"Petal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... letters—itself a South German peculiarity—then the alternation of colours without interrupting the design, the profusion of foliage modelling in the backgrounds of the letter panels outside the historiations. The next thing is the bold use of minium side by side even with pure rose-petal colour, pale bright cerulean blue, and bright gold. Lastly, the immense variety of leaf-forms, based on the three, five, and seven-lobed groupings of the typical form. The coil and spiral are freely used as the groundwork, and the colours alternated ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... bursting with the shrill ecstasy of life in nesting time. All is hot and fierce and passionate, ardent and unashamed in its exulting and importunate desire for life and love. And, do you know that the scarlet lilies are woven petal by petal from my heart's blood, these little quivering birds are my soul made incarnate music, these heavy perfumes are my emotions dissolved into aerial essence, this flaming blue and gold sky is the "very me," that part of me that incessantly and insolently, yes, and a little deliberately, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... keeping life together, and it is not until these stout-stemmed plants are cultivated and duly sheltered and watered, and can grow, as it were, with confidence, that they are able to do justice to the inherent beauty of penciled petal and veined leaf. Then the stem contracts to ordinary dimensions, and leaf and blossom expand into things which may well be a joy to the botanist's eye. A thousand times during that shady saunter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... window with the full light on her face, somehow oddly defenceless in her extreme embarrassment, and he could see the light powdering of freckles on her nose, as well as that curious, camellia-petal fineness of skin which always escaped notice until the observer came quite close, for there was a tinge of sallowness in the colour which prevented people from admiring it ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... Anemones; those innocent looking flowers really possess powerful weapons in the shape of tiny lassos, which are concealed in lasso-cells. These lasso-cells, which are very small, are carefully hidden in the walls of those petal-like tentacles, or feelers of the Anemone. Still other lasso-cells are hidden in the mouth of the Anemone, and inside its stomach. In the cells the long, slender, thread-like lassos lie coiled up ready for use. The lassos escape from the cells by turning themselves inside out ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... a most delicate and highly colored little creature, is as harmless as a baby, and about as slow and undecided in its movements. Its cold body seems to like the warmth of your hand. Yet in color it is as rich an orange as the petal of the cardinal flower is a rich scarlet. It seems more than an outside color; it is a glow, and renders the creature almost transparent, an effect as uniform as the radiance of a precious stone. Its little, innocent-looking, three-toed foot, or three and a half toed—how ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... her face was pale as a lily petal held against the light, her sweet lips drooped wistfully at the corners, and I thought she spoke but seldom. The smile with which she had greeted me had been fleeting, and even as it lingered there had been an expression in her large soft eyes which it galled me ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... enriched and prepared perfectly for the seed; when rain is abundant, sunshine plenteous and mother-earth's spring quickening is instinctive, is it to be wondered at that the rootlet delves, the plantlet lifts itself, the bud forms quickly, and unexpectedly spreads its petal-star to the sunlight which enhances its beauty and fructifies its work of reproduction? The natural laws, in this case, work to their prescribed end along lines of favoring circumstance—and Love is but the working out of the greatest of all ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... hops from bough to bough, examining every part for food; it also runs up the stems of the crown-imperials, and, putting its head into the bells of those flowers, sips the liquor which stands in the nectarium of each petal. Sometimes it feeds on the ground like the hedge- sparrow, by hopping about ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... was called "Petal" for short) was one of Sandyface's four kittens that had been brought with the old cat from Mr. Stetson's grocery to the old Corner House, soon after the Kenway girls came to live there. Petal was Ruth's particular pet—or, had been, when she was a kitten. Agnes' choice was the black ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... its history on earth has only begun; as the first wild rose when it hung from its stem with its center of stamens and pistils and its single whorl of pale petals had only begun its course, and was destined, as the ages passed, to develop stamen upon stamen and petal upon petal, till it assumed a hundred ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... blue between, and now and again a tiny yellowish flower dropped on her. Pretty—yes, if you held one of those flowers on the palm of your hand and looked at it closely, it was an exquisite small thing. Each pale yellow petal shone as if each was the careful work of a loving hand. The tiny tongue in the centre gave it the shape of a bell. And when you turned it over the outside was a deep bronze colour. But as soon as they flowered, they fell and were ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... and was still, the unrivaled beauty of Seddon Hall. Her complexion was as soft and pink as a rose petal, and her shimmering golden hair and big blue eyes made you think of gardens and Dresden china. She was never known to hurry, and she spoke with a soft lazy drawl, which, curiously enough, never irritated any one. She had won quite a renown as a poet, ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... to manage being Job's board, and in doing so drew some fifty or sixty paces to the left of our starting-point, for we went up like a crab, sideways. Presently we reached a ledge, narrow enough at first, but which widened as we followed it, and moreover sloped inwards like the petal of a flower, so that as we followed it we gradually got into a kind of rut or fold of rock, that grew deeper and deeper, till at last it resembled a Devonshire lane in stone, and hid us perfectly from the gaze of anybody on the slope ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... the beast, he said to himself. He knew without seeing. He did not wish to see. He strove to shut away thought of the devastation of what had once been a man's goodly face. Doris' skin was like a child's, smooth and soft and tinted like a rose petal. Love, he said to himself, had made her bloom. It made him quake to think that she might suddenly see out of those dear, blind eyes. Would she look and shudder and turn away? He shook off that ghastly thought. She would never see him. She could only touch ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Suffices to upturn to the warm air Half-germinating spices, mere decay Produces richer life, and day by day New pollen on the lily-petal grows, And still more labyrinthine buds ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... that Louis cared much about the matter. Why should he? He had other things to think about—bright, young, heart-stirring things that danced and glistened, flitting up before him just as a sudden wind-gust may for a moment turn a petal-strewn garden path ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... particularly to the shoots or buds, but there is another pulmonary system, perhaps totally independent of the green foliage, which belongs to the fructification only, I mean the corol or petals. In this there is an artery belonging to each petal, which conveys the vegetable blood to its extremities, exposing it to the light and air under a delicate membrane covering the internal surface of the petal, where it often changes its colour, as is beautifully seen in some party-coloured poppies; though it is probable some ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... revenges. What the tyranny really had grown to can be gauged nowhere so well as in country lodgings, where the most ordinary things of design and decoration have sifted down and gathered together, so that foolish ornament gains a cumulative force and achieves a conspicuous commonness. Stem and petal and leaf—the fluent forms that a man has not by heart but certainly by rote—are woven, printed, cast, and stamped wherever restlessness and insimplicity have feared to leave plain spaces. The most ugly of all imaginable rooms, which is ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... Aunt Debby had given her was in a tiny box by itself. Hester took it out and examined it carefully. The little bit of cut glass in the center attracted her strongly. In the sunlight it gleamed like fire. In the shadow it showed a pale yellow tinge like the petal of a ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... as the rose of the breaking dawn, as tender as the notes of a cooing dove calling gently to its mate, as soft as the touch of a flower-petal the words drifted through the curtain. With a whispered cry to Allah, his God, the man was upon his feet. With the strength of the oriental, which has its root in patience and its flower in achievement ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... lime granules, from any similar, stipitate species. It varies a little according to locality. Ohio specimens are a little larger and have thicker and more calcareous stipes than is usual in those from Philadelphia. The walls of the sporangia when fully matured generally break into several petal-like segments which finally become reflexed. The description given by Berkeley is ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... successive planes. In the old aphorism, nature is always self-similar. In the plant, the eye or germinative point opens to a leaf, then to another leaf, with a power of transforming the leaf into radicle, stamen, pistil, petal, bract, sepal, or seed. The whole art of the plant is still to repeat leaf on leaf without end, the more or less of heat, light, moisture, and food, determining the form it shall assume. In the animal, nature ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... children make the invitations they send out for their own daisy party. On heavy water color paper they may draw and cut out simple outlines of daisies—about ten petals around a center which is then colored yellow with crayons. Each petal may hold one or two words of the invitation, thus: ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... to shoulder with her mother, and their gloves and shirt waists were interchangeable. One really distinguishing loveliness was her complexion. The skin flowed over her body with the cool fleshliness of a pink rose petal. There was a natural shimmer to it, a dewiness and a pollen of youth that enveloped ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... the Court and has succeeded in increasing both. "The Flower Girl" appears in outer niches of the attic cloister of the court bearing her name, the Court of Flowers. A light garlanded mantle falls like a petal from her shoulders, the floating edge following the line of the nymph's divided hair, so that the maiden seems more like a flower itself than a flowerbearer. However, she has the sculptural solidity necessary for ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... we have time this afternoon, I will go over this list with you. Bring me those five boxes on the first row of shelves." I brought the boxes to her room and placed them on the table. She opened the first one and it contained a most beautiful peony made of coral and jade and each petal trembled like a real flower. This flower was made by stringing the petals which were made of coral on very fine brass wire, also the leaves which were made of pure jade. She took this flower and placed it on ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... cowslip under her claws. In an instant she dropped to the ground, and at the same moment Abdullah seized her tail. But Fantosina put forth her beak as far as it would go and just succeeded in touching the pale yellow petal of the ...
— The Bountiful Lady - or, How Mary was changed from a very Miserable Little Girl - to a very Happy One • Thomas Cobb
... then, has white tips to petal and sepal; the crimson spot keeps its place; and the inside of the flower is deep red—an inversion of the usual colouring. Mr. Lange could scarcely fail to observe this peculiarity, but he seems to have thought little of it. Mr. Cookson, paying him a visit, was ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... me with quick steps, the end of her skirt touched me. From the unknown island of a heart came a sudden warm breath of spring. A flutter of a flitting touch brushed me and vanished in a moment, like a torn flower petal blown in the breeze. It fell upon my heart like a sigh of her body and ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... disposition of the goldenrod, which, though remaining fresh and bright, when called upon to decorate our homes, obstinately refuses to open a petal after it is gathered; and the fairy-like elder, which sullenly resents being touched, gives up the struggle for existence and droops at once; and the cactus, which promptly draws its satin petals together, and stubbornly declines to open again. The loveliest bouquet of late July on the ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... house. Of petal and blade, Of the roots of the oak, is the flooring made, With a carpet of mosses and lichen and clover, Each small miracle over and over, And tender, traveling ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... honor has a rosy cope To shimmer back the tributary stars; And every petal glistens with a hope Where Love hath blossomed in the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... opaque variety, but with the actually velvet look of a bee's body. The girls at school had told her her eyes looked good to stroke. Her nose was an indeterminate snub, her chin delightfully round but retreating, falling away from a mouth like a baby's—so fine in texture, so petal soft, so utterly helpless-looking, with its glint of two small square teeth. Only when she looked obstinate and closed her mouth the charm went out of her face as though wiped off like a tangible thing. She ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... with its quartered bearings,—all intensely there, and there in beauty of which no one could have dreamed that even flowers or gold were capable, far less parchment or steel. But every change of shade is felt, every rich and rubied line of petal followed; every subdued gleam in the soft blue of the enamel and bending of the gold touched with a hand whose patience of regard creates rather than paints. The jewel itself was not so precious as the rays of enduring light which ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... things is always indicated in Anatole France's writings with brief, clear cut, decisive touches, but "the murmurs and scents" of the great waters, the silences of the shadowy forests are not allowed to cross the threshold of his garden of Epicurus. Each single petal of a rose will have its curves, its colours, its tints; but the mysterious forces of subterranean life which bring the thing to birth are pushed back into the darkness. The marble-cold resistance of Anatole France's ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... think, clever as the whole is, that parts are weak, as when he doubts whether each curvature of the beak of humming-birds is of service to each species. He admits, perhaps too fully, that I have shown the use of each little ridge and shape of each petal in orchids, and how strange he does not extend the view to humming-birds. Still odder, it seems to me, all that he says on beauty, which I should have thought a nonentity, except in the mind of some sentient being. He might have as well said that ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... the festival Thou holdest in the regions of romance, Where dragons lurk and elfin spirits dance, And pearls lie hid within each rose petal. What magic changes in life's crystal ball Shall thus transform earth's dullness at thy glance! Ride then the wind, a feather for thy lance, A pool thy sea, thy heaven a waterfall. So shall thy soul to fairy worlds belong, Where dust is ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various
... to a butterfly, but a resemblance arising from five petals of a certain-peculiar shape and arrangement; and even if the resemblance were much stronger than it is in such cases, yet, if it were produced in a different way, as, for example, by one petal, or two only, instead of a 'standard,' two 'wings,' and a 'keel' consisting of two parts more or less united into one, we should be no longer justified in speaking of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... by petal, and beginning to bloom gloriously," said Patsy to sympathetic Uncle John. "Could anyone be more ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... that my foot touched it. The removal of this blade of grass was followed by the cessation of the sound from the telephone, and I found that the moment I touched with the toe of my boot a blade of grass or the petal of a daisy ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... tubular sort of skirt, clinging close to the lines of her figure and split at the side for walking; a tight-fitting bodice, light in color (a man knows little of the technicalities of such things); throat bare, with a flaring rolled collar behind—a throat like a rose-petal with the moonlight on it; arms bare, save for the upper, ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... glowed. Above us the clouds changed from grey to dove-colour, from that to rose-pink; and then, straight before us, the sun came up and gave us gold for redness. The little purple wild flowers opened, showing us where the night had left a jewel on every petal, and the sleepy soldiers plucked them as they passed and cheered themselves with their faint fragrance. The day, like the night, comes quickly there, and brings with it an even greater change. For in that last week of autumn we tasted of every season; hot summer ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... exactly parallel the entire length of the form. They may be straight across or at an angle, but the one slant must be maintained throughout. In small curved figures, the stitches may be placed more closely at the inner edge and spread slightly at the outer edge. In flat work where the leaf or petal is large, two or three stitches taken in the cloth, back of the face stitch, holds them even and prevents misplacement in laundering. (All embroidery should be ironed on ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... lot, or to be so constantly contented with it but that they are always coming off in boats to dine at the neighboring hotels. Doubtless a yacht has a crumpled rose-leaf under it, and possibly the keelless hull of the houseboat feels the irk of a folded petal somewhere. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... her task, glanced over her shoulder at him. She did not know how tantalizingly her face, close and clear in skin texture as the petal of a lily, flashed out her dislike. A heavier woman's rudeness ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... no bales—but wonder, Not anything of note: How should she, being merely A slender petal-boat?... But rated in the shipping: The dearest ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... the flower, secreted, it would seem, for no other purpose but to attract her—while there she obtains nothing but what nature has provided for her and given her the means of obtaining, and the most delicate petal ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... Little Blue Overalls came again. This time he was a peddler, with horse-chestnut "apples" to sell, and rose-petal pies. He ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... doth go To linger in the sacred dark and green Where many boughs the still pool overlean And many leaves make shadow with their sheen. But presently A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly Upon the bosom of that harmony, And sailed and sailed incessantly, As if a petal from a wild-rose blown Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone And boatwise dropped o' the convex side And floated down the glassy tide And clarified and glorified The solemn spaces where the shadows bide. From the warm concave ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... agaric is so called from the fancied resemblance of the plant to the petal of a flower. The plant usually grows in a nearly upright or more or less ascending position, or when it grows from the side of a trunk it is somewhat shelving. It is somewhat spathulate in form, i. e., broad at the free end and tapering downward into the short stem in a wedge-shaped manner, and ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... pulling it to pieces. What she wanted to ascertain I cannot tell; I only heard in a low murmur, falling from her pale lips, these words: "a little, a great deal, passionately, not at all," as each petal her fingers pulled away fell ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... dressed as a Pierrot, and a beautiful lady who wore a grey satin domino. She had taken off her mask and pushed back the hood from her hair, which was encircled by a diadem made of something shining and silvery, and a ray of moonlight fell on her face, which was as delicate as the petal of a flower. Pierrot was masked; he was holding her hand and looking into her eyes, which were turned upwards ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... "reversing layer" lies the scarlet "chromosphere" with "prominences" of various forms and dimensions rising high above the solar surface; and over, and embracing all, is the "corona," with its mysterious petal-like forms ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... hills, breeze-haunted on the brow; And sandy deserts hung with stinging stars! Half-vanished hangs the moon, with daylight sick, Wan-faced and lost and lonely: daylight fades— Blooms out the pale eternal flower of space, The opal night, whose odours are gray dreams— Core of its petal-cup, the radiant moon! All, all the unnumbered meanings of the earth, Changing with every cloud that passes o'er; All, all, from rocks slow-crumbling in the frost Of Alpine deserts, isled in stormy air, To where the pool in warm brown shadow ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... broad June light On the open bank of the river, In the summer of manhood, young; And over the water bright Is a lair that is overhung With coned pink blooms that quiver And droop, till the water's breast Is of petal and ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... escaped And my life ran back from me And my heart slipped into you. It seems, also, that you are the moon And that I am at the top of a tree. If I had wings I would spread them as far as you, Dear bud, that will not open Though the kisses of the holy bird knock at your petal door. ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers
... first sight from the description he already had, for the leaves of the plant grew thick about the root and put forth an upright stem, some two to three feet high, from which proceeded shoots, like broccoli sprouts on an enlarged scale, the outer petal-like leaves of which were six to eight inches long, and of a dark olive-green hue and fleshy nature, rounded and ciliated at the margin; while the inner leaves were of a paler green that approximated to yellow in the centre, ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... after three brothers Commelyn, Dutch botanists, because two of them—commemorated in the two showy blue petals of the blossom—published their works; the third, lacking application and ambition, amounted to nothing, like the inconspicuous whitish third petal! Happily Kaspar Commelyn died in 1731, before the joke was perpetrated in "Species Plantarum." Soon after noon, the day-flower's petals roll up, never ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... white columbine. Around the amphitheatres of the lake regions and above them to the limit of perennial drifts they gather flock-wise in splintered rock wastes. The crowds of them, the airy spread of sepals, the pale purity of the petal spurs, the quivering swing of bloom, obsesses the sense. One must learn to spare a little of the pang of inexpressible beauty, not to spend all one's purse in one shop. There is always ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... man. Her eyes seemed to warm, and she often looked flushed and softly appealing. He began to note vaguely that her dresses were better, and oftener changed, than they had been at Mallowe. A more observant man might have been touched by the suggestion that she was unfolding petal by petal like a flower, and that each carefully chosen costume was a new petal. He did not in the least suspect the reverent eagerness of her care of herself as an object hoping to render itself worthy of ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... boy, my love, my poet! Nay, I know Thy lonely room, tomb-like to thee as mine, Tomb-like as tomb of some returning ghost Seems only bright about my lily-flower. And, mayhap, while I wrong thee thus in thought Thou bendest o'er it, feigning for some ease Of parted ache conceits of poet-wit On petal and on stamen—let me try! If lilies be alike thine is as this, I wonder if thy reading ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... pink dawn like a rose From out night's gray and cloudy sheath; Softly and still it grows and grows, Petal by petal, leaf by leaf. The Morning Comes Before the Sun. S.C. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... of India resembles that of America in most particulars. It is there often placed in alternate rows with rice, and after the rice-harvest is over puts forth a beautiful yellow flower with a crimson eye in each petal; this is succeeded by a green pod filled with a white pulp, which as it ripens turns brown, and then separates into several divisions containing the cotton. A luxuriant field, says Forbes in his "Oriental Memoirs," "exhibits at the same time the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... speaking, but continued to smile; and so complete was the stillness, that Soames, whose sense of hearing had become nervously stimulated, heard a solitary rose petal fall upon the ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... corolla, sometimes by skipping over the organs of the calyx, and in such a case we likewise have an opportunity to observe that leaves of the stalk become transformed into petals. Thus on the stalk of tulips, for instance, there sometimes appears an almost completely developed and colored petal. Even more remarkable is the case when such a leaf, half green and half of it belonging to the stalk, remains attached to the latter, while another colored part is raised with the corolla, and the leaf is ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Muses, the Seasons, and their speech, so the women wore wreaths in their hair, and Miss Betty's that night was of marguerites. "Read your fortune in them all," whispered Tom's heart, "and of whomsoever you wish to learn, every petal will say 'He loves you; none declare, He loves ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... a bunch David had brought her, and began to pluck off the petals, alternating 'yes' and 'no.' The last petal fell to 'yes.' ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Marianna grew to be quite the loveliest lass in all the world. Her hair was as black as the raven's wing, her eyes were as blue as the midsummer sea, and her skin was fair as the petal of a rose. One spring morning a little yellow bird flew into the cedar grove, and gave the dwarf a letter which ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... this time, bub, that I'm in my second childhood, and playing dime novel. But there are some things in politics that have to be done as gentle and careful as picking a rose petal off a school-ma'am's shoulder." The Duke chuckled and smoked for a time. "When I've had a job of that sort to do I haven't even talked to myself, Harlan. So you mustn't think I'm distrustful of you because I don't tell ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... of their accommodating nature lies in the fact that within the Hyacinth or Tulip every petal of the coming flower is already stored. During the five or six years of its progressive life the capacities of the bulb have been steadily conserved, and we have but to unfold its beauty, aiming at short stout growth and intensity of colour. Of course there is an immense difference ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... a single petal flung, One chord from a full harmony unsung, May speak the life-long love that ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... the throne-room, near a little fountain that trickled continually a sort of silver-colored syrup, which made a drowsy sound as it fell. Then they flew away again, and after a good while returned carrying a pat of butter in a large magnolia petal. The magnolia petal was about the size of Mother's best turkey-platter, and as white and fragrant as the magnolias at home. And the pat of butter was about as large as a veal loaf. Of course it did ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... old, when, amid thoughts of thee, I asked, 'Loves she, loves she not?' and the poppy petal clung not, and gave no crackling sound, but withered on my smooth ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... peace. Lightfooted maids came and went noiselessly, to brush up a fallen daisy petal, or straighten a rug. Not the faintest streak of dust ever lay across the shining surface of the piano, not the tiniest cloud ever filmed the clear depths of the mirrors. A slim Chinese houseboy, in plum- color and pale blue, with his queue neatly coiled, and his handsome, smooth young ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... little life to peck and pipe, As long as cherries ripe and ripe, And minister unto the need Of baby-birds that feed and feed. This, Fragoletta, is a flower, Open and fragrant for an hour, A flower, a transitory thing, Each petal fleeting as a wing, All a May morning blows and blows, And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... hundred petals detaches its delicate edges, and springs back, opening towards the water, while its white reflection opens to meet it from below. Many moments of repose follow,—you watch,—another petal trembles, detaches, springs open, and is still. Then another, and another, and another. Each movement is so quiet, yet so decided, so living, so human, that the radiant creature seems a Musidora of the water, and you almost blush with a sense of guilt, in gazing on that peerless privacy. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... and sensational were not necessary to literature. And just as the dewdrop on the petal is a divine manifestation, and every blade of grass is a miracle, and the three speckled eggs in an English sparrow's nest constitute an immaculate conception, so every human life, with its hopes, aspirations, dream, defeats and successes, is a drama, joyous with comedy, rich ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... of a flower (such as we have chosen for our illustration), the outer part is first worked in with stitches which form a close, even edge on the outline, but a broken one towards the centre of the petal, being alternately long and short. These edging stitches resemble satin stitch in so far that the same amount of crewel or silk appears on the under, as on the upper side of the work: they must slope towards the narrow part of ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... were lit by two bits of scarlet that could be seen at a distance before her features were discernible. Her eyes were of a gray-blue that changed in shade with her swiftly varying moods. Her lower lip was full and red, the upper one firm and repressed with the dull crimson of a fading rose-petal. Her shapely arms and legs were restless, seemingly impatient to break into some quickly moving dance. She was extraordinarily alive. Vitality flashed from her with every gesture, and her mind, a thing of ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... knew that he was looking at her and was moving nearer; she felt that he was going to kiss her, but she did not resist this time though the colour was rising in her throat, and just under the exquisitely shaped petal of peach-blossom on which his eyes were fixed, and which was really only the tip of her ear, though it was so like the leaf of a flower that the scent of the bloom came to his memory when his lips touched the ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... unconsciously in their study. Whenever their minds are ready for it, it will be readily understood. The chief difficulty is that they imagine that there is a direct metamorphosis of a leaf to a petal or a stamen. ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... for the daisies in his path, or to note the pretty moss on the tree he climbs for safety. But the novel by comparison is like breakfasting in the open air on a summer morning; nothing is irrelevant if the waiter's mood is happy, and the tapping of the thrush upon the garden path, or the petal of apple-blossom that floats down into my coffee, is as relevant as the egg I open or the bread and butter I bite. And all sorts of things that inevitably mar the tense illusion which is the aim of the short story—the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... than Grace and beautifully straight and slender. Her hair was jet black and lay on her forehead in little silky rings, while she had the bluest eyes the girls had ever seen. Her features were small and regular, and her skin as creamy as the petal of a magnolia. She stood regarding the astonished girls with a fascinating little ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... labels) were sunk in the ground and so arranged as to form a pyramid, at the summit of which rose a certain dragon's-head tulip which Balthazar alone possessed. This flower, named "tulipa Claesiana," combined the seven colors; and the curved edges of each petal looked as though they were gilt. Balthazar's father, who had frequently refused ten thousand florins for this treasure, took such precautions against the theft of a single seed that he kept the plant ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... moment that they form a symmetrical six-petaled star; but on examining them more closely, we shall find that they are thrown into a group of three magnitudes by the expansion of two of the inner petals above the stamens to a breadth greater than any of the four others; while the third inner petal, on which the stamens rest, contracts itself into the narrowest of the six, and the three under petals remain of one intermediate magnitude, as ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... smile, as though all the stars were about to pass away in a sigh of love; and there is the mother of the God of humility who cast so great a spell over men that they have tried to unpeople their hearts that he might reign alone, but she holds in her hand the rose whose every petal is a god; and there, O swiftly she comes! is Aphrodite under a twilight falling from the wings of numberless sparrows, and about her feet are the grey and white doves.' In the midst of my dream I saw him hold out his left arm and pass his right hand over it as though he stroked the wings of ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... teeth that I could have guessed at what it was suffering. But gradually I apprehended what was being done. Its captor was squeezing its throat. I saw what I had never seen before, and have never seen since, I saw its tongue like a pale pink petal of a flower dart out as the pressure drove it. Revolting sight as that would have been to me, witnessed in the world, here, in this dark wood, in this outland presence, it was nothing but curious. Now, as I watched and wondered, the being, following my eyes' direction, looked down ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... with their soft wings; but, alas! it could not have been the hour for dancing on the fairy ring, nor the proper time for the fairy pipers, and long, long as I looked I saw and heard nothing more than what I have told you. Indeed, I presently lost even that, for a bee buzzed, a white petal dropped from the thorn-tree on my face, there was a scraping of tiny claws and the sound of two squirrels barking love to each other in the high branches, and in that moment the glamour that was upon me ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a rich background to the splendour of tinted flower. Indeed, the scene appeared not unlike an enormous nosegay lying upon a hill of moss. The night had brought showers, and from every minute projection of twig, leaf or petal glistened limpid drops, some swelling with honey and falling like dew upon the young sward. The birds twittered ceaselessly, and some young thing preening upon a light blossomy twig scattered down, anon, perfume upon some shy young fawn, and he leapt away frightened ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... the big road again with some of the same wonderful exultation that sped you onward and forward in the Long Ago ... One touch of that, and the burden of Today, grown great in the years of struggle, slips from your shoulders as lightly as the wild-rose petal drops upon the bosom of the stream and floats away to the ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... make a languorous gloom, And heavy-headed poppies drip perfume In secret arbours set in garden close; And all the air, one glorious breath of rose, Shakes not a dainty petal from the trees. Nor stirs a ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the grayness, to the west, the cone of Fuji flashes into splendor. It, too, is pink. Its shape is of a lotos bud, and the long fissures that plough a mountain side are now but delicate gold veining on a petal. Slowly it seems to open. It is the chalice of a new day, the signal and the pledge of consecration. Husky crows awake in the pine trees, and doves under the temple eaves. The east is red beyond the river, and the round, red sun, insignia ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... the conscious grace Of gentle, winsome womanhood, Nor yet, withal, the flaunting face Of men and women understood, But rather as a thing apart, A wind-blown petal of a rose, A specter with a specter's heart That ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... bunches where the grass is thinner are the heads of purple clover; pluck one of these, and while meditating draw forth petal after petal and imbibe the honey with the lips till nothing remains but the green framework, like stolen jewellery from which the gems have been taken. Torn pink ragged robins through whose petals a comb seems to have been remorselessly dragged, blue scabious, red ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... encountered more trees, but so arranged in brilliant foliage and curious blossoms that we almost failed to recognize them. We listened in wonder while our guide unfolded to us the beauty of each bud and leaf; how patiently he traced every vein of the leaf, and every petal of the flower, until our eyes, too, were opened to their beauty so that we could appreciate and discern the difference between them, notwithstanding that they possessed great similarity. This comparative ...
— Silver Links • Various
... that needest to be courted forth from the shelter, and developed under the calm and genial atmosphere of holy, happy love—can such affection as Harley L'Estrange may proffer suffice to thee? Will not the blossoms, yet folded in the petal, wither away beneath the shade that may protect them from the storm, and yet shut them from the sun? Thou who, where thou givest love, seekest, though meekly, for love in return; to be the soul's sweet necessity, the life's household partner to him ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not look through love to look on thee, Grave heavenliness! nor know they joy of sight, Who deem the wave of rapt desire must be Its wrecking and last issue of delight. Dead seasons quicken in one petal-spot ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... doctrine that peloria is simply the result of an arrest of development, it is difficult to understand how an organ arrested at a very early period of growth should acquire its full functional perfection;—how a petal, supposed to be thus arrested, should acquire its brilliant colours, and serve as an envelope to the flower, or a stamen produce efficient pollen; yet this occurs with many peloric flowers. That pelorism is not due to mere chance variability, but either to an arrest of development or to reversion, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... selling daffodils along the windy street, Poor drooping, dusty daffodils — but oh! so Summer sweet! Green stems that stab with loveliness, rich petal-cups to hold The wine of Spring to lips that cling like bees about ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... I lifted from the ground at his feet a single petal of pink rose, fragrant, unwithered, and placed it in ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... fragrance entering her soul and turning all bitterness there to sweetness? Perhaps the shy spirit of life and loveliness, mother of men and of wild-flowers and grasses, had come to it, bringing a whiter sunshine and the mystic silence of her forests, and touching every flowery petal with her invisible finger to make it burn like fire, and giving a ringing woodland music to ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... . . the miracle happened. Michael, with the hand that had just taken hers, stroked a petal of this prized vegetable, with no thought in his mind stronger than the thoughts that had been indigenous there since Christmas. As his finger first touched the rim of the town-bred petals, undersized yet not quite lacking in "rose-quality," he had intended nothing more than to salute the ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... the song of all the birds in spring is more beautiful than Man, and the first coming of the hyacinth more delectable than his face! When spring is fallen upon the days of summer, I carry away with mournful joy at night petal by petal the rhododendron's bloom. No lit procession of purple kings is nigh so fair as that. No beautiful death of well-beloved men hath such a glory of forlornness. And I bear far away the pink and white petals of the apple-blossom's youth when the laborious time comes for his ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... her cheek above the blossom, and whether the cheek or the petal were the redder, who should say? If there were any ill at ease in that room, it was not Law of Lauriston. He stood calm as though there by right. It was an escapade, an adventure, without doubt, as both these young women saw plainly enough. And now, what to do with this adventure ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... her three celluloid fish and had trotted down the path. She wore her pink rompers, and as she bobbed along she was like a mammoth rose-petal ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... 2-4 ft. June. Flowers 6-8 in. across; deep scarlet, with a purple spot at the base of each petal. There are other varieties of pink, ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... rose or white, Petal by petal, fall On that stretch of mud and sand that lies By the hideous prison-wall, To tell the men who tramp the yard That ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... calm! How adorably blue the sky in its debauch of sun-lit ether! The sea, too, although it reeled slightly, unsteadily rising only to fall away, what a radiance of color it maintained! Here in the garden the drowsy air would lift a flower petal, as some dreamer sunk in hasheesh slumber might touch a loved hand, only to let it slip away in nerveless impotence. Never had the charm of this Normandy sea-coast been as compelling; never had the divine softness of this air, this ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... she had looked as she lay asleep in the woods with the tears on her cheek like the dew-drops upon a rose petal! She was a dear little girl and he must take care of her and protect her. That scoundrel Temple! What were such men made for? He must settle ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... taking satisfaction or pleasure in the luxury that surrounds him. He does not congratulate himself on his wealth, nor upon the comforts he possesses and that he values so highly. He thinks of nothing but the little crumpled petal which causes him imaginary distress, and all his faculties are absorbed by ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... after another, and the distant shore became a floating blackness. A breeze that rose and sank brushed their faces with the scents of the garden; once it blew out over the water a great white moth like a drifting magnolia petal. The nightingales had paused and the trickle of the fountain behind the house ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... remember the date well. It was the afternoon of Tuesday, June 13th. I was reading, or rather dipping here and there, in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. As I read, I remember that a little unripe apple, with a petal or two of blossom still clinging to it, fell upon the old yellow page. Then I suppose I must have fallen into a dream, though it seemed to me that both my eyes and my ears were wide open, for I suddenly became aware of a beautiful young voice singing very softly somewhere among ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... a force abroad in Albert that could do these things, an iron force that had no mercy for iron, a mighty mechanical contrivance that could take machinery and pull it all to pieces in a moment as a child takes a flower to pieces petal by petal. ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that moves you—if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty and human soul that moves you—if, being a flower or animal painter, it is love, and wonder, and delight in petal and in limb that move you, then the Spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and the fulness thereof. But if, on the other hand, it is petty self-complacency in your own skill, trust in precepts and laws, hope for academical or popular approbation, or avarice ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... attempts to gather them "by hand"! Properly warned, she will take a knife, sever the flower from the pear (there is no stem to speak of), pick it up by the tip of a petal, carry it home in a paper or handkerchief, and dump it gently into water—happy if she does not feel a dozen intolerable prickles here and there, and have to extract, with help of magnifying-glass and tweezers, ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... satisfaction. Kathleen Somers had, for the first time, envisaged the cosmic, had seen something less passionate, but more vital, than history. Most of us are more fortunate than she: we take it for granted that no loom can rival the petal of a flower. But to some creatures the primitive is a cipher, hard to learn; and blood is spent in the struggle. You have perhaps seen (and not simply in the old legend) passion come to a statue. Rare, oh, rare is the necessity for such a miracle. But Kathleen ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... pearled with evanescent dew, fresh as a new creation of sunbeams, has power to suppress in one part of its petals all vibrations we call red, in another those we call yellow, and purple, and reflect each of these in other parts of the same tender petal. "Pansies are for thoughts," even more thoughts than poor Ophelia knew. An evening cloud that is dense enough to absorb all the faster and weaker vibrations, leaving only the stronger to come through, will be said to be red; because the ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... favourable situations to about 4 feet in height. It has lanceolate leaves that are glutinous above, and thickly covered with a whitish tomentum on the under sides, and large and showy vhite flowers with a conspicuous purple blotch at the base of each petal. Unless in southern and western England, but particularly on the sea-coast, this handsome Portuguese shrub is not to be depended on, in so far as ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... at the call, and the two figures passed lightly along by the Meleager, towards the hall where the reclining Ariadne, then called the Cleopatra, lies in the marble voluptuousness of her beauty, the drapery folding around her with a petal-like ease and tenderness. They were just in time to see another figure standing against a pedestal near the reclining marble: a breathing blooming girl, whose form, not shamed by the Ariadne, was clad in Quakerish gray drapery; her long cloak, fastened at ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... "Tiptilted like the petal of a flower," said Gertrude, laughing. "I always thought your nose one of your prettinesses, Vanity, and I believe ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... received from outside, but thanks to the United States Minister, who had resolved to remain in Paris, a letter arrived from time to time. It was in this way that I received a thin slip of paper, as soft as a primrose petal, bringing me the following message: "Every one well. Courage. A thousand kisses.—Your mother." This impalpable missive dated ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... glasses for a twelve month, he would wait for her to play down first. Yet she recognized the instinct of his manhood to rescue the confusion of her embarrassment when he put forward his hand casually and said—"See my roses, Miss Eleanor? They are a new variety of American Beauties. See, each petal has a white veining? Know how those roses are produced? Ages and ages of poor trash worthless common roses have been sacrificed to produce ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... calamities are disagreeable; to the hyperaesthetic every breeze has a sting, and life is full of pin pricks. "The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" are multiplied in number, and furthermore the reaction to them is intensified. In the "Arabian Nights" the princess boasts that a rose petal bruises her skin, while her competitor in delicacy is made ill by a fiber of cotton in her silken garments. So with the hyperaesthetic; an unintentional overlooking is reacted to as a deadly insult; the thwarting of any desire robs life of its savor; ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... which we are incapable, associated with the fall of monarchs and the fate of man, is for us only a professor, a piece of chalk, and a blackboard. The solemn and unapproachable skies we have vulgarized; we have peeped and botanized among the flowers of light, pulled off every petal, fumbled in every calyx, and reduced them to the bare stem of order and class. The stars can no longer maintain their divine reserves, but whenever there is a conjunction and congress of planets, every enterprising ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... species of Erythrina, a small tree, bearing red flowers, that grew in this valley, near the brook, often drew my attention. The tree blooms in February, and is at the time leafless, so that the large red flowers are seen from a great distance. Each flower consists of a single long, rather fleshy petal, doubled over, flattened, and closed, excepting a small opening on one edge, where the stamens protrude. Only minute insects can find access to the flower, which secretes at the base a honey-like fluid. ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... made the world so radiant. As the old apple-trees, warmed by the sun, suddenly blossomed into bridal beauty in the spring, so, in the silent night, between sundown and day-dawn, while she slept, yet another petal of her own manifold nature had unfolded, and in the glow of its loveliness there was nothing of commonplace aspect; for a new joy in life was hers which helped her to discover in all things a ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... That instant she was asleep. Once in the night she woke. A dream waked her. It seemed to her that a great white flower had blossomed in the window of her room and that in the heart of it was Dickie's face, tender and as pale as a petal. It drew near to her and bent over her wistfully. She held out her arms with a piteous longing to comfort his wistfulness and woke. Her face was wet with the mystery of dream tears. The flower dwindled to a small white moon ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... this little one shan't count to make up," said Levin, tearing off a little half-grown petal. "Here's the wagonette ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... minute to the very largest flowers. The red martagon grows abundantly on our plains; the dog's tooth violet, Erythronium, with its spotted leaves and bending yellow blossom, delicately dashed with crimson spots within, and marked with fine purple lines on the outer part of the petal, proves a great attraction in our woods, where these plants increase: they form a beautiful bed; the leaves come up singly, one from each separate tuber. There are two varieties of this flower, the pale yellow, with neither spots nor lines, and the deep yellow with both; ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... dreaming-place of graver thoughts. Alice Maud Mutimer was nineteen. For two years she had been thus tall, but the grace of her proportions had only of late fully determined itself. Her work in the City warehouse was unexacting; she had even a faint impress of rose-petal on each cheek, and her eye was excellently clear. Her lips, unfortunately never quite closed, betrayed faultless teeth. Her likeness to Richard was noteworthy; beyond question she understood the charm of her presence, and one felt that the consciousness ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... to kiss the tall man squarely upon the lips with her own soft rose-petal lips that clung and clung ... and the reply of Lieutenant McGuire, while it was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... Young, Thomson, Collins, Burns, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, and many other poets. His native faculty, indeed, seems rather fine than powerful—rather timid than daring, and resembles rather the petal of a rose peeping out into the summer air, which seems scarce warm enough for its shrinking loveliness, than the feather of the wing of a great eagle, dipping into the night tempest, which raves around the ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope |
