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Vernal   Listen
adjective
vernal  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to the spring; appearing in the spring; as, vernal bloom. "And purple all the ground with vernal flowers."
2.
Fig.: Belonging to youth, the spring of life. "When after the long vernal day of life." "And seems it hard thy vernal years Few vernal joys can show?"
Vernal equinox (Astron.), the point of time in each year when the sun crosses the equator when proceeding northward, about March 21, when day and night are of approximately equal duration. The beginning of the Spring season.
Vernal grass (Bot.), a low, soft grass (Anthoxanthum odoratum), producing in the spring narrow spikelike panicles, and noted for the delicious fragrance which it gives to new-mown hay; also called sweet vernal grass.
Vernal signs (Astron.), the signs, Aries, Taurus, and Gemini, in which the sun appears between the vernal equinox and summer solstice.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vernal" Quotes from Famous Books



... openness and proneness to pleasing outward impressions in a striking point of view. 'But to return to our own institute,' he says, 'besides these constant exercises at home, there is another opportunity of gaining experience to be won from pleasure itself abroad. In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with Heaven and earth. I should not therefore be a persuader to them of studying much ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... alike, Bonaventure moved straight away along the bushy path, and was presently gone from sight. There is a repentance of good deeds. Bonaventure Deschamps felt it gnawing and tearing hard and harder within his bosom as he strode on through the wild vernal growth that closed in the view on every side. Soon he halted; then turned, and began to retrace ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... of all our days of camping and tramping with John of Birds and John of Mountains was the day in Yosemite when we tramped to Nevada and Vernal Falls, a distance of fourteen miles, returning to Camp Ahwahnee at night, weary almost to exhaustion, but strangely uplifted by the beauty and sublimity n which we had lived and moved and had our being. Our brown tents stood hospitably open, and out in the great ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... that smoothly flow; Ye vernal airs that softly blow; Ye plains, by blooming spring arrayed; Ye birds that ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... and my purse with the ardor of a husbandman who hopes to reap a hundred ears for every grain he confides to the earth. But, alas! the fields, where is garnered the harvest of expended doubloons, and where vernal loves bloom anew, are yet to be discovered; and the result of my double prodigality was, that one fine morning I found myself a bankrupt in heart, with my purse ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... forefathers had been wont fearlessly to alight had been changed into a disgusting expanse of farms. If geese are favored with the long lives in which fable bids us believe, some of these venerable honkers must have seen every vernal and autumnal phase of the transformation from boundless prairie to boundless corn-land. I sometimes seem to hear in the bewildering trumpetings of wild geese a cry of surprise and protest at the ruin of their former paradise. ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick

... dandy of two countries, the international Lothario, the Viscount-baron Gratian von Linden-hohen-Linden-cum de Terremonde. Luckily, too, he had been at the same period as myself, smitten with your vernal charms, and he entered upon his amorous mission with gusto. You believed him very wealthy, but let me tell you that the cash he really had under hand was our petty expense fund. Judge by that what a capital we control!" exclaimed Von Sendlingen proudly. "Our poor Gratian the double dealer, seemed ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... features, from an angular filly devoid of grace and charm, had by a stroke of the wand become metamorphosed into a remarkably attractive young woman. It was startling: but it was also undeniable. It was not the vernal frock, of that Cleopatra was convinced; although Mrs. Delarayne had concentrated chiefly upon this feature in her transports of joy over her younger daughter's dramatic and spontaneous assumption of womanly beauty. Had it been only the frock Cleopatra was ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then. They were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... in our prison, a season indeed of light and gratulation; and the day passed with us as a Sabbath to our spirits. The anvils of Fear were hushed, and the shuttles in the looms of Anxiety were at rest, while Hope again walked abroad in those sunny fields where, amidst vernal blossoms and shining dews, she expatiates on the delights of the flowing cluster and the ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... snow-white rose, lay then Before my view the saintly multitude, Which in his own blood Christ espous'd. Meanwhile That other host, that soar aloft to gaze And celebrate his glory, whom they love, Hover'd around; and, like a troop of bees, Amid the vernal sweets alighting now, Now, clustering, where their fragrant labour glows, Flew downward to the mighty flow'r, or rose From the redundant petals, streaming back Unto the steadfast dwelling of their joy. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... is the Man who with ennobling pride Beholds not his own nature? where is he Who but with deep amazement awe allied Must muse the mysteries of the human mind, The miniature of Deity. For Man the vernal clouds descending Shower down their fertilizing rain, For Man the ripen'd harvest bending Waves with soft murmur o'er the plenteous plain. He spreads the sail on high, The rude gale wafts him o'er the main; For him the winds of Heaven subservient blow, ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... of the instruction at St. Denis and the consecration at Chartres were followed on the day of the vernal equinox by a third and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... girl, who as yet was in a convent for her education. She came out for the purpose of sitting for the picture. I first saw her in an apartment of one of the sumptuous palaces of Genoa. She stood before a casement that looked out upon the bay, a stream of vernal sunshine fell upon her, and shed a kind of glory round her as it lit up the rich crimson chamber. She was but sixteen years of age—and oh, how lovely! The scene broke upon me like a mere vision of spring and youth ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... strange sounds for January. All the winter birds are doing their share in the chorus and orchestra; crows, jays, woodpeckers, nut-hatches, juncos, tree-sparrows. But suddenly a woodpecker begins a new sound,—his vernal drumming! Not the mere tap, tap, tap, in quest of insects, but the love-call drumming of the nidification season, nearly ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... 1. Sweet-scented Vernal Grass.—Small growth; yield of hay light. For pastures it is very early, and grows quickly after being cropped, and is excellent for milch-cows; grows well on almost any soil, but most naturally on high, well-drained meadows. It grows ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... but more sedately and meekly, Elizabeth Haddon Sang in her inmost heart, but her lips were silent and songless. Thus came the lovely spring with a rush of blossoms and music, Flooding the earth with flowers, and the air with melodies vernal. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... gladness of Easter came upon the land; the spring showed traces of its secret presence by a thousand intangible and delicate signs in sky, and air, and earth: there was everywhere a stir and a quickening, a blitheness which belongs to the vernal season only. Philip felt all these things by the growing sharpness of the contrast between his mood and that of the world without. His melancholy and unrest seemed to him to grow every day more intense ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... a transport dies away: Some more refin'd transcribe their Opera-loves On Iv'ry Tablets, or in clean white Gloves: Some of Platonic, some of carnal Taste, Hoop'd, or un-hoop'd, ungarter'd, or unlac'd. Thus thick in Air the wing'd Creation play, When vernal Phoebus rouls the Light away, A motley race, half Insects and half Fowls, Loose-tail'd and dirty, May-flies, Bats, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte

... the beginning of the year. One is, that the year begins at the conjunction of the sun and the moon which occurs nearest to the vernal equinox. Thus this month is called the first by Moses in Exodus. If the flood set in on the seventeenth day of the second month, it must have continued almost to the end of April, the most beautiful ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... thief, Before the urchin well could go, She stole the whiteness of the snow. And more—that whiteness to adorn, She snatch'd the blushes of the morn; Stole all the softness aether pours On primrose buds in vernal show'rs. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various

... nightingale's sequestered tower, Who with her love-lorn melody So bewitched thee in the vernal hour: When she ceased to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... his eyes, realizing and relishing the part that Consetena was playing. On his own part, Poet Tate welcomed this single gleam of kindly feeling, as the Eskimo welcomes the first glimpse of the vernal sun. He ran ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... powerful and healthy population. The results of these events in the moral and political world may be compared to those produced in the vegetable kingdom by the storms and heavy gales so usual at the vernal equinox, the time of the formation of the seed; the pollen or farina of one flower is thrown upon the pistil of another, and the crossing of varieties of plants so essential to the perfection of the vegetable world produced. In man moral causes and physical ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... belly tinged With various spots unnumbered, more than those Which paint the Theban (24) marble; horned snakes With spines contorted: like to torrid sand Ammodytes, of hue invisible: Sole of all serpents Scytale to shed In vernal frosts his slough; and thirsty Dipsas; Dread Amphisbaena with his double head Tapering; and Natrix who in bubbling fount Fuses his venom. Greedy Prester swells His foaming jaws; Pareas, head erect Furrows ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... though it was long before charts were made, or the set of currents taken into account, yet voyages were for the most part accomplished with very tolerable accuracy and safety. An ample commerce grew up under Sidonian auspices. After the vernal equinox was over a fleet of white-winged ships sped forth from the many harbours of the Syrian coast, well laden with a variety of wares—Phoenician, Assyrian, Egyptian[1430]—and made for the coasts and islands of the Levant, the AEgean, the Propontis, the Adriatic, the ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... recollect it, as I believe you scarcely noticed the poetic reveur as he wandered by you. I had roved out as chance directed, in the favourite haunts of my muse, on the banks of the Ayr, to view nature in all the gaiety of the vernal year. The evening sun was flaming over the distant western hills; not a breath stirred the crimson opening blossom, or the verdant-spreading leaf. It was a golden moment for a poetic heart. I listened to the feathered warblers, pouring their harmony on ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... or lilac, according to the stain of the sky, and there is no light in the rocky South that so tenderly touches the soul as this. Here the spurge drinks of the wine of heaven with golden lips wide open; but the hellebore, which has already lost all its vernal greenness, and is parched by the drought, ripens its drooping seeds sullenly on the shadowy side of the jutting crag, and seems to hate the sun. Higher and yet far below the plateau is a little field where the lately cut grass has ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... discovered (or invented) an important engagement with a growing family of clothes-moths in a Connecticut country house. So there remained only the faithful Phil. One swallow does not make a summer; nor does one youth with a vernal proboscis convince a skeptical public that it is enjoying the fearful companionship of a subversive and revolutionary cult. Patronage ebbed out as fast as it had flooded in. Barbran's eyes were as soft ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... and summer gale, In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid, What time, where lucid Avon stray'd, 85 To him the mighty mother did unveil Her awful face: the dauntless child Stretch'd forth his little arms and smil'd. "This pencil take (she said), whose colours clear Richly paint the vernal year: 90 Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy! This can unlock the gates of joy; Of horror that, and thrilling fears, Or ope the sacred ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray

... sea-quake rolled unheededly away. Apparently the direction was from north to south: I noted the hour, 9.10 p.m., and the duration, twenty seconds. According to the Arabs the Zilzilah is not uncommon in Midian, especially about the vernal equinox: on this occasion it ended the spell of damp and muggy weather which began on March 19th, and which may have ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... 2 this change of era is formally commanded by Moses: "This month (the passover month) shall be the beginning of months unto you, it shall be to you the first of the months of the year." According to George Smith, the Assyrian year commenced at the vernal equinox; the Assyrian use depends on the Babylonian (Assyrian Eponym ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... tribes intended to leave at night; their kindred in Succoth must be ready to go forth with them. There was great rejoicing among the Hebrews, who like those of their blood in the city of Rameses, had assembled in every house at a festive repast on the night of the new moon after the vernal equinox when the harvest festival usually began. The heads of the tribes had informed them that the day of liberation had arrived, and the Lord would lead them ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... return home. Only when that was decided did he discover how much he longed to be there. For the horror and suffering of the past were a little dimmed already; he thirsted to see his woods and meadows in their vernal dress, to hear the murmur of his river, and move again among ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... not of Christian origin were derived from the ceremonies with which the heathen peoples of Europe had been accustomed to mark the changes of the seasons. Thus, April Fool's Day formed a relic of festivities held at the vernal equinox. May Day, another festival of spring, honored the spirits of trees and of all budding vegetation. The persons who acted as May kings and May queens represented these spirits. According to the original custom a new May ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... with pious care, Beneath the vernal turf we laid; Remembrance loves to linger there, And ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent

... his ruddy breast upon the lawn in spring, or his pert form outlined against a patch of lingering snow in the brown fields, or hears his simple carol from the top of a leafless tree at sundown, what a vernal thrill it gives one! What a train of pleasant associations is quickened ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... brown-brimmed hat adorned with eagle or heron plumes. As personification of the summer, he was invoked to still the raging storms which desolated the coasts during the winter months. He was also implored to hasten the vernal warmth and thereby ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... continue, and soon nurture must deal with notes written by foolish maidens and the first glamour of the great passion, "sicklied o'er" with callowness and sentimentality. There is no more perplexing problem in Adolescence than how to handle wisely this vernal manifestation of love. ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux

... beating still With throbs her vernal passion taught her,— Even here, as on the vine-clad hill, Or by the Arethusan water! New forms may fold the speech, new lands Arise within these ocean-portals, But Music waves eternal wands,— Enchantress ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... mead through which we were passing was a natural parterre, where in the midst of the lively vernal green, bloomed the oxlip, the white and blue violet, the yellow-cup dotted with jet, and many another fragile and aromatic member of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... Cardamines! Thine hour is when the thrushes sing, When gently stirs the vernal breeze, When earth and sky proclaim the spring; When all the fields melodious ring With cuckoos' calls, when all the trees Put on their green, then art thou king Of ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... long ago bewitched by its waters, and now their perturbed spirits haunt the place. Those perfectly round rainbows may form the nimbus for each of the martyrs; they, at any rate, look supernatural enough for such an office. The wildly wooded pass to the Vernal and Nevada Falls has echoed to my tread. I have been sprayed upon till my spirit is never dry of the life-giving waters that flow so freely. But I am just a little tired of all this. I begin to breathe short, irregular breaths. The soul of this mighty solitude oppresses ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... cooling herb Or medicinal liquor can asswage, Nor breath of vernal air from Snowy Alp; Sleep hath forsook and given me o'er To death's benumming opium as my ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... happy, glorious morning. The air is fresh and cool. The sky lovingly smiles on the earth and her children. The deep woods are crowned in bright vernal leafage; the water of the Mkuti, rushing under the emerald shade afforded by the bearded banks, seems to challenge us for the race to Ujiji, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... many a child, from the roof-tree diurnal, A scene of distraction or dullness severe, With the longing of youth for diversion and cheer, That comes like the spring-time refreshing and vernal, Goes out on a ruinous, reckless career, Returning, if ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... bright Sunday near the end of April, six of us walked up from the hotel to Vernal and Nevada Falls, or as near to them as we could get, and took our fill of the tumult of foaming waters struggling with the wreck of huge granite cliffs: so impassive and immobile the rocks, so impetuous and reckless and determined the onset of the waters, till the falls are reached, ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... out their catkins, and the white birches showed faint signs of returning life. In the woods were long drifts of snow, though he knew that in the brown leaves along their edges the pale pink flowers of the trailing arbutus were hiding their wet faces. A vernal mildness overhung the landscape. A blue haze filled the distances and veiled the hills; from the farm door-yards the smell of burning leaf-heaps and garden-stalks came through the window which he lifted to let in the dull, ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... April Will typify my life, my faith, My hope of victory through the years, My steadiness of step, my clear and visioned eye. The early flowers, the birds Singing in the rain, The increasing light, the slowly opening buds, The almond blooms, the trees in vernal dress Are like the silver crown upon the head; A prophecy of heaven's summer time. Yes, even now it is the April Of ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright

... vast panorama of granite mountain sides, almost white,—here and there covered with a sparse growth of timber. The waters from these mountain reaches had cut a channel for themselves known as Little Yosemite Valley, where pour the two wonderful cataracts known as Nevada Falls and Vernal Falls. Their deep roar came up from the valley. Mamie felt that she would be content to watch that scene ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall

... roaming lonely by the mournful forest streams, The loveliness and melody of childhood's happy dreams; Pale flowers, the vermeil-tinted, lightly fanned by vernal breeze, Whose fitful breath went sighingly among the solemn trees; Sunny streamlets, gushing clearly in their fresh and tameless glee, Sparkling onward, ever onward, toward a golden summer sea. Fairy isles of green were sleeping on its softly-heaving breast, Where the chime ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... of the spring are here blended together like the breath of opening flowers. Images of vernal beauty appear to have floated before the author's mind, in writing this poem, in profusion. Here is another of exquisite beauty, brought in more by accident than by necessity. Montague declares of his son smit with a hopeless passion, which ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... snow, Clinging so chastely, tenderly: Hail holly, darkly, richly green, Whose crimson berries blush between Thy prickly foliage, modestly. Ye winter-flowers, bloom sweet and fair, Though Nature's garden else be bare— Ye vernal glistening emblems, meet To twine a ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... time shall fondly trace the name Of BROCK upon the scrolls of fame, And those bright laurels, which should wave Upon the brow of one so brave, Shall flourish vernal o'er his grave. ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... music, above and around, undulated as if from invisible instruments, seeming to belong naturally to the place, just as the sound of murmuring waters belongs to a rocky landscape, or the warble of birds to vernal groves. ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... and a warble That make the pulses leap: A watching, as in childhood, For the flowers that, one by one, Open their golden petals To woo the fitful sun. A gust, a flash, a gurgle, A wish to shout and sing, As, filled with hope and gladness, We hail the vernal Spring. ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... and pixies, nymphs and fairies, become established in the world as the primitive man conceives it. Larger tasks are discharged by more important spirits, and everything natural thus becomes animated by supernatural beings. Thor was the god of thunder; Freia the goddess of spring and vernal awakening; Athena inspired the minds of men. Venus and Aphrodite played their special parts, also. But such powers as these, established by the untutored mind, needed to be accounted for, and so in ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... of the widows and poplars furnish the materials for the work. There breaks from them, in May, a sort of vernal snow, a fine down, which the eddies of the air heap in the crevices of the ground. It is a cotton similar to that of our manufactures, but of very short staple. It comes from an inexhaustible warehouse: the tree is bountiful; and the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... long evening walk through the vernal Hof Gardens and by the Rhine, and thought of the beauty and splendor of the divine Julia; and sighed, and remembered that he was Mr. Nobody of Nowhere, pictor ignotus, with only one eye he could see with, and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... glad sunshine of life's vernal spring, Hope buoys the spirit with expectancy; Hope with her dulcet voice and fluttering wing, Sings of life's goal with siren harmony; When silvered temples tell that life declines, That goal, though yet unreached, ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... portentous glare of a comet, and hear a crow with equal tranquillity from the right or left, will yet talk of times and situations proper for intellectual performances, will imagine the fancy exalted by vernal breezes, and the reason invigorated by a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... month when, through the sultry hour, The vernal sun denies the wonted shower, When youthful Spring usurps maturer sway, And pallid April steals the blush of May, How joys the rustic tribe, to view displayed The liberal blossom and the early shade! But ah! far other air our soil delights; Here 'charming ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... gay bloom and beauty's charms Mercy alike stern Time denies, Like vernal flowers o'erwhelmed by storms, Whate'er he looks at ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors

... grouse with kindled soul, Wistful of his mate and nest, Sounding forth his vernal roll On ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... brief moment in a work of pastoral elegance that has survived the changing tastes of succeeding generations. The 'romance of Daphnis and Chloe is the last word of a world of sensuous enervation toying with the idea of vernal freshness and virginity. It is a genuine picture of the purity of awakening love, wrought with every delicacy of sentiment and expression, and yet in such manner as by its very naivete and innocence to serve as a goad to satiated appetite. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... various birds, shew us how species, or whole groups, might have originally acquired their double annual moult, or having once gained the habit, have again lost it. With certain bustards and plovers the vernal moult is far from complete, some feathers being renewed, and some changed in colour. There is also reason to believe that with certain bustards and rail-like birds, which properly undergo a double moult, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... than all English poets, the poet of the lusty spring, of "Aprille with her showres sweet" and the "foules song," of "May with all her floures and her greene," of the new leaves in the wood, and the meadows new powdered with the daisy, the mystic Marguerite of his Legend of Good Women. A fresh vernal air blows through ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... tender, vernal spray The sunny air such fragrance drew, As breathes from fields of strawberries wild, All ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... not perceive the least damp, either on the floors, or the furniture; neither was I much incommoded by the asthma, which used always to harass me most in wet weather. In a word, I passed the winter here much more comfortably than I expected. About the vernal equinox, however, I caught a violent cold, which was attended with a difficulty of breathing, and as the sun advances towards the tropic, I find myself still more subject to rheums. As the heat increases, the humours of the body are rarefied, and, of consequence, the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... the snowdrops will lift their heads; Ladyday may be expected, and the pecuniary duties peculiar to that feast; in place of bonbons, trees will have an eruption of light green knobs; the whitebait season will bloom ... as if one need go on describing these vernal phenomena, when Christmas is still here, though ending, and the ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray

... in the white, sunlit landscape spread before me that compelled my glance. To some it might compare but ill with the luxuriant splendour that is of the vernal season; but to me there was a wondrously impressive charm about that solemn, silent, virginal expanse of snow, expressionless as the Sphinx, and imposing and majestic by virtue of that very lack of expression. From Fabriano, at our feet, was spread to the east, the broad ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... try to make me hope, that much of my malady is the effect of cold, and that some degree at least of recovery is to be expected from vernal breezes and summer suns[808]. If my life is prolonged to autumn, I should be glad to try a warmer climate; though how to travel with a diseased body, without a companion to conduct me, and with very little money, I do not well see. Ramsay has recovered his limbs in Italy[809]; and Fielding was sent ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... thee then, And charge the wind flie from his Rockie Den. Let loose thy subjects, only Boreas Too foul for our intention as he was; Still keep him fast chain'd; we must have none here But vernal blasts, and gentle winds appear, Such as blow flowers, and through the glad Boughs sing Many soft welcomes to the lusty spring. These are our musick: next, thy watry race Bring on in couples; we are pleas'd to grace This noble night, each in their richest things Your own deeps or the broken ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... without risk. Their subaltern leaders roamed the three provinces, roused all the partisans of monarchy, and gave consistence and unity to their plans. These proceedings coincided with what was going on in La Vendee, where the same intrigues, under the influence of four famous leaders (the Abbe Vernal, the Comte de Fontaine, De Chatillon, and Suzannet), were agitating the country. The Chevalier de Valois, the Marquis d'Esgrignon, and the Troisvilles were, it was said, corresponding with these leaders in the department of the Orne. The chief of the great ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... rooting the noxious weeds of passion, malice, envy, and strife? Are we picking away the cold, hard pebbles of [15] selfishness, uncovering the secrets of sin and burnishing anew the hidden gems of Love, that their pure perfection shall appear? Are we feeling the vernal freshness and sunshine of ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... get beyond plovers and lovers. I am still, however, harassed by the unauthentic Muse; if I cared to encourage her—but I have not the time, and anyway we are at the vernal equinox. It is funny enough, but my pottering verses are usually made (like the God-gifted organ voice's) at the autumnal; and this seems to hold at the Antipodes. There is here some odd secret of Nature. I cannot speak of politics; we wait and wonder. It seems (this is partly a guess) ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... adieu, a fond adieu to thee, O muse of rhyme— I do remand thee to the shades until that happier time When fields are green, and posies gay are budding everywhere, And there's a smell of clover bloom upon the vernal air; When by the pond out yonder the redwing blackbird calls, And distant hills are wed to Spring in veils of water-falls; When from his aqueous element the famished pickerel springs Two hundred ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... shortened and sliced that now looked like young saplings. Better even than just now, the sun shed on that white and red accumulation of mingled material an appearance of life and even an illusion of meditation. Its very stones seemed to feel the vernal revival. The beauty of sunshine heralded what would be, and revealed the future. The face of the watching soldier, too, shone with a glamour of reincarnation, and the smile on it was born of the springtime and of hope. His rosy cheeks and blue eyes ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... lies, Richly tinted, brightly beaming, With its varied lessons teeming, All outspread before his eyes. Dewy glades and opening flowers, Emerald meadows, vernal bowers, Sun and shade, and bird and bee, Fount and forest, hill and lea,— All things beautiful and fair, His ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... money, or a Russian one, where every man is but a co-proprietor with the north wind in the fee-simple of his own ears. Indeed, so great an epicure am I in this matter that I cannot relish a winter night fully if it be much past St. Thomas's day, and have degenerated into disgusting tendencies to vernal appearances. No, it must be divided by a thick wall of dark nights from all return of light and sunshine. From the latter weeks of October to Christmas Eve, therefore, is the period during which happiness ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... an unaccustomed glory! Earth! though fair Aurora be, Never from her vernal features Shone such magic light for thee: Lo! the ivy's glossy tendrils Bathed in purple lustre gleam, And the flowers that crown each fountain ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... the southern hemisphere of Mars in about latitude 45 degrees south. It was near the time of the vernal equinox in that hemisphere of the planet, and under the stimulating influence of the Spring sun, rising higher and higher every day, some such awakening of life and activity upon its surface as occurs on the earth under similar ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss

... to commence its blooming period about October, from which time to the severest part of winter it affords a goodly amount of flowers; it is then stopped for a while, though its buds can be seen during the whole winter, and when the longer days and vernal sunshine return, it soon becomes thickly covered with blossoms, which are of the most desirable ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood

... processions of the seasons, the death of nature, and the birth of spring. The Adoniac or Syrian cults were similar, Adonis being killed, but revived to point to life through death. In the Cabirie Mysteries on the island of Samothrace, Atys the Sun was killed by his brothers the Seasons, and at the vernal equinox was restored to life. So, also, the Druids, as far north as England, taught of one God the tragedy of winter and summer, and conducted the initiate through the valley of death to ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... days since, driving to Fiesole, we came back by the castle of Vincigliata. The afternoon was lovely; and, though there is as yet (February 10th) no visible revival of vegetation, the air was full of a vague vernal perfume, and the warm colours of the hills and the yellow western sunlight flooding the plain seemed to contain the promise of Nature's return to grace. It's true that above the distant pale blue gorge of Vallombrosa the mountain-line was tipped with snow; but the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... Vernai remarked that if the worst came to the worst the lottery could be suppressed. At this I knew my business was done, and all present, after signing a document which M. du Vernai gave them, took their leave, and I myself left directly afterwards with a friendly leave-taking from M. du Vernal. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... background, just ready to come if she was wanted. But indeed it seemed as if no such precautions were necessary, for never had Lady Ashbridge been more amenable, more blissfully content in her son's companionship. The vernal hour, that first smell of the rejuvenated earth, as it stirred and awoke from its winter sleep had reached her no less than it had reached the springing grass and the heart of buried bulbs, and never perhaps in all her life had ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... forth in the freshness of the morning, and the woods that had been so black and bewildering at my coming opened before us in easy paths, and all that tropical squalor that had been foul with sweat and insects seemed strangely vernal to me, so that I could hardly believe that I had trodden that way before. And for our companion all the way along—or, at least, for my other companion—was the Wonder of the World, the beautiful strangeness of living, and that marvel of a man's ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... old heathen burying barrows on Stone Horse Head quieted off for the time being. Deadham, meanwhile, in act of repossessing its soul in peace and hibernating according to time-honoured habit until the vernal equinox. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... wood-fire supplies the sun's defect, Whispering old forest-sagas in its dreams, I take my May down from the happy shelf Where perch the world's rare song-birds in a row, Waiting my choice to open with full breast, And beg an alms of springtime, ne'er denied Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods Throb thick with merle and mavis ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... not doubt the fact, the statue still remains, and stands in the temple of Venus at Salamis, in the exact form of the lady. Now think of these things, my dear, and lay aside your scorn and your delays, and accept a lover. So may neither the vernal frosts blight your young fruits, nor ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... be no such thing as a peaceable secession. Peaceable secession is an utter impossibility. Is the great Constitution under which we live, covering this whole country, is it to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun, disappear almost unobserved, and run off? No, sir! No, sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption of the Union; but, sir, I see as plainly as I can see the sun in heaven what that disruption itself must produce; I see ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... would you conquer—the map of America? I am ready to meet any general officer on the subject, What will you do out of the protection of your fleet? In the winter, if together, they are starved—if dispersed, they are taken off in detail. I am experienced in spring hopes and vernal promises: I know what ministers throw out; but at last will come your equinoctial disappointment. You have got nothing in America but stations. You have been three years teaching them the art of war—they are apt scholars; and I will venture to tell your lordships ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... up! my Friend, and quit your books, Or surely you'll grow double! . . . One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... vernal Heat Shall Old Acquaintance Old Acquaintance greet, Under the Branch that leans above the Wall To shed his Blossom ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... infants forth with many smiles, But, once delivered, kills them with a frown. He therefore, timely warned, himself supplies Her want of care, screening and keeping warm The plenteous bloom, that no rough blast may sweep His garlands from the boughs. Again, as oft As the sun peeps and vernal airs breathe mild, The fence withdrawn, he gives them ev'ry beam, And spreads his hopes before ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... in Heaven, Ned, and Things on Earth, and Things under the Earth. The old Story, whereof you have alreadie seen many Parcels; but, you know, my Vein ne'er flows so happily as from the autumnal to the vernal Equinox. Howbeit, there is Something in the Quality of this Air would arouse the old Man of ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... bounded. He gathered up the beauties of the world around him in great sheaves of delicious and thrilling sensations. Long-forgotten odors came sweeping across the fields, rich with the verdure of the vernal season, and brought with them precious accompaniments of the almost-forgotten past. The rich and varied colors of field and sky and forest fed his starved soul with one kind of beauty; and the sweet sounds of ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... O'er the season vernal, Time may cast a shade; Sunshine, if eternal, Makes the roses fade: Time may do his duty; Let the thief alone - Winter hath a beauty That is all his own. Fairest days are sun and shade: Happy be thy ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... the waterfalls and the scene is complete. They are the highest in the world. Each is markedly individualized; no two resemble each other. Yet, with the exception of the Vernal Fall, all have a common note; all are formed of comparatively small streams dropping from great heights; all are wind-blown ribbons ending in clouds of mist. They are so distributed that one or more are visible from most parts of the Valley ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... winds forget to blaw, An' vernal suns revive pale nature, A shepherd lad by chance I saw, Feeding his flocks by ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy: In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour, The fruit autumnal, and the vernal flow'r; With listless eyes the dotard views the store, He views, and wonders that they ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... parallacticum, a wooden isosceles triangle with legs eight feet long divided into 1000 {619} divisions by ink marks, and a hypotenuse divided into 1414 divisions. With this he determined the height of the sun, moon and stars, and their deviation from the vernal point. To this he added a square (quadrum) which told the height of the sun by the shadow thrown by a peg in the middle of the square. A third instrument, also to measure the height of a celestial body, was called the Jacob's staff. His difficulties were increased ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... than historic, that prophetic lay Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright) Of the foundations and the building up Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell What may be told, to the understanding mind Revealable; and what within the mind By vital breathings secret as the soul Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart Thoughts all too deep for words!— Theme hard as high, Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears (The first-born they of Reason and twin-birth), Of tides obedient to external force, And currents self-determined, as might seem, Or by some inner power; ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... There are ten shells, thirteen inches in diameter, rising high in air. There are handfuls of smoke flecking the sky, and a prolonged, indescribable crashing, rolling, and rumbling. You have seen battle-pieces by the great painters; but the highest artistic skill cannot portray the scene. It is a vernal day, as beautiful as ever dawned. The gunboats are enveloped in flame and smoke. The unfolding clouds are slowly wafted away by the gentle breeze. Huge columns rise majestically from the mortars. A line of white—a thread-like tissue—spans the sky. It is the ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... it is this, taken together with the fact that he is the first English poet to read whom is to enjoy him, and that he garnished not only our language but our literature with blossoms still adorning them in vernal freshness,—which makes Chaucer's figure so unique a one in the gallery of our great English writers, and gives to his works an interest so inexhaustible for the historical as well as for the ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... refuse of bushes, With rose-tinted lips, like herald of morn, With but a leaf to conceal secret blushes, Earth's first vernal ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite

... lie, and deeper yet In night, where not a leaf its neighbour knows; Forget the shining of the stars, forget The vernal visitation of the rose; And, far from all delights, ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps

... me where's the vi'let fled Late so gaily blowing; Springing 'neath fair Flora's tread, Choicest sweets bestowing? Swains the vernal scene is o'er, And the vi'let blooms ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... climate, the difference between the heat at two hours afternoon in the month of the vernal equinox, and at an hour before sunrise, has been as great as ten degrees of the thermometer of Reaumur, as I have been informed by one of the medical staff attached to the army, who was in possession of that instrument. It is at present the commencement of ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English

... unexpected legacy from an admirable distant relation put me at the end of a longer tether. I still have to work, but less hard. I have always tried not to ossify, keeping in view a possible serene time to come, when I might put forth blossoms in this vernal fashion that tempts my middle-aged fancy. And where could I choose a sweeter spot for these late efforts to be young and green, than here in this perfect ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... blue shirts, staggering, look at the steamer and laugh and shout something. The big, beautiful vessel goes sidewise on the river; the yellow scantlings with which it is loaded sparkle like gold and are dimly reflected in the muddy, vernal water. A passenger steamer comes from the opposite side and whistles—the resounding echo of the whistle loses itself in the woods, in the gorges of the mountainous bank, and dies away there. In the middle of the river the waves stirred ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... the yellow of the Rose Eternal That spreads, and multiplies, and breathes an odor Of praise unto the ever-vernal Sun, As one who silent is and fain would speak, Me Beatrice drew on, and said: 'Behold Of the white stoles how vast the convent is! Behold how vast the circuit of our city! Behold our seats so filled to overflowing, ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... effects of nature's renewal. He discovered the liquid light of her dark eyes in the rippling darkness of the streams; the lilies recalled the faintly tinted paleness of her cheeks; the silene roses, scattered throughout the hedges, called forth the remembrance of the young maiden's rosy lips, and the vernal odor of the leaves appeared to him like an emanation of her graceful ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... The Vernal Equinox has all over the ancient world, and from the earliest times, been a period of rejoicing and of festivals in honor of the Sungod. It is needless to labor a point which is so well known. Everyone ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... undone, the notice of some persons of rank began to reach him. Shenstone, however, deeply colours the variable state of his own mind—"Recovering from a nervous fever, as I have since discovered by many concurrent symptoms, I seem to anticipate a little of that 'vernal delight' which Milton ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... day of our Washington's glory; The garlands uplift for our liberties won. Oh sing in your gladness his echoing story, Whose sword swept for freedom the fields of the sun! Not with gold, nor with gems, But with evergreens vernal, And the banners of stars that the continent span, Crown, crown we the chief of the heroes eternal, Who lifted his sword for the ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... the sincere delight; The habitual scene of hill and dale; The rural herds, the vernal gale; The tangled vetches' purple bloom; The fragrance of the bean's perfume,— Theirs, theirs alone, who cultivate the soil, And drink the cup of thirst, and eat the ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... sweetly talk, Till the silent moon shine clearly; I'll grasp thy waist, and, fondly prest, Swear how I love thee dearly; Not vernal showers to budding flow'rs, Not autumn to the farmer, So dear can be as thou to me, My fair, my ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... not quitted my side! Coleridge in truth met me half-way on the ground of philosophy, or I should not have been won over to his imaginative creed. I had an uneasy, pleasurable sensation all the time, till I was to visit him. During those months the chill breath of winter gave me a welcoming; the vernal air was balm and inspiration to me. The golden sun-sets, the silver star of evening, lighted me on my way to new hopes and prospects. I was to visit Coleridge in the spring. This circumstance was never absent from my thoughts, and mingled with all my feelings. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... There can be no such thing as peaceable secession. It is an utter impossibility. Is this great Constitution, under which we live, to be melted and thawed away by secession, as the snows on the mountains are melted away under the influence of the vernal sun? No, sir; I see as plainly as the sun in the heavens what that disruption must produce. I see ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... touched me profoundly. Moreover, his suggestion appeared to my conceptions to be both timely and effective, carrying with it, as it did, a thought of the opening of the burs, of the descent of autumn on the vernal forest, of the rich meatiness of the kernel; a thought of the delectable filbert, the luscious pecan and the succulent walnut—the latter, however, having a tendency to produce cramping sensations when partaken ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... satisfy the breast, The sons of Italy were surely blest. Whatever fruits in different climes are found, That proudly rise, or humbly court the ground; Whatever blooms in torrid tracts appear, Whose bright succession decks the varied year: Whatever sweets salute the northern sky, With vernal leaves that blossom but to die: These here disporting, own the kindred soil, Nor ask luxuriance from their planter's toil; While sea-born gales their gelid wings expand, To winnow fragrance round the ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... recommend their "extraordinary and rare industry." And he also wrote the Preliminary Discourse to that part which relates to Fruit-trees, wherein he thus breaks out:—"Let us but take a turn or two in a well-contrived and planted garden; and see what a surprising scene presents itself in the vernal bloom, diffusing its fragrant and odoriferous wafts, with their ravishing sweets; the tender blossoms curiously enamelled; the variously-figured shapes of the verdant foliage, dancing about, and immantling the laden branches of the choicest ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... conqueror in battle of the gods, the Danavas, the Gandharvas, the Yakshas, and the Kimpurushas, attired in celestial robes and possessing handsome features, decked with jewelled earrings and wearing a beautiful garland and crown, entered the Asoka woods, like an embodiment of the vernal season. And dressed with care, Ravana looked like the Kalpa tree in Indra's garden. But though adorned with every embellishment, that inspired her only with awe, like a beautified banian in the midst of a cemetery. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... too a sister had! too cruel Death! How sad Remembrance bids my bosom heave! Tranquil her soul, as sleeping Infant's breath; Meek were her manners as a vernal Eve. Knowledge, that frequent lifts the bloated mind, 5 Gave her the treasure of a lowly breast, And Wit to venom'd Malice oft assign'd, Dwelt in her bosom in a Turtle's nest. Cease, busy Memory! cease to urge the dart; Nor on my soul her love to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... a vast extent of ocean, and is cooled in the summer by perpetual ventilation, but by the same blasts is kept warm in winter. Their weather is not pleasing. Half the year is deluged with rain. From the autumnal to the vernal equinox, a dry day is hardly known, except when the showers are suspended by a tempest. Under such skies can be expected no great exuberance of vegetation. Their winter overtakes their summer, and their harvest ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... rich array," to "orient day;" then "but soon the scathing lightning," to "blighted land." Then "Sublime of thought" to "his bosom glows." Then "but soon upon his poor unsheltered head Did Penury her sickly Mildew shed, and soon are fled the charms of vernal Grace, and Joy's wild gleams that lightend o'er his face!" Then "Youth of tumultuous soul" to "sigh" as before. The rest may all stand down to "gaze upon the waves below." What follows now may come next, as detached ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... dryness of Protestant ritual and theology, and said that in the Middle Ages there was a unity (Einheit) which ought to be again recovered. All Europe was then one fatherland with a single faith. The period of the Arthursage was the blossoming time of romance, the vernal season of love, religion, chivalry, and—sorcery! He pleaded for the creation of a new Christian, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... with glory's light, his fame, And glad his life with pleasure's ray! While, like th' affrighted dove, thy form Still shrinks, and fears some latent storm, His cares shall sooth thy panting soul to rest, And spread thy vernal couch on Albion's breast. ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams

... of the world. Let P be a point upon this line. As we have seen, such point is the summit of a very wide cone described in one day by the solar rays. At the equinox this cone is converted into a plane, which, in a vertical plane, intersects the straight line A B. Between the vernal and autumnal equinoxes the sun is situated above this plane, and, consequently, the shadow of P describes the lower curves at A B. During winter, on the contrary, it is the upper curves that are described. It is easily seen that the curves traced by the shadow of the point P are hyperbolas whose ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... years' course, require great diligence to excel, and considerable industry to keep above water. But with the returning spring the unused walks again are paced, and the dry keels launched into the vernal waters. Again, in the warm twilight of evening, you hear the laugh and song go up under the wide-spreading elms. Now, too, comes the Exhibition of the Wooden Spoon, where the low-appointment men burlesque ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... beds, or laid on shakedowns upon the floor, or stretched upon the lockers, in that state of despondency which overwhelming sickness induces;—and they have a picture of the Good Intent's cabin and state-room during the voyage to which I refer. Nor was this all. The weather was boisterous, being the vernal equinox; the winds cross and tempestuous; and the waves of the sea so tremendous that the little vessel sunk, and rose, and rolled, as if each succeeding shock were the last ere she sank for ever into the roaring abyss; while each convulsion of the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... very 'sprite' of Walton; this has that vernal and matutinal air of opening European literature, full of birds' music, and redolent of dawn. This is the note to which the age following ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang

... darkness, levitated them from the district of dark loft-buildings and theater-bound taxicabs to a far-out Broadway, softened with trees and brightened with small apartment-houses and little shops. They could see a great feathery space of vernal darkness down over the Hudson at the end of a street. Steel-bound nature seemed reaching for them wherever in a vacant lot she could get free and send out quickening odors of fresh ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... vernal morn, yet overhead The leafless boughs across the lane were knitting: The ghost of some forgotten Spring, we said, O'er Winter's world ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... through the devious footways where the shadow was chill, and through the broad campos where the sun was tenderly warm, and the towers of the church rose against the speck-less azure of the vernal heaven. As he went along, he frowned in a helpless perplexity with the case of Don Ippolito, whom he had begun by doubting for a spy with some incomprehensible motive, and had ended by pitying with a certain degree of amusement and a deep sense of the futility of ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... and Egyptian years appears in the fact that the Babylonian new year dates from about the period of the vernal equinox and not from the solstice. Lockyer associates this with the fact that the periodical inundation of the Tigris and Euphrates occurs about the equinoctial period, whereas, as we have seen, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... this way a year ago The wind blew south; the noon of day Was warm as June's; and save that snow Flecked the low mountains far away, And that the vernal-seeming breeze Mocked faded grass and leafless trees, I might have dreamed of summer as I lay, Watching the fallen leaves with the soft ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Whence but from himself? For see the universal Race endowed With the same upright form. The sun is fixed And the infinite magnificence of heaven Fixed, within reach of every human eye; The sleepless ocean murmurs for all years; The vernal field infuses fresh delight Into all hearts. Throughout the world of sense, Even as an object is sublime or fair, That object is laid open to the view Without reserve or veil; and as a power Is salutary, or an influence ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... that purpose he generally uses the measure provided by the sun's precession: Each year the sun crosses the earth's equator about the twenty-first of March. Then day and night are of even length, therefore this is called the Vernal equinox. But on account of a certain wabbling motion of the earth's axis, the sun does not cross over at the same place in the Zodiac, it reaches the equator a little too early, it precedes, year by year it ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... vividly, with restored power, and though the clouds sometimes passed over his very face, the shadows only lasted for a moment, and each returning radiance seemed brighter than the one before. In the pure breath of the wind, as it gustily swept the earth, was a promise of things vernal, of the tender beauties of a coming spring; but there was still a keen, delightful freshness in the air, a vague reminder of frosty starlights and serene white snow—the untrodden snow of deserted, moon-lit streets—that quickened the blood, and sent a craving for movement through the veins. The ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... pastoral walk, And with us hold kindly talk. To himself we've heard him say, "Thanks that I may hither stray, Worn with age and sin and care, Here to breathe the pure, glad air, Here Faith's lesson learn anew, Of this happy vernal crew. Here the fragrant shrubs around, And the graceful shadowy ground, And the village tones afar, And the steeple with its star, And the clouds that gently move, Turn the heart to trust and love." Thus we fared in ages past, But ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... venerei periodus. The venereal orgasm of birds and quadrupeds commences or returns about the vernal or autumnal equinoxes, and thence seems in respect to their great periods to be governed by solar influence. But if this orgasm be disappointed of its object, it is said to recur at about monthly periods, as observed in ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... one of the most common of wild animals. In all parts you may meet with it. In the hot lowlands of Louisiana—in the tropical "chapparals" of Mexico—in the snowy regions of Canada—and in the vernal valleys of California. Unlike the deer, the wild cat, and the wolverine, it is never mistaken for any other animal, nor is any animal taken for it. It is as well-known in America as the red fox is in England, and with a somewhat ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... complexion, like morning flowers in spring; the hair along his temples, as if chiselled with a knife; his eyebrows, as if pencilled with ink; his nose like a suspended gallbladder (a well-cut and shapely nose); his eyes like vernal waves; his angry look even resembled a smile; his glance, even when stern, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... month Paoni (March-April), on the day of the vernal equinox, about nine in the evening, when the star Sirius inclined toward its setting, two wayfaring priests and one penitent stopped in the gateway. The penitent, who was barefoot, had ashes on his head, and was covered with a coarse cloth ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... coming early this year, slipping in on light bright feet. And in the House of Heth there was felt a vernal exuberance, indeed: permeating papa even, extending to the very servants. Mr. Heth had received the news of the great event with profound satisfaction, asserting unequivocally that Canning was the finest young man he ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison



Words linked to "Vernal" :   spring-flowering, vernal iris, young, wintry, late-spring-blooming, summery, early-blooming, immature, youthful



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