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Vernal   /vˈərnəl/   Listen
Vernal

adjective
1.
Suggestive of youth; vigorous and fresh.  Synonyms: young, youthful.
2.
Of or characteristic of or occurring in spring.



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"Vernal" Quotes from Famous Books



... the vernal breezes! List to the minstrels' strain! 'Tis the poet's song they are singing, And the ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... after entering the sign Aries and passing through one eighth of it, determines the vernal equinox. On reaching the tail of Taurus and the constellation of the Pleiades, from which the front half of Taurus projects, he advances into a space greater than half the firmament, moving toward the north. From Taurus he enters Gemini at the time of the ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... Adonis, with the hymeneal Fresh vernal buds half sunk between His youthful curls. [Footnote: ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... Babylonian 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, the Nile flood ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... "Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... covered with violets, and the gardens with roses: the banks by the side of the road seem one continued bed of cowslips. In plain words, Spring here indeed seems to hold her throne, and to reign in all that vernal sweetness and loveliness which is imputed to her ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... 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 ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... slew num'rous on the shore. Meantime, Ciconians to Ciconians call'd, Their neighbours summoning, a mightier host And braver, natives of the continent, Expert, on horses mounted, to maintain Fierce fight, or if occasion bade, on foot. 60 Num'rous they came as leaves, or vernal flow'rs At day-spring. Then, by the decree of Jove, Misfortune found us. At the ships we stood Piercing each other with the brazen spear, And till the morning brighten'd into noon, Few as we were, we yet withstood them all; But, when the sun verged ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... Nature, 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

... visited Yarrow was not the AUTUMN vacation of 1802, as Lockhart erroneously writes, {23b} but the SPRING vacation of 1802. The spring vacation, Mr. Macmath informs me, ran from 11th March to 12th May in 1802. In May, apparently, Scott having obtained the Auld Maitland MS. in the vernal vacation of the Court of Session, gave his account of his discovery to his friend Ellis (Lockhart does not date the letter, but wrongly puts it after the return ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang

... time when vernal fruits receive The grateful showers that hang on April's eve; Though every coarser stem of forest birth Throws with the morning beam its dews to earth, Ne'er does the gentle rose revive so soon, But, bath'd in nature's tears, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... especially so on the high Arachosian plateau. In Kabul the snow lies for two or three months; the people seldom leave their houses, and sleep close to stoves. At Ghazni the snow has been known to lie long beyond the vernal equinox; the thermometer sinks to 10 deg. and 15 deg. below zero (Fahr.); and tradition relates the entire destruction of the population of Ghazni by ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... count backwards by the motion of the heavenly bodies. For 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 moves backwards a little. At the time of ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... dedicated to Apollo, and afterwards to other gods; their tune and words expressed hope and confidence to overcome, by the help of the god, great and imminent danger, or gratitude and thanksgiving for victory and safety. To this class belonged the vernal Paeans, which were sung at the termination of winter, and those sung in war before the attack on the enemy. The Threnos, or lamentations for the dead, were songs containing vehement expressions of grief, sung by professional singers standing near the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me; from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... little tangled up in his comparisons when he sprung his poetry about him and tried to ring in the Circassian, and he had to blow his whistle like blazes to spare the blushes of the audience. The Siamese Twins gave him a good opening about 'bonds eternal' and the 'season vernal' and he didn't do a thing with it. The Leopard Boy was a cinch for him as he ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe

... 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 ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... trip her singing way through the wide wilderness, all by her joyful self, led, as all believed, nor erred they in so believing, by an angel's hand! When the primroses peeped through the reviving grass upon the vernal braes, they seemed to give themselves into her hand; and 'twas thought they hung longer unfaded round her neck or forehead than if they had been left to drink the dew on their native bed. The linnets ceased not their lays, though her garment touched the broomstalk on which they sung. The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various

... 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. ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... elastic grasses sparingly used and without lining. The nest is placed on some horizontal branch against some upright twig, or at some horizontal fork. It is nearly round and has a diameter of about 6 inches. They lay three or four eggs of a sordid vernal green ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... 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

... these, in long lines armed with hooks, the shoots of the blue dewberry creep along the ground. To visit the prickly thicket when the Wasp goes foraging, you must wear boots that come to mid-leg or else resign yourself to a smarting in the calves. As long as the ground retains a few remnants of the vernal rains, this rude vegetation does not lack a certain charm, when the pyramids of the oyster-plant and the slender branches of the cotton-thistle rise above the wide carpet formed by the yellow-flowered centaury's saffron heads; but let the droughts of summer come ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... There vernal breezes fann'd the myrtle shade, Soft odour breath'd, and beams unclouded play'd. No tyrant winter e'er despoil'd the grove, 10 Bid feather'd warblers end the note of love, Or bound the murm'ring rill in icy chains. Eternal ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire

... man had, however, unsuspected reserves of vitality. He crept out into the sunshine again, basking in the vernal warmth with a sense of luxury, and entering into the gossip of the ditchers with an unwonted ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... blowing, though the sky was clear. But the sunlight was not the same. There was an interfusion of a new element. Not ten days before there had been a day just as bright,—even brighter and warmer,—a clear, crystalline day of February, with nothing vernal in it; but this day was opaline; there was a film, a sentiment in it, a nearer approach to life. Then there was that fresh, indescribable odor, a breath from the Gulf, or from Florida and the Carolinas,—a subtle, persuasive influence that ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... immortality. All nature rejoiced in its presence; the flowers came forth and filled the air with healthful odours; the birds warbled as they built their nests; the merry children rejoiced as they played on the green, and exulted in the liberty the vernal season bestowed. But to the widow spring brought no renewal of health; and now, finding herself unable to wash, she consulted a physician, who told her it was too late; the disease had made large progress, and she could ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers

... 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 possessed ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... panorama of Ireland's portfolio, unmatched, despite their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted prize regions, for very beauty, of bosky grove and undulating plain and luscious pastureland of vernal green, steeped in the transcendent translucent glow of our mild mysterious ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... processing of the grape. All the wineries for hundreds of miles around had shipped hogshead after hogshead and barrel after barrel of fine wine—red, white, rose, still, or sparkling—as joyous sacrifice to Dionysus/Bacchus, and in thanks that the fertility rites of the Vernal Bacchanal had brought them good crops. Wine flowed from everywhere into the city, and now the immense reserves were stacked away, awaiting the revels. Even the brewers and distillers had sent along their wares, from the mildest beer to vodka of 120 proof, joining unselfishly ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett

... of the avenue the road, by an easy grade, descended into a lowland, where, on the right hand, there was a precipitous facing of gray rock, and on the left an open meadow of vernal freshness. Then they came in view of the famous ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... could not recall the first line of it;—he told his mishap to the audience, and they screamed it at him in a chorus of a thousand voices. Milton could not write to suit himself, except from the autumnal to the vernal equinox. One in the clothing-business, who, there is reason to suspect, may have inherited, by descent, the great poet's impressible temperament, let a customer slip through his fingers one day without fitting him with a new garment. "Ah!" said he to a friend ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... 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 ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and a sullennes against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various

... our vernal migration of ring-ousels every week. Persons worthy of credit assure me that ring-ousels were seen at Christmas, 1770, in the forest of Bere, on the southern verge of this county. Hence we may conclude that their migrations are only internal, and not extending to the continent southward, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... fragrant fruit Of love were ripening to be pressed: Her voice, that shook my heart's red root, Yet might not break a babe's soft rest! More liquid than the running brooks, More vernal than the voice of Spring, When Nightingales are in their nooks, And all the leafy thickets ring. The love she coyly hid at heart Was shyly conscious in her eye; O! who that looked could help but love? Not ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various

... 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 that it must produce war, and ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... by the way, expresses the distance of a celestial body, such as a star or a planet, east of the vernal equinox, or the first point of Aries, which is an arbitrary point on the equator of the heavens, which serves, like the meridian of Greenwich on the earth, as a starting-place for reckoning longitude. The entire circuit of the heavens along the equator is divided ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... about eleven minutes. As no allowance was made for these minutes, which amount to a day in about one hundred and thirty years, the current year had, in process of ages, advanced ten days beyond the real time. Thus the vernal equinox, which really took place on the 10th of March, was assigned in the calendar to the 21st. To rectify this important error the New Style, or Gregorian calendar, was introduced, so called from Pope Gregory XII. Ten days were ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... 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, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... 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 ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... 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 ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... 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 ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... Beginning with the Vernal Equinox, it must be remembered; and (howsoever the old Solar Year is practically superseded by the clumsy Lunar Year that dates from the Mohammedan Hijra) still commemorated by a Festival that is said to have been appointed by the very Jamshyd whom ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam

... vernal day, In scenes so rich and fair, The spirit feels a hallow'd ray Kindling its essence there; And Fancy haunts the mourner's urn, "With thoughts that breathe, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various

... morning, just as the vernal equinox had blown a few ships into harbor, a stranger was announced, and immediately recognized by the master of the house as a 'Don' something—a Spanish merchant, whose kindness to a young member of the family had ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... on the green turf sucked the honeyed showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink and the pansy freaked with jet, The glowing violet, The musk rose, and the well attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... the Spartan fife, And call in solemn sounds to life, The youths, whose locks divinely spreading, Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue, At once the breath of fear and virtue shedding, 5 Applauding Freedom loved of old to view? What new Alcaeus,[21] fancy-blest, Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest, At Wisdom's shrine awhile its flame concealing, (What place so fit to seal a ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... and tempest from the sky; The air at once grew calm and all serene; And where rude thorns had clothed the mountain high, Was spread a plain, all flowers and vernal green. Repentance ceased her scourge. Still standing nigh, With placid looks, in her but rarely seen, She said: 'Beware how yet the prize you lose; The key of ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... 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

... Persian poem written in the 14th century the delights of the vernal season are thus described: "On every bush roses were blowing; on every branch the nightingale was plaintively warbling. The tall cypress was dancing in the garden; and the poplar never ceased clapping its hands with joy. With a loud voice from the top of every bough the turtle-dove was proclaiming ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... limbs—all rose color with their soft snow burden; and again a few months, and spring will breathe on him, and he will draw a long breath, and break out once more, for the three hundredth time, perhaps, into a vernal crown of leaves. I sometimes think that leaves are the thoughts of trees, and that if we only knew it, we should find their life's experience recorded in them. Our oak! what a crop of meditations and remembrances must he have thrown forth, leafing out century after century. Awhile he spake ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... point of view in something of a tangle in the Balkans by the vernal equinox of 1915; but they had got into much more of a tangle by the time that spring was merging into summer. At that stage, the failure of our naval effort against the Dardanelles had been followed by our military effort coming ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... genial latitudes, and the unusual duration of the march was gradually bringing them into the more genial seasons of the year: Two thousand miles had at least been traversed; February, March, April were gone; the balmy month of May had opened; vernal sights and sounds came from every side to comfort the heart-weary travellers; and at last, in the latter end of May, they crossed the Torgau, and took up a position where they hoped to find liberty to repose themselves for many ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... imperfectly. And 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 ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... Last Tournament that Modred finds the beginning of his opportunity. The brief life of the Ideal has burned itself out, as the year, in its vernal beauty when Arthur came, is burning out in autumn. The poem is purposely autumnal, with the autumn, not of mellow fruitfulness, but of the "flying gold of the ruined woodlands" and the dank odours of decay. In that miserable ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... were shutting me off from the outer world. No nightingales were singing here, but I heard the melancholy scream of the hawk and the harsh croak of the raven. And yet, when I looked down into the bottom of this steep desert of stones, what soft and vernal beauty was there! Over the grass of living green was spread the gold of cowslips, just as if that strip of meadow, with its gently-gliding river, had been lifted out of an English dale and dropped into the midst of the sternest scenery of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... is the breath of vernal shower, The bees' collected treasures sweet, Sweet music's melting fall, but sweeter yet The still, small ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... who played games that required much chalking of the paved walks, and much sprawling and crouching there, under the feet of passers, and the little curled and feathered people who drove their hoops under the eyes of French nursemaids—all the infant population filled the vernal air with small sounds which had a crude, tender quality, like the leaves and the thin herbage. Olive wandered through the place, and ended by sitting down on one of the continuous benches. It was a long time since she ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... or three miles of tiring work the day began to fade, but we reached a beautiful south slope where there was little snow, with a rich crop of bunch grass just starting green under the vernal influence that was a feast for the famished horses, the snow relieving their thirst. While Andy the ever-faithful got supper I reconnoitred and made up my mind that I could reach the locality I was trying for, by following a ridge ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... new home in Charlesbridge, through a storm of snow and rain so finely blent by the influences of this fortunate climate, that no flake knew itself from its sister drop, or could be better identified by the people against whom they beat in unison. A vernal gale from the east fanned our cheeks and pierced our marrow and chilled our blood, while the raw, cold green of the adventurous grass on the borders of the sopping sidewalks gave, as it peered through its veil of melting snow and freezing rain, a peculiar cheerfulness ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... yield fifteen pounds of oil: the best quality selling at twelve sous the pound, retail, and ten sous, wholesale. The high hills of Languedoc still covered with snow. The horse-chestnut and mulberry are leafing; apple trees and peas blossoming. The first butterfly I have seen. After the vernal equinox, they are often six or eight months without rain. Many separate farm-houses, numbers of people in rags, and abundance of beggars. The mine of wheat, weighing thirty pounds, costs four livres and ten sous. Wheat bread, three sous the pound. Vin ordinaire, good, and of a strong body, two ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... had chosen for their picnic was ideal. It was a patch of short fine grass near the edge of the cliff, with a bank for a seat. The ground was blue with the beautiful little flowers of the vernal squill, and clumps of sea-pinks, white bladder campion, and golden lady's fingers bloomed in such profusion that the place was like a wild garden. The air was soft and warm, for it was one of those beautiful afternoons in early May when Nature seems predominant, and one can almost ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... to Florence and Venice, not finding room to introduce into the name of Florence the elements that ordinarily constitute a town, I was obliged to let a supernatural city emerge from the impregnation by certain vernal scenes of what I supposed to be, in its essentials, the genius of Giotto. All the more—and because one cannot make a name extend much further in time than in space—like some of Giotto's paintings themselves which shew us at two separate moments the same person engaged in different ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... Italy were surely blest. Whatever fruits in different climes were found, That proudly rise, or humbly court the ground; Whatever blooms in torrid tracts appear, 115 Whose bright succession decks the varied year; Whatever sweets salute the northern sky With vernal lives that blossom but to die; These here disporting own the kindred soil, Nor ask luxuriance from the planter's toil; 120 While sea-born gales their gelid wings expand To winnow ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... in this mournful song Too much take off your thoughts from time, For joy should fill your vernal prime, And peace your summer mild ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... 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. ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... the council led the way. Uprose the sceptred monarchs, and obey'd Their leader's call, and round them throng'd the crowd. As swarms of bees, that pour in ceaseless stream From out the crevice of some hollow rock, Now clust'ring, and anon 'mid vernal flow'rs, Some here, some there, in busy numbers fly; So to th' Assembly from their tents and ships The countless tribes came thronging; in their midst, By Jove enkindled, Rumour urged them on. Great was the din; ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... spring: the old tree of music was to put forth young green leaves: in the bed of harmony thousands of flowers were to open their smiling eyes upon the new dawn: and silvery trickling springs were to bubble forth with the vernal sweet song ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... or every idea that arouses our enthusiasm we have just so much to bestow, a definite sum of energy to expend, which seems, like that of our body, to have its own time and season. I have known Rose for hardly three months; her picture is still vernal in my heart; nothing can prevent its colours from being radiant with freshness, radiant with vigour, radiant with sunshine. I shall therefore go away without regret. I see the childishness of all the experiments to which I am subjecting the girl ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... Nature, and the naming of specific objects," says Mr. Gosse,[36] "they substituted generalities and second-hand allusions. They no longer mentioned the gillyflower and the daffodil, but permitted themselves a general reference to Flora's vernal wreath. It was vulgar to say that the moon was rising; the gentlemanly expression was, 'Cynthia is lifting her silver horn!' Women became nymphs in this new phraseology, fruits became 'the treasures of Pomona,' a horse became 'the impatient courser.' The result of coining these ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... which filled and moved the Senate when paying the last tribute to his dead body, coffined and there before them in the Senate chamber—may know how those estimated the man who knew him best. Friend of my heart, farewell! We soon shall meet, with vernal youth ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... planets in particular houses varied according to the signs in which the planets were situated. If we were to follow the description given by the astrologers themselves, not much insight would be thrown upon the meaning of the zodiacal signs. For instance, astrologers say that Aries is a vernal, dry, fiery, masculine, cardinal, equinoctial, diurnal, movable, commanding, eastern, choleric, violent, and quadrupedalian sign. We may, however, infer generally from their accounts the influences which they assigned ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... will be succeeded by a 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 ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... blossoming, Makes the year's sunset pale the set of day. O Youth unprescient, were it only so With trees you plant, and in whose shade reclined, Thinking their drifting blooms Fate's coldest snow, You carve dear names upon the faithful rind, Nor in that vernal stem the cross foreknow That Age may bear, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... mutilated to be of any use, except to a Zoologist with antiquarian eyes: one Jerboa. Hares are rather common in some parts, and about here there is a Lagomys. Of birds there are but few, but as the vegetation is chiefly vernal, these creatures may perhaps be abundant. The game birds are quail, three species of partridge, a huge Ptarmigan? Pterocles of Loodianah. The fauna is richest in Saurian reptiles, and of these one might make a very good collection. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... works, and to see how many immortal productions have, within a few months, been gathered to the poems of Blackmore and the novels of Mrs. Behn; how many "profound views of human nature," and "exquisite delineations of fashionable manners," and "vernal, and sunny, and refreshing thoughts," and "high imaginings," and "young breathings," and "embodyings," and "pinings," and "minglings with the beauty of the universe," and "harmonies which dissolve the soul in a passionate sense of loveliness and divinity," ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... is her velvet cheek; her wasted bosom Loses its fulness; e'en her slender waist Grows more attenuate; her face is wan, Her shoulders droop;—as when the vernal blasts Sear the young blossoms of the Madhavi, Blighting their bloom; so mournful is the change, Yet in its sadness, fascinating still, Inflicted by the mighty lord of love On the fair figure ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... own Miles Coverdale, to have arrived at Brook Farm in the midst of one of those April snow-storms which, during the New England spring, occasionally diversify the inaction of the vernal process. Miles Coverdale, in The Blithedale Romance, is evidently as much Hawthorne as he is any one else in particular. He is indeed not very markedly any one, unless it be the spectator, the observer; his chief identity lies in his success in looking at ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... vernal blooms their torpid rocks array, But winter, lingering, chills the lap of May; No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast, But meteors glare, and stormy glooms ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... thousand hues. Ye valleys low where the milde whispers use, Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart Star sparely looks, Throw hither all your quaint enameld eyes, That on the green terf suck the honied showres, And purple all the ground with vernal flowres. Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken dies. The tufted Crow-toe, and pale Gessamine, The white Pink, and the Pansie freakt with jeat, The glowing Violet. The Musk-rose, and the well attir'd Woodbine. With Cowslips wan that hang the ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... 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 days upon the earth which ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... diffugient snows will give place to spring; 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

... morning, of that soft vernal temperature, that seems to thaw all the frost out of one's blood, and to set all nature in a ferment. The very fishes felt its influence: the cautious trout ventured out of his dark hole to seek his mate, the roach and the dace rose up to the surface ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... the 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 birthright ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... some their infant plumage try, And on a tender winglet fly; While in the shell, impregned with fires, Still lurk a thousand more desires; Some from their tiny prisons peeping, And some in formless embryo sleeping. Thus peopled, like the vernal groves, My breast resounds, with warbling Loves; One urchin imps the other's feather, Then twin-desires they wing together, And fast as they thus take their flight, Still other urchins spring to light. But is there ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... 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 ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... distaff gave to Helen's hand; And that rich vase, with living sculpture wrought, Which heap'd with wool the beauteous Phylo brought The silken fleece, impurpled for the loom, Rivall'd the hyacinth in vernal bloom. The sovereign seat then Jove born Helen press'd, And pleasing thus ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... somehow or other, estimated; and 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 ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... tunic, with a crown of shells and seaweed upon his head, or a 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 extinguish ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... in these days. His perennial faculty for enjoyment never deserted him even in his darkest hours. His big red automobile, acquired on the crest of Semple and West's prosperity, was constantly to be seen bowling down the street of an early-vernal afternoon, or dancing down far country lanes light with a load of two. The Thursday German had known him as of old, and many were the delightful dinners where he proved, by merit alone, the life of the party. Nor were his ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... manner of moulting, which are known to occur with 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, some of the older males retain their nuptial plumage throughout the year. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... glided imperceptibly away, and as imperceptibly vernal bloom and beauty stole over the ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... Savior! plant within that bosom These seeds of holiness, and bid them blossom In fragrance and in beauty bright and vernal, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... clear and fine, full of Milton's "vernal delight and joy," I determined on a saunter; the inclemency of the weather having, for more than a week, kept me a prisoner at home. Although now advanced into the heart of February, a great fall of snow had taken place; the roads were blocked up; the mails ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... mountains pass down to the plains in the autumn, then wing their way farther south into New Mexico, Mexico, Central America, and even South America, where they spend the winter, reversing this order on their return to the north in the spring; others simply pass through this region in their vernal and autumnal pilgrimages, stopping for a short time, but spending neither the summer nor the winter in this latitude; still others come down from the remote north on the approach of autumn, and winter in this State, either ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... The monarch gazed on that disastrous sight, Muttering, 'and yet he lives!' A time it was Of swift transitions. Hearts, how proud soe'er, Made not that boast—consistency in sin, Though dark and rough accessible to Grace As earth to vernal showers. With hands hard-clenched The King upstarted: thus his voice rang out: 'Beware, who gave ill counsel to their King! The royal countenance is against them set, Ill merchants trafficking with his lesser moods! Does any say the King wrought well of ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... around is full of very picturesque, scenic surprises, and the lordly Hudson winding among its hills of vernal loveliness is not the least of them. Your attention is quickly recalled from the dead past, whether you like it or not, to the living present. From this place you will see and hear things which no historian can ever record; paragraphs of the life history of the palpitant beauty and pulsing ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... of his youth were over, and he had returned to his old home for life, there came over the settled and brooding darkness of his soul a warm ray of dawn. In some way, as naturally as one meets a fresh wind full of vernal odor and life, yet never marks the moment of its first caress, so naturally, so unmarkedly, he renewed a childish acquaintance with Violet Channing, a dweller in the same quiet valley with himself, though for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... Indian falsetto, ringing with triumph, vernal and bursting, slapping his thighs and stamping his feet to ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... echo in the wood, Where the pimpernel reposes; Gladness fills the solitude Where the blushes kiss the roses; Sunny beam and somber gloom Utter hymns from bowers of bloom, Where the vernal winds are crying And the ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller

... the ornaments in rooms." That is the "feather-grass;" it is a very rare grass, and has been seldom found wild in this country. The long yellow tails are the awns, which resemble delicate feathers. Here is the sweet-scented vernal grass; taste and see how pleasant it is; it is the grass which, perhaps more than any other, gives that charming odour to the hayfields. "There is a clear pond in yonder corner of the field, let us go there and see what we can find," said Willy. All right. It is a very ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton

... Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers— All that ever was Joyous and clear ...
— O May I Join the Choir Invisible! - and Other Favorite Poems • George Eliot

... the birth of Venus, Poverty modestly stood at the gate of the palace to gather the fragments of the celestial banquet; when she observed the god of riches, inebriated with nectar, roll out of the heavenly residence, and passing into the Olympian Gardens, throw himself on a vernal bank. She seized this opportunity to become familiar with the god. The frolicsome deity honoured her with his caresses; and from this amour sprung the god of Love, who resembles his father in jollity and mirth, and his mother in his nudity. The allegory is ingenious. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... 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 it must ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... seen that from the autumnal to the vernal equinox the North Pole is in darkness and has a night of six months' duration, during which time the sun is not seen. Therefore, any point near the pole is, during any given twenty-four hours, longer in ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu

... are wet and low, There the trees of goat-peach grow. Soft and fragrant are their flowers, Glossy from the vernal showers. Joy it were to me, O tree, Ties of home ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... of culture for rice in Carolina:—It is sowed as soon as it conveniently can be after the vernal equinox, from which period until the middle, and even the last of May, is the usual time of putting it in the ground. It grows best in low marshy land, and should be sowed in furrows twelve inches asunder; it requires to be flooded, and thrives best if six inches ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... Overflowings of Gladness which diffuse themselves thro' the Mind of the Beholder, upon surveying the gay Scenes of Nature: he has touched upon it twice or thrice in his Paradise Lost, and describes it very beautifully under the Name of Vernal Delight, in that Passage where he represents the Devil himself ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... his season of inspiration is somewhat uncertain. In the elegy "To Spring," Milton says it was the spring which restored his poetic faculty. Phillips, however, says, "that his vein never flowed happily but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal," and that the poet told him this. Phillips' reminiscence is perhaps true at the date of Paradise Lost, when Milton's habits had changed from what they had been at twenty. Or we may agree with Toland, that Phillips has transposed ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... to Ninety-Two! A full half-century of story! And now, our Century's end in view. May's back once more in vernal glory, And with it brings your Jubilee, (Punch came to his one year before you!) "Many Returns," Ma'am, may you see, And honoured be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various

... 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

... the Harris sparrows are said to be common winter sojourners, but in the north-eastern part of the state they disappeared in November or December, and did not return until the middle of February, or later if the weather happened to be severe. From the time of their vernal arrival they were to be seen in every ramble until they took flight for their breeding haunts in the North. One spring some of them were still loitering in Kansas on the eleventh of May, and were singing blithely, no doubt waiting for the winter cold of their summer ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... "Spring Flowers in the South of Europe," as a sample of Mr. Mill's popular manner, as well as for its own sake as a fine description of a matchless scene. He is describing the little mountain range of Albano, beloved of painters, and, after comparing its vernal flora with that in ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other

... tangled hair and blotchy 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 ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... constituted part of a religious ceremony; and the character of the deity to whom it was more particularly dedicated was stamped at times pretty visibly upon the work which was composed in his honor. The Dionysian festivals were the great carnivals of antiquity—they celebrated the returns of vernal festivity or the joyous vintage, and were in consequence the great holidays of ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... floating under vernal arches, where a murmurous rustle seemed to whisper, "Stay!" along shadowless sweeps, where the blue turned to gold and dazzled with its unsteady shimmer; passed islands so full of birds they seemed green cages floating in the sun, or ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... New Orleans, the Carnival to Rome, and what the Feast of the Ygquato Bloom was to the ancient Aztecs. It is always held on the twenty-first of March, Sunday of course excepted, and it is known as the Vernal. Not to be seen at it is too bad. Not to be invited—unlike the lupercals before mentioned it requires invitations—is a blight mercifully spared all but the most painfully outre. Of these the Coogans, who live in Center and ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis

... of yonder bird to cross the continent in search of summer sunshine in yonder Southern clime is too good to deceive it, and just as surely as He has put the instinct in its breast, so has He also put the balmy breezes and the vernal sunshine yonder to meet it ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... have required the stimulus of necessity to make them break through an initial indolence of nature. When Johnson found fault with Gray for having times of the year when he wrote more easily, from the vernal to the autumnal equinox, he added that a man could write at any time if he set himself doggedly to it. True, no doubt! But to write doggedly is not to court favourable conditions for artistic work. It may be a finer sight for a moralist to see a man performing ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... suggested a resection of Kaf, that unseen mountain-wall of emerald, the so-called Desert, changed face twice a year; now brown and dry as summer-dust; then green as Hope, beautified with infinite verdure and broad sheetings of rain-water. The vernal and autumnal shiftings of camp, disruptions of homesteads and partings of kith and kin, friends and lovers, made the life many-sided as it was vigorous and noble, the outcome of hardy frames, strong minds and spirits breathing ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... grows ripe to meet our doom! Alas! it was not till the thunder-boom Of shell and cannon shocked the vernal day, Which shone o'er Charleston Bay— When the tamed "Stars and Stripes" before us bowed— That startled, roused, the last scale fallen away From, blinded eyes, our SOUTH, erect and proud, Fronted the issue, and, though lulled ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me; from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... of his sensitiveness to such impressions; but the sway of another mood turned his eye from the outstretched beauty of the city to the vernal solitude about him. It was the season when old memories of Donnaz worked in his blood; when the banks and hedges of the fresh hill-country about Turin cheated him with a breath of budding beech-groves and the fragrance of crushed fern in the glens of the high Pennine valleys. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... fort fhere was plenty of the yellow oxalis and the creeping white houstonia; and from a crevice in the wall, out of reach, leaned a stalk of goldenrod in full bloom. The reader may smile, if he will, but this last flower was a surprise and a stumbling-block. A vernal goldenrod! Dr. Chapman's Flora made no mention of such an anomaly. Sow thistles, too, looked strangely anachronistic. I had never thought of them as harbingers of springtime. The truth did not break upon me till a week or so afterward. Then, on the way to the beach at Daytona, where the pleasant ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... fires of ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. They no longer soar, and they attain only to a Shanghai and Cochin-China ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... already fixed When, mid the bathers (freely mixed), In a polite costume I mean to plunge beneath the spray And, washing from a soul at play The City's stain—three times a day— Restore its vernal bloom. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various

... within thy fold eternal Let them find a resting-place; Feed in pastures ever vernal, Drink the rivers of ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... wind blows high, and the fine snow drifts, as it does about the vernal equinox, in these latitudes, the Indians smilingly say, "Ah! now Pup-puk-e-wiss is gathering his harvest," or words to this effect. There is a mythological tale connected with it, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... to crowds, scorch'd with the summer's heats, In courts the wretched lawyer toils and sweats; While smiling Nature, in her best attire, Regales each sense, and vernal joys inspire. Can he, who knows that real good should please, Barter for gold his liberty and ease?"— This Paulus preach'd:—When, entering at the door, Upon his board the client pours the ore: He grasps the ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... it by the geranium at my window. It had put forth two sickly leaves. Two sickly leaves for me, and the world alive with vernal things! Spring, thou Queen of the ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... tree, A senseless thing of wood, Wherein the sluggish sap ascends To swell the vernal bud— But conscious, moving, breathing trunks That throb ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... only seven nautical leagues from Cumanacoa. It scarcely ever rains in the first-mentioned place, while in the latter there are seven months of wintry weather. At Cumanacoa, the dry season begins at the winter solstice, and lasts till the vernal equinox. Light showers are frequent in the months of April, May, and June. The dry weather then returns again, and lasts from the summer solstice to the end of August. Then come the real winter rains, which cease only in the month of November, and during which torrents of water pour down ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... this autumnal festival, the Sun-fte Mihrgn (which balanced the vernal Nau-roz) into Michaelmas and its goose-massacre. It was so called because it began on the 16th of Mihr, the seventh month; and lasted six days, with feasts, festivities and great rejoicings in honour of the Sun, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... points at which the Ecliptic and Equinoctial intersect, and when the sun occupies either of these two positions, the days and nights are of equal length. The Vernal Equinox is that one which the sun passes through or intersects in going from S to N declination, and the Autumnal Equinox that which it passes through or intersects in going from N to S declination. The Vernal Equinox (V in the illustration) is also ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper

... tulips bloom in Union Square, And timid breaths of vernal air Are wandering down the dusty town, Like children lost ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... prompt wooer, if thou wouldst be wise: "Time is in flight, and never backward flies. "How swiftly fades the bloom, the vernal green! "How swift yon poplar dims its silver sheen! "Spurning the goal th' Olympian courser flies, "Then yields to Time his strength, his victories; "And oft I see sad, fading youth deplore "Each ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus

... wide the vernal breeze Sweet odours waft from blooming trees, So, too, the grateful savour spreads To distant lands of ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston

... looked at Steena and growled. She looked calmly back at him and nodded once. From then on they traveled together—the thin gray woman and the big gray tom-cat. Bat learned to know the inside of more stellar bars than even most spacers visit in their lifetimes. He developed a liking for Vernal juice, drank it neat and quick, right out of a glass. And he was always at home on any table where Steena elected to ...
— All Cats Are Gray • Andre Alice Norton

... solitude; beneath swaying fir-boughs, petted by no season, but still green in all, on I journeyed—my horse and I; on, by an old saw-mill, bound down and hushed with vines, that his grating voice no more was heard; on, by a deep flume clove through snowy marble, vernal-tinted, where freshet eddies had, on each side, spun out empty chapels in the living rock; on, where Jacks-in-the-pulpit, like their Baptist namesake, preached but to the wilderness; on, where a huge, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... gem of flowers! Rose, the care of vernal hours! Rose, of every god the joy! With roses Venus' darling boy Links the Graces in a round With ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... haply too, at vernal dawn, Some musing bard may stray, And eye the smoking, dewy lawn, And misty mountain gray; Or, by the reaper's nightly beam, Mild-chequering thro' the trees, Rave to my darkly-dashing stream, Hoarse-swelling on ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... Ishmael, walking with Georgie, came on a patch of the most exquisite of spring flowers, the vernal squill. Georgie clapped her hands for joy at sight of the delicate blue blossoms, but Ishmael, lying beside them, buried his face in their rain-washed petals and drew a deep breath of that scent which is like the memory ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... Wainamoinen, Lifts his head above the waters, Boldly rises from the sea-waves, Lifts his body from the billows, Seats himself upon the eagle, On the eagle's feathered shoulders. Quick aloft the huge bird bears him, Bears the ancient Wainamoinen, Bears him on the path of zephyrs, Floating on the vernal breezes, To the distant shore of Northland, To the dismal Sariola, Where the eagle leaves his burden, Flies away to join his fellows. Wainamoinen, lone and weary, Straightway fell to bitter weeping, Wept and moaned in heavy accents, On the border of the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... 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 understands and appreciates the joy of finding that the long ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... escape. It not only makes the blood purer and richer, but it strengthens the organ (the heart) that pumps it everywhere throughout the system. It not only builds up and rejuvenates the general system, but it brings vernal strength and power to the ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... and sweet re-union, Where the bells of time shall cease; Oh, the greeting, endless greeting, On the vernal heights of peace; Where the hoping and desponding Of the weary heart are past, And we enter life eternal— Home at last, home ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles

... mercy to breasts that tumultuously burn, Dwell no more on departure—but speak of return. Since she goes, when the buds are just ready to burst, In expanding its leaves, let the Willow be first. We here shall no longer find beauties in May; It cannot be Spring, when Maria's away: If vernal at all, 'tis an April appears, For the Blossom flies off, in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various

... and so continued for more than three weeks, during which time we could bear no sail, and were driven into the latitude of 57 deg. S. On the 15th September, the moon was eclipsed, beginning to be darkened immediately after sun-set, about six in the evening, being then the vernal equinox in this southern hemisphere. This eclipse happened in England on the 16th before one in the morning, which is about six hours difference, agreeing to one quarter of the circumference of the globe, from the meridian of England to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... occasional oak draperied with festoons of gray moss or the druidical mistletoe. A wide expanse of varied beauty was before them; an ample and lofty plain around them; and, though spring had not yet garnished the scene with her vernal glories, sprinkling the woods with gay wild-flowers and charming creepers, and making the atmosphere balmy with the bay, the jessamine, and the magnolia, yet, even in winter, were there sufficient charms in the spot to fix on it the heart of Oglethorpe, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... powers! the patriot name That courts fair Peace, thy gentle stay; Ah! gild 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 ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams

... I stood in mazes bound Of vernal sorcery, I heard a dainty dubious sound, As of goodly melody; Which first was faint as if in swound, Then burst so suddenly In warring concord all around, That, whence this thing might be, To see The very marrow longed in me! It ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson

... from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various

... in green fields and majestic woods. Quiet, restful, peaceful it was—like a dream place, untroubled. Upon the farms about men plowed their furrows, calling to each other and to their horses; in the homes the doors and windows were thrown hospitably wide to the sweet, fresh, vernal airs, and the thrifty housewives were busy ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... 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

... the teacher-training class at Provo when someone asked how the lesson on Jonah could be presented so that it would appeal to adolescent boys and girls. The query was joined in by several others for whom Jonah had been a stumbling block, when Brother Sainsbury, of Vernal, startled the class by saying Jonah was his favorite story. "I would rather teach that story than any other one in the Bible," he declared, and illustrated his method so clearly that the account of Jonah took on an entirely ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion

... whose beauty vernal Through tried ages blooms eternal Thou, in bliss undreamed, supernal Baskest in the glory-light Where celestial joys inspire All heaven's vast, unnumbered choir With sweet songs that never tire, Through the fadeless ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl

... especially difficult for those who live by manual labour, is a union of peace with innocent and laudable animation. Not by bread alone is the life of Man sustained; not by raiment alone is he warmed;—but by the genial and vernal inmate of the breast, which at once pushes forth and cherishes; by self-support and self-sufficing endeavours; by anticipations, apprehensions, and active remembrances; by elasticity under insult, and firm resistance to injury; by joy, and by love; by pride which his ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... of her as his vernal bride, while the snowy Alps were a celestial garden of no sunset before his eyes, was to have the taste of mortal life in the highest. He wondered how it was that he could have waited so long for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... quiet nook, with the orphan child. Mittie played Queen over the rest, in a truly royal style. At last, weary of singing and jumping the rope, and singing "Merry O'Jenny," they launched into bolder amusements. They ran over the flower-beds, leaping from bed to bed, trampling down many a fair, vernal bud, and then trying their gymnastics by climbing the fences and the low trees. A white railing divided Miss Thusa's bleaching ground, with its winding rill, from the garden, and as they peeped at the white thread shining on the grass, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... devoured by his hounds after being changed into a stag, is a symbol of the vernal year. Palaephatus (De Fab. Narrat.) holds that the story is a ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... 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

... young 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 ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... and from her lips the ear of reason catches deep-toned words of assurance that death is not the end of life. The hue of the butterfly's wing, "the flower of the grass," the beauty of the vernal year, these all, all teach the sublime truth that "all great endings are but great beginnings." The voice of God from the unrolled page of plainer if not diviner truth, says: "These are not dead, but sleeping—they ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... of orange, or rose, 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 been thrown into ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... that crested fortune wears, No gem that sparkling hangs in beauty's ears; Not the bright stars that night's blue arch adorn, Nor opening suns that gild the vernal morn, Shine with such lustre as the tear that flows Down virtue's manly cheeks, for ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... polar axis to the right or left. The four projections as shown, or inverted, or seen from the back of the plate (held up to the light) give presentations of Mars towards the sun at twelve periods of the Martial year,—viz., at the autumnal and vernal equinoxes, at the two solstices, and at intermediate periods corresponding ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... when life was young and promised to be happy,—gave generous sketches of his rivals,—the high contention now hidden by the handful of earth,—hours passed fifty years ago with great authors, recalled for the vernal emotions which then they made to live and revel in the soul. And from these conversations of friendship, no man—no man, old or young—went away to remember one word of profaneness, one allusion of indelicacy, one impure thought, one unbelieving suggestion, one doubt cast on the reality ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... dentists, past the old dismantled Manhattan hospital. The taste of spring was in the air: one of the dentists was having his sign regilded, a huge four-pronged grinder as big as McTeague's in Frank Norris's story. Oysters going out, the new brew of Bock beer coming in: so do the saloons mark the vernal equinox. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... the larch tree stood The manly form of the brave young chief, And fair as the larch in its vernal leaf, When the red fawn bleats in the feathering wood. Mild was his face as the morning skies, And friendship shone in his laughing eyes; But swift were his feet o'er the drifted snow On the trail of the ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon



Words linked to "Vernal" :   vernal equinox, summery, early-blooming, wintry, early-flowering, vernal witch hazel, late-spring-blooming, young, spring-flowering, immature, spring-blooming, youthful, autumnal



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