"Sylvan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... threaded the green windings of vine covered hills, these gradually assumed a bolder outline, and, rising in separate cones, formed a sylvan amphitheatre round the lovely village ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... still, the sun shining in the light blue sky, and the wind altogether hushed. On each side of the winding road spread the bright green turf, occasionally shaded by picturesque groups of doddered oaks. The calm beauty of the sylvan scene wonderfully touched the fancy of the youthful fugitive; it soothed and gratified him. He pulled up his pony; patted its lively neck, as if in gratitude for its good service, and, confident that he could not be successfully pursued, indulged in a thousand dreams of Robin Hood and ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... pure parent stream, Whose pastoral banks first heard my Doric reed, With sylvan Jed! ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... is yellow and sere, The ancient elms seem withered and bare, The river asleep in its rushy bed, The waters are green, and the grass is red, The roses are dead in the sylvan bowers, Where oft in the dewy evening hours, Ere yet the fairies had sought the dell, And the merle was singing her day-farewell, The Lady Etheline would recline And think of her dear Sir Peregrine: All was cheerless now, forlorn, As if they missed her at early morn; At noontide and at evening fall ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... home of the Montgomerys, was indeed no misnomer; for in this beautiful and sylvan retreat every heart was truly made glad and every guest only felt sad when the summons ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... fresh and fair," Answered the blushing Claire, "Fit for my bridal hair, Bloom 'mongst the barley; Hark! 'tis the hunter's horn, Waking the sylvan morn, And through the yellow ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... leaf communing, and all bending down to one object, worshipping as it were the deep pool's mystery! Here is the natural Gothic of Pan's temple—and out from the deep pass, golden and like a painted window of the sylvan aisle, glows the sun-touched wood, illuminated in all its wondrous tracery. In such a scene—where "Contemplation has her fill"—the perfect truth of this highly finished picture is sure to renew the feeling first enjoyed—enjoyed in solitude: it should have no figure but ourselves, for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... of woods and dells, And summer windy ill sylvan cells;.. The clearest echoes of the hills, The softest notes of falling rills, The melodies of birds and bees, The murmuring of summer seas, And pattering rain, and breathing dew, And airs of evening; all it knew.... —All this it knows, but will not tell To those who cannot question well ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... vicinity, dwelt hard by the beach in little cages of bamboo; whence of mornings they sallied out with jocund cries, and went plunging into the refreshing bath, whose frothy margin was the threshold of their dwellings. Others still, like birds, built their nests among the sylvan nooks of the elevated interior; whence all below, and hazy green, lay steeped in languor the island's ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... was intersected with rivers, inlets and creeks that were deep enough to float the sea going vessels of the age, and salt water penetrated the woods for miles, forming of the whole country, as John Fiske has expressed it, a sylvan Venice. Thus it was possible for each planter to have his own wharf and to ship his tobacco directly from his own estate. Moreover, it allowed him to receive from the foreign vessels what merchandise he desired to purchase. Hugh Jones wrote, "No country is better watered, for the conveniency ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... eminence from which we saw what dispelled at once the illusion of sylvan solitude. The sun had been shining an hour or two, and the bridge before us and the road beyond were defended by abatis and other obstructions. On the further bank a line of infantry was in full view with batteries ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... garment. Only a sculptor of the finest imagination, most delicate taste, and sweetest feeling would have dreamed of representing a faun under this guise; and, if you brood over it long enough, all the pleasantness of sylvan life, and all the genial and happy characteristics of the brute creation, seem to be mixed in him with humanity—trees, grass, flowers, cattle, deer, and unsophisticated man." This passage shows how ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... feast. So perfectly tame and friendly were they, that I felt as if I were the intruder, and bound by all the laws of aerial chivalry to keep the peace. But this was no easy matter where Rose and Nettle were concerned, for when an imprudent weka appeared on the sylvan scene, looking around-as if to say, "Who's afraid?" it was more than I could do to keep the little terriers from giving chase. Brisk, too, blundered after them, but I had no fear of his destroying the charm of the day by taking even a ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... was on the gate opposed, And on the north a turret was enclosed Within the wall of alabaster white And crimson coral, for the Queen of Night, Who takes in sylvan sports ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... gate opening from the wood into the park by this time. There was not much difference in the aspect of the sylvan scene upon the other side of the fence. Sir David's domain had been a good deal neglected of late years, and the brushwood and brambles grew thick under the noble old trees. The timber had not yet suffered by its owner's improvidence. The end of all things must ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... The sylvan folk seem to know when you are on a peaceful mission, and are less afraid than usual. Did not that marmot to-day guess my errand did not concern him as he saw me approach there from his cover in the bushes? But, when he saw me pause and deliberately ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... not unconscious of the voice and tread, Lifts to the sound his ear, and rears his head; Bred by Ulysses, nourished at his board, But, ah! not fated long to please his lord! To him, his swiftness and his strength were vain; The voice of glory called him o'er the main. Till then, in every sylvan chase renowned, With Argus, Argus, rung the woods around: With him the youth pursued the goat or fawn, Or traced the mazy leveret o'er the lawn; Now left to man's ingratitude he lay, Unhoused, neglected in the ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... The sylvan ball room, is an oblong square, lined with beautiful treillages, surmounted with vases of flowers. The top is open. When the queen gave her balls here, the ground was covered by a temporary flooring, and the whole was brilliantly lighted. As we passed by the palace, we saw, in the queen's little ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... food. For the rest, they were to depend on chance shots. With {129} numerous portages, keeping to the south shore of the St. Lawrence because that was best known to the Seneca guides, the canoes passed up Lake St. Louis and Lake St. Francis and glided through the sylvan fairyland of the Thousand Islands, coming out in August on Lake Ontario, "which," says Galinee, "appeared to us like a great sea." Striking south, they appealed to the Seneca Iroquois for guides to the Ohio, but the Senecas were ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... final medial syllables, unaccented, and closed by n, l, nt, nce, nd, s, ss, st, p or ph or ff, m, or d, as in sylvan, vacancy, mortal, loyal, valiant, guidance, husband, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... round their sylvan pathway lay, Halting at each wayside station marched the princes ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... at a table as stationary and steady as any in any hotel in Glasgow. Next day the weather was clear. We rounded the terrible headland, and were floating at ease that evening on the glassy surface of Loch Erribol. In this half-sylvan seclusion we rested for several days. Thence some eight hours of steaming brought us to the roadstead of Thurso. For several days we lay there while the yacht rocked uneasily, and most of our time was ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... reached the age of seventeen. I was still innocent and merry like a child; tended my garden or ran upon the hills in glad simplicity; gave not a thought to coquetry or to material cares; and if my eye rested on my own image in a mirror or some sylvan spring, it was to seek and recognise the features of my parents. But the fears which had long pressed on others were now to be laid on my youth. I had thrown myself, one sultry, cloudy afternoon, on a divan; the windows stood ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fir, and branching palm A sylvan scene; and, as the ranks ascend Shade above shade, a woody theatre Of ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... reached is Marysville, whence the highway skirts the Tulalip Indian reservation, crosses the Stillaguamish river in the Sylvan Flats and enters Stanwood where a scenic road branches off to Camano Island. At Mount Vernon and Burlington, where it intersects the Skagit county road leading from Anacortes eastward to the mountains, one may appreciate the famous Skagit Valley, ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... noon in a sylvan glade, and Aggie was pathetic. She dipped a cracker in a cup of tea, and sat off by herself under a tree. Tish, however, ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... for a moment at the old hound that was sniffing and whimpering in his master's ears, as if he could answer him. Poor Jonquil! he has shared his master's fortune fairly—the better and the worse; for years his humble comrade in the sylvan solitudes of Charrebourg, and here the solitary witness of his parting moment. Who can say with what more than human grief that dumb heart is swelling! He will not outlive his old friend many days—Jonquil is past the age for making ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... savage wildness about Yessney that was certainly not likely to appeal to town-bred tastes, and Sylvia, notwithstanding her name, was accustomed to nothing much more sylvan than "leafy Kensington." She looked on the country as something excellent and wholesome in its way, which was apt to become troublesome if you encouraged it overmuch. Distrust of town-life had been a new thing with her, born ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... spreads round the holy spires; Where'er they rise, the sylvan waste retires, And aery harvests ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... in the hut, together with the botanical studies and the formation of the herbarium, suggested the plan of the "Sylvan Year," and thereby lent additional interest to these pursuits, though at that time his main work was the prosecution of "The Intellectual Life," now that he had finished the correction of the handbook ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... sweet and simple Chaucer's child, Dear heritor of Spenser's tuneful reed, With soft and sylvan pipe has oft beguiled The weary soul of man in troublous need, And from the far and flowerless fields of ice Has brought fair flowers to ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... little river of Pomperaug and his people, like a mother bending over her sleeping infant, fell before them like a field of corn bowed to the earth by a tempest of wind. And very soon was the tribe itself swept away by the same resistless torrent which divested their land of its sylvan adornments. The Great Sachem of the East, who dwelt on the lofty Haup, having engaged in a war with my brethren, the Pomperaugs took part with the king of the Pequods, and a large part of them shared in his destruction. The chief fell, pierced ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... grove of superb oaks, centuries old, their long arms muffled in golden moss, and adorned with a plumage of ferns. The turf at their feet was studded with violets, filling the air with delicious odors. This sylvan retreat was the birthplace of Pan, and no more fitting home for the universal god can be imagined. On the northern side we descended for some time through a forest of immense ilex trees, which sprang ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... and breeding covered her ancestral traits, and bridged the gulf of a thousand years of civilization that lay between her race and ours. But in fact, she was doubly estranged by descent; for, as we learned later, a sylvan wilderness mixed with that of the desert in her veins; her grandfather was an Indian, and her ancestors on this side had probably sold their lands for the same value in trinkets that bought the original African pair on the ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... we'd spun past the charming villas and attractive shops of Cannes (which looks so deceitfully sylvan, and is one of the gayest watering-places in the world) silence ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... forests of England. The verdure and the shade from the Syrian sun were delightful, with the glades and vistas, as well as the amusing alternations often occurring of stooping to the horse's neck in passing below the venerable branches that stretched across the roadway. Those sylvan scenes abound in game, and are known ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... Western before he visits the East, those few who could digest it might escape the normal lot of being twisted round the fingers of every rogue they meet from Dragoman to Rajah. And a quotation from them tells at once: it shows the quoter to be man of education, not a "Jangali," a sylvan or savage, as the Anglo-Indian official is habitually termed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... be so," said I. "I was curious to know what kept you in this sylvan, and I fear, to you, half-barbaric spot. I was bored with myself; and I had some purpose in coming, or I should not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... appointed place, he found an entrance to the greenery near by. Within were people on every bench in sight—New York's unhoused lovers, whose wooing is accomplished in the all but sylvan glades which ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... rehearsing lovelorn shepherds and shepherdesses in sylvan dells. To call a halt eighteen times in the middle of the romantic duet between the unhappy innkeeper's daughter and the prince. To marry them all smoothly in B flat in the finale, and keep the brass down and the strings up in the apotheosis when the heart of the man behind the baton ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... and passing under the bridge which he had viewed with so much terror, the path ascended rapidly from the edge of the brook, and the glen widened into a sylvan amphitheatre, waving with birch, young oaks, and hazels, with here and there a scattered yew-tree. The rocks now receded, but still showed their grey and shaggy crests rising among the copse-wood. Still higher, rose eminences and peaks, some bare, some clothed with wood, some round ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... oaken roof, with its proud heraldic emblazonments, where its lofty painted windows, where its ponderous doors, more than 30 feet high? The cross still remains above, as if symbolical that religion triumphs over all, and St. Anthony still holds out his right hand as if to protect the sylvan and mute inhabitants of these groves that here once found secure shelter from the cruel gun and still more cruel dog. But he is tottering in his niche, and when the wind is high is seen to rock, as if his reign ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... with a roar of derision by day and contemptuously winking tail-lights at night. On the dark green background of the distant heights an eruption of new red bungalows threatened to spread and destroy the beauty of Charleswood at no remote date. But at present the sylvan charm of the spot was unspoiled. Its meadows and fields seemed to lie happily unconscious of the contagion ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... sheltering and warmly protecting to poor poets and others, who may be greatly cheered by a little kindness. For there is an old legend that the Druids decorated dwelling places with Ivy and holly during the winter, 'that the sylvan spirits might repair to them, and remain unnipped with frost and cold winds, until a milder season had renewed the foliage of their darling abodes. (DR. CHANDLER, Travels in Greece.) Think of this when ye ink your pens ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Our sylvan retreat has been somewhat disturbed by the advent of Mrs. Johns, her children and her dog. Annie is also here, but they will not remain long, it is too quiet, too lonely, and the nights are too mysterious and uncanny, ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... a waterfall, at last we stood the perpetual sound without any inconvenience, and carried on quiet conversation, or sank into silent admiration, as we floated past the bold cliffs, or soft-wooded shores, of the sylvan Wye. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... idol hewn in stone? Or imp from witch's lap let fall? Perhaps a ring of shining fairies? Such as pursue their feared vagaries [54] In sylvan bower, or ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... a cytisus, nor an arbutus upon them great enough to shelter a new-dropped lamb. Level the Alps one with another, and where is their sublimity? Raise up the vale of Tempe to the downs above, and where are those sylvan creeks and harbours in which the imagination watches while the soul reposes; those recesses in which the gods partook the weaknesses of mortals, and mortals the enjoyments ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... English country scenery, these gardens had been set by a great Frenchman who had caught the strange secret of the romance of utterly formal hedges. He could make of them a fitting framework for the glories of a court, or for sylvan life in Merrie England. There were miles of hedges; not yew, hornbeam had been chosen for this green, tranquil country. At one spot many avenues of hedges met together as if by accident, or by some rhythmic movement; it was a minuet of Nature's dancing, ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... believed {so to be}, and that he had never attended us as a companion to the Phrygian towers, this counsellor of evil! Then, son of Poeas,[11] Lemnos would not have had thee exposed {there} through our guilt; who now, as they say, concealed in sylvan caves, art moving the {very} rocks with thy groans, and art wishing for the son of Laertes what he has deserved; which, may the Gods, the Gods, {I say}, grant thee not ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... each courtier's passion, And flattered every vice in fashion. 30 But Jove, who hates the liar's ways, At once cut short my prosperous days; And, sentenced to retain my nature, Transformed me to this crawling creature. Doomed to a life obscure and mean, I wander in the sylvan scene. For Jove the heart alone regards; He punishes what man rewards. How different is thy case and mine! With men at least you sup and dine; 40 While I, condemned to thinnest fare, Like those ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... of the great festival, Ernest, with all the other people of the valley, left their work, and proceeded to the spot where the sylvan banquet was prepared. As he approached, the loud voice of the Rev. Dr. Battleblast was heard, beseeching a blessing on the good things set before them, and on the distinguished friend of peace in whose honor they were assembled. The tables were arranged in a cleared space ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... hung back to look at her. She turned and stood before him, superb and still, shrined in a crescent of tall beech stems, column by column, with the light descending on the fine gold of her hair. Nothing in Anne even remotely suggested a sylvan and primeval creature; but, as she stood there in her temperate and alien beauty, she seemed to him to have yielded to a brief enchantment. She threw back her head, as if her white throat drank the sweet air like wine. She held out her white hands, and let the warmth play over ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... be lover of you and yours— The Child and Mary; but also Pan And the sylvan gods of the woods and hills, And the god that ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... of balsam, and tender Tendrils of wild-flowers, lovelier for thy daring, And deck a sylvan shrine, where the maple parts The moonlight, with lilac bloom, and the splendour Of suns unwearied; all unwithered, wearing Thy valor stainless in ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... I am safe in my sylvan home, I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome; And when I am stretched beneath the pines, Where the evening star so holy shines, I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, At the sophist schools, and the learned clan; For what are they all in their ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... sphere—what realm of thought, Dwelt the bright model from which Nature drew That fair and beauteous face, in which we view Her utmost power, on earth, divinely wrought? What sylvan queen—what nymph by fountain sought, Upon the breeze such golden tresses threw? When did such virtues one sole breast imbue? Though with my death her chief perfection's fraught. For heavenly beauty he in vain inquires, Who ne'er beheld her eyes' celestial stain, Where'er she turns around their ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... pretty little valleys joined our creek to-day. We were now near some of the higher cones of the main chain, and could see that they were all entirely timberless, and that triodia grew upon their sides. The spot we were now encamped upon was another scene of exquisite sylvan beauty. We had now been a month in the field, as to-morrow was the 4th of September, and I could certainly congratulate myself upon the result ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... aged sire. Behold the coward and the brave, The haughty prince, the humble slave, Physician, lawyer, and divine, All make oblations at this shrine. Some enter boldly, some by stealth, And leave behind their fruitless wealth. For, while the bashful sylvan maid, As half-ashamed and half-afraid, Approaching finds it hard to part With that which dwelt so near her heart; The courtly dame, unmoved by fear, Profusely pours her offering here. A treasure here of learning lurks, Huge heaps of never-dying ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... where, in the churchyard, is the grave of Oliver Goldsmith, who died in chambers (since pulled down) in Brick Court. The Temple Gardens, fronting the river, are laid out as extensive shrub and tree-bordered lawns, which are generously thrown open to the public in the summer. A more charming sylvan retreat, there is not in any city in ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... best to observe the Christmas festival in good old English style, even during the sieges of Ladysmith, Kimberley, and Mafeking, when provisions were to be had only at famine prices. The ingenious Tommy Atkins, in distant lands, has often found sylvan substitutes for mistletoe and holly, and native viands to take the place of plum-puddings and mince-pies, but it is not so easy to find substitutes for the social circles in old England, and when the time comes round for the Christmas dance Tommy's thoughts "Return again ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Mira, shepherds, is as fair As sylvan nymphs who haunt the vale; As sylphs who dwell in purest air, As fays ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the park there is a circular plantation of im-mense circumference, and in the interior of this you are in a perfect Arcadia. The mind cannot conceive any thing more hushed, more sylvan, more entirely removed from the slightest evidence of proximity to a town. Nothing is audible there except the songs of birds and the rustling of leaves. Kensington gardens, beautiful as they are, have no seclusion so perfect ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... had been half destroyed by the English, were now overgrown with vines and half hidden by fallen trees, showed the combined ravages of war and nature. A few yards in advance of them the glen widened into a sylvan amphitheater, waving with firs and pines, and rendered almost impassable by underbrush. A short turning in the road suddenly brought them in front of a romantic waterfall. The cousins drew rein, watching the fall of the water in silence, for the sound of the cascade ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... "In sylvan bowers hence I'll dwell My bruised mind to ease. Farewell, ye urban scenes, farewell! Hail, ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... occasionally progresses about his little domains, visiting the different towns, receiving the homage of the inhabitants, and bestowing largesses with a princely hand. His great delight, however, was in sylvan sports and exercises, with horses, hawks, and hounds, being passionately fond of hunting and falconry, so as to pass weeks together in sporting campaigns among the mountains. The jealous suspicions of Ferdinand followed him into his retreat. No exertions were spared by the politically pious monarch ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... young man as he reclined under the shadow of a tall beech-tree that skirted the green border of a meadow, somewhere near the woods around Schonbrunn. He had fastened his horse to a tree not far off, and while the steed cropped the fresh grass, its owner revelled in the luxury of sylvan solitude. With an expression of quiet enjoyment he glanced now upon the soft, green meadow, now at the dim, shady woods, and then at the blue and silver sky that parted him ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... words, the two gentlemen emerged from the wood into the open space, denuded of its sylvan honors, by ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... know not any charm That can make the fleeting time Of thy sylvan, faint alarm Suit itself to human rhyme: And my yearning rhythmic word, Does thee ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... places that now know them will know them no more forever." Or if, perchance, some dubious memorial of them should survive, it may be in the romantic dreams of the poet, to people in imagination his glades and groves, like the fauns and satyrs and sylvan deities of antiquity. But should he venture upon the dark story of their wrongs and wretchedness; should he tell how they were invaded, corrupted, despoiled, driven from their native abodes and the sepulchers of their fathers; hunted like ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... and kept his eye upon the two figures as they threaded their way through these sylvan phenomena. Mr. Melbury's long legs, and gaiters drawn in to the bone at the ankles, his slight stoop, his habit of getting lost in thought and arousing himself with an exclamation of "Hah!" accompanied with an upward jerk ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... days. The Innocent was holding forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability. "Is this yer a damned picnic?" said Uncle Billy with inward scorn as he surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the tethered animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the alcoholic fumes that disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular nature, for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram his fist ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... little rogues, instead of leaving the young couple alone, teased their sister aloud, and followed the teasing with boisterous laughter. It was then that I obtained my first impression of the mating of the natives of the northern forest. The sylvan scene reminded me of the mating, too, of the white people of that same region, and I thought again of the beautiful Athabasca. Was it in the same way that her young white man had come so many miles on snowshoes through the winter woods just to call upon her? It set me thinking. Again, I wondered ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... purple, scarlet and yellow, and was gorgeously beautiful in the ripened glory of its drapery. The season, the scene, the sunny warmth all invited to a participation in the enjoyment which nature held out to those who would accept her bounty, and refresh themselves in her sylvan bowers. ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... grow With purple ripeness, and invest each hill As with the blushes of an evening sky? Or wilt thou rather stoop thy vagrant plume, Where gliding through his daughters honour'd shades, The smooth Peneus from his glassy flood Reflects purpureal Tempo's pleasant scene? Fair Tempe! haunt beloved of sylvan Powers, Of Nymphs and Fauns; where in the golden age 300 They play'd in secret on the shady brink With ancient Pan: while round their choral steps Young Hours and genial Gales with constant hand Shower'd blossoms, odours, shower'd ambrosial dews, And spring's Elysian bloom. Her flowery ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... forbidden to perform any of the sacerdotal duties, continued among the trees and rocks to collect their own congregations undiminished in number, and much more than ordinarily zealous, in their religious duties; and with the licence which such sylvan chapels were found to foster, denunciations against the Republic, and prayers for the speedy restoration of the monarchy, were mingled with ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... and when the woods become dim and the air civic with their cooking-smokes, and the subtle odor of fried pork overpowers methylic fragrance among the trees, then he who loves forests for their solitude leaves these brethren to their clumsy joys, and wanders elsewhere deeper into sylvan scenes. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... at any period, of such a person as Robin Hood. They make him either a mere hero of romance—the 'creation of some poetical mind;' or else, led by a similarity of names, they discover in him merely one of the embodiments of popular superstitions—a sylvan sprite, a Robin Goodfellow, or a Hudkin. Only two years ago, a historical writer of no small acumen, Mr Thomas Wright, published his opinion, that Robin Hood, in his original character, was simply 'one amongst the personages of the early ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... artists. The student of art and the amateur photographer can find subjects in variety, whatever may be his peculiar line of study. The noble cliffs and bays for the student of coast scenery; old mills and cottages, with trees and streams, for the lover of sylvan beauty. The rugged grandeur of the Landslip and Undercliff will furnish subjects that yield delight in the interpretation of their romantic interest. The earnest student of Geology will find enhanced interest in the fact that within short distances many successive formations can be studied; ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... in plentifully, sylvan or grassy. People who never come to church, heathens who do not seem much overjoyed with the Gospel, gave just as handsomely as Church officers. No one was paid. The church is cheap and big, and the headman and native teacher are ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... long frozen up in the Greenland Bay of indifference amid the noise and nonsense of Edinburgh.' When he left this romantic city his thoughts were not of the honour its citizens had done him, but of Jed's crystal stream and sylvan banks, and, above all, of Miss Lindsay, who brings him to the verge of verse. Thereafter he visited Kelso, Melrose, and Selkirk, and after spending about three weeks seeing all that was to be seen in this beautiful country-side, he set off with a Mr. Ker and a Mr. ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... flung, Her buskins gemmed with morning dew, Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung, The hunter's call to Faun and Dryad known! The oak-crowned Sisters and their chaste-eyed Queen, Satyrs and Sylvan boys, were seen Peeping from forth their alleys green. Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear, And Sport leaped up, and seized ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... increased in volume and in sound, but it was soon far beneath us, pursuing its headlong course till it reached level ground, where it flowed in the midst of a beautiful but confined prairie. There was something sylvan and savage in the mountains on the farther side, clad from foot to pinnacle with trees, so closely growing that the eye was unable to obtain a glimpse of the hill sides, which were uneven with ravines and gulleys, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... crowd in front of a telegraph office. Bulletins are on a board and in the windows. Men are rushing about. The scene is in strange contrast with the sylvan drama which is closing far to the north, where the choir is ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... toiling Barge And the swart Cyclops ever-clanging forge Din in thy dells;—permits the dark-red gleams, From umber'd fires on all thy hills, the beams, Solar and pure, to shroud with columns large Of black sulphureous smoke, that spread their veils Like funeral crape upon the sylvan robe Of thy romantic rocks, pollute thy gales, And stain thy glassy floods;—while o'er the globe To spread thy stores metallic, this rude yell Drowns the wild woodland song, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... the bustle of the world, they live in the most delightful climate, and richest soil imaginable; they are everywhere surrounded with beautiful prospects and sylvan scenes; lofty mountains, transparent streams, falls of water, rich valleys, and majestic woods; the whole interspersed with an infinite variety of flowering shrubs, constitute the landscape surrounding them; they are subject to few diseases; are generally robust; and live ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... savage the world is peopled by a host of mythic beings, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic. The difference between man and brute recognized in civilization, is unrecognized in savagery. All animal life is wonderful and magical co sylvan man. Wisdom, cunning, skill, and prowess are attributed to the real animals to a degree often greater than to man; and there are mythic animals as well as mythic men—monsters dwelling in the mountains and caves or hiding in the waters, who make themselves invisible ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... and scrub sycamore. The hills, now rounder, less ambitious, and more widely separated, are checkered with fields and forests, and the bottom lands are of more generous breadth. Pleasant islands stud the peaceful stream. The sylvan foliage has by this time attained very nearly its fullest size. The horse chestnut, the pawpaw, the grape, and the willow are in bloom. A gentle pastoral scene is this through ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... writings from the first captivates the reader. He has the interpretive power which makes us see what he sees and invites us to share his enjoyment in his strange adventures. The stories of the wary trout and the pastoral bee, the ways of sylvan folk, their quarrels and their love-making, are so many character sketches on paper, showing a most intimate acquaintance ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... perfectly acquainted with the locality, directed our steps into a narrow path hardly traced through the woods. Here at least were flowers and grass and sylvan shadows. No sooner did I smell the balm of the pine trees than my heart resigned itself, with exquisite indecision, to the thoughts of Francine Joliet and the memories of Mary Ashburton. I glanced at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... Beings, echoing from haunted Spring and Dale, as ne'er smote human Ears before nor since: Nymphs and Wood-Gods, or they that had passed for such, breaking up House and retreating to their own Place. I warrant you, there was Trouble among the Sylvan People that ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... had saved him from the corruption of the tomb, by placing out, on some sylvan spot, where the cold moonbeams fell, the apparently lifeless form, and now claimed so large a reward for such a service, and the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... it you? beautiful sylvan! countryman! wolf's cub!" cried the duke, much surprised; "I thought you were ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... whose structure is nature's master-piece, there a wood nymph passed her quiet days; she was extremely beautiful, and charmed all that beheld her; her looks, her mien, and her behaviour had something of more than human; and indeed she was the daughter of a Dryad, and of a sylvan god. Her chastity and devotion equalled her beauty, she was perfectly resigned to the will of heaven, and never undertook any thing without having first implored our assistance; her heart was pure, and her hands undefiled. This nymph is dead, and my intention is to raise a flower from her ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... naturally a stream of large size, it is among the most valuable of the Median rivers, its waters being capable of spreading fertility, by means of a proper arrangement of canals, over a vast extent of country, and giving to this part of Iran a sylvan character, scarcely ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... shy as sylvan run, Demure as some sweet-hooded nun, And wrapt about with grey of gloaming, Unveil thy ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... path; his mustang's hoofs sank in deep pits of moss and last year's withered leaves; trailing vines caught his heavy-stirruped feet, or brushed his broad sombrero; the vista before him seemed only to endlessly repeat the same sylvan glade; he was in fancy once more in the primeval Western forest, and encompassed by its vast, dim silences. He did not know that he had in fact only penetrated an ancient park which in former days resounded to the winding fanfare ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... be heralded by the arrival, ten days before the end of Advent, of the Calabrian minstrels or pifferari with their sylvan pipes (zampogne), resembling the Scottish bagpipe, but less harsh in sound. These minstrels were to be seen in every street in Rome, playing their wild plaintive music before the shrines of the Madonna, under the traditional ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... it," says his friend, "to Hampstead air with its many sylvan beauties that du Maurier was able for so long, notwithstanding defective sight and health gradually failing, to prosecute his daily ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... glittering child of pride, That a poor villager inspires my strain; With thee let Pageantry and Power abide: The gentle Muses, haunt the sylvan reign; Where through wild groves at eve the lonely swain Enraptured roams, to gaze on Nature's charms: They hate the sensual and scorn the vain, The parasite their influence never warms, Nor him whose sordid soul the ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... by, leaned against a gnarled tree with the slightly constrained air of a person unused to sylvan abandonments. Her beautiful back could not adapt itself to the irregularities of the tree-trunk, and she moved a little now and then in the effort to find an easier position. But her expression was serene, and Ralph, looking up at her through drowsy lids, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... clothing, bedding, and crockery—there was no human trace that he could detect. Nor was there any suggestion of the original condition and quality of the house, except its size: whether the ordinary unsightly cabin of frontier "partners," or some sylvan cottage—there was nothing left but the usual ignoble and unsavory ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... sprang quickly to overtake her, but she danced away like a fairy in the moonlight, throwing a glance of mischief over her shoulder at me, with her finger on her lips. It seemed to me a pity that so sylvan a dell should merely be used for the purposes of speed, but in a jiffy Mary was at the little door in the wall and had the bolts drawn back, and I was outside before I understood what had happened, listening to bolts being thrust ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... sun was reducing the gloom of the sylvan tunnel to a translucent twilight, we floated down the ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... a nice, flat little piece of the United States, situated in the shade of the clump of willows that bordered a trickling creek not far from her sylvan bath-room of the early morning. How she was to sit on the ground all day and yet preserve a properly pedagogical demeanor was the first question to be settled. That there was nothing even remotely resembling a chair in camp she felt ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... paradise around, And all the broad and boundless mainland, lay Cooled by the interminable wood, that frowned O'er mount and vale, where never summer ray Glanced, till the strong tornado broke his way Through the gray giants of the sylvan wild; Yet many a sheltered glade, with blossoms gay, Beneath the showery sky and sunshine mild, Within the shaggy arms of that ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... his fill, Ending on the russling Leaves, With minute drops from off the Eaves. 130 And when the Sun begins to fling His flaring beams, me Goddes bring To arched walks of twilight groves, And shadows brown that Sylvan loves Of Pine, or monumental Oake, Where the rude Ax with heaved stroke, Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt, Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt. There in close covert by som Brook, Where no profaner eye may look, 140 Hide me from ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... miniature forests of the graceful brake, beneath whose feathery branches the wood-mouse and other tiny forest-creatures roamed secure; and in the very road-way, trampled under old Nancy's feet, delicate lady-fern, and sturdy hart's-tongue, and a dozen other varieties, all perfect in grace and sylvan beauty. Hilda was conscious of a vague delight, through all her fatigue and distress How beautiful it was; how cool and green and restful! If she must stay in the country, why could it not be always in the woods, where there was no noise, nor ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... Answered the blushing Claire, "Fit for my bridal hair, Bloom 'mongst the barley; Hark! 'tis the hunter's horn, Waking the sylvan morn, And through the yellow corn Comes ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... rippling stream winding downward from the higher ground in the north, and now and then, in the spring of the year, overflowing its bed in a wilderness of brambles and rushes;—do these things make you realise more plainly the sylvan remoteness of that part of New York which we now know ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... and gaunt and somewhat wistful, rode slowly through the leafy lane, attended some little distance behind by Griggs the groom, who slumped in the saddle and thought only of the sylvan dell to curse it with poetic license. (Ever since Mr. Wrandall had been thrown by his horse in the Park a few years before his wife had insisted on having a groom handy in case he lost his seat again: ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... forget it. Dark as the wood might be by day, the moonlight seemed to fill every glade of it, showing us the gnarled trunks and the flowering bushes, the silent pools and the grassy dells. And in the midst of this sylvan rest, remote from men, a lonely thicket of the great Pacific Ocean, was this figure of civilization, a young girl decked out in white, with a pretty hat that Paris might have sent her, and little children, in their sailors' clothes, ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... the Lahn, are the gardens. In these, in a pavilion, a band of musicians seldom cease from enchanting the visitors by their execution of the most favourite specimens of German and Italian music. Numberless acacia arbours and retired sylvan seats are here to be found, where the student or the contemplative may seek refuge from the noise of his more gay companions, and the tedium of eternal conversation. In these gardens, also, are the billiard-room, and another saloon, in which each night meet, not merely those who are ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... her example unless she invites you to be seated. She must not have occasion to think of the possibility of any impropriety on your part. You are her servant, protector, and guard of honor. You will of course give her your hand to assist her in rising. When the sylvan repast is served, you will see that the ladies whose cavalier you have the honor to be, lack nothing. The ladies, social queens though they be, should not forget that every favor or act of courtesy and deference, by whoever shown, demands some acknowledgment on their part—a word, a bow, a smile, ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... of these sylvan occasions I awoke, not with a graceful start, like the story-book ladies, but with a grunt. Sis was digging me in the ribs with her toe. I looked up to see her standing over me, a foaming tumbler of something in her hand. I felt that it was ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... such a helpless compound of perverted inclinations, that he is altogether at the mercy of external circumstances, loses all independence and singleness of character, and degenerates so rapidly from the primitive dignity of his sylvan origin, that it is scarcely possible to indulge in any other expectation, than that the whole species must at length be exterminated by its own ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... the hour of releases, and I found myself in a moment in the midst of a "classic revival," whimsical beyond description. Aeneas hastened to deposit his aged father in a heap on the gravel and ran after the Sylvan Nymphs; Theseus gave the Minotaur a respite; Themistocles was bending over the dying Spartan, who was coming to life; Venus Pudica was waltzing about the diagonal basin with Antinous; Ascanius was playing marbles with the infant Hercules. In this ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... detested every thing that came in the way of his convenience, whether long skirts, hanging sleeves, royal mantles, or boots with folding tops. He was (for his time) a great reader, a "huge lover of the woods" and of all sylvan sports, fond of travelling, a very small eater, a generous almsgiver, a faithful friend—and a good hater. The model example which he set before him as a statesman was that of his grandfather, Henry First. The Empress Maud, his mother, was above ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... old, tiny, mysterious pagoda, half hidden in the foliage of the overhanging trees, bringing to the minds of new arrivals, like ourselves, a sense of unfamiliarity and strangeness, and the feeling that in this country the spirits, the sylvan gods, the antique symbols, faithful guardians of the woods and forests, were ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti |
