rain it feeds the plant, and when withheld the seed perishes in the ground and forests and flowers alike wither away; as the fountain, the river, and the lake, it enriches the valley, offers safe retreats, and provides store of fishes; as the ocean, it presents the most fitting type of the infinite. It cleanses, it purifies; it produces, it preserves. "Bodies, unless dissolved, cannot act," is ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... they should be used as seed. Instead of indolently living on the stores which our fathers left, we should cast them into the ground, and get the product fresh every season—old, and yet ever new. The intellectual and spiritual life of an age will wither, if it has nothing wherewith to sustain itself, but the food which grew in an earlier era; it must live on the fruits that grow in its own time, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... aunt did not consider it all right. "Why don't you help cut carpet rags?" she asked. "That would be more sense than runnin' out after flowers that wither right aways." ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... say. They'll all have to go. Think of the years of love an' happiness in store for you. A week or so an' it 'll be too late. Can you stand for me seein' you?... Let me tell you, Mercedes, when the summer heat hits the lava we'll all wither an' curl up like shavin's near a fire. A wind of hell will blow up this slope. Look at them mesquites. See the twist in them. That's the torture of heat an' thirst. Do you want me or all us men seein' you like that?... Mercedes, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... degree of pecuniary ease: the thoughts of the sisters rise above the pickling and preserving that occupied their heartier and happier mother; they are in fact in that aesthetic, social, and intellectual mean, in which single women are thought soonest to wither and decline. With a little more power, and in our later era, they would be writing stories full of ambitious, unintelligible, self-devoted and sudden collapsing young girls and amazing doctors; but as they are, and in their time, they must do what they can. A sentimentalist may discern on these vases ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... must last for a thousand years. When you fighters do not get killed in fighting one another or fighting the beasts, you die from mere evil in yourselves. Your flesh ceases to grow like man's flesh: it grows like a fungus on a tree. Instead of breathing you sneeze, or cough up your insides, and wither and perish. Your bowels become rotten; your hair falls from you; your teeth blacken and drop out; and you die before your time, not because you will, but because you must. I will ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... my Spanish castles, I see Prue in them as my heart saw her standing by her father's door. "Age cannot wither her." There is a magic in the Spanish air that paralyzes Time. He glides by, unnoticed and unnoticing. I greatly admire the Alps, which I see so distinctly from my Spanish windows; I delight in the taste of the southern fruit that ripens upon my terraces; I enjoy the pensive shade ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... your seed wither in your loins! It's better to do that; it's better—" At that moment the clashing of the supper gong fell on the old man's naked nerves. He straightened up by some reflex mechanism, turned away from what he thought was his last interview with his secretary, ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... a man who was strong, handsome, rich, and accomplished—how could he look upon death as otherwise than a loathsome thing—a thing not to be thought of in the heyday of youthful blood and jollity—a doleful spectre, in whose bony hands the roses of love must fall and wither! With a sense of deep commiseration in me, I ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... threw his shoulders back, looked imposingly around and repeated: "I am the great Dr. Rutherford the witch-doctor of Boston! My black Cat tells me that the witch is here—that she has hung the deadly nightshade at your cabin-doors, and your blood is turning to water. You are beginning to wither away. You shiver in the sunshine; you don't want to eat; your hearts are heavy and you don't feel like work; and when you come from the field you don't take down the banjo and pat and shuffle and dance, but you sit down in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... hath mighty power, For thou alone may'st train, and guide, and mould, Plants that shall blossom with an odor sweet, Or like the cursed fig-tree, wither and become ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely

... the squirrel Ratatoskr runs up and down along the ash, bearing words of hate betwixt the eagle and the worm. Those Norns who abide by the holy spring draw from it every day water, and take the clay that lies around the well, and sprinkle them up over the ash for that its boughs should not wither or rot. All those men that have fallen in the fight, and borne wounds and toil unto death, from the beginning of the world, are come to Odin in Valhall; a very great throng is there, and many more shall yet come; the flesh of the boar Soerfmnir is sodden for them every day, and he is whole again ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous

... over-run all Italy, and is now, with rapid strides, spreading through the provinces. The effects, however, are more visible at home, and therefore I shall confine myself to the reigning vices of the capital; vices that wither every virtue in the bud, and continue their baleful influence through every season ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... on the morrow. The church was old and grey, with ivy clinging to the walls, and round the porch. Shunning the tombs, it crept about the mounds, beneath which slept poor humble men: twining for them the first wreaths they had ever won, but wreaths less liable to wither and far more lasting in their kind, than some which were graven deep in stone and marble, and told in pompous terms of virtues meekly hidden for many a year, and only revealed at last ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... gave up his life for this. Rajah Muda Saffir fought and intrigued and murdered for possession of it! Poor, misguided von Horn has died for it, and left his head to wither beneath the rafters of a Dyak long-house! ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... I have alluded to requires the continuous strengthening of the spiritual, intellectual, and economic sinews of American life. The steady purpose of our society is to assure justice, before God, for every individual. We must be ever alert that freedom does not wither through the careless amassing of restrictive controls or the lack of courage to deal boldly with the giant issues of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower

... though I dared to speak to him; but at last he spoke to me, and his voice was as soft as a flute, and he said, 'All the roses on earth fade and wither, but nothing fades or withers in the happy place where I now live; and oh, do not be anxious to possess the withering, fading flowers, but walk on the road that leads to my happy home, where everything is bright ...
— The One Moss-Rose • P. B. Power

... towards my soul; "And tho' she loves me, yet am I content "To know she loves me by the hour—the year— "Perchance the second—as all women love." The bright axe falter'd in the air, and ripp'd Down the rough bark, and bit the drifted snow, For Max's arm fell, wither'd in its strength, 'Long by his side. "Your Kate," he said; "your Kate!" "Yes, mine, while holds her mind that way, my Kate; "I sav'd her life, and had her love for thanks; "Her father is Malcolm Graem—Max, my friend, "You pale! what sickness seizes on your soul?" Max laugh'd, and swung ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford



Words linked to "Wither" :   vanish, mummify, lessen, atrophy, diminish, shrink, fade, shrivel, withering, go away, blast, die back, disappear, die down, decrease



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