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More "Coy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mind. At a General Court held at Boston, Sept. 6, 1638, it was voted that, "Whereas Emanuel Downing, Esq., hath brought over, at his great charges, all things fitting for taking wild fowl by way of duck-coy, this court, being desirous to encourage him and others in such designs as tend to the public good," &c., orders that liberty shall be given him to set up his duck-coy within the limits of Salem; and all persons are forbidden ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... appointed commissioners to visit the Arkansas Territory, accompanied by a deputation of Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws. This expedition was commanded by Messrs. Kennerly, M'Coy, Wash Hood, and John Bell. See the different reports of the commissioners, and their journal, in the Documents of Congress, No. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... shine upon the world! Their ears To one demand alone are coy; They will not give us love and tears, They bring us light ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... during the burned breakfast at the parsonage, or the drive to Major Scott's, for deep emotion is ever silent. Yet not for them were the coy reserves often evinced by hearts on the verge of a life-union—the faltering timidity which hesitates to lift the veil from feelings in whose light existence is thenceforth to pass. They could not forget that they ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... "Some kindly coy dryad of the woods has guided my footsteps to this blessed spot," declared Don. "The last inn which I passed—observe my selection of the word, passed—known, I believe, as the 'Pig and Something-or-other,' is fully three ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... for? "Ah! woman's strength is in passivity," Fastidio says, shaking his wise, wise head, And withering me with a disdainful stare. Nay! woman's strength is in developing, In virtuous ways, all that is best in her. No superstitious waiting then be mine! No fancy that in coy, alluring arts, Rather than action, modest and sincere, Woman most worthily performs her part. Here am I twenty-five, and all alone In the wide world; yet having won the right, By my own effort, to hew out my lot, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... let Anna have six little girls here to supper to-night: Louisa Field, Hattie Paddock, Helen Coy, Martha Densmore, Emma Wheeler, and Alice Jewett. We had a splendid supper and then we played cards. I do not mean regular cards, mercy no! Grandfather thinks those kinds are contageous or outrageous or something dreadful and never keeps them in the house. Grandmother said they ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, And shuns the hands would seize upon her; Follow thy life, and she will sue To pour for thee the cup ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... odd players are placed in the center, one of them, "Jacob," being blindfolded. The object of the game is for Jacob to catch the other player, "Rachel," by the sound of her voice; but Rachel is supposed to be rather coy, and to do all in her power to avoid being caught by Jacob, even ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... time it is to haste my carcase hence: Youth stole away and felt no kind of joy, And age he left in travail ever since; The wanton days that made me nice and coy Were but a dream, a ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... drawing-room song, darling! Sing by the sunset's glow; Now while the shadows are long, darling; Now while the lights are low; Something so chaste and so coy, darling! Something that melts the chest; Milder than even Molloy, darling! Better ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... circumstance. Pierre was torturing him with his accounts of daily rendezvous: if but for a moment, they were seeing each other every day, sometimes twice a day. And Virginie could speak to this man, though to himself she was coy and reserved as hardly to utter a sentence. Pierre caught these broken words while his cousin's complexion grew more and more livid, and then purple, as if some great effect were produced on his circulation by the news he had just heard. Pierre was so ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... care?—you who were so coy, and who, when you knew my heart was hungering for you, ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... attempt to speak the mind of all For this day's pleasure and substantial joy Should meet, with approbation and recall The hours so sweetly spent without alloy. He spoke of this to them with manners coy, Like one not used to boast what he had done. "Perhaps," he said, "They might their time employ To more advantage if he ne'er begun To give to them the Song which he in ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... roar when Prulliere, that great favorite, appeared as a general, a masquerade Mars, decked with an enormous plume and dragging along a sword, the hilt of which reached to his shoulder. As for him, he had had enough of Diana; she had been a great deal too coy with him, he averred. Thereupon Diana promised to keep a sharp eye on him and to be revenged. The duet ended with a comic yodel which Prulliere delivered very amusingly with the yell of an angry tomcat. He had about him all the entertaining fatuity of a young leading gentleman ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... Thursday to know who advised His Majesty to recal Rodney; and out of doors the talk is the same. Charles gave Johnson, who had been very violent on this subject the other day, an excellent trimming; but there was a good deal of coy ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... of beer for their husbands, who very liberally invited us to partake. After seven hours' hard travelling we came to the village, where we spend Sunday by the torrent Usangazi, and near a remarkable mountain, Namasi. The chief, a one-eyed man, was rather coy—coming incognito to visit us; and, as I suspected that he was present, I asked if the chief were an old woman, afraid to look at and welcome a stranger? All burst into a laugh, and looked at him, when he felt forced to join in it, and asked what sort ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... the church belfry, to call her father's servants from the fields, and, though they were half a league off, they heard her as though she were in the next field; and the best of her is there is nothing coy about her, but she jokes with all and makes game and jest of everybody. To be frank with you, Sir Don Quixote, I have been living under a great mistake, for, really and truly, I thought all this while that the lady ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... hear you are coming down, so you will see the bride for yourself. There was a silly rumor about her being part Indian. Well, if Indian blood can give one a skin like hers, I could do with an off-side ancestor myself! She is even younger than report predicted. But not sweet or coy (Heavens, how one wearies of that type!) And Benis Spence, as a bride-groom, has lost something of his 'moony' air. He is quite attractive in an odd way. All the same, I can't help feeling (and others ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... him. He never declared what he knew, though she could not but guess it; did not betray her to the others; seemed to enjoy the equivoque, content to wait. So he kept her on tenterhooks; she felt a cheat, and what is worse, a detected cheat. This filled her deep with shame. It made her more coy and more a prude than she had ever need to be had she gone among them kirtled and coifed. At last came the day when that happened which she had darkly dreaded. A load of coals went off to Market Basing; to dinner came herself only, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... I ought to be coy, and say that I would prefer to wait; but, dearest love, sorrow and trouble have banished all that. You will not love me less because I tell you that I count the minutes till I may be ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... scene attunes my soul to song, awaking any muse from the silence in which she has long slumbered. But the voice of the coy maiden is less melodious than of yore: she shies me for my neglect: and despite the gentlest courting, refusing to breathe her divine spirit over a scene worthy of a sweeter strain. And this scene lay not upon the classic shores of the Hellespont—not ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... sweetbreads, game, poultry, and all of the very best— where the profits are to come from with a bill of fare like that passes my powers of arithmetic, and so I point out to her. I hope it is appreciated—yes, I do hope that, Mr. Lovegrove"—there the speaker became extremely coy and playful. "A little bird sometimes seems to twitter to me that it is. And yet I am sure I don't know. The members of your sex are very misleading, Mr. Lovegrove. Do not perjure yourself now. You cannot take me in. And a certain gentleman is very close, you know, and stand-offish. It ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... in which these quaint little cabins showed themselves. First he saw one or two of them just with the corner of his eye, and when he looked full at them, strange to say, they faded away and disappeared. Then another and another came in view, but all in the same coy way, just appearing and gone again before he could well fix his gaze upon them; in a little while, however, they began to bear a fuller gaze, and he found, as it seemed to himself, that he was able ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... trip remain unpublished? You are very coy. You don't find what you do worth being described. That is a mistake. All that issues from a master is instructive, and one should not fear to show one's sketches and drawings. They are still far above the reader, and so many things are brought down to his level that the poor ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... mother," she said. "I didn't realize—you've always been so intellectual and advanced—that you'd feel that way about it—be shocked because I hadn't pretended not to care for him and been shy and coy"—in spite of herself, her voice got an edge of humor in it—"and a startled fawn, you know, running away, but just not fast enough so that he wouldn't come running after and think he'd made a wonderful conquest by ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... content to ramble through the world in a pleasant dream, rather than ever waken again to its harsh realities. We are alchemists who would extract the essence of perpetual youth from dust and ashes, tempt coy Truth in many light and airy forms from the bottom of her well, and discover one crumb of comfort or one grain of good in the commonest and least-regarded matter that passes through our crucible. Spirits of past times, creatures of imagination, and people of to-day are alike ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... ripples softly around the rocks and a cool air stirs in the trees above, exorcising all mournful spirits. The harvest moon is rising and the white light lies sleeping, dreaming, on trees and cliff and river. On such a night pleading Pan wooed his coy nymph with the promise: ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou! Scarce were the piteous accents said, When, with the ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... blooms, a perfect flower. Though the actual lapse of time represented in the play occupies only a few days, Juliet in that brief period must assume several distinct characters. We see her first the coy, heart-whole maiden, the cherished heiress of a patrician house: soon the blind bow-boy launches his shaft, and, quick as thought, she is passionately, impulsively, enduringly in love; then we see her but a few hours a bride, with black sorrow creeping already ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... entrance that she completely lost the thread of what she was doing, and threw away two tricks that simply required to be gathered up by her, but now lurked below Diva's elbow. What made it worse was that no trace of emotion, no heightened colour, no coy and downcast eye betrayed a hint of what had happened on the lawn. With brazen effrontery Susan informed her daughter that Mr. ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... sweet warning Of daylight come, is the cheerful song To the hum of the wheel, in the early morning. Benjie, the gentle, red-cheeked boy, On his way to school, peeps in at the gate; In neat, white pinafore, pleased and coy, She reaches a ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... mighty bowl of punch; and when a few glasses of the hot beverage had restored his powers, James opened ore rotundo on the merits of the forthcoming romance. "One chapter, one chapter only," was the cry. After "Nay, by'r Lady, nay!" and a few more coy shifts, the proof sheets were at length produced, and James, with many a prefatory hem, read aloud what he considered as the most striking dialogue ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Fleckring, the companion and household help of Mrs. Maldon, but a nymph, a fay, the universal symbol of his highest desire.... He would have been happy to kiss the glinting steel buckle, so feminine, so provocative, so coy. The tight rounded line of the waist, every bend of the fingers, the fall of the eye-lashes—all were exquisite and precious to him after the harsh, unsatisfying, desolating masculinity of Horrocleave's. This was the divine reward of Horrocleave's, the sole reason of Horrocleave's. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... thy thoughts, low vassals to thy state'— 'No more,' quoth he; 'by heaven, I will not hear thee: Yield to my love; if not, enforced hate, Instead of love's coy touch, shall rudely tear thee; That done, despitefully I mean to bear thee Unto the base bed of some rascal groom, To be thy partner in this ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... many wasted years, Have run their round, since I beheld your face! In Memory's dim eye it yet appears Crowned, as it then seemed, with a chearful grace. Young prattling Maiden, on the Thames' fair side, Enlivening pleasant Sunbury with your smiles, Time may have changed you: coy reserve, or pride, To sullen looks reduced those mirthful wiles. I will not 'bate one smile on that clear brow, But take of Time a rigorous account, When next I see you; and Maria now Must be the Thing she was. To what amount These verses ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Fitzgerald. "Scenery and sleep; of the two I prefer the latter. I have always been routed out at dawn and never allowed to turn in till midnight. You can always find scenery, but sleep is a coy thing." ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... Figure of Twinnes.] Ye haue yet another manner of speach when ye will seeme to make two of one, not thereunto constrained, which therefore we call the figure of Twynnes, the Greekes Endiadis thus. Not you coy dame your ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... unconscious that he was the victim of a plot which his friends, Mr. Cunningham, Mr. M'Coy and Mr. Power had disclosed to Mrs. Kernan in the parlour. The idea been Mr. Power's, but its development was entrusted to Mr. Cunningham. Mr. Kernan came of Protestant stock and, though he had ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... more timorous, more coy, and secret love of the Spaniards and Italians pleases me. I know not who of old wished his throat as long as that of a crane, that he might the longer taste what he swallowed; it had been better wished as to this quick and precipitous ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... officers to-day continued an investigation of the death of a five-year-old girl, allegedly at the hands of two itinerant preachers who sought to 'drive out the devil' they believed responsible for her partial paralysis. Murder charges were filed against Paul Oaks and his brother, Coy Oaks, and precautions taken to prevent possible mob vengeance. Sheriff Nat Curtright said the accused men admitted they had choked the child to death in an attempt to cure her. Officers said the preachers had been conducting ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Did coy Marcella own a Soul As beauteous as her Eyes, Her Judgment wou'd her Sence controul, And teach her how to prize. But Providence, that form'd the fair In such a charming Skin, Their outside made its only care, And never ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... shake of the eyeglass, to shift and sidle again, as if distinctly excited by the subject. But it was as if his very excitement made the poor gentleman a trifle coy. "Are there ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... again from under his brow, sidles along the table, with far less of ease than he had worn when he came whistling through the hall,—sidles nearer and nearer, till she, with a coy approach that seems to be full of doubt, meets him with a little furtive hand-shake. Then he, retiring a step, leans with one elbow on the friendly table, eying her curiously, and more boldly when he discovers that her look is downcast, and that she seems ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... music of guitars and the clacking of castanets; the fandango, the bolero, the malaguena, the chaquera vella; all the classical dances of old Spain, and each one a variant on the theme of love, the woman coy, coquettishly retreating; the man persuading or demanding, the woman yielding in passionate ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... bad good morning to the day, O' th' sudden Roscius breaks in a bright ray: Gods with your favour, I've presum'd to see A mortal fairer then a deitie. With looks and hands a satyre courts the boy, Who draws back his unwilling cheek as coy. Although of marble hewn, whom move not they? The boy ev'n seems to ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... lov'd them a whole summer long: 250 And soon his eyes had drunk her beauty up, Leaving no drop in the bewildering cup, And still the cup was full,—while he, afraid Lest she should vanish ere his lip had paid Due adoration, thus began to adore; Her soft look growing coy, she saw his chain so sure: "Leave thee alone! Look back! Ah, Goddess, see Whether my eyes can ever turn from thee! For pity do not this sad heart belie— Even as thou vanishest so I shall die. 260 Stay! though a Naiad of the rivers, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... mastered it, and went on to the distressful strokes his youth had suffered, and then to Desdemona's coy hint: ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... leaning on the arm of an attendant, in a graceful attitude, remains slightly smiling, in such a manner that no description can express her beauty. The guards become fascinated and remain immoveable. With trembling frame and coy of heart she finally departs ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... need not be coy, my lass," said the old miller. "You'll not get a better offer, and Andrew has no time nor heart either for running about courting. What he wants is a good wife to cheer him up, and see to ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... swung and pivoted gently like a ship at sea straining at its anchor in the first, fresh breezes of a gathering storm. For a moment it seemed to hesitate like a coy maiden on the verge of some unknown threshold. Then, abruptly, she climaxed her voyage and plunged directly toward the waiting Sun some twenty million miles below, carrying with her only her ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... weary Love, O, folded to her breast, Love in each moment years and years of rest, Be calm, as being not. Ye oceans of intolerable delight, The blazing photosphere of central Night, Be ye forgot. Terror, thou swarthy Groom of Bride-bliss coy, Let me not see thee toy. O, Death, too tardy with thy hope intense Of kisses close beyond conceit of sense; O, Life, too liberal, while to take her hand Is more of hope than heart can understand; Perturb my golden patience not with joy, Nor, through a ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... him no answer, but continued to walk beside him trembling. 'I thought I would tell it you all, because I wish you to know exactly the state of my mind. I would show you if I could all my heart and all my thoughts about yourself as in a glass case. Do not coy your love for me if you can feel it. When you know, dear, that a man's heart is set upon a woman as mine is set on you, so that it is for you to make his life bright or dark, for you to open or to shut the gates of his earthly ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... from women. They have the strangest facility in reading physiological language, tones, gestures, bearing, and all those countless signs which make the face and eyes such tell-tales of the soul. They will look into your eyes, and see you think; listen to your voice, and hear you feel. The coy and subtle world of emotion now infinitely timid and reticent, now all gates flung down for the floods to pour is their domain. They are at home in it all, from the rosy fogs of feeling to the twilight borders of intelligence. On the one side, these endowments ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... The coy twilight waned quickly, and the caravan was still pushing on through the thick darkness of the wood, when a high tensioned yelping made the vast silence insignificant, ugly. But as the travelers filed into the clearing ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... visited Reynolds to sound him on the subject, but found him obdurate. West was then deputed to wait upon the greatest English painter, and to leave no means untried in the way of persuading him to join the new association. For a time Reynolds was cold and coy enough, but influenced at last by the allurement of probable knighthood, or the force of other arguments, he permitted himself to be carried in West's coach to the meeting at Wilton's. He was at once declared president; Chambers being appointed ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... was witty; and as her person was not very likely to attract many admirers, which, however, she was resolved to have, she was far from being coy when an occasion offered: she did not so much as make any terms: she was violent in her resentments, as well as in her attachments, which had exposed her to some inconveniences; and she had very indiscreetly ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... limbs, And like a streak of lightning reached the waves:— Wherein his thwarted speed appeared more awful As, brought within the scope of comprehension, Its progress and its purpose could be gauged. Spluttering Amyntas rose, Hipparchus near him Who cried 'Why coy of kisses, lovely lad? I ne'er would harm thee; art thou not ashamed To treat thy conquest thus?' He shouted partly to drown the sea's noise, chiefly The nearing Delphis to disarm. His voice lost its assurance while he spoke, And, as he finished, quick to ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... heads, were there like apparitions that a breath might dissipate. Aristocratic beauties with haughty glances, languid, flexible, slender, and complaisant, bent their heads as though there were royal protectors still in the market. An English-woman seemed like a spirit of melancholy—some coy, pale, shadowy form among Ossian's mists, or a type of remorse flying from crime. The Parisienne was not wanting in all her beauty that consists in an indescribable charm; armed with her irresistible weakness, vain of her costume and her wit, pliant and hard, a heartless, passionless ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... diamonds Would so emblaze the forehead of the deep, And so bestud with stars, that they below Would grow inured to light, and come at last To gaze upon the sun with shameless brows. List, lady; be not coy, and be not cozened With that same vaunted name, Virginity. Beauty is Nature's coin; must not be hoarded, But must be current; and the good thereof 740 Consists in mutual and partaken bliss, Unsavoury in the enjoyment of itself. If you let slip time, like a neglected ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... feels that the death of his master approaches. Nay, life is breathed even into inanimate objects by the imagination of Slavic girls and youths. A Servian youth contracts a regular league of friendship and brotherhood with a bramble-bush, in order to induce it to catch his coy love's clothes, when she flees before his kisses. Even the stars and planets sympathize with human beings, and live in constant intercourse with them and their affairs. Stars become messengers; a proud maiden boasts to ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... to me, my darling, whom I despaired of ever seeing again—she came shy and coy, I thought, but love was shining from her eyes for ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... to the prince he spoke, From the brave youth the streaming passion broke; Studious to veil the grief, in vain repress'd, His face he shrouded with his purple vest. The conscious monarch pierced the coy disguise, And view'd his filial love with vast surprise: Dubious to press the tender theme, or wait To hear the youth inquire his father's fate. In this suspense bright Helen graced the room; Before her breathed a gale ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... gave him one of those shy, timid glances he had noticed before, and began coiling something around her fingers, with a suggestion of coy embarrassment, indescribably inconsistent with her previous ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... but one solitary tenant in the chicken-coop, once a gay and dapper young cock, bearing him so bravely among the coy hens. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... instance of such sustained [113] power. Poetic scholar!—If we must reserve the sacred name of "poet" to a very small number, that humbler but perhaps still rarer title is due indisputably to Mr. Gosse. His work is like exquisite modern Latin verse, into the academic shape of which, discreet and coy, comes a sincere, deeply felt consciousness of modern life, of the modern world as it is. His poetry, according with the best intellectual instincts of our critical age, is as pointed out recently by a clever writer ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... latter, more particularly in its early years, is always a Narcissus, caring for nought or none except in so much as they reflect back its own beauty or its own dreams. The face such a youth looks for, as he turns the coy captured head to meet his glance, is, quite unconsciously, his own, and the 'ideal' he seeks is but the perfect mirror. Yet it is not that mirror he marries after all: for when at last he has come to know what that word—one so distasteful, so 'soiled' to his ear 'with all ignoble' ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... him for a moment. Certainly of late Marjorie had been uncertain, coy, and very hard to please. Marjorie had suffered, and was suffering. She was contrasting Tom with Hugh, and Hugh with Tom, and it made her heart ache and made her angry with herself for her own previous blindness. And, womanlike, ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... rock, There to abide until the clock You reckon by, with shadowy hands, Lay benediction on the lands And landsmen, and the eve-jar's croak Summon ye, lightfoot fairy folk, To your activity full tide Over the empty earth and wide. Here be your food, fair nymph, and coy Of mortal ken—remember'd joy! ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... our pleasant acquaintances in the town come to take us to Lake La Rose, away up on the South Mountain; and there we embark and glide over the placid water in the moonlight, rousing the echoes with song, and vainly endeavoring to uproot the coy lilies, which abruptly slip through our fingers, and "bob" down under the water as if enjoying our discomfiture. But as Dame Nature tries her hand at painting in water-colors, treating us to a series of dissolving views, the shower forces us to hurry ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... together and telling each other things in low tones, while not seeming to look at Hetty and her dupes, at which all would giggle in the most venemous manner. Daisy Estelle left the bunch once and made a coy bid for the notice of Mr. D. by snatching his cap and running merrily off with it about six feet. If there was any one in the world—except Hetty—could make a man hate the idea of riding pants for women, she was it. I could see the cold, ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... well, What pains it cost they did not blush to tell. Their ease (my Lords!) ne'er lowng'd for want of fire, Nor did their rage thro' affectation tire. 61 Free from all tawdry and imposing glare They trusted to their native grace of air. Rapt'rous and wild the trembling soul they seize, } Or sly coy beauties steal it by degrees; } 65 The more you view them still the ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... more, no more, since thou art dead, Shall we e'er bring coy brides to bed, No more, at yearly festivals, We cowslip balls Or chains of columbines shall make, For this or that occasion's sake. No, no! our maiden pleasures be Wrapt ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... hath gone to roam, The franklin's maid she bides at home; But she is cold, and coy, and staid, And who may win the ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fame's crown of light, The latest murmur of departing day, Fond friendship's plaint, that melts at piteous sight, The mystic farewell of each hour at flight, The kiss which beauty grants with coy delay,— ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... join Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's on one side and Judge Hammond Mayne's are just behind us; so that the Judge's black Daddy January can court our yellow Clelie over one fence, with coy and delicate love-gifts of sugar-cane and sweet-potato pone in season; and Miss Sally Ruth's roosters and ours can wholeheartedly pick each other's eyes out through the other all the year round. These are fowls with so firm a faith in the Mosaic ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... proceedings of this particular night at the Green Dragon. The pipes charged, and those of the guests who smoked, well fixed behind them, celestial Harmony was invoked through the slowly curling clouds. In Britain the Goddess is coy. She demands pressure to appear, and great gulps of ale. Vastly does she swell the chests of her island children, but with the modesty of a maid at the commencement. Precedence again disturbed the minds of the company. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... your ear?" To which, looking rather shy, he responded: "Well, Colonel, it was bit off." "How did it happen, Ben?" "Well, you see, I was sent to arrest a gentleman, and him and me mixed it up, and he bit off my ear." "What did you do to the gentleman, Ben?" And Ben, looking more coy than ever, responded: "Well, Colonel, we broke about even!" I forebore to inquire what variety of mayhem he had committed on the "gentleman." After considerable struggle I got him confirmed by the Senate, and he made one of the best marshals in the entire service, exactly as ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... admiration—lovely! Thou that smoothest the wrinkles of wisdom, and softenest the tone of the more sublime virtues till they all melt into humanity! thou that spreadest the ethereal cloud that surrounding love heightens every beauty, it half shades, breathing those coy sweets that steal into the heart, and charm the senses—modulate for me the language of persuasive reason, till I rouse my sex from the flowery bed, on which they supinely ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... intelligence can hardly be supposed to have yet attained to, it becomes probable that magic arose before religion in the evolution of our race, and that man essayed to bend nature to his wishes by the sheer force of spells and enchantments before he strove to coax and mollify a coy, capricious, or irascible deity by the soft insinuation ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... O Bride, whatever dare Thy groom, of coy rebuff beware, Lest he to find elsewhither fare. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... weather is prone to be coy, if not fickle, the manual part of transplanting should always be properly done. The plants should always be taken up with as little loss of roots as possible, be kept exposed to the air as short a time as possible, and when set in the ground have the soil ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... presence? It seemed to me impossible: I could not realize such deadness. I imagined her grateful in secret, loving now with reserve; but purposing one day to show how much she loved: I pictured her faithful hero half conscious of her coy fondness, and comforted by that consciousness: I conceived an electric chord of sympathy between them, a fine chain of mutual understanding, sustaining union through a separation of a hundred leagues—carrying, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... joy incessant palls the sense; And love, unchanged will cloy, And she became a bore intense Unto her love-sick boy! With fitful glimmer burnt my flame, And I grew cold and coy, At last, one morning, I became Another's ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... however, this state of things only served to make the man more eager to talk with the lady. She was not anxious for his attention. Ah! She was coy, and the acquaintance was to have the zest of being no lightly won friendship. All the better. He watched her as she talked, noted every charm of lash and lid and curving lip; stared so continually that she finally gave up looking his way at all, even ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... thee I owe, More than others here will know; Thou hast cheered my weary days, With thy coy and winsome ways. When my heart has been most sad, Smile of thine has made me glad; In return, I wish for thee, Health and sweet felicity. May thy future days be blest, With all things the world deems best. If perchance the day should come, ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... mistress to the young, But to her ancient servants coy and hard), Him at that age her favourites rank'd among, When she ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... my board and lodging, it was covenanted that, without any more ado, I should resign myself to clerical employment at Nantes. The merchant there is a friend of the family, and had offered to demonstrate his friendship by paying me too little to live on. Enfin, Fame has continued coy. The year expires to-night. I have begged a few comrades to attend a valedictory dinner—and at the stroke of ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... strength, was to employ him to lie a-bed all day and hatch turkey's eggs. The least allusion to this rumour used to drive him well-nigh frantic, and the fatal termination of his duel with young Crofts, which began in wanton mirth, and ended in bloodshed, made men more coy than they had formerly been, of making the fiery little hero ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... amiable and friendly pussy that ever walked on four paws. He took Danny to his heart at once: they used to lie in the sun together with Danny's head on the dog's big paws, and I sometimes used to meet them walking as coy as lovers, side by side, up one of the garden walks. When I could not help laughing at their sentimental and conscious air, they would turn aside into the bushes for shelter. They respected each other's ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... the campus be your joy, And whispered loves your lips employ, What time the twilight shadows gather, And tryst you keep with the maiden coy. ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... finer by far than those in the meadows, and deliciously fragrant. In the swampy hollows were yellow marsh marigolds and blue forget-me-nots; on the drier soil of the rising bank the wild hyacinths were just shaking open their bells, and heartsease here and there lifted coy ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... and arresting their execution. By my soul, I had not thought you so ready or so apt; but how do you reconcile it to your notions of propriety to be abroad at an hour which is something late for a coy damsel? Munro, you must look to these rare doings, or they will work you some difficulty ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Roman Cardinal, "whom Fortune does not visit once in his life: but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she goes in at the door, and out through the window." Opportunity is coy. The careless, the slow, the unobservant, the lazy fail to see it, or clutch at it when it has gone. The sharp fellows detect it instantly, and catch it ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... sun, Forth from my burning heart the words shall run. Far, far be envy, far be jealous fear, With discord dark and drear, And all the choir that is of love the foe.— The season had returned when soft winds blow, The season friendly to young lovers coy, Which bids them clothe their joy In divers garbs and many a masked disguise. Then I to track the game 'neath April skies Went forth in raiment strange apparelled, And by kind fate was led Unto the spot where stayed my soul's desire. The beauteous nymph ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... her, but not until the quick-witted girl had revealed to her, in one startled wave of consciousness, the full extent of Lance's infirmity of temper. With the instinct of awakened tenderness came a sense of responsibility, and a vague premonition of danger. The coy blossom of her heart was scarce unfolded before it was chilled by approaching shadows. Fearful of, she knew not what, she hesitated. Every moment of Lance's stay was imperiled by a single word that might spring from his suppressed white ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... made up her mind that she would be the Prince's legal wife, and no light-o'-love to be petted and flung aside when he chose, butterfly-like, to flit to some other flower; and this she made abundantly clear to Henry Frederick. Her favours—after a period of coquetry and coy reluctance—were at his disposal; but the price to be paid for them was a wedding-ring—nothing less. And such was the infatuation she had inspired that the Duke—flinging scruples and fears aside, consented. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... petty squalors and enjoyed things—the coy tremble of the tiller and the backwash of air from the dingy mainsail, and, with a somewhat chastened rapture, the lunch which Davies brought up to me and solicitously ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... in our kind: in the leafy shades of Upcote in Oxfordshire, he had pondered these things during his lonely years of youth and adolescence—had pondered, and in some cases already decided them UPON THE MERITS. This was remarkably so in the matter of Betty Coy, as he will tell you for himself before long. Meantime, lest I keep Dr. Lanfranchi too long upon the threshold of his own house, all I shall add to my picture of his pupil now is that he was the eldest son and third child of Squire Antony Strelley ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... another, and had a rogue's trick and a joke for all round. Poor girl! she broke her neck down stairs at a christening. To be sure I shall never meet with her fellow! But never you mind that; I do not doubt that I shall find more in you upon further acquaintance. As coy and bashful as you seem, I dare say you are rogue enough at bottom. When I have touzled and rumpled you a little, we shall see. I am no chicken, miss, whatever you may think. I know what is what, and can see as far into ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... not coy, but use your time, And while ye may, go marry; For having lost but once your prime, You ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... I repine, Since all the roving birds are mine? The thrush and linnet in the vale, The sweet sequester'd nightingale, The bulfinch, wren, and wood-lark, all Obey my summons when I call: O! could I form some cunning snare To catch the coy, coquetting fair, In Cupid's filmy web so fine, The pretty girls should ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... his teeth half savagely, the little witch tantalizing him with the swiftness of her speech, the coy archness of her manner. To his slower mentality she was like a humming-bird darting about from flower to flower, ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... hidden it from the eyes of the world. I fancied as she came—'twas all in a flash—that into this rare creation He had breathed a spirit harmonious with the afflatus of its conception. And being thus overcome and preoccupied, I left the maid's coy lips escape me, but kissed her long, slender-fingered hand, which she withdrew, at once, to give to John Cather, who was most warm and voluble in greeting. I was by this hurt; but John Cather was differently affected: it seemed ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... so gay and kittenish and coy as she! She was the essence of youth. Her hair was as yellow as gold and so thick and undulating that one could not help wondering how far down her back it would drop if released. Her lips were red with the rich, warm blood of ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... are erotics! In one place he writes, "Beautiful art thou, O Broom! on the breezy bosom of the bee-haunted heath"; and throughout he buds and blossoms into similar delights. He wallows in doves and coy toyings and modest blushes, and bowers and meads. He always adds, "Wonderful boy!" to Chatterton's name as if it were a university degree (W.B.), and he invariably refers to Moore as the Bard of Erin, and to Milton as the Bard of Paradise—though Bard ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... day coach—the fine and the loss of his Pullman reservation have left him with less than three dollars in cash—Oliver crawls into Vanamee and Company's about four in the afternoon. Everybody but Mrs. Wimple and Mr. Tickler is out of Copy for the moment and the former greets him with coy wit. ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... ago, in that heroic time When I, a coy and modest youth, was shot Out on this dust-heap of careers and crime To try and ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... To be in loue; where scorne is bought with grones: Coy looks, with hart-sore sighes: one fading moments mirth, With twenty watchfull, weary, tedious nights; If hap'ly won, perhaps a haplesse gaine; If lost, why then a grieuous labour won; How euer: but a folly bought with wit, Or else a wit, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... hand and pulls her back.] I've never had a good look at your face yet, my girl—you act uncommon coy, and that ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... purple hue. Shortly she shall follow you; for her impetuous time runs on, and shall place to her account those years of which it abridges you; shortly Lalage with a wanton assurance will seek a husband, beloved in a higher degree than the coy Pholoe, or even Chloris; shining as brightly with her fair shoulder, as the spotless moon upon the midnight sea, or even the Gnidian Gyges, whom if you should intermix in a company of girls, the undiscernible difference occasioned by his flowing locks and doubtful countenance would ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... flights from one bed of flowers to another, and when resting for a few minutes, folding and unfolding her wings on the gravel path, I crept slowly up to her with a drop of honey on my finger to try and make friends; but my "lady" was coy, "she would and she wouldn't," and after letting me come within a few inches with my tempting repast, she floated away, out of sight, and I feared she would not be willing to give me another chance; however, I waited quietly, and in a few minutes she alighted ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... She seemed to be coy; to quarrel sometimes; to beg; to promise. They whirled about; they executed steps; they snapped castanets. The orchestra sang, whistled, snapped, strummed. The music flowed in waltzes; it jerked in Castilian measures; it whispered. It serenaded, while Fil carried a mandolin with a ribbon. ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... course of five minutes' conversation! She wasn't a day too old for Heriot W. That's to say, he could do with a lassie of that age fine, and, by Gad, he shouldn't wonder but Ellen mightn't have rather cottoned to him if her heart had been free. She looked deuced coy when she thought he was proposing. Yes, a girl like Ellen was the ticket for him. But in that ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... have no guile between them," saith a proverb, traced back to Confucius. O ye days of still sunshine, reflected back from our selves! O ye haunts endeared evermore by a look, tone, or smile, or rapt silence, when more and more with each hour unfolded before me that nature, so tenderly coy, so cheerful though serious, so attuned by simple cares to affection, yet so filled, from soft musings and solitude, with a poetry that gave grace to duties the homeliest, setting life's trite things to ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thee! (selfish love Such preference may be,) That thou reservest all thy sweets, Coy ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... made the barriers tight? Next morn I heard their impious voices sing; All up the stairs their blasphemies did ring: "Come forth, O Williams, wherefore thus supine Remain within thy chambers after nine? Come forth, suffer thyself to be admired, And blush not so, coy dean, to be desired." The captive churchman chafes with empty rage, Till some knight-errant free him from his cage. Pale fear and anger sit upon yon face Erst full of love and piety and grace, But not pale fear nor anger will ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... wooer. It is an exceedingly interesting and amusing sight to see a couple of males paying their addresses to a coy and coquettish female; the apparent shyness of the suitors as they sidle up to her and as quickly retreat again, the shy glances given as one peeps from behind a limb watching the other—playing bo-peep—seem very human, and "I have seen," says an observer, "few more ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... Wright was standing so as to be completely hidden by the door: and Marvel, not seeing his friend, addressed himself, as soon as he had breath, to his mistress.—The lady's manner changed, and Wright had an opportunity of seeing and admiring her powers of acting. To Marvel, she was coy and disdainful. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... the irrepressible Hicks, as Coach Corridan warmed up to his vision, "you don't want much, Coach! Why don't you ask Ted Coy, the famous ex-Yale full-back, to give up his business and play the position for you? Maybe you can persuade Charlie Brickley, a fair sort of dropkicker, to quit coaching Hopkins, and kick a few goals for ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... the head of the high stoop. "I was gettin' uneasy. Honest I was." And dropping her voice: "Miss Kalmanovitch came on time. She's a good girl. Always." And she gave me a knowing look that brought the color to my face and a coy ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Roosevelt, who was dressed in a Moire antique bath-towel and was eating walnuts, met coy Aunt Priscilla in a Khaki tea-gown playing with her Noah's Ark, when he would much rather have met Madame Tussaud. They met at South Hampton. What he thought was, "Here's this woman again," but he merely said, "That's a very chic costume of yours." What she thought was, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Rouges," in 1814, when barely seventeen. He served until 1827, "twelve long years of peace," then resigned. Already in 1822 appeared a volume of 'Poemes' which was hardly noticed, although containing poetry since become important to the evolution of French verse: 'La Neige, le Coy, le Deluge, Elva, la Frigate', etc., again collected in 'Poemes antiques et modernes' (1826). Other poems were published after his death ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... walnut-shells, which she set down upon the bottom of a feather-pot, and then, after she had given them three whisks of a broom besom athwart the chimney, casting into the fire half a bavin of long heather, together with a branch of dry laurel, she observed with a very hush and coy silence in what form they did burn, and saw that, although they were in a flame, they made no kind of noise or crackling din. Hereupon she gave a most hideous and horribly dreadful shout, muttering betwixt her teeth some few barbarous words ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Gavin scratched gratingly on the tree trunk, and gazed up in ostentatious admiration at the coy Simon Cameron. The Persian, like all his kind, was foolishly open to admiration. Brice's look, his crooning voice, his entertaining fashion of scratching the tree for the cat's amusement all these proved a genuine lure. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... opposed science and experience to the prejudices of superstition and ignorance, and in doing so incurred much misrepresentation, and perhaps no little ill-will, in the cause of truth and humanity, claim for them some distinction in a work on Demonology. The pursuers of exact science to its coy retreats, were sure to be the first to discover that the most remarkable phenomena in Nature are regulated by certain fixed laws, and cannot rationally be referred to supernatural agency, the sufficing cause to which superstition attributes all that is beyond her own narrow power of ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... the Custom-house, and every afternoon met at the races, the bull-fight, a merienda, or to climb the greased pole, catch the greased pig by its tail as it ran, or exhibit skill in horsemanship. Chonita, at times an imperious coquette, at others, indifferent, perverse, or coy, was La Favorita without appeal, and the girls alternately worshipped her—she was abstractedly kind to them—or heartily wished her back in Santa Barbara. Estenega rarely attended the socialities, being closeted with Alvarado and Castro most of the time, ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Which was sometime his general; who lov'd him In a most dear particular. He call'd me father: But what o' that? Go, you that banish'd him; A mile before his tent fall down, and knee The way into his mercy: nay, if he coy'd To hear Cominius speak, I'll keep ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... old the Sun, our sire, Came wooing the mother of men, Earth, that was virginal then, Vestal fire to his fire. Silent her bosom and coy, But the strong god sued and pressed; And born of their starry nuptial joy Are all that drink of ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... tale. So romantic is it that I shall be forced to pry into the coy recesses of the mind in order to exhibit a connected, reasonable affair, not only of a man and his wife prosperously seated in the mean of things, nel mezzo del cammin in space as well as time—for the ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... virtues would not suit in the presence of one whose favourite task it was to laugh his so-called virtues to scorn. Such, at least to begin with, was his honourable intention. But the subtle Wratislaw drew him from his retirement and skilfully elicited his coy principles. It was a cruel performance—a shameless one, had there been any spectator. The one would lay down a fine generous line of policy; the other would beg for a fact in confirmation. The one would haltingly detail some facts; the other would ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... prison, as you have heard, and Nicolette remained shut up in her chamber. It was summer-time, in the month of May, when the days are warm and long and clear, and the nights coy and serene. ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... my dear Harry, we must all be prepared for trials in this rugged world, but then, according to my experience, we are the better for them in the end. If the lady is obdurate or coy, or if her friends throw obstacles in the way, or if want of means exist, we must try to win her by greater attention, or sometimes by pretended indifference, or we must set to work to overcome the obstacles, or to gain the means which are wanting, and we ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... confess, there was one bold with me too, Some coy thing would say rude, but 'tis no matter, I was to pay a Waiting womans ransom, And I have don't, and I would pay't again, Were I ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... the next two reigns is far too wide a subject to be entered upon here. Grave or gay, satirical or idyllic, coy or wanton, there is scarcely a poet of note or obscurity who did not contribute his share. Nowhere is a rarer note of pastoral to be found than ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... stuff the Secretary Bird spouted when you showed Phillis to him, Kit? About her being forward, or coy, or something. It sounded ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... an impostor, for she appeared to have sincere faith in her profession. Often she exclaimed with solemn fervency, "The gift I hae is fae aboon, an' what He gies daurna be hidit." It was common for coy damsels and staid matrons to wend their way to Lizzie's cot about twilight, to have their fortunes spaed. About ten years before her death, when the prospects of the herring fishing were discouraging in the extreme, a buxom young woman, belonging to Pittenweem or St. Monance, repaired ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... cannot tell what they think—- Only know they eat and drink, And on all that lies about With a quiet heart look out, Each after its kind, stately or coy, Solemn like man, gamesome like boy, Glad ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... maiden. The other, however, had attractions of a very different class: fine-featured, dark-eyed, coal-black-haired and tall; as she stood—her right hand holding the rude torch over her head, while the left gathered the folds of a long cloak under her bosom, with her eyes of coy expectation and merry amazement—she seemed more the ideal of a robber's daughter in some old romance, than a menial in a moorland farm-house. I attempted to salute her, but she held me at bay with her hand. "Hech, lad! ye're no blate—is it knievin' troots[A] ye think ye are? ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... him, and the lover had had an opportunity of speaking his mind freely. She also had spoken hers freely. She would not engage herself to him without her father's consent. With that consent she would do so,—oh, so willingly! She did not coy her love. He might be certain that she would give herself to no one else. Her heart was entirely his. But she had pledged herself to her father, and on no consideration would she break that pledge. She went ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... have these poor monosyllables conveyed! More than any other words in the whole dictionary have they enraptured or saddened the human heart; rung out the peal of joy, or sounded the knell of hope. And yet not so often as at first sight might appear, for these blunt and honest words are, both, kindly coy in ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... single man in a space suit, anchored to its outer plates, directed a plastic hose which stretched out impossibly far and clamped to one drone with a magnetic grapple. He maneuvered it to the hull and made it fast. He captured a second, which was worked delicately within reach by coy puffs of ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... a brow encircled by eternal snows reflected a sheen of glorious splendor; when, conscious of her immense wealth in coal, minerals, and fisheries, her delightful climate and geographical position, she bid for commercial supremacy. It is said of States, as of women, they are "fickle, coy and hard to please." For, changed and governed from England's Downing Street, "with all its red tape circumlocution," "Tile Barncal," incapacity, and "how-not-to-do-it" ability that attached to that venerable institution, its people were ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... All I shall 'ave ze honour of showing you will be perform by simple Sloight of 'and, or Ledger-dee-Mang! (He invites any member of the Audience to step up and assist him, but the spectators remain coy.) I see zat I 'ave not to-night so larsh an orjence to select from as usual, still I 'ope——(Here one of the obvious Confederates slouches up, and joins him on the platform. ) Ah, zat is goot! I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... Slumber was coy with me that night. I lay listening to the soughing of the wind, and thinking of Mr. Jaffrey's illusion. It had amused me at first with its grotesqueness; but now the poor little phantom was dead, I was conscious that there had been something pathetic in it all along. ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... second-rate. As a matter of fact the marriage had happened entirely by accident. It had occurred through a misunderstanding during a game of consequences in a country house. She was terribly literal. Having taken some joke of his seriously, she had sent him a touchingly coy letter saying she was overwhelmed at his offer (feeling she was hardly worthy to be his wife) and must think it over. He did not like to hurt her feelings by explaining, and when she relented and accepted ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... semblance oft Meet a guerdon, coy and soft, And timid lovers sometimes find Reward both merciful and kind: Yet to the lips prefer the feet Seems to my mind a ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... see early pricks the tree that will prove a thorn: hath my familiar conversing with you made you coy,[1] or my good looks drawn you to be thus contemptuous? I can quickly remedy such a fault, and I will bend the tree while it is a wand. In faith, sir boy, I have a snaffle for such a headstrong colt. You, sirs, lay hold on him and bind him, and then I ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... sight of her making rapid flights from one bed of flowers to another, and when resting for a few minutes, folding and unfolding her wings on the gravel path, I crept slowly up to her with a drop of honey on my finger to try and make friends; but my "lady" was coy, "she would and she wouldn't," and after letting me come within a few inches with my tempting repast, she floated away, out of sight, and I feared she would not be willing to give me another chance; however, I waited ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... herds would over-multitude their lords; The sea o'erfraught would swell, and the unsought diamonds Would so emblaze the forehead of the deep, And so bestud with stars, that they below Would grow inured to light, and come at last To gaze upon the sun with shameless brows. List, lady; be not coy, and be not cozened With that same vaunted name, Virginity. Beauty is Nature's coin; must not be hoarded, But must be current; and the good thereof 740 Consists in mutual and partaken bliss, Unsavoury in the enjoyment of itself. If you let slip time, like a neglected rose It withers ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... was a fair maid And fresh as any flower, Whom Harpalus the herdman prayed To be his paramour. Harpalus and eke Corin Were herdmen, both yfere; And Phylida could twist and spin, And thereto sing full clear. But Phylida was all too coy For Harpalus to win; For Corin was her only joy, Who forced her not a pin. How often would she flowers twine, How often garlands make, Of cowslips and of columbine, And all for Corin's sake! But Corin, he had hawks to lure, And forced more the field; Of lovers' law he took no ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... depositaries of these national treasures, believe that the inquirer can have any real interest in the matter. They fear that the question is only put to turn them into ridicule; for the popular mind is a sensitive plant; it becomes coy, and closes its leaves at the first rude touch; and when once shut, it is hard to make these aged lips reveal the secrets of the memory. There they remain, however, forming part of an under-current of tradition, of which the educated classes, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... flowers, which is very eloquent—a philosophy that is instructive. Nature appears to have made them as emblems of women. The timid snow-drop, the modest violet, the languid primrose, the coy lily, the flaunting tulip, the smart marigold, the lowly blushing daisy, the proud foxglove, the deadly nightshade, the sleepy poppy, and the sweet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... poor monosyllables conveyed! More than any other words in the whole dictionary have they enraptured or saddened the human heart; rung out the peal of joy, or sounded the knell of hope. And yet not so often as at first sight might appear, for these blunt and honest words are, both, kindly coy in ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... predestined flight, Than I, HER viewless tresses netted in. As some most beautiful one, with lovely taunting, Her eyes of guileless guile o'ercanopies, Does her hid visage bow, And miserly your covetous gaze allow, By inchmeal, coy degrees, Saying—"Can you see me now?" Yet from the mouth's reflex you guess the wanting Smile of the coming eyes In all their upturned grievous witcheries, Before that sunbreak rise; And each still hidden feature view within Your mind, as eager scrutinies detail ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... Laura's coy smile hinted many things. "I should say so. Since the very first day in church. He said—but I don't like to tell ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... the dances, The dearest were those we sat out, How I frowned when detecting your glances On others, which caused you to pout? You are changeful and coy and capricious, A weathercock easily blown; But when shall I hear the delicious One word ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... tractable and coming, apt, yielding, and willing to embrace, to take a green gown, with that shepherdess in Theocritus, Edyl. 27. to let their coats, &c., to play and dally, at such seasons, and to some, as they spy their advantage; and then coy, close again, so nice, so surly, so demure, you had much better tame a colt, catch or ride a wild horse, than get her favour, or win her love, not a look, not a smile, not a kiss for a kingdom. [5125]Aretine's Lucretia was an excellent artisan in this kind, as ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... is my only joy, Faithless as the winds or seas, Sometimes cunning, sometimes coy, Yet she ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... death ten times.' He uttered his inmost thoughts out of pity:—All this he had awaited. The King's Highness by the report of his painters, his ambassadors, his spies—they were all in the pay of Cromwell—had awaited a lady of modest demeanour, a coy habit, and a great and placid fairness. 'I had warned the Almains at Rochester to attire her against our coming. But she slobbered with ecstasy and slipped sideways, aiming at a courtesy. Therefore the King was hot with new ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... the mother of good luck"; that nine times out of ten what we call luck or fate is but a mere bugbear of the indolent, the languid, the purposeless, the careless, the indifferent; that, as a rule, the man who fails does not see or seize his opportunity. Opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... frames ere long. I think I'll have you painted as chaste Diana, descended from the sky, despite her coldness, to lavish sweet kisses on Endymion. You shall take your place among those other goddesses, who were as coy and hard to please at first as yourself, and who are far greater ladies, my dear, than you ever will be. Your fall is at hand, and you must learn, as your betters have done before you, that there's no withstanding ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... somehow, of a steam-roller flirting with a cow—but on the stage it is so sylph-like. She has short skirts, and her stockings are so much tidier and better fitting than these things are in real peasant life, and she is arch and coy. She turns away from him and laughs—such a silvery laugh. And he is ruddy and curly haired and has on such a beautiful waistcoat! how can she help but love him? And he is so tender and devoted and holds her ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, When pain and anguish wring the brow, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... door: and Marvel, not seeing his friend, addressed himself, as soon as he had breath, to his mistress.—The lady's manner changed, and Wright had an opportunity of seeing and admiring her powers of acting. To Marvel, she was coy and disdainful. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... a ma maison a Londres. Sur ce temps-la, s'il vous plaira d'envoyer v^{re} filz vers moy, il sera le bien venu. Son traittement rendra tesmoinage de l'estime que je fais de vostre amitie. De vous envoyer des nouvelles, ce seroyt d'envoyer Noctuas Athenas. Tout est coy icy. La mort de Concini a rendu la France heureuse. Mais l'Italie est en danger d'estre exposee a la tirannie d'Espagne. Je vous baise les mains, et suis, Mons^r, vostre ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... animals, however, the females at first withdraw from the males; they are coy, and have to be sought out, and sometimes held by force. This tracking and grasping of the females by the males has given rise to many different characters in the latter, as, for instance, the larger eyes of the male ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... who had a wife waiting for him at home, because if their addresses were rejected the mermaids were liable to throw stones, and always with fatal results; or they would brew mists, and set loose awful storms; yet, if the man who inspired this affection was not coy, and yielded to one of these slippery denizens, she dragged him under the sea forthwith, unless he could persuade her to compromise on a cave or a lonely rock as a home, for it is reputed that mortals have formally wedded them and raised ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... the British public is a task of herculean difficulty and danger, for the blatant monster is, at times, as whimsical and coy as a maiden, and if it once makes up its mind not to be amused, nothing will shake it. The labour is enormous, the sacrifice beyond what is demanded of saints. And if you succeed, what is your reward? Read the lives of comedians, and closing them, you will see what good reason ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... sometimes be arrived at in a tentative way; but they are broad and determinate; and, when found, vindicate themselves. Still, in all this erroneous subtilisation, and these abortive efforts, Kant perceived a grasping at some real idea—fugitive indeed and coy, which had for the present absolutely escaped; but he caught glimpses of it continually in the rear; he felt its necessity to any account of the human understanding that could be satisfactory to one who ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... fully intended to marry him. The engagement neared its close, and on the day before that of the wedding, the man, slow minded, loving intensely, procured the marriage licence. The woman read the document, and with the last coy flutter before surrender told him that ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... resumed Savarin, drawing away the manuscript from Isaura's coy, reluctant clasp, "do permit me to cast a glance over these papers. For what I yet know, there may be here more promise of fame than even you could gain ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hardly fix upon any cause to which female delicacy is to be ascribed. If we attend, however, to the whole animal creation, if we consider it attentively wherever it falls under our observation, it will discover to us, that in the female there is a greater degree of delicacy or coy reserve than in the male. Is not this a proof, that, through the wide extent of creation, the seeds of delicacy are more liberally bestowed upon ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Then be not coy, but use your time, And while ye may, go marry: For having lost but once your prime, You may ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... king. With prospering shade embower me, whilst I sing Thy wonders yet unreached by mortal flight. Sky-piercing mountain! in thy bowers of love, No tears are seen, save where medicinal stalks Weep drops balsamic o'er the silvered walks. No plaints are heard, save where the restless dove Of coy repulse, and mild reluctance talks. Mantled in woven gold, with gems inchas'd, With emerald hillocks graced, From whose fresh laps, in young fantastic mazes, Soft crystal bounds and blazes, Bathing the lithe convolvulus that winds Obsequious, ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... all thine eyes look down! Darkness shed its holiest dew! When ever smiled the inconstant moon On a pair so true? Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light, 5 Lest eyes see their own delight! Hence, swift hour! and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... wrote a dissertation upon this atmospheric mockery. Many have seen and described it, among them Filati de Tassulo; Nicola Leoni reproduces the narrative of an eye-witness of 1643; another account appears in the book of A. Fortis ("Mineralogische Reisen, 1788"). The apparition is coy. Yet there are pictures of it—in an article in "La Lettura" by Dr. Vittorio Boccara, who therein refers to a scientific treatise by himself on the subject, as well as in the little volume "Da Reggio a Metaponto" by Lupi-Crisafi, which was printed at Gerace some years ago. I ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... only be there from Saturday afternoon till Monday at noon, and Boggley says that Kangchenjunga is often cloud-covered for weeks, so it is a mere chance whether we shall see it. But surely, surely Kangchenjunga won't be coy with me. I came to India, of course, in the first place to see Boggley, but in the second place to see the snows, and I can't believe that the gods will be so unkind as to deny a humble worshipper of great mountains a ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... Wayland." All the curl papers nodded like clover tops in the wind, while the coy brows arched, and an inviting smile played round the simpering headlights. "No, he ain't! Dan ain't in!" The curl papers nodded again and the gold teeth ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... nail by the gate. Isn't it fun to make believe like children? We don't often play, do we Philip? You must take my hand very gently, under the hay," pulling the cushion over her wrist. "I draw it away, you see, rather shyly, looking deliciously coy, and say: 'Oh! ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... feasted, far apart From churls, who, wondered what our friendship meant; And in that coy retirement heart to heart Drew closer, and our ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... fellow, Doc Bennet! I tried all afternoon yesterday to locate the lithersome Clip. Took a coy little jaunt of two miles afoot - some one said she had a friend out Bentley way, but I did not locate her. Hope ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... to him in public as His Reverence!" Olive sighed. "It is almost as bad as her coy flirtation with him, during sermon time. If I were in his place, I'd ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... who are content to ramble through the world in a pleasant dream, rather than ever waken again to its harsh realities. We are alchemists who would extract the essence of perpetual youth from dust and ashes, tempt coy Truth in many light and airy forms from the bottom of her well, and discover one crumb of comfort or one grain of good in the commonest and least-regarded matter that passes through our crucible. Spirits of past times, creatures of imagination, and ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... as are Marvell's lines to his Coy Mistress, I have not the heart to omit them, so eminently characteristic are they ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... twenty-six years old. At that age, with plenty of romantic illusions still left, the mind loves to dwell on the thought of death when death seems to come as a friend. But with youth, death is coy, coming up close only to go away, showing himself and hiding again, till youth has time to fall out of love with him during this dalliance. There is that uncertainty too that hangs over death's to-morrow. ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... P. M. There was coy conversation, while the civilian telephone-service suffered. Then Sergeant Walpole went back to his post of duty with a date for the evening. He never kept that date, as it turned out. The rural Central was dead an hour after the first and only Wabbly landed, and as everybody knows, that ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... by nodding towers you tread; Or haunt the desart's trackless gloom, Or hover o'er the yawning tomb; Or climb the Andes' clifted side, Or by the Nile's coy source abide; Or, starting from your half-year's sleep, From Hecla view the thawing deep; Or, at the purple dawn of day, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... did not betray her to the others; seemed to enjoy the equivoque, content to wait. So he kept her on tenterhooks; she felt a cheat, and what is worse, a detected cheat. This filled her deep with shame. It made her more coy and more a prude than she had ever need to be had she gone among them kirtled and coifed. At last came the day when that happened which she had darkly dreaded. A load of coals went off to Market Basing; to dinner ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... fountain of eternal day, Could it within the human flow'r be seen, Rememb'ring still its former height, Shuns the sweet leaves, and blossoms green; And, recollecting its own light, Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express The greater heaven in an heaven less, In how coy a figure wound, Every way it turns away: So the world excluding round, Yet receiving in the day. Dark beneath, but bright above; Here disdaining, there in love, How loose and easy hence to go; How girt ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... the arm of an attendant, in a graceful attitude, remains slightly smiling, in such a manner that no description can express her beauty. The guards become fascinated and remain immoveable. With trembling frame and coy of heart she finally departs ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... that Englishmen, when they first come to this country, are for some time under the impression that American women all have deformed feet, they are so coy of them and so studiously careful to keep them hid. That there is an astonishing difference between the women of the two countries in this respect, every traveler can testify; and that there is a difference equally astonishing between the pedestrian habits and capabilities of the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... be In love: when scorn is bought with groans; coy looks, With heart-sore sighs; one fading moment's mirth, With ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... exclaimed: "Was I not right? You are like two lovers; Lupinus acts the part of the coy maiden to the life. I do not believe, Eckhof, that you will ever have a wife who will love you more entirely, more tenderly, than ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... talk of my Mr. Jones just as if we were married, because it all comes easier to me in that way. You will see that I absolutely believe in you and I expect that you shall absolutely believe in me. Send you a kiss! Of course I do; I am not at all coy of my favours. You ask Mahomet also as to what he thinks of the strength of my right arm. I examined his face so minutely when I had to fall into his arms on the stage, and there I saw the round mark of my fist, and the swelling all round it. And I thought ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... is courtly now, this is sweete, this plaine, this is familiar, but by the Court of France, our peevish dames are so proud, so precise, so coy, so disdainfull, and so subtill, as the Pomonian Serpent, mort dieu the Puncke of Babylon was ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... Young Men with pastimes the Twilight beguile, I watch your plump cheek till it dimples with joy: And observe, that whatever occasions the smile, You give me a glance; but provokingly coy. ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... not so far gone As you suppose: Two words t' a bargain: That may be done, and time enough, When you have given downright proof; And yet 'tis no fantastic pique 545 I have to love, nor coy dislike: 'Tis no implicit, nice aversion T' your conversation, mein, or person, But a just fear, lest you should prove False and perfidious in love:, 550 For if I thought you could be true, I could love twice as much ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... of the sacred well, That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring, Begin, and somwhat loudly sweep the string. Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse, So may som gentle Muse With lucky words favour my destin'd Urn, 20 And as he passes turn, And bid fair peace be to my sable shrowd. For we were nurst upon the self-same hill, Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... wall and roof. Its banked edges bristle and stand up in the bight of a vaster bay, with a crooked breakwater, like a bent finger, beckoning passing sails to its harbourage—an invitation which most are coy of accepting. For the attractions of King's Cobb are—comparatively—limited, and its nearest station is a full six miles ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... lover's interview? Who dares to snatch the first coy love words from a maiden's lips, and give them to a world grown old in love making, and appraising each tender word by its ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... begin plays and to be funny. The curtain of a farce should rise on a butler and a parlourmaid remarking on the fact that master was suspiciously late last night; and the butler should be amorous, bibulous and peculative, and the parlourmaid coy and trim. Similarly, footmen should be haughty and drop their aitches, cooks short-tempered, red and fat, and office-boys knowing and cheeky. The public expected it, and the public ought to have it ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... world! Their ears To one demand alone are coy; They will not give us love and tears, They bring us light and ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... In silence I took a deep delicious bite, nimbly chased the coy filling around a corner with my tongue, devoured every bit down to the last crumb and licked the stickiness off my fingers. Then I investigated the interior of ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... true. Then he was pressing, and you were coy, until finally he extorted your definitive answer, which was—" Maria paused, and seemed to be intensely studying the looks of the other—Miss Henley smiled as she turned her placid, ingenuous features to her gaze, and continued the ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... touch, those sweet, fresh, crimson lips of hers, that were like a half-opened damask rose. Modesty is apt to go to the wall in camps, and poor little Cigarette's notions of the great passion were very simple, rudimentary, and in no way coy. How should they be? She had tossed about with the army, like one of the tassels to their standards; blowing whichever way the breath of war floated her; and had experienced, or thought she had experienced, as many affairs as the veriest Don Juan among them, though ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... loue; where scorne is bought with grones: Coy looks, with hart-sore sighes: one fading moments mirth, With twenty watchfull, weary, tedious nights; If hap'ly won, perhaps a haplesse gaine; If lost, why then a grieuous labour won; How euer: but a folly bought with wit, Or else a wit, by ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... some favored song; A life-like presence lending to the theme, Until the soul is fervent in return Of they who listen to its thrilling power. Then they would wander to the village oft, Now by the path along the bridge, and then Across the water by the ferry-boat; For the coy village is across the stream, Near on a line from where the castle stands, And nigh it well, that when the breeze accords, Or calm prevails, the sounds come floating o'er Of mirthful lads in gambol on the green, Or the part song of buxom damsel raised, Who lightly busies at ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... clasping her hands, and looking solemnly up to heaven. "If, in my eager acquiescence, I seem unmaidenly, forgive me; but I dare not be coy, Eugene; we have no time for conventional reserve, and I must act as becomes a brave and trusting woman, for every moment is fraught with danger. I am surrounded by spies, even of my own household, and, until I hear the blessing of the priest, I ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... dancing, to show their figures; others coloring, to improve their complexion, others having been a good three hours before a mirror trimming themselves, learning to smile, pinning and unpinning, making grimaces and striking attitudes. Many a coy wench was there who knew not how to open her lips to speak, much less to eat, or from very ceremony, how to look under foot; and many a ragged shrew who would contend that she was equal to the best lady in the street, ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... Rumford in her had their joy She showed herself courteous and modestly coy And at her commandment still would they be; So fair and so comely was ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... as he intended she should, and blushed a visible acknowledgment. All of her character was visible, well-developed as her body: her timidity showed itself in the unceasing dropping of her eyelid; her arch simplicity in the pouting lips; a coy reserve—well, that everywhere, to the very rosette on her retreating slipper; and her patriotism was quite palpable in the color of her Balmoral. She rode ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... my knowledge, I deem it my duty to call a special meeting of the shareholders of 'The Island Navigation Coy.,' to consider circumstances in connection with the purchase of Mr. Joseph Pillin's fleet. And I give you notice that at this meeting your conduct will be called ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for thee the lirid clusters with a purple hue. Shortly she shall follow you; for her impetuous time runs on, and shall place to her account those years of which it abridges you; shortly Lalage with a wanton assurance will seek a husband, beloved in a higher degree than the coy Pholoe, or even Chloris; shining as brightly with her fair shoulder, as the spotless moon upon the midnight sea, or even the Gnidian Gyges, whom if you should intermix in a company of girls, the undiscernible difference occasioned by his ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... seemed to challenge me to find her a second time. In the end I was vexed, and resolved to be even with her by not visiting the wood for some time. A display of indifference on my part would, I hoped, result in making her less coy in the future. ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... doth hyr nest and byrdes also betraye By hyr grete chatterynge, clamoure dyn and crye, Ryght so these folys theyr owne foly bewraye. But touchynge wymen of them I wyll nought say, They can not speke, but ar as coy and styll As the horle wynde or clapper of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... partaker in their follies. How could I dream that he would have made scruples about a few years' youth or age, when the advantages of the match were so evident? And thou knowest, there would have been no moving yonder coy wench to be so frank as this coming Countess here, who hangs on our arms as dead a weight as a wool pack. I loved the lad too, and would have done him a kindness: to wed him to this old woman was to make his fortune, to unite ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... great sickenesse amongst them. Whereby it seemeth, that either his prelacy did much abuse him in perswading him to hopes, whereof after two or three dayes he saw no semblance: or he like a silly louer, who promiseth himselfe fauor by importuning a coy mistresse, thought by our long being before his towne, that in the end taking pity on him, they would ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... rolling as ever like a nervous intruder over the great snow peaks behind the steep hills black with forest that rose like a wall back of the little settlement of Sitka, parted for a moment, and the sun, a coy disdainful guest, flung a glittering mist over what Nature had intended to be one of the most enchanting spots on earth, until, in a fit of ill-temper—with one of the gods, no doubt—she gave it to Niobe as a permanent outlet for her discontent. When it does not rain at Sitka it ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... a new sense of misgiving. Danger was mysteriously coy, and she didn't know how to court it. True, there was still time enough, but the debut was not encouraging. When she had gone forth from Judson Flack's she had felt sure that adventure lay in wait for her, and Rashleigh Allerton had responded almost instantaneously. Now she had ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... also a Nonne, a Prioresse, That of her smyling was ful simple and coy; Hir grettest ooth was ne but by seynt Loy; And she was cleped madame Eglentyne. Ful wel she song the service divyne, Entuned in hir nose ful semely; And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly, After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe. ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... wax. "In person should my love have been display'd. "Then had my tears been seen; then had he view'd "My raptur'd countenance; then had I spoke "Far more than power of letters can convey. "My arms around his neck I then had thrown "Howe'er unwilling; and, had he been coy, "In dying posture I his feet had clasp'd; "And stretch'd before him life demanding, all "Had I achiev'd. Perchance though, by the boy, "My messenger commission'd, I have fail'd: "Aptly perhaps he enter'd not; perhaps, "And much I fear, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Mr. Coy was afflicted with a Cough, with Asthma combined, and at times was laid up for months, unable to do any thing—given over by his physician, who said that his lungs were badly effected. After a perseverance of three months in the use of the PHARMAKON, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to that worthy, who peeped in at that moment; "you are right, it is better to plow away upon canvas blindfold, as our grandfathers—no, grandmothers—used, than to kill ourselves toiling after such coy ladies as ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... Muses a retreat, O'er ground untrod before, I devious roam, And deep enamour'd into latent springs Presume to peep at coy ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... giving in the style of a carte blanche, I received fresh kisses of compliment from them all, in approval of my docility and good nature. Now I was "a sweet girl... I came into things with a good grace... I was not affectedly coy... I should be the pride of the house," ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... put it on, covered Ermine well, made up the fire, and took her seat on the form, just outside the screen, while Ermine tried to sleep. But sleep was coy, and would not visit the girl's eyes. Her state of mind was strangely quiescent and acquiescent in all that was done to her or for her. Perhaps extreme weakness had a share in this; but she felt as if sorrow and mourning were as far from her as was active, tumultuous ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... actually was, it felt raw and chill after the close, stifling atmosphere of the midshipman's berth. It was very dark, for it was only just past the date of the new moon, and the thin silver sickle—which was all that the coy orb then showed of herself—had set some hours before; moreover, there was a thin veil of mist or sea fog hanging upon the surface of the water, through which only a few of the brighter stars could be faintly distinguished near the zenith. There was ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... hand. "All right, fellows! Just a minute, please! We've got a guest with us this evening, an honoured guest, fellows. Those of you who know football history know his name as well as you know the names of Heffelfinger and DeWitt and Coy and Brickley and—and many others in the Football Hall of Fame! I know you want to hear from him and I hope he will be willing to say a few words." Childers glanced at Doctor Proctor and the latter, smiling, shook his head energetically. "He says he will be glad to, fellows," continued ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... a drawing-room song, darling! Sing by the sunset's glow; Now while the shadows are long, darling; Now while the lights are low; Something so chaste and so coy, darling! Something that melts the chest; Milder than even Molloy, darling! ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... afraid of Madame Schontz, who really loved him for himself, but he had supplanted a friend in the heart of a Marquise. This Marquise, a lady nowise coy, sometimes dropped in unexpectedly at his rooms in the evening, arriving veiled in a hackney coach; and she, as a literary woman, allowed herself to ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... is borne to your Majesty throughout these countries is great," said William Herle. They would have thrown themselves into her arms, heart and soul, had they been cordially extended at that moment of their distress; but she was coy, hesitating, and, for reasons already sufficiently indicated, although not so conclusive as they seemed, disposed to temporize and to await the issue of the negotiations between ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he was the victim of a plot which his friends, Mr. Cunningham, Mr. M'Coy and Mr. Power had disclosed to Mrs. Kernan in the parlour. The idea been Mr. Power's, but its development was entrusted to Mr. Cunningham. Mr. Kernan came of Protestant stock and, though he had been converted ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... should the campus be your joy, And whispered loves your lips employ, What time the twilight shadows gather, And tryst you keep with the maiden coy. ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... live anew To stay the soul with coy caresses; But he who only loves the True Slays them again, and ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... smile is curving o'er her creamy cheek, Her bosom swells with all a lover's joy, When love receives a message that the coy Young love-god made a strong and true heart speak From far-off lands; and like a mountain-peak That loses in one avalanche its cloy Of ice and snow, so doth her breast employ Its hidden store of blushes; and they wreak Destruction, as they crush my aching heart,— Destruction, wild, relentless, ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... river to Paris, and I doubted not that it was your Dragon, which had been hidden somewhere during the siege. I thought then of sending to tell you that I was lying here wounded; but Freda, who had always been talking of you, suddenly turned coy and said that you might have forgotten us, and if you wanted us you would come to ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... reservation have left him with less than three dollars in cash—Oliver crawls into Vanamee and Company's about four in the afternoon. Everybody but Mrs. Wimple and Mr. Tickler is out of Copy for the moment and the former greets him with coy wit. ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... him to finish, but waltzed right in. I danced straight up to that side of beef with the diamonds still on it, and flinging my arms about her, turned a coy ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... let him see it without being rude; but the blindness of egotism and vast self-appreciation was upon him and he thought her only charmingly coy; probably with the intent to thus conceal her ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... never could she be alone. Was she insensible to this presence? It seemed to me impossible: I could not realize such deadness. I imagined her grateful in secret, loving now with reserve; but purposing one day to show how much she loved: I pictured her faithful hero half conscious of her coy fondness, and comforted by that consciousness: I conceived an electric chord of sympathy between them, a fine chain of mutual understanding, sustaining union through a separation of a hundred leagues—carrying, across ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... touch of the coy little hand, that he glanced down to assure himself he had it on his arm. But his glance, stopping for an instant at the bright eyes, forgot its first design, and went ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... finches And all birds of scanty inches. Willie wagtail is a pleasant bird, and coy. All the babblers, chats and wrens, Tits and robins, and their hens, Are my very special ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... Maxim's so gay and kittenish and coy as she! She was the essence of youth. Her hair was as yellow as gold and so thick and undulating that one could not help wondering how far down her back it would drop if released. Her lips were red with ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... driver"; the air-tractor sledge; the Western sledging expedition; on tent pitching; his birthday; the relief party; winter work at the hut; wireless work; dredge constructed by; the home journey; account of Biology, work of the expedition Bird & Coy, Messrs. Birds, Antarctic, weight in relation to wing areas Birthday Camp Biscoe Island ........John, work Bishop and Clerk, islet Black Sunday Blair, J. H., Chief Officer on the 'Aurora' Blake, Cape ...... L R., work on Macquarie Island; visit to Sandy Bay; accident ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... in't. Its outside also they must beautify, When in it there's scarce common honesty. Their bodies they must have tricked up and trim, Their inside full of filth up to the brim. Upon their clothes there must not be a spot, But is their lives more than one common blot. How nice, how coy are some about their diet, That can their crying souls with hogs'-meat quiet. All drest must to a hair be, else 'tis naught, While of the living bread they have no thought. Thus for their outside they ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and a cool air stirs in the trees above, exorcising all mournful spirits. The harvest moon is rising and the white light lies sleeping, dreaming, on trees and cliff and river. On such a night pleading Pan wooed his coy nymph ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... argument of the spokesman, Honorable David Flint, that the sacred cause of Reform demanded me as its champion, and that victory was possible only under my banner? I had promised to think it over, which was a coy way of stating that I would accept. Having made up my mind to run, I was obliged to tell Josephine that this would mean good-by for many a long and weary month to ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... afternoon, Lady Clare with her heifer and Fillo Billaroo were found far away from the mob and driven home. It had been hot, and the big calf has an enormous appetite and apparently Lady Clare had been coy. When he saw his mother and his mother saw him, he stooped with uplifting nose, sniffing; she stopped feeding and begin to sniff. He seemed to say to himself, "I do believe I know that little creature. Yes; I am certain I must have met her ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... never." She shook a coy finger at him. "You dear old tightie," she cooed, "you don't realize what a closed car means to a woman." She turned to Shirley. "How an open car does blow one around, ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... which I then felt my first real passion. I thought I had loved before, but no, it was only a dream; the dream of the village schoolboy, who saw heaven in the bright eyes of his coy class-mate; or perhaps at the family picnic, in some romantic dell, had tasted the rosy ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... story, solemn fervors, subtile sympathies, and the winsomeness of little children at their play,—sometimes glowing with the deepest color, often just tinged to the pale and changing hues of a dream, but touched with such coy grace, modulated to such free, wild rhythm, suffused with such a delicate, evanishing loveliness, that they seem scarcely to be the songs of our tangible earth, but snatches from fairy-land. Often rude in form, often defective in rhyme, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... the prince he spoke, From the brave youth the streaming passion broke; Studious to veil the grief, in vain repress'd, His face he shrouded with his purple vest. The conscious monarch pierced the coy disguise, And view'd his filial love with vast surprise: Dubious to press the tender theme, or wait To hear the youth inquire his father's fate. In this suspense bright Helen graced the room; Before her breathed a gale of rich perfume. ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... thinking of "all those years" and the poor creature that from morning to night and Sunday to Sunday, in calm and storm, had clung to his rough affections: and the bright eyes, and the winding arms so often trellised over his tremendous form, and the coy tricks and laughter that had cheered so many tired hours. He may have been much of a brute, but he felt that, after all, that sort of thing was denied to dogs and pigs. Before he could translate his thoughts into words or acts ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... never be undone. The wise—and they included all his social world and many who were not of it—could see just how he had been living. The article which accompanied the pictures told how he had followed Jennie from Cleveland to Chicago, how she had been coy and distant and that he had to court her a long time to win her consent. This was to explain their living together on the North Side. Lester realized that this was an asinine attempt to sugar-coat the true story and it ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... dusky, coy, with long black hair and a short chamois dress, gaiters and moccasins and bare arms: so coy, and so ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... iron towards it. An intense energy lies behind such passivity, an absorbed pre-occupation in the end to be attained."[313] In the examples we have studied of the courtships of birds we saw that it is by no means a universal law that the male is eager and the female coy. I need only recall the instance noted by Darwin[314] in which a wild duck forced her love on a male pintail, and such cases, as is well known, are frequent. High-bred bitches will show sudden passions for low-bred ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... Sweden. Alexander offered Norway as the price of alliance, with hints of the crown of France for Bernadotte somewhere in the dim future. Napoleon temptingly offered Finland for forty thousand Swedish soldiers. But the new crown prince was seemingly coy, and dallied with both. This temporizing was brought to a sudden end in January, 1812, when Davout occupied Swedish Pomerania. On April twelfth the alliance between Sweden and Russia was sealed. It carried with it an armistice between Russia and Great Britain. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... tall; her hair, which was bound in a plain knot on the back of her head, was dark—almost black; her eyes were large, grey, lustrous, and on occasion could be proud and angry. Yet with it all she was pretty—pretty, said Drusus to himself, as any girl he had seen in Athens. For there were coy dimples in her delicate little chin, her finely chiselled features were not angular, while her cheeks were aglow with a healthy colour that needed no rouge to heighten. In short, Cornelia, like Drusus, was a Roman; and Drusus saw that she was a ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... further compensation in return," said John, "than, perhaps, the coy turning up of a lamp at an upper casement where the jasmine climbs; or an exasperating patter of invisible palms; or a huge dank wedge of fruit-cake shoved at you by the old man, through a crack ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... love with Beatrice. Now begin; for look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs close by the ground, to hear our conference.' They then began; Hero saying, as if in answer to something which Ursula had said: 'No, truly, Ursula. She is too disdainful; her spirits are as coy as wild birds of the rock.' 'But are you sure,' said Ursula, 'that Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?' Hero replied: 'So says the prince, and my lord Claudio, and they entreated me to acquaint her with it; but I persuaded them, if they loved Benedick, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... from conscience (though he did feel he had suddenly developed into a surprisingly finished scoundrel), as from a fear that his lie might after all be detected. He sat staring stupidly at Mr. Fladgate, who patted him on the shoulder with well-meant encouragement; he had never seen quite so coy an author before. 'I'm very glad to make Mr. Vincent Beauchamp's acquaintance—at last,' he said, beaming with honest pride at the success of his tactics, 'and now we can ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Rinuccini was the first of a long and usually incompetent lineage of librettists. The music was written by Peri and Caccini. It was appropriate that they should have chosen the love affairs of the first musician Orpheus and the coy Daphne, seeing what a vast amount of love-making, pretended and real, the school of opera has handed down upon the world. Reissman has reckoned it out that twenty thousand lovers are joined or are parted every night in the ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... it does. What! do you think I am so dull of ear That I can mark no changes in the tones That reach me? Once I liked not girlish pride And that coy quiet, chary of reply, That held me distant: now the sweetest lips Open to entertain me—fairest hands ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... in which this was said, and the coy and tender side-glance that accompanied it, were balm of ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Buren Powell has said: "Everyone will grant that in photoplay writing 'The Idea's the thing.' The script of the beginner, carrying a brand-new idea, will find acceptance where the most technical technique in the world, disguising a revamped story, will fail to coax the coy check from its lair." ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... brother, the Duke of York, were placed in the Tower, and their uncle, Lord Hastings, and several other offensive partisans, on the charge of treason, were executed in 1483. He then made arrangements that he should be urged to accept the throne, and with a coy and reluctant grace peculiar to this gifted assassin, he caused himself to be proclaimed ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... Wyatt Fawnia Robert Greene The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Christopher Marlowe The Nymph's Reply to the Passionate Shepherd Walter Raleigh "Wrong not, Sweet Empress of My Heart" Walter Raleigh To His Coy Love Michael Drayton Her Sacred Bower Thomas Campion To Lesbia Thomas Campion "Love me or Not" Thomas Campion "There is None, O None but You" Thomas Campion Of Corinna's Singing Thomas Campion "Were my Heart ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... are coy and quaint. But they grosly daub and paint; The Spanish kind, and apt to please, But fav'ring of the same disease: Of Dutch and French some few are comely, The French are light, the Dutch are homely. Let Tagus, Po, the Loire and Rhine Then veil unto ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... conquering, growing stronger. Up the gray arch the soft, dewy blue crept gently, deepening, broadening; below it, the level bars of light struck full on the sullen black of the west, and worked there undaunted, tinging it with crimson and imperial purple. Two or three coy mist-clouds, soon converted to the new allegiance, drifted giddily about, mere flakes of rosy blushes. The victory of the day came slowly, but sure, and then the full morning flushed out, fresh with moisture and light and delicate perfume. The bars of sunlight fell on the lower earth from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... tall Lieutenant did not fall a victim to my wiles as I had at first supposed, but, in some unaccountable manner, one can never tell how these things happen; he was most anxious to be left alone with the coy Miss Dorothy Amhurst, who does not understand how long a time it takes to fall in love at first sight, although she has read of these things, dear, innocent girl. The first villain of the piece has said to the second villain of the piece: 'There's a superfluous young woman ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... vain would you assuage Your frowns upon an unresisting smile, In which not even contempt lurks, to beguile Your heart by some faint sympathy of hate. Oh conquer what you cannot satiate! For to your passion I am far more coy Then ever yet was coldest maid or boy In winter-noon. Of your antipathy If I am the Narcissus, you are free To pine into a sound with ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... crimson blushes that dyed her fair young face. She never once raised her dark eyes to his. He had seen beautiful and stately ladies, but none so coy or bewitching as this pretty maiden. The more he looked at her the more he admired her. She had no delicate patrician loveliness, no refined grace; but for glowing, shy, fresh beauty, ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... yet not unlike Niagara. You hear the cardinal's rich flute-like song of "What, what cheer!" ringing from a wild grapevine. Again he seems to say "Come, come here!" Whether it be an invitation to all mankind or just a message to his coy mate you know he learned it from the same teacher as Niagara, and their voices are alike full of rarest melody. The leisurely golden chant of the wood thrush, where the misty spray and cool shadows enfold you, seems like ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... is, Crept to that, and came to this: Be ye lock'd up like to these, Or the rich Hesperides: Or those babies in your eyes, In their crystal nurseries; Notwithstanding love will win, Or else force a passage in; And as coy be as you can. Gifts will ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... myself that such was the case, but Wilmur Benton gave me so to understand—said you were a coy damsel but a glorious girl, and would make a splendid wife—'just such as I need,' ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... mimicked, and wakens to the conviction that the phantom is but a dilated reflection of himself. This Titan amongst the apparitions of earth is exceedingly capricious, vanishing abruptly for reasons best known to himself, and more coy in coming forward than the Lady Echo of Ovid. One reason why he is seen so seldom must be ascribed to the concurrence of conditions under which only the phenomenon can be manifested; the sun must be near to the horizon, (which, of itself, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... glancing again from under his brow, sidles along the table, with far less of ease than he had worn when he came whistling through the hall,—sidles nearer and nearer, till she, with a coy approach that seems to be full of doubt, meets him with a little furtive hand-shake. Then he, retiring a step, leans with one elbow on the friendly table, eying her curiously, and more boldly when he discovers that her look is downcast, and that she seems to be warming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... the dull fatigue of thinking free, Hear the facetious fiddle's repartee: Our home-spun authors must forsake the field, And Shakspeare to the soft Scarletti yield. 10 To your new taste the poet of this day Was by a friend advised to form his play. Had Valentini, musically coy, Shunn'd Phaedra's arms, and scorn'd the proffer'd joy, It had not moved your wonder to have seen An eunuch fly from an enamour'd queen: How would it please, should she in English speak, And could Hippolitus reply in Greek! But he, a stranger to your modish ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Sisters of the sacred well That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring; Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string; Hence with denial vain and coy excuse: So may some gentle Muse With lucky words favour my destined urn: And as he passes, turn And bid fair peace be to ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... How enchantingly coy the dear girl had been yesterday! Taking down a Continental Bradshaw from one of the bookshelves, he looked up the route to Milan. She had chosen Rome, Naples and Capri for the honeymoon, and of course she should have her own way! Unable to control his impatience after half-past ten, Colonel ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... also due from me to many friends who have aided me with their scholarly suggestions and criticism. My warmest thanks are particularly due to Professor W.F. Allen, of the University of Wisconsin; to Dr. E.W. Coy, Principal of Hughes High School, Cincinnati; to Professor William A. Merrill, of Miami University; and to Mr. D. H. Montgomery, author of The Leading Facts of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... species, he says: "It rattles like the rest of the tribe on the dead limbs, and with such violence as to be heard in still weather more than half a mile off; and listens to hear the insect it has alarmed." He listens rather to hear the drum of his rival, or the brief and coy response of the female; for there are no insects in ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... LINDEN TREE is represented as a little coy maiden, whose short silver-gray dress reaches a little below the knee, and displays to advantage her delicately formed limbs. The sweet face, which is partly averted, reveals a pair of large blue eyes, which appear to look at you with wondering surprise and shy mistrust; {169} ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... and showed two or three water-coloured drawings of the graceful little head and piquant features. Edgar criticised, and promised a lesson; and the sitter, nothing loth, though rather coy, was caught. She blushed and smiled, and took exception at little personalities, and laughed her forgiveness, going through a play of countenance very perplexing to the pupil, but much relished by the master, as he called up the pout and smile by turns, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... each other to do their utmost. The flags of the two great Anglo-Saxon nations rippled and played in the soft breeze, sometimes drawing near caressingly together, again bending away, like two lovers coy to unite. The tight little boat of the Doctor would keep ahead, and the crimson and crossed flag of England would wave before me, and it seemed to say to the beautiful laggard astern, "Come on, come on; England leads the way." But was it not England's place to be in the front here? She won the ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... a soul, but a coy one. The nine hundred and ninety-nine never win it. They play rapid tunes, but the soul of beautiful gayety is not there; slow tunes, very slow ones, wherein the spirit of whining is mighty, but the sweet soul of pathos is absent; doleful, not nice and tearful. Then comes ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... well it has nothing to do with harvesting nor harrowing," he cried; "I said kirtles, didn't I! And you needn't be so coy about the matter; surely to God you never learned modesty at your trade of sacking ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... proved so amusing that Kirkwood, chuckling, forbore to resent the manner of its delivery, and, abandoning until a more favorable time the chase of the coy sovereign purse, extracted from one trouser pocket half a handful of ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... "stoops to folly"—nor woman who in our hour of ease is uncertain, coy, and hard to please. But Woman, the weekly Woman who is doing uncommonly well and in her fifty-third number, gave the week before Christmas, her idea of a Christmas dinner, and, but for "sweetbread cutlets," a very good and simple dinner it was. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... you upon all occasions—masquerade, ball, or supper, Sir: you may perhaps wish to go out, as we say in the West, in coy.—happy to receive your commands at any ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... hath! Why, I saw her one day stand on top of the church belfry, to call her father's servants from the fields, and, though they were half a league off, they heard her as though she were in the next field; and the best of her is there is nothing coy about her, but she jokes with all and makes game and jest of everybody. To be frank with you, Sir Don Quixote, I have been living under a great mistake, for, really and truly, I thought all this while that ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... an elaborate wink in the direction of his guests, "it's a pretty good dinner, considerin' everything. Of course 'tain't what a feller used to get down at Sam Coy's eatin'- house on Atlantic Avenue, but it's pretty good—as I ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of the tremendous catastrophe probably dawned upon the usual restless crowd of gold-getters intent upon their several avocations. The streets were filled with the expanded figures of gayly dressed women, acknowledging with coy glances the respectful salutations of beaux as they gracefully raised their remarkable cylindrical head-coverings, a model of which is still preserved in the Honolulu Museum. The brokers had gathered at their respective ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... was forming in his mind, was dissipated by the she-wolf, who advanced upon him, sniffed noses with him for a fleeting instant, and then resumed her coy ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... presence of one whose favourite task it was to laugh his so-called virtues to scorn. Such, at least to begin with, was his honourable intention. But the subtle Wratislaw drew him from his retirement and skilfully elicited his coy principles. It was a cruel performance—a shameless one, had there been any spectator. The one would lay down a fine generous line of policy; the other would beg for a fact in confirmation. The one would haltingly detail some facts; the other would promptly ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... the sense; And love unchanged will cloy, And she became a bore intense Unto her love-sick boy? With fitful glimmer burnt my flame, And I grew cold and coy, At last, one morning, I became Another's ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... And own that Dulman bears a brain. Some, in my place, to gain their ends, Would give relations up, and friends; Would lend a wife, who, they might swear Safely, was none the worse for wear; 1410 Would see a daughter, yet a maid, Into a statesman's arms betray'd; Nay, should the girl prove coy, nor know What daughters to a father owe, Sooner than schemes so nobly plann'd Should fail, themselves would lend a hand; Would vote on one side, whilst a brother, Properly taught, would vote on t'other; Would every petty band forget; To public eye be with one set, 1420 In private with ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... romantick maid, Whether by nodding towers you tread; Or haunt the desart's trackless gloom, Or hover o'er the yawning tomb; Or climb the Andes' clifted side, Or by the Nile's coy source abide; Or, starting from your half-year's sleep, From Hecla view the thawing deep; Or, at the purple dawn of day, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... carried in committee, which went to alter the operation and consequences of the bill. Thus Mr. O'Connell moved an amendment, the object of which was to relieve the tithe-payer immediately to the extent of forty per cent.; and in consequence of the accommodating language and coy resistance of ministers, it was carried by a majority of eighty-two to thirty-three. Additional concessions were also made in the committee; and even Mr. Shiel remarked that Ireland ought to be grateful. Such, indeed, was the departure from the original principles and arrangements ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Cow Flat it was necessary to forage for ammunition. Two or three of the boys were provided with bags. It was proposed to fill these with such vegetables as would serve to allure the coy but gluttonous goat, and a silent, systematic descent was made upon several kitchen gardens ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... spontaneous. He knew that he was personally responsible for the present enforcement; he believed that because of it, Henry Devereux didn't have a Chinaman's chance; he knew that if Mirabelle got her legacy, she would have Mr. Mix to thank for it. But Henry was too cheerful, and Mirabelle was too coy, and the two facts ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... and clean, to my great horror Mrs Neptune cried out in a voice so gruff, that one might have supposed she had attempted to swallow the best-bower anchor, and that it had stuck in her throat, "Now my pretty Master Green, let me give you a buss, to welcome you to the Polar Seas. Don't be coy now, and ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... too coy To them that chastely seeke them, And yet are apt to toy With baser Jacks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... said the doctor, with his excellent temper in perfect working order again. "So delightfully impulsive! so charmingly reckless of what they say or how they say it! 'Oh, woman, in our hours of ease, uncertain, coy, and hard to please!' ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... passing moment give To the coy muse, with me she would not live In this dark city, nor would condescend 'Mid contradictions her delights to lend. Should e'er the fine-eyed maid to me be kind, Ah! surely it must be whene'er I ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... like the rest of the tribe on the dead limbs, and with such violence as to be heard in still weather more than half a mile off; and listens to hear the insect it has alarmed." He listens rather to hear the drum of his rival, or the brief and coy response of the female; for there are no insects in ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... at Alvarado's or at the Custom-house, and every afternoon met at the races, the bull-fight, a merienda, or to climb the greased pole, catch the greased pig by its tail as it ran, or exhibit skill in horsemanship. Chonita, at times an imperious coquette, at others, indifferent, perverse, or coy, was La Favorita without appeal, and the girls alternately worshipped her—she was abstractedly kind to them—or heartily wished her back in Santa Barbara. Estenega rarely attended the socialities, being closeted with Alvarado and Castro most of the time, and when he did ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... come to my knowledge, I deem it my duty to call a special meeting of the shareholders of 'The Island Navigation Coy.,' to consider circumstances in connection with the purchase of Mr. Joseph Pillin's fleet. And I give you notice that at this meeting your conduct will be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... mammas and adoring daughters. We had our fun, and cleared besides a profit of nearly four pounds sterling. This financial coup would not have come off so well but for the warm-hearted co-operation of our railway printers, McCorquodale and Coy. They, good people, entered into our exploit with a will, did their part well, and made little if any profit, generously leaving that to Cynicus ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... to supply my board and lodging, it was covenanted that, without any more ado, I should resign myself to clerical employment at Nantes. The merchant there is a friend of the family, and had offered to demonstrate his friendship by paying me too little to live on. Enfin, Fame has continued coy. The year expires to-night. I have begged a few comrades to attend a valedictory dinner—and at the stroke of midnight, despairing ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the beautiful verses he addressed to her teach her to endure him. The nymph at length returned to her parents at Birmingham, and was soon forgotten. Business taking Johnson to Birmingham on the death of his own father, and calling upon his coy mistress there, he found her father dying. He passed all his leisure hours at Mr. Porter's, attending his sick bed, and in a few months after his death, asked Mrs. Johnson's consent to marry the old widow. After expressing her surprise ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... ignorance of Tiffles's sudden fortune, she was at a loss how to explain his defection. She conjectured all things, and finally settled down to the conclusion that he was a coy young man, and had not been sufficiently encouraged by her. She remembered instances where he had exhibited signs of ardor—in one case so far as beginning to slip a hand around her waist—and she had repelled him. He was evidently waiting for some marked encouragement. How foolishly prudish she ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... fountain of eternal day, Could it within the human flower be seen, Remembering still its former height, Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green; And, recollecting its own light, Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express The greater heaven in an heaven less. In how coy a figure wound, Every way it turns away, So the world excluding round, Yet receiving in the day; Dark beneath but bright above, Here disdaining, there in love. How loose and easy hence to go! How girt and ready to ascend! Moving but on a point ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... to listen much for the approach of footsteps, Ruth came back, and behind her Lorna; coy as if of her bridegroom; and hanging back with her beauty. Ruth banged the door, and ran away; and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Chattanooga who was not lynched in May only because the prominent citizens became his body guard until the doors of the penitentiary closed on him, had letters in his pocket from the white woman in the case, making the appointment with him. Edward Coy who was burned alive in Texarkana, January 1, 1892, died protesting his innocence. Investigation since as given by the Bystander in the Chicago Inter Ocean, October ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... grandeur of Mr. Oliver were mightily magnified. Mr. Delaford thrummed his most doleful tunes on the guitar that evening, but though the June sun was sinking beauteously, Charlotte never put her head out. However, the third time, he found her, and then she was coy and blushing, reserved and distant, and so much prettier, and more genuine than all his former conquests, that something ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... D.," said Johnny, attempting the line of a witty, gay young spendthrift. "That's my love—pounds, shillings, and pence; and a very coy mistress ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... child, is the Sissy Boy Who acts so womanly and coy. His head's as soft as new-made butter; His aim in life is just to flutter; Yet he goes along with unconcern And marries a ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... cut. I had been waiting for an opportunity to ask him about it, and didn't know myself how to go about it. Just from that you can realize how he had me guessing, for it takes quite some jolt to make me coy. So I followed his own lead finally and blurted the question right out, without any fancy conversational trimmings, and he told ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... uprising dew Tears glisten'd in my eyes, though few, To hail a dawning quite as new To me, as Time: It was not sorrow—not annoy— But like a happy maid, though coy, With grief-like welcome ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... die. She never thought so herself. She felt in no dying case; she had neither pain nor sickness. Her appetite was diminished; she knew the reason. It was because she wept so much at night. Her strength was lessened; she could account for it. Sleep was coy and hard to be won; dreams were distressing and baleful. In the far future she still seemed to anticipate a time when this passage of misery should be got over, and when she should once more be calm, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... keep late hours; and as I listened to the wooing of fair Brooklyn by the eloquent son[1] of New York I thought we might be here till papa turned out the gas. Brooklyn is a New England maiden and a trifle coy, and it may take even more than an hour's pleading and persuasive wooing to win her. [Applause.] You ask me, sir, to turn our thoughts back from these considerations of pressing and immediate problems, from discussion of international and even intercontinental relations, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... of the tender passion hardly drops into the heart before it buds and blooms, a perfect flower. Though the actual lapse of time represented in the play occupies only a few days, Juliet in that brief period must assume several distinct characters. We see her first the coy, heart-whole maiden, the cherished heiress of a patrician house: soon the blind bow-boy launches his shaft, and, quick as thought, she is passionately, impulsively, enduringly in love; then we see her but a few hours a bride, with black sorrow creeping ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... through eclipsing fears, Fill'd, like Cassandra's, with prophetic tears: With such a visage, withering, woe-begone, Shrinks the pale poet from the damning dun. Come, let us teach each others tears to flow, Like fasting bards, in fellowship of woe, When the coy muse puts on coquettish airs, Nor deigns one line to their voracious prayers; Thy spirit, groaning like th'encumber'd block Which bears my works, deplores them as dead stock, Doom'd by these undiscriminating times To endless sleep, with Della Cruscan rhymes; ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... state positively —and I knew this young gentleman quite well at the time—that it was not Sue at all that he longed for at this precise moment, even though he hurried to meet her. It was more the WOMAN IN HER—the something that satisfied his inner nature when he was with her—her coy touches of confidence, her artless outbursts of admiration, looking up in his face as she spoke, the dimples playing about the corners of her mouth. He revelled in all those subtle flatteries and cajoleries, and in all the arts to please of which she was past mistress. He loved to believe ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a candidate for Nyleptha's hand in marriage, and when we appeared on the scene I fancy, from all I could gather, that though there were still many obstacles in his path, success was by no means out of his reach. But now all this had changed; the coy Nyleptha smiled no more in his direction, and he was not slow to guess the cause. Infuriated and alarmed, he turned his attention to Sorais, only to find that he might as well try to woo a mountain side. With a bitter jest or two about his fickleness, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... cares not, and hardens her heart, and hies her off to the East, to find, among the opium-eaters of Nankin, a favourite with whom she lingers fondly—caressing his blue porcelain, and painting his coy maidens, and marking his plates with her six marks of choice—indifferent in her companionship with him, to all save the virtue ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... has bent me down. To you, Paolo, I could look, however, Were my hump made a mountain. Bless him, God! Pour everlasting bounties on his head! Make Croesus jealous of his treasury, Achilles of his arms, Endymion Of his fresh beauties,—though the coy one lay, Blushing beneath Diana's earliest kiss, On grassy Latmos; and may every good, Beyond man's sight, though in the ken of heaven, Round his fair fortune to a perfect end! O, you have dried the sorrow of my eyes; My heart is beating with a lighter pulse; The air is musical; the total ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... wouldn't allude to him in public as His Reverence!" Olive sighed. "It is almost as bad as her coy flirtation with him, during sermon time. If I were in his place, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... in love, where scorn is bought with groans; Coy looks with heart-sore sighs; one fading moment's mirth 30 With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights: If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain; If lost, why then a grievous labour won; However, but a folly bought with wit, Or else a wit ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... their comfortable hours, the guests were come. The Morses appeared first. He was a pleasant, hollow-chested little man; his delicacy of lung gave him his excuse for playing gentleman farmer. She, half-Spanish, carried bulk for the family and carried it well. The Andalusian showed in her coy yet open air, in her small, broad hand and foot, in a languorous liquidity of eye. Their son, a well-behaved and pretty youth of twelve, and their daughter, two years older, rode behind them on the back seat. The daughter bore one of those mosaic names with which the mixed ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... melody, pitched in a higher key, yet not unlike Niagara. You hear the cardinal's rich flute-like song of "What, what cheer!" ringing from a wild grapevine. Again he seems to say "Come, come here!" Whether it be an invitation to all mankind or just a message to his coy mate you know he learned it from the same teacher as Niagara, and their voices are alike full of rarest melody. The leisurely golden chant of the wood thrush, where the misty spray and cool shadows enfold you, seems like a spirit voice speaking ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... replied she, clasping her hands, and looking solemnly up to heaven. "If, in my eager acquiescence, I seem unmaidenly, forgive me; but I dare not be coy, Eugene; we have no time for conventional reserve, and I must act as becomes a brave and trusting woman, for every moment is fraught with danger. I am surrounded by spies, even of my own household, and, ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... of the gentry in the nearest counties, to attend a great ball at Elmwood. The old house would be filled from garret to cellar, and the hospitable homes of nearby friends would open to take in the overflow of guests. Dames and maidens coy, clad in the quaint and picturesque colonial costume, with powdered hair and patches, in richly brocaded gowns and satin slippers, made stately courtesy to gay dandies and jovial squires arrayed in coats of many colors, broidered vests, knee breeches and silken hose, brilliant buckles at ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... was coy, and ever she fluttered near to me but never near enough. When my arm went out to her to girdle her, presto, she was not there. I knew, as never before, nor since, the thousand dear and delightful anguishes of love frustrated but ever ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... in love with Mr. Ryde," says Monica, sweetly, with averted face and a coy air, assumed ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... over-multitude their lords; The sea o'erfraught would swell, and the unsought diamonds Would so emblaze the forehead of the deep, And so bestud with stars, that they below Would grow inured to light, and come at last To gaze upon the sun with shameless brows. List, Lady; be not coy, and be not cozened With that same vaunted name, Virginity. Beauty is Nature's coin; must not be hoarded, But must be current; and the good thereof Consists in mutual and partaken bliss, Unsavoury in the ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... sat watching him with deep, dissatisfied eyes. She had sense enough to see that she could not win him with the arts that had won others. His was a nature deeper, stronger. She must bide her time and be coy. But her spirit chafed beneath delay, and dark passions lurked behind and brooded in her eyes. Perhaps it was this that held him in a sort of uncertainty. It was as if he waited permission from some unseen source to take what she was so evidently ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... fanciful and sentimental, which means, of course, I was thinking about you. And then I imagined this whole scene—only a little different; I in this dress, and you at my feet, worshipping me and calling me all sorts of sweet names. And I was coy and held back!" ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... heart to try to discover why such bitter feelings should be there. Surely that girl was honest: there was honesty in her eyes. She had been most kind to Sheila herself. And was there not at times, when she abandoned the ways and speech of a woman of the world, a singular coy fascination about her, that any man might be excused for yielding to, even as any woman might yield to it? Sheila fought with herself, and resolved that she would cast forth from her heart those harsh fancies and indignant feelings that seemed to have established themselves there. She would not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... down, and the dancing began, to the flamenco music of guitars and the clacking of castanets; the fandango, the bolero, the malaguena, the chaquera vella; all the classical dances of old Spain, and each one a variant on the theme of love, the woman coy, coquettishly retreating; the man persuading or demanding, the woman yielding in ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... couples among the convenient laurel and manzanita bushes which flounced the mountain side. After the dancing, old-fashioned children's games were revived with great laughter and half-hearted and coy protests from the ladies; notably one pastime known as "I'm a-pinin'," in which ingenious performance the victim was obliged to stand in the centre of a circle and publicly "pine" for a member of the opposite sex. Some hilarity was occasioned by the mischievous Miss "Georgy" Piper ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... experiences; "bus driver"; the air-tractor sledge; the Western sledging expedition; on tent pitching; his birthday; the relief party; winter work at the hut; wireless work; dredge constructed by; the home journey; account of Biology, work of the expedition Bird & Coy, Messrs. Birds, Antarctic, weight in relation to wing areas Birthday Camp Biscoe Island ........John, work Bishop and Clerk, islet Black Sunday Blair, J. H., Chief Officer on the 'Aurora' Blake, Cape ...... L R., work on Macquarie Island; visit to Sandy Bay; accident to; visits to Lusitania ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... "The coy potato or the onion browns, The tender steak takes on a nobler hue. I ponder 'mid the falling of the dew, And watch the lapwings circling o'er ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... huge pots of beer for their husbands, who very liberally invited us to partake. After seven hours' hard travelling we came to the village, where we spend Sunday by the torrent Usangazi, and near a remarkable mountain, Namasi. The chief, a one-eyed man, was rather coy—coming incognito to visit us; and, as I suspected that he was present, I asked if the chief were an old woman, afraid to look at and welcome a stranger? All burst into a laugh, and looked at him, when ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... than she for this good turn. 92 Her help she sees, but help she cannot get; She bathes in water, yet her fire must burn: 'O! pity,' 'gan she cry, 'flint-hearted boy: 'Tis but a kiss I beg; why art thou coy? 96 ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... prone to be coy, if not fickle, the manual part of transplanting should always be properly done. The plants should always be taken up with as little loss of roots as possible, be kept exposed to the air as short a ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... to tell—numbers and knives. For your sun-scorched Nepenthean, when duly roused, confesses to an expert knowledge of anatomy; he can tell you, to the fraction of an inch, where the liver, the spleen, kidneys and various other coy organs of the human frame are located. Blood, the blood of the Sacred Sixty-three, began to flow. At that sight the women, as their manner is, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... been known to express an opinion to the effect that a naughty word would be quite luxurious. The lovers whom we love kiss when they meet or part, they talk plainly—unless the girls play the natural and delightful trick of being coy—and they behave in a manner which human beings understand. Supposing that the duke uses a language which ordinary dukes do not affect save in moments of extreme emotion, it is not tiresome, and, at the worst, it satisfies a convention which has not done very much ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... silence till my passion should touch you, that I might the better conceal it if its silent demonstrations should displease you; or till I could express it even more delicately than in words if I found favor in your eyes. However, after having listened for long to the coy fears that fill a youthful heart with alarms, I write in obedience to the instinct which drags ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... came, I observed a feverish excitement in her manner, which assured me, even plainer than the coy sweetness displayed in our last interview, that her heart had been touched by her lover's attentions. Indeed, she hinted as much before she left, saying in a melancholy tone, when I had ended my story in the usual happy ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... being careful to mention whose skill in the chase procured them, but in vain did they look for the bowl of succatash or embroidered moccasins—the products of woman's labor—in token that their gifts were pleasing to the coy beauty. In vain, when the shades of evening fell, the softly breathed flute lamented in melancholy tones her cruelty. In vain, with tasteful hand, the sighing lover painted his face and person to heighten ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... forward, immodest, rude, hoidenish, brazen, saucy, insolent, unabashed, audacious, pert, shameless, malapert; conspicuous, prominent, salient; steep, abrupt, precipitous, acclivitous, jagged. Antonyms: modest, bashful, diffident, coy, shy, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... into the realms of fairyland and wonder. Fleeces of irregular shape, but a mile long and two miles wide, slowly lifted themselves from a horizontal position to a vertical one, thus converting themselves from blankets into curtains. Yet behind and through them,—as a coy beauty half reveals, half conceals, her charms,—so the walls and buttes, the pinnacles and buttresses, took on a new and delicate beauty, a subtleness of charm and refinement that only such a veiling could produce. Every moment the panorama changed. This was veiled completely, that entirely ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... out among the trees, trilling loudly a gleeful carol. The tits flew hither and thither, twittering to each other as they flew. The hedge-sparrows' metallic notes sounded clear amid all the varied music, as the birds, moving among the hazels and gently flirting their wings, pursued their coy mates from bough to bough. Through the raised curtain of the mist the sun—a white globe hardly too brilliant to be boldly looked at—illumined the dewy fields with its faint beams, till the cloud-streaked sky became a clear ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... pure, fame's crown of light, The latest murmur of departing day, Fond friendship's plaint, that melts at piteous sight, The mystic farewell of each hour at flight, The kiss which beauty grants with coy delay,— ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... answer. But she had not yet quite made up her mind. Had she known her mind, she would have answered him frankly. She was quite resolved as to that. If she could once bring herself to give him her hand, she would not coy it for a moment. "I will be your wife, Larry." That was the form on which she had determined, should she find herself able to yield. But she had not brought herself to it as yet. "If you can take ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... thereof), Gives back to thee in sanctities of flower; And holy odours do her bosom invest, That sweeter grows for being prest: Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of joy, From thine embrace still startles coy, Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour, The laughing captive from the ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... a genuine Scot, 530 In double portion swells thy glorious lot; For thee Edina culls her evening sweets, And showers their odours on thy candid sheets, Whose Hue and Fragrance to thy work adhere— This scents its pages, and that gilds its rear. [75] Lo! blushing Itch, coy nymph, enamoured grown, Forsakes the rest, and cleaves to thee alone, And, too unjust to other Pictish men, Enjoys thy person, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... Why be coy about an opening like that? "Clyde, what do you know about Edwin Scott?" That let him spin any yarn he chose—if ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... ceremony, with all the grand cordons of his orders blazing about his imperial person—thus dazzling, magnificent, triumphant, the great Galgenstein descended towards Mrs. Catherine. Her cheeks glowed red-hot under her coy velvet mask, her heart thumped against the whalebone prison of her stays. What a delicious storm of vanity was raging in her bosom! What a rush of long-pent recollections burst forth at the sound of ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the life and spirit of the poetry. I had a proof of this in an attempt which I made to impose a pantun of my own composing on the natives as a work of their countrymen. The subject was a dialogue between a lover and a rich coy mistress: the expressions were proper to the occasion, and in some degree characteristic. It passed with several, but an old lady who was a more discerning critic than the others remarked that it was "katta katta saja"—mere conversation; meaning that it was destitute of the quaint and ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... immobility is drawing the iron towards it. An intense energy lies behind such passivity, an absorbed pre-occupation in the end to be attained."[313] In the examples we have studied of the courtships of birds we saw that it is by no means a universal law that the male is eager and the female coy. I need only recall the instance noted by Darwin[314] in which a wild duck forced her love on a male pintail, and such cases, as is well known, are frequent. High-bred bitches will show sudden passions for low-bred or mongrel males. According to breeders and observers it is the female who is always ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... witty; and as her person was not very likely to attract many admirers, which, however, she was resolved to have, she was far from being coy when an occasion offered: she did not so much as make any terms: she was violent in her resentments, as well as in her attachments, which had exposed her to some inconveniences; and she had very indiscreetly quarrelled ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Endiadis, or the Figure of Twinnes.] Ye haue yet another manner of speach when ye will seeme to make two of one, not thereunto constrained, which therefore we call the figure of Twynnes, the Greekes Endiadis thus. Not you coy dame ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... can only be one language for an emotion so powerful. Wise or foolish, Jane understood what I said, and in words equally sweet and foolish she gave me her promise. Oh, mother, it was not altogether the words! It was the little tremors and coy unfoldings and sweet agitations of love revealing itself—it wakened in Jane's heart like a wandering rose. And I saw this awakening of the woman, mother, and it was a ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... sometimes tried to make up to the prettiest ones, and offered them trinkets, pretty boxes of soap, beads, and small mirrors (so dear to the heart of the Indian girl), but the young maids were coy enough; it seemed to me they cared more for men of their ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... believe like children? We don't often play, do we Philip? You must take my hand very gently, under the hay," pulling the cushion over her wrist. "I draw it away, you see, rather shyly, looking deliciously coy, and say: 'Oh! ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... and uncivill usage in her, grew very distastefull to Anastasio, and so unsufferable, that after a long time of fruitlesse service, requited still with nothing but coy disdaine; desperate resolutions entred into his brain, and often he was minded to kill himselfe. But better thoughts supplanting those furious passions, he abstained from any such violent act; and governed by more manly consideration, determined, ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... I would rate the northern varieties as follows from highest to lowest: Major, Greenriver, Busseron, Indiana, Niblack, Kentucky, Warwick, Posey, Coy, Tissue, Johnson. Perhaps a little broader classification and grouping should be made. In my judgment, the Major, Greenriver, Busseron, Indiana, and Niblack compose one group which may be depended upon for fairly satisfactory production. The Kentucky, Warwick, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... had lov'd them a whole summer long: 250 And soon his eyes had drunk her beauty up, Leaving no drop in the bewildering cup, And still the cup was full,—while he, afraid Lest she should vanish ere his lip had paid Due adoration, thus began to adore; Her soft look growing coy, she saw his chain so sure: "Leave thee alone! Look back! Ah, Goddess, see Whether my eyes can ever turn from thee! For pity do not this sad heart belie— Even as thou vanishest so I shall die. 260 Stay! though a Naiad of the rivers, stay! To thy far wishes will thy streams obey: Stay! ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... deter, discourage; browbeat, bully; threaten &c 909. Adj. fearing &c v.; frightened &c v.; in fear, in a fright &c n.; haunted with the fear of &c n.; afeard^. afraid, fearful; timid, timorous; nervous, diffident, coy, faint- hearted, tremulous, shaky, afraid of one's shadow, apprehensive, restless, fidgety; more frightened than hurt. aghast; awe-stricken, horror-stricken, terror-stricken, panic- stricken, awestruck, awe-stricken, horror-struck; frightened to death, white as a sheet; pale, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they are weary; and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness of their times, diebus ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... however, the females at first withdraw from the males; they are coy, and have to be sought out, and sometimes held by force. This tracking and grasping of the females by the males has given rise to many different characters in the latter, as, for instance, the larger eyes of the male bee, and especially of the males of the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... she was, so full of grace, So innocent with coy caresses, So proud to step at my own pace, So rosy through her golden ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... Jefferson county I built a chimney for a man named —— M'Coy; he had forty-seven laboring hands. Near where I was at work, M'Coy had ordered one of his slaves to set a post for a gate. When he came to look at it, he said the slave had not set it in the right place; and ordered him to strip, and lie ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... on working. Then all of a sudden the transplendent sun sailed from its clouds and poured upon him its genial beams. He had at last found the golden Chersonese. His pockets, so long cobwebbed, now bulged with money. Publishers, who had been coy, now fought for him. All the world—or nearly all—sang his praises. [502] Lastly came the K.C.M.G., an honour that was conferred upon him owing in large measure to the noble persistency of the ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Anna have six little girls here to supper to-night: Louisa Field, Hattie Paddock, Helen Coy, Martha Densmore, Emma Wheeler, and Alice Jewett. We had a splendid supper and then we played cards. I do not mean regular cards, mercy no! Grandfather thinks those kinds are contageous or outrageous or something dreadful and never ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... some folks don't keer. They don't raise they chillun; they drags 'em up. God knows if dat Daisy wuz mine, I'd throw her down an' put a hundred lashes on her back wid a plow-line. Here she come in de store Sat'day night (Acts coy and coquettish, burlesques DAISY'S walk) a wringing ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... the touch of the coy little hand, that he glanced down to assure himself he had it on his arm. But his glance, stopping for an instant at the bright eyes, forgot its first design, and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... garb The rapid glory of his naked limbs, And like a streak of lightning reached the waves:— Wherein his thwarted speed appeared more awful As, brought within the scope of comprehension, Its progress and its purpose could be gauged. Spluttering Amyntas rose, Hipparchus near him Who cried 'Why coy of kisses, lovely lad? I ne'er would harm thee; art thou not ashamed To treat thy conquest thus?' He shouted partly to drown the sea's noise, chiefly The nearing Delphis to disarm. His voice lost ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... her reason all her passions sway; Easy in company, in private gay; Coy to a fop, to the deserving free; Still constant to herself, and just to me. She should a soul have for great actions fit; Prudence and wisdom to direct her wit; Courage to look bold danger in the face, Not fear, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Bright-eyed grisettes flung coy looks at the young artist as he strode along, admiring his well-knit figure, his handsome boyish features chiseled as finely as a cameo, the crisp brown hair with a slight tendency to curl, his velvet jacket ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... their round, since I beheld your face! In Memory's dim eye it yet appears Crowned, as it then seemed, with a chearful grace. Young prattling Maiden, on the Thames' fair side, Enlivening pleasant Sunbury with your smiles, Time may have changed you: coy reserve, or pride, To sullen looks reduced those mirthful wiles. I will not 'bate one smile on that clear brow, But take of Time a rigorous account, When next I see you; and Maria now Must be the Thing she was. To what amount These verses else?—all ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Divine Architect, I dismiss all modes of conveyance, and with well-nailed shoes, rough clothes, a staff, and a lunch, I take the kingdom by force. When once in, I am royally entertained; for though coy and apparently hard to woo, Nature is a most delightful companion when once you ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... that have no guile between them," saith a proverb, traced back to Confucius. O ye days of still sunshine, reflected back from our selves! O ye haunts endeared evermore by a look, tone, or smile, or rapt silence, when more and more with each hour unfolded before me that nature, so tenderly coy, so cheerful though serious, so attuned by simple cares to affection, yet so filled, from soft musings and solitude, with a poetry that gave grace to duties the homeliest, setting life's trite things ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be not coy, but use your time, And while ye may, go marry; For having lost but once your prime, You may ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... nurse, and hung weeping round her neck. Her tears made the manly but tender-hearted Walter give a sort of gulp. Mary heard it, and put her white hand out to him. He threw himself upon his knees, and kissed it devotedly, and the coy girl was won. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... Oxfordshire, he had pondered these things during his lonely years of youth and adolescence—had pondered, and in some cases already decided them UPON THE MERITS. This was remarkably so in the matter of Betty Coy, as he will tell you for himself before long. Meantime, lest I keep Dr. Lanfranchi too long upon the threshold of his own house, all I shall add to my picture of his pupil now is that he was the eldest son and third child of Squire Antony Strelley of Upcote, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light, quivering aspen made,— When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... dissembling, and such like playing the fool? Nay, how few matches would go forward, if the hasty lover did but first know how many little tricks of lust and wantonness (and perhaps more gross failings) his coy and seemingly bashful mistress had oft before been guilty of? And how fewer marriages, when consummated, would continue happy, if the husband were not either sottishly insensible of, or did not purposely ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... d'envoyer v^{re} filz vers moy, il sera le bien venu. Son traittement rendra tesmoinage de l'estime que je fais de vostre amitie. De vous envoyer des nouvelles, ce seroyt d'envoyer Noctuas Athenas. Tout est coy icy. La mort de Concini a rendu la France heureuse. Mais l'Italie est en danger d'estre exposee a la tirannie d'Espagne. Je vous baise les mains, et suis, Mons^r, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... ask me if there might be another?" she inquired, with a coy glance and just a little petulance ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... recommended for an office. Congress, that had no virtue, or if it had, its quality was too hard for use, was for ever standing in admiration of its beauty and whiteness, as a member or two since expelled had been pleased to call it, and was as scrupulous of having it called in question as a coy damsel. I who had virtues, was cast out because the color of it, as seen through the spectacles of my enemies, was not as white as alabaster. Ah, I have wiped the sweat from my fevered brow, and thought what a wrong-headed world we had-many a time! Every man has a history worth relating, or he must ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... with a rather soggy cake for the dessert. At most balls it is customary for the ladies to be seated first at the refreshment-table, where the most substantial articles of diet are boiled ham with sugar frosting, cakes flavored with the native lime, and lemon soda. Like the coy nun in Chaucer's "Prologue," she who is most elegant will take care not to spill the food upon her lap, eat with the fingers, or spit out the bones. At wedding feasts the gentlemen are given preference ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... and with her mother opposite. Mr. Shubrick bided his time in a mixture of patience and impatience. The latter needs no accounting for; the former was half brought about and maintained by the exquisite manner of Dolly's presentation of herself those days. The delicate, coy grace which invested her, it is difficult to describe it or the effect of it. She was not awkward, she was not even embarrassed, the least bit in the world; she was grave and fair and unapproachable, with the rarest maidenly shyness, which took the form of the rarest womanly dignity. She ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... speak, in connection with what he styled his horrible youth, of the years which she—the Dilecta—had tarnished. Too opportune to be sincere, this condemnation of his first liaison cannot but be regarded as an incense of flattery offered to the coy goddess ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... into the shadow of the room. She was trembling, and as she leaned toward him she was very different from the coy girl who had so long held him aloof. He ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... extravagances. If the experience of the reader has led him through the hallowed mystery of the first kiss of love, he needs not another's fancy to revive the beatific vision. If not, why, thousands of coy and blushing damsels, equally in the dark, are waiting, from whom he may select one to assist him in solving the mystery. Besides, it is not always wise to penetrate the secrets of the heart, even in a novel; for there is a sacredness about ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... she returned, with a coy, sidelong look from her mild blue eyes, and then, at last, she shut ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Berstoun in the course of five minutes' conversation! She wasn't a day too old for Heriot W. That's to say, he could do with a lassie of that age fine, and, by Gad, he shouldn't wonder but Ellen mightn't have rather cottoned to him if her heart had been free. She looked deuced coy when she thought he was proposing. Yes, a girl like Ellen was the ticket for him. But in that ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... they are coy and quaint. But they grosly daub and paint; The Spanish kind, and apt to please, But fav'ring of the same disease: Of Dutch and French some few are comely, The French are light, the Dutch are homely. Let Tagus, Po, the Loire and Rhine Then veil unto ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... go: you hear what he hath said Which was sometime his general; who lov'd him In a most dear particular. He call'd me father: But what o' that? Go, you that banish'd him; A mile before his tent fall down, and knee The way into his mercy: nay, if he coy'd To hear Cominius speak, I'll keep ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... had for some years been a candidate for Nyleptha's hand in marriage, and when we appeared on the scene I fancy, from all I could gather, that though there were still many obstacles in his path, success was by no means out of his reach. But now all this had changed; the coy Nyleptha smiled no more in his direction, and he was not slow to guess the cause. Infuriated and alarmed, he turned his attention to Sorais, only to find that he might as well try to woo a mountain side. With a bitter jest or two about his fickleness, that ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... as her person was not very likely to attract many admirers, which, however, she was resolved to have, she was far from being coy when an occasion offered: she did not so much as make any terms: she was violent in her resentments, as well as in her attachments, which had exposed her to some inconveniences; and she had very indiscreetly quarrelled with a young girl whom Lord Rochester ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... conceal it if its silent demonstrations should displease you; or till I could express it even more delicately than in words if I found favor in your eyes. However, after having listened for long to the coy fears that fill a youthful heart with alarms, I write in obedience to the instinct which drags useless lamentations ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... "Hollo! A sudden thought strikes me! I abandon my allies! Now I think of it, they have always been my oppressors! I abandon them, and now let you and me swear an eternal friendship!" Such a proposition, from such a quarter, Sir, was not likely to be long withstood. The other party was a little coy, but, upon the whole, nothing loath. After proper hesitation, and a little decorous blushing, it owned the soft impeachment, admitted an equally sudden sympathetic impulse on its own side; and, since few words are wanted where hearts are already known, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... of the rock, There to abide until the clock You reckon by, with shadowy hands, Lay benediction on the lands And landsmen, and the eve-jar's croak Summon ye, lightfoot fairy folk, To your activity full tide Over the empty earth and wide. Here be your food, fair nymph, and coy Of mortal ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... our hours of ease uncertain, coy, and hard to please,'" he murmured. "Come, sit down, stranger; 'Sit down an' share a soldier's couch, a soldier's fare.' Not as I'm a sojer," he hastened to explain, "but thet's how it is in ther book. Say, old woman, kint ye kinder sker ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... "Well, Colonel, it was bit off." "How did it happen, Ben?" "Well, you see, I was sent to arrest a gentleman, and him and me mixed it up, and he bit off my ear." "What did you do to the gentleman, Ben?" And Ben, looking more coy than ever, responded: "Well, Colonel, we broke about even!" I forebore to inquire what variety of mayhem he had committed on the "gentleman." After considerable struggle I got him confirmed by the Senate, and he made one of the best marshals in the entire service, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... extremely burned. And thus came Love, with Proteus and his power, T' encounter Eucharis: first, like the flower That Juno's milk did spring,[97] the silver lily, He fell on Hymen's hand, who straight did spy The bounteous godhead, and with wondrous joy Offer'd it Eucharis. She, wonderous coy, Drew back her hand: the subtle flower did woo it, And, drawing it near, mixed so you could not know it: 220 As two clear tapers mix in one their light, So did the lily and the hand their white. She viewed it; and her view the form bestows Amongst her spirits; ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... that the tall Lieutenant did not fall a victim to my wiles as I had at first supposed, but, in some unaccountable manner, one can never tell how these things happen; he was most anxious to be left alone with the coy Miss Dorothy Amhurst, who does not understand how long a time it takes to fall in love at first sight, although she has read of these things, dear, innocent girl. The first villain of the piece has said to the second villain of ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... while? Thy sunk eyes glisten through eclipsing fears, Fill'd, like Cassandra's, with prophetic tears: With such a visage, withering, woe-begone, Shrinks the pale poet from the damning dun. Come, let us teach each others tears to flow, Like fasting bards, in fellowship of woe, When the coy muse puts on coquettish airs, Nor deigns one line to their voracious prayers; Thy spirit, groaning like th'encumber'd block Which bears my works, deplores them as dead stock, Doom'd by these undiscriminating times To endless sleep, with ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... limbs in the pellucid waters of the lake or large body of water just referred to. We briskly project ourselves to and fro in a swing of Nature's own contriving, namely, the tendrils of the wild grapevine. We glean the coy berry from its hiding place beneath the sheltering leafage. We entice from their native element the finny denizens of the brawling stream and the murmuring brook. We go quickly hither and yon. We throb with health and energy. We become bronzed ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... i.e. "Eros, the Lord of Passion, must lend his hand." "But," he proceeds, "the god is coy; he has little liking for the breasts of kings. He is more likely to be found in the cottage of the ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... house upon this spot, And a small arbour made for rural joy; 'Twill be the traveller's shed, the pilgrim's cot, A place of love for damsels that are coy. ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... developed into a surprisingly finished scoundrel), as from a fear that his lie might after all be detected. He sat staring stupidly at Mr. Fladgate, who patted him on the shoulder with well-meant encouragement; he had never seen quite so coy an author before. 'I'm very glad to make Mr. Vincent Beauchamp's acquaintance—at last,' he said, beaming with honest pride at the success of his tactics, 'and now we can come ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... due to the artist to say that his wildness that morning was not the result only of despair at the obvious indifference with which Nita regarded him. It was the combination of that wretched condition with a heroic resolve to forsake the coy maiden and return to his first love— his beloved art—that excited him; and the idea of renewing his devotion to her in dangerous circumstances was rather congenial to his savage state of mind. It may be here remarked that Mr Slingsby, besides being ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... towards it. An intense energy lies behind such passivity, an absorbed pre-occupation in the end to be attained."[313] In the examples we have studied of the courtships of birds we saw that it is by no means a universal law that the male is eager and the female coy. I need only recall the instance noted by Darwin[314] in which a wild duck forced her love on a male pintail, and such cases, as is well known, are frequent. High-bred bitches will show sudden passions for low-bred or mongrel ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... their sharp spikes being gone." The mere fact of its loveliness and perfection gives them no authority to do so; and to my ear the rather stately procession of syllables is reminiscent of Fletcher. We shall never be certain; and who would not swear that "Hear, ye ladies that are coy" was by the same hand that wrote "Sigh no more, ladies," if we were not sure of the contrary? But the most effective test, even in the case of Fletcher, is to see whether the trill of song is, or is not, an inherent portion of the dramatic structure of the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... which was Freeman, and at the dances I gave my Georgia superfine blue clothes made no indifferent appearance, as I thought. Some of the sable females, who formerly stood aloof, now began to relax and appear less coy; but my heart was still fixed on London, where I hoped to be ere long. So that my worthy captain and his owner, my late master, finding that the bent of my mind was towards London, said to me, 'We hope you won't leave us, but that you will ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... broken heart. She, too, has been dreaming "of a wild young falcon that she trained for many a day, till two fierce eagles tore it." And she rushes to her mother Ute, that she may read the dream for her; and her mother tells her what it means. And then the coy maiden answers:— ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... elders, to women; the sense of law and justice in our kind: in the leafy shades of Upcote in Oxfordshire, he had pondered these things during his lonely years of youth and adolescence—had pondered, and in some cases already decided them UPON THE MERITS. This was remarkably so in the matter of Betty Coy, as he will tell you for himself before long. Meantime, lest I keep Dr. Lanfranchi too long upon the threshold of his own house, all I shall add to my picture of his pupil now is that he was the eldest son and third child of Squire Antony Strelley ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... pleasant greeting and some reference to the chicken. She felt it a great honor to be remembered by the bride, and thanked again, after all these years, for her parting gift. She gave a little giggle when Lloyd came up, and said, with a coy self-conscious air that was extremely amusing to the Northern man, who had never met this type of the race before, "I'se a maid of honah, ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... mean the sort, Sweet marrow-pulp, for babes and maidens fitter, But that wherein the golden fishes sport On oranges seas (with just a dash of bitter), Not falsely coy, but eager to parade Their ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... with her along the still street to the lighted corner where she ran to catch her car. There seemed always to be a pair of voluminous elderly matrons in attendance upon her, to daunt and chill him. She herself was unchanged; her soft, beneficent radiance, her elusive, coy charm, all her maddening quality of delicacy and ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... seen with the eyes of her mistress, for that poor girl fell so violently in love with Jones in five minutes, that her passion afterwards cost her many a sigh. This Nanny was extremely pretty, and altogether as coy; for she had refused a drawer, and one or two young farmers in the neighbourhood, but the bright eyes of our heroe thawed all ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... prying into their plans, and arresting their execution. By my soul, I had not thought you so ready or so apt; but how do you reconcile it to your notions of propriety to be abroad at an hour which is something late for a coy damsel? Munro, you must look to these rare doings, or they will work you some ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... little lad that hath so many in his care! What, Firefly, is thy sleep so deep? It ill befits a hound, Tending a boyish master's flock, to slumber over-sound. And, wethers, of this tender grass take, nothing coy, your fill: So, when it comes, the after-math shall find you feeding still. So! so! graze on, that ye be full, that not an udder fail: Part of the milk shall rear the lambs, and part shall fill my pail." Then Daphnis flung a carol out, as ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... those sweet, fresh, crimson lips of hers, that were like a half-opened damask rose. Modesty is apt to go to the wall in camps, and poor little Cigarette's notions of the great passion were very simple, rudimentary, and in no way coy. How should they be? She had tossed about with the army, like one of the tassels to their standards; blowing whichever way the breath of war floated her; and had experienced, or thought she had experienced, as many affairs as the veriest Don Juan among them, though her heart had never been much ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... to the "birdies," but these latter, throughout his visit, showed a coy reluctance to approach the house. He caught another odd grimace on the features of the old woman, who was ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... delight, so that she cannot contain herself; and leaning on the arm of an attendant, in a graceful attitude, remains slightly smiling, in such a manner that no description can express her beauty. The guards become fascinated and remain immoveable. With trembling frame and coy of heart she ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... a foretaste of the joy That so much tedious tramping merely stifles: We want to fall upon our—well, deploy, And less of "Stand at ease" and fruitless trifles; Der Tag will come (we whisper it with coy Half-bated murmurings), when we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... sense; And love unchanged will cloy, And she became a bore intense Unto her love-sick boy? With fitful glimmer burnt my flame, And I grew cold and coy, At last, one morning, I became Another's ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... men of Rumford in her had their joy She showed herself courteous and modestly coy And at her commandment still would they be; So fair and so ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... gazed, and his eager eye shone With a lustre of feeling, deep, fervent, and sweet; And he thought it were better to give up his throne For a place, on his knees, at the coy maiden's feet. ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... advanced and took possession of the battle-field, and sent detachments in pursuit of Stewart. A victory was claimed by both parties. Washington seemed to consider it as such for Greene. "Fortune," he said, in a letter to him, "must have been coy indeed, had she not yielded at last to so persevering a pursuer as you have been." Yet there was no victory in the case. The advantage evidently lay with the Americans. The contest had been a most sanguinary one. The loss of the Americans in killed, wounded, and missing, was five hundred and fifty-five; ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... the squaw's low-crooning lilt. No longer shimmers starlight from eyes of savage maids Worshippers of the fire and sun, poor dwellers of the caves— The sisters of the deer and lo, shy startled fawns of Aztec race Or coy ancestral dams of moon-eyed Toltec doe. Now Verde witches bathe in Montezuma's well And over its crystal waters the tourists cast ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... knew this young gentleman quite well at the time—that it was not Sue at all that he longed for at this precise moment, even though he hurried to meet her. It was more the WOMAN IN HER—the something that satisfied his inner nature when he was with her—her coy touches of confidence, her artless outbursts of admiration, looking up in his face as she spoke, the dimples playing about the corners of her mouth. He revelled in all those subtle flatteries and cajoleries, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... he knew, though she could not but guess it; did not betray her to the others; seemed to enjoy the equivoque, content to wait. So he kept her on tenterhooks; she felt a cheat, and what is worse, a detected cheat. This filled her deep with shame. It made her more coy and more a prude than she had ever need to be had she gone among them kirtled and coifed. At last came the day when that happened which she had darkly dreaded. A load of coals went off to Market Basing; to dinner ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... she, clasping her hands, and looking solemnly up to heaven. "If, in my eager acquiescence, I seem unmaidenly, forgive me; but I dare not be coy, Eugene; we have no time for conventional reserve, and I must act as becomes a brave and trusting woman, for every moment is fraught with danger. I am surrounded by spies, even of my own household, and, until I hear the blessing of the priest, I shall ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... coughed modestly, and cast another coy glance at the red waistcoat. "How is poor Sam'l this mornin', Calvin?" he asked mournfully. "Do you find him ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... never claw'd away with Broad-Sides from any Female before, thou hast one Virtue I adore, good-Nature; I hate a coy demure Mistress, she's as troublesome as a Colt, I'll break none; no, give me a mad Mistress when mew'd, and in flying on[e] I dare trust upon the Wing, that whilst she's kind will ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... "The muses are coy, and will only be wooed and won by some highly-favored suitors. The sciences are lofty, and will not stoop to the reach of ordinary capacities. But 'wisdom (by which the royal preacher means piety) is a loving ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... to draw his sword, wave it dramatically over his head, cheer for a few seconds in monkey talk, then break and dash to the rear. "Paterno" was an easy candidate for second honors. He gave a giddy dance and looked coy. ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... Laura, a Lady bred at Court, and Yet want complaisance enough to entertain A Gallant in private! this coy Humour Is not a-la-mode.—Be not so peevish with a ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... held out my hand. She did not seem to see it. Her eyes were now on the fire, and a warm blush dyed forehead and cheek and neck. The reproof was so gentle that no one could have been offended. It was evident that she was something coy and reticent, and would not allow me to come at present more close to her, even to the touching of her hand. But that her heart was not in the denial was also evident in the glance from her glorious ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... flew hither and thither, twittering to each other as they flew. The hedge-sparrows' metallic notes sounded clear amid all the varied music, as the birds, moving among the hazels and gently flirting their wings, pursued their coy mates from bough to bough. Through the raised curtain of the mist the sun—a white globe hardly too brilliant to be boldly looked at—illumined the dewy fields with its faint beams, till the cloud-streaked sky became a clear expanse, and the blue and brown countryside ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... Then he was pressing, and you were coy, until finally he extorted your definitive answer, which was—" Maria paused, and seemed to be intensely studying the looks of the other—Miss Henley smiled as she turned her placid, ingenuous features to her gaze, and continued the conversation ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... campus be your joy, And whispered loves your lips employ, What time the twilight shadows gather, And tryst you keep with the maiden coy. ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... checkered scene display, And part admit and part exclude the day, As some coy nymph her lover's warm address Not quite indulges, nor can quite repress. There interspersed in lawns and opening glades The trees arise that share each other's shades; Here in full light the russet plains extend, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... happened entirely by accident. It had occurred through a misunderstanding during a game of consequences in a country house. She was terribly literal. Having taken some joke of his seriously, she had sent him a touchingly coy letter saying she was overwhelmed at his offer (feeling she was hardly worthy to be his wife) and must think it over. He did not like to hurt her feelings by explaining, and when she relented and accepted him he couldn't bear to tell her the truth. He was absurdly tender-hearted, and ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... it was, perhaps, not very complimentary'of Mr. J.W. WILSON to urge the Government to put forth their best speakers. The PRIME MINISTER was still coy, but Sir ROBERT HORNE, in virtue of his new office as President of the Board of Trade, stepped nimbly into the breach, and made a speech so cheerful both in substance and delivery as to justify the hope that in him the Government have found the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... Syrian essences And wreathed with roses, while we may, Lie drinking? Bacchus puts to shame The cares that waste us. Where's the slave To quench the fierce Falernian's flame With water from the passing wave? Who'll coax coy Lyde from her home? Go, bid her take her ivory lyre, The runaway, and haste to come, Her wild hair bound with ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... there was one bold with me too, Some coy thing would say rude, but 'tis no matter, I was to pay a Waiting womans ransom, And I have don't, and I would pay't again, Were ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... the shadow of either hillside was not reaching across the loch, the meridian sun, chancing upon this coy mirror, made the most of it. Then it was that, seen from above, it flashed like a falchion lying between the hills; then its reflected glory, striking up, transfigured the two acclivities, tipped the cold heather with fire, gladdened the funereal pines, and warmed the ascetic rocks. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a short knock sounded on the back door, and an instant change came over Becky Boozer. It was impossible to imagine that anyone as ponderous as Becky could be coy, but at the sound of the knock, this is what she became. Wiping her hands hastily on one of many petticoats, she pushed and pulled at her hat (which remained immovable), straightened her fichu, and smoothing her dress, she minced ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... its mellow radiance—see her, in her fresh young beauty, seated at the old instrument, the moonlight falling on her bright hair; the sweet eyes averted from my too admiring gaze, veiled beneath the drooping lashes, cast down with a coy pretence of studying ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... part of Jefferson county I built a chimney for a man named —— M'Coy; he had forty-seven laboring hands. Near where I was at work, M'Coy had ordered one of his slaves to set a post for a gate. When he came to look at it, he said the slave had not set it in the right place; and ordered him to strip, and lie ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... generally accepted, and though Bishop Colenso's criticisms may still lie, formally, under ecclesiastical ban, yet the Church has not wholly turned a deaf ear to the voice of the scientific tempter; and many a coy divine, while "crying I will ne'er consent," has consented to the proposals of that scientific criticism which ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... advocate into a fervent description of many meetings with his coy subjects, and the tricks he was compelled to resort to in order to let them understand he meant ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou! Scarce were the piteous accents said, When, with the baron's casque, the maid ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... spinning all day long; To her wakening sense, the first sweet warning Of daylight come, is the cheerful song To the hum of the wheel, in the early morning. Benjie, the gentle, red-cheeked boy, On his way to school, peeps in at the gate; In neat, white pinafore, pleased and coy, She reaches a hand ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... on her beauty, which he later read to her in German through a kitchen window that was raised. The window was screened; so he read it all. Later he gets Sandy Sawtelle to tell her this poem is all about how coy she is. Every once in a while you could get an idea partway over on Herman. He was ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... "She is very coy," said the emperor. "All my gold and diamonds have won me not a smile—she will not yield up her secret. But I believe that she has responded to the love of one happy mortal, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... should she hesitate, and play the coy girl, and pretend to any doubts in her mind which did not exist there? She did love him, and had so told herself with much earnestness. To him, while his words had been doubtful while he had simply played at making love to ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... side the poet wisely draws, Bespeaking him hereafter by applause. The days will come, when we shall all receive Returning interest from what now we give, Instructed and supported by that praise And reputation which we strive to raise. Nature so coy, so hardly to be wooed, Flies, like a mistress, but to be pursued. O Congreve! boldly follow on the chase: She looks behind and wants thy strong embrace: She yields, she yields, surrenders all her charms, Do you but force her gently to your arms: Such nerves, such graces, in your lines appear, ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... will be sick, well, sullen, Merry, coy, over-joy'd, and seem to dye All in one half hour, to make an asse of him: I make no doubt she will be drunk too damnably, And in her drink will fight, then ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... stope out my stove polish ore and sell it for enough to go on with the development. I tried that, but capital seemed coy. Others had been there before me and capital bade me soak my head and said other things which grated harshly on ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... The phrase is Marvell's. 'Cf. To his Coy Mistress' (a favourite poem of Tennyson's), "my vegetable ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... palace. I went up to my room to-night and was feeling fanciful and sentimental, which means, of course, I was thinking about you. And then I imagined this whole scene—only a little different; I in this dress, and you at my feet, worshipping me and calling me all sorts of sweet names. And I was coy and held back!" ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... marvels can I work, 30 All the powers of Hell that lurk Favour me exceedingly, As deeds impossible shall attest Of awful shape, Miracles most manifest 35 Such that all shall see and gape, Visibly and invisibly. For I'll make a lady coy, Though love's guerdon she defer, If her lover look on her, 40 The very breath of life enjoy; And two lovers, love's curse under Kept asunder, Will I leave to grieve apart, And achieve by this my art 45 Things at which ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... is time enough to think of that," answered Donna Tullia, with a blush that might have passed for the result of a coy shyness, but which was in reality caused by a certain annoyance at ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... reason all her passions sway; Easy in company, in private gay; Coy to a fop, to the deserving free; Still constant to herself, and just to me. She should a soul have for great actions fit; Prudence and wisdom to direct her wit; Courage to look bold danger in the face, Not fear, but only to be proud or base; Quick to advise, by an ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... but destroy. The noblest way to fly is that death shows; I'll court her now, since victory's grown coy. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... then is love, sings Corydon, Since Phyllida is grown so coy? A flattering glass to gaze upon, A busy jest, a serious toy, A flower still budding, never blown, A scanty dearth in fullest store Yielding least fruit where most is sown. My daily note shall be therefore— Heigh ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... front porch, and reviewed the entire affair. It began when his Heart's Desire had fluttered into his autograph album with a coy: ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... see?" said brother Michael. "The virtues of both lovers diffuse themselves through the lake. The infusion of masculine valour makes the fish active and sanguineous: the infusion of maiden modesty makes him coy and hard to win: and you shall find through life, the fish which is most easily hooked is not the best worth dishing. But yonder are the ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... continued oracularly, "there will be a third attending us when we return, if thou hast been coy with the gentle Seti ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... low voice; the sister was too florid and loud for my fancy. We played at whist, and in the intervals between the games we tested Jerry's wine. He has a singularly good selection. The florid nymph was reserved and coy at first, but as the wine mounted she rather astonished me by her choice of expletives. The merry one had become business-like, and that sweet smile was gone. As I looked at him I gradually understood that I had ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... glanced round languidly to see what sort of man "Mr. Horace Moncrieff" might be. The door was pushed open further. Charon, now revealed as a pale-faced young man with a drooping moustache, put his head into the room and repeated impatiently his invitation to the apparently coy Moncrieff. It suddenly occurred to me that I ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... steam-roller flirting with a cow—but on the stage it is so sylph-like. She has short skirts, and her stockings are so much tidier and better fitting than these things are in real peasant life, and she is arch and coy. She turns away from him and laughs—such a silvery laugh. And he is ruddy and curly haired and has on such a beautiful waistcoat! how can she help but love him? And he is so tender and devoted and holds her by the waist; and she slips ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... as I glimpsed thee thou wert gone, A dream for mortal eyes too proudly coy, Yet in thy place for subtle thought's employ The golden magic clung, a light that shone And filled me with thy joy. Before me like a mist that streamed and fell All names and shapes of antique beauty passed In garlanded procession with the swell Of flutes between ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... men of Rumford in her had their joy, She showed herself courteous, but never too coy, And at their commandment still she would be, So fair and ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... the day should be named. On this subject also he found her ready to accommodate him. She had no coy scruples as to the time. He suggested that it should be before Christmas. Very well; let it be before Christmas. Christmas is a cold time for marrying; but this was to be a cold marriage. Christmas, however, for the fortunate ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... to whom he had entrusted the furniture and decoration had done their splendid worst. The drawing-room had the appearance of an hotel sitting-room trying to look coy. An air of factitious geniality pervaded the dining-room. An engraving of Frans Hals's "Laughing Cavalier" hung with too great a semblance of jollity over the oak sideboard. Everything was too new, too ordered, too unindividual; but Sypher loved it, especially ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... throbbed under the vernal summons; pale, tender grass-blades peeped above the mould, houstonias lifted their blue disks to the March sun, and while the world of birds commenced their preludes where silky young leaves shyly fluttered, earth and sky were wrapped in that silvery haze with which coy Springtime half veils her radiant face. The vivid verdure of wheat and oat fields, the cooler aqua marina of long stretches of rye, served as mere groundwork for displaying in bold relief the snowy tufts of plum, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... by the door: and Marvel, not seeing his friend, addressed himself, as soon as he had breath, to his mistress.—The lady's manner changed, and Wright had an opportunity of seeing and admiring her powers of acting. To Marvel, she was coy and disdainful. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... a streak of lightning reached the waves:— Wherein his thwarted speed appeared more awful As, brought within the scope of comprehension, Its progress and its purpose could be gauged. Spluttering Amyntas rose, Hipparchus near him Who cried 'Why coy of kisses, lovely lad? I ne'er would harm thee; art thou not ashamed To treat thy conquest thus?' He shouted partly to drown the sea's noise, chiefly The nearing Delphis to disarm. His voice lost its assurance while ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... faints, and Glory fails, And coy Reward in sighs exhales, I gaze in my two springs and see Attainment full ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... best— where the profits are to come from with a bill of fare like that passes my powers of arithmetic, and so I point out to her. I hope it is appreciated—yes, I do hope that, Mr. Lovegrove"—there the speaker became extremely coy and playful. "A little bird sometimes seems to twitter to me that it is. And yet I am sure I don't know. The members of your sex are very misleading, Mr. Lovegrove. Do not perjure yourself now. You cannot take me in. And a certain ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... its popularity is only a little less than that of roses and daffodils, but when we trust to seeds as a means of reproducing the best of windflowers instead of buying dried roots from the shops, then, and then only, will "coy anemone" become a garden queen. A. coronaria, if treated as an annual, furnishes glowing blossoms from October until June, after which A. dichotoma and A. japonica in all its forms—white and rosy—carry on the supply and complete the cycle of a year's blossoming. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... however, had attractions of a very different class: fine-featured, dark-eyed, coal-black-haired and tall; as she stood—her right hand holding the rude torch over her head, while the left gathered the folds of a long cloak under her bosom, with her eyes of coy expectation and merry amazement—she seemed more the ideal of a robber's daughter in some old romance, than a menial in a moorland farm-house. I attempted to salute her, but she held me at bay with her hand. "Hech, lad! ye're no blate—is it knievin' troots[A] ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... simple story, solemn fervors, subtile sympathies, and the winsomeness of little children at their play,—sometimes glowing with the deepest color, often just tinged to the pale and changing hues of a dream, but touched with such coy grace, modulated to such free, wild rhythm, suffused with such a delicate, evanishing loveliness, that they seem scarcely to be the songs of our tangible earth, but snatches from fairy-land. Often rude in form, often defective in rhyme, and not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... they had both been born, the mother had been considered rather bold and forward. Her penchant for Gibbon was only one of a number of adventures that have been told about her. She was by no means coy with the gallants of Geneva. Yet, after her marriage, and when she came to Paris, she seemed to be transformed into a sort of ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... song and swelled her song With maiden coy caprice In a labyrinth of throbs, 120 Pauses, cadences; Clear-noted as a dropping brook, Soft-noted like the bees, Wild-noted as the shivering wind Forlorn through forest trees: Love-noted like the wood-pigeon Who hides herself for love, Yet cannot keep her secret ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... Heaven has bent me down. To you, Paolo, I could look, however, Were my hump made a mountain. Bless him, God! Pour everlasting bounties on his head! Make Croesus jealous of his treasury, Achilles of his arms, Endymion Of his fresh beauties,—though the coy one lay, Blushing beneath Diana's earliest kiss, On grassy Latmos; and may every good, Beyond man's sight, though in the ken of heaven, Round his fair fortune to a perfect end! O, you have dried the sorrow of my eyes; My heart is beating with a lighter pulse; The air is musical; the total earth ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... erotics. And they are erotics! In one place he writes, "Beautiful art thou, O Broom! on the breezy bosom of the bee-haunted heath"; and throughout he buds and blossoms into similar delights. He wallows in doves and coy toyings and modest blushes, and bowers and meads. He always adds, "Wonderful boy!" to Chatterton's name as if it were a university degree (W.B.), and he invariably refers to Moore as the Bard of Erin, and to Milton as the Bard of Paradise—though ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... pitched in a higher key, yet not unlike Niagara. You hear the cardinal's rich flute-like song of "What, what cheer!" ringing from a wild grapevine. Again he seems to say "Come, come here!" Whether it be an invitation to all mankind or just a message to his coy mate you know he learned it from the same teacher as Niagara, and their voices are alike full of rarest melody. The leisurely golden chant of the wood thrush, where the misty spray and cool shadows enfold you, seems like a spirit voice speaking audibly to you, and the song- sparrow sends his ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... have been nearer death ten times.' He uttered his inmost thoughts out of pity:—All this he had awaited. The King's Highness by the report of his painters, his ambassadors, his spies—they were all in the pay of Cromwell—had awaited a lady of modest demeanour, a coy habit, and a great and placid fairness. 'I had warned the Almains at Rochester to attire her against our coming. But she slobbered with ecstasy and slipped sideways, aiming at a courtesy. Therefore the King was hot with ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... of those shy, timid glances he had noticed before, and began coiling something around her fingers, with a suggestion of coy embarrassment, indescribably inconsistent with ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... serious consideration. I am well aware that those responsible for her short and fatal existence ask us in desolate accents to believe that if she had hit end on she would have survived. Which, by a sort of coy implication, seems to mean that it was all the fault of the officer of the watch (he is dead now) for trying to avoid the obstacle. We shall have presently, in deference to commercial and industrial interests, a new kind of seamanship. A very new and "progressive" ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... maid, Whether by nodding towers you tread; Or haunt the desart's trackless gloom, Or hover o'er the yawning tomb; Or climb the Andes' clifted side, Or by the Nile's coy source abide; Or, starting from your half-year's sleep, From Hecla view the thawing deep; Or, at the purple dawn of day, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... either with white jessamine or with roses stuck into their round combs, and several wore gold beads and ear-rings. Some of the Indian dances are very pretty; but one thing is noticeable, at least in all that I have seen. The man makes all the advances, while the woman is coy and retiring, her movements being very languid. Her partner throws himself at her feet, but does not elicit a smile or a gesture; he stoops, and pretends to be fishing, making motions as if he were drawing her in with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... it is to haste my carcase hence: Youth stole away and felt no kind of joy, And age he left in travail ever since; The wanton days that made me nice and coy Were but a dream, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... as a young oak and all fresh and clean and pretty, like the first frost, green and tender as an April bud; in fact, she resembled all that is prettiest in the world. She had eyes of a modest and virtuous blue, with a look more coy than that of the Virgin, for she was less forward, never having had ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... proportion to the amount of obstacles which had to be surmounted, difficulty upon difficulty was now conjured up and produced as fast as they thought they were working upon our inclinations. Sometimes our advisers would go, and then the opposite. They were verily as coy in their advancements and retractions as a woman who, in love, gives and takes with a wavering man on whom she has set her heart at a time when he is fearful of giving way to ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... TREE is represented as a little coy maiden, whose short silver-gray dress reaches a little below the knee, and displays to advantage her delicately formed limbs. The sweet face, which is partly averted, reveals a pair of large blue eyes, which appear to ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... his attempt to speak the mind of all For this day's pleasure and substantial joy Should meet, with approbation and recall The hours so sweetly spent without alloy. He spoke of this to them with manners coy, Like one not used to boast what he had done. "Perhaps," he said, "They might their time employ To more advantage if he ne'er begun To give to them the Song which he ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... which the mothers of the young hunters presented for acceptance at her lodge, being careful to mention whose skill in the chase procured them, but in vain did they look for the bowl of succatash or embroidered moccasins—the products of woman's labor—in token that their gifts were pleasing to the coy beauty. In vain, when the shades of evening fell, the softly breathed flute lamented in melancholy tones her cruelty. In vain, with tasteful hand, the sighing lover painted his face and person to heighten his attractions and draw attention. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... streams, and bear Along with you my tear To that coy girl Who smiles, yet slays Me with delays, And strings my ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... can't help it—not if I stand right in his way," said Mrs. Thomas, with a coy glance from under her ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... from its tray, steady-borne by the hands of reverence, as one has seen Infallibility pass with uplifting of jewelled fingers through genuflexions to the Balcony. Port has this in it: that it compels obeisance, master of us; as opposed to brother and sister wines wooing us with a coy flush in the gold of them to a cursory tope or harlequin leap shimmering up the veins with a sly wink at us through eyelets. Hussy vintages swim to a cosset. We go to Port, ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... broiled bones and a mighty bowl of punch; and when a few glasses of the hot beverage had restored his powers, James opened ore rotundo on the merits of the forthcoming romance. "One chapter, one chapter only," was the cry. After "Nay, by'r Lady, nay!" and a few more coy shifts, the proof sheets were at length produced, and James, with many a prefatory hem, read aloud what he considered as the most striking ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... desire of the club that the Author of Waverley, with whom it was supposed that he had the means of communicating, would accept of the seat at the club vacated by the death of Sir Mark Sykes. Scott got through the affair ingeniously with a little coy fencing that deceived no one, and was finally accepted as the Author of Waverley's representative. The Roxburghe had, however, at that time, done nothing in serious book-club business, having let loose only the small flight of flimsy sheets of letterpress ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... shall run. Far, far be envy, far be jealous fear, With discord dark and drear, And all the choir that is of love the foe.— The season had returned when soft winds blow, The season friendly to young lovers coy, Which bids them clothe their joy In divers garbs and many a masked disguise. Then I to track the game 'neath April skies Went forth in raiment strange apparelled, And by kind fate was led Unto the spot where stayed my soul's desire. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... above the water. Then came snow again, and the road showed next a straight white band across the water. And now had come some colder weather, and ice had formed above the waiting waters which spread out so in all directions. What skating there would be! The boys had tried the ice, but it was coy and threatening, not yet quite safe to venture forth upon. It was what the boys called "India-rubber ice"; ice which would bend beneath their tread, but would not quite support them when they stopped. It would be all right, they said, ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... Was she insensible to this presence? It seemed to me impossible: I could not realize such deadness. I imagined her grateful in secret, loving now with reserve; but purposing one day to show how much she loved: I pictured her faithful hero half conscious of her coy fondness, and comforted by that consciousness: I conceived an electric chord of sympathy between them, a fine chain of mutual understanding, sustaining union through a separation of a hundred leagues—carrying, across mound and hollow, communication by prayer and wish. Ginevra ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... was going to die. She never thought so herself. She felt in no dying case; she had neither pain nor sickness. Her appetite was diminished; she knew the reason. It was because she wept so much at night. Her strength was lessened; she could account for it. Sleep was coy and hard to be won; dreams were distressing and baleful. In the far future she still seemed to anticipate a time when this passage of misery should be got over, and when she should once more be calm, though ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... together crushed and bruised, But, as the world, harmoniously confused: Where order in variety we see, And where, though all things differ, all agree. Here waving groves a chequered scene display, And part admit, and part exclude the day; As some coy nymph her lover's warm address Nor quite ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... no further compensation in return," said John, "than, perhaps, the coy turning up of a lamp at an upper casement where the jasmine climbs; or an exasperating patter of invisible palms; or a huge dank wedge of fruit-cake shoved at you by the old man, through a crack ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... Rufus he did hunt the deer, With a hey ho, come and kiss me, Dolly! It was the spring-time of the year, Hey ho, Dolly shut her eyes! King Rufus was a bully boy, He hunted all the day for joy, Sweet Dolly she was ever coy: And who would e'er be wise That looked ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... before it buds and blooms, a perfect flower. Though the actual lapse of time represented in the play occupies only a few days, Juliet in that brief period must assume several distinct characters. We see her first the coy, heart-whole maiden, the cherished heiress of a patrician house: soon the blind bow-boy launches his shaft, and, quick as thought, she is passionately, impulsively, enduringly in love; then we see her but a few hours a bride, with black sorrow creeping already ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... of Congress on this important point is much to be desired. For my part I think a temporary stipulation of that sort might be expedient. They mean to court us and in my opinion we should avoid being either too forward or too coy. I have no faith in any Court in Europe, but it would be improper to discover that sentiment. There are circumstances which induce me to believe, that Spain is turning her eyes to England for a more intimate connexion. They are the only two European powers, which have continental possessions ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... maison a Londres. Sur ce temps-la, s'il vous plaira d'envoyer v^{re} filz vers moy, il sera le bien venu. Son traittement rendra tesmoinage de l'estime que je fais de vostre amitie. De vous envoyer des nouvelles, ce seroyt d'envoyer Noctuas Athenas. Tout est coy icy. La mort de Concini a rendu la France heureuse. Mais l'Italie est en danger d'estre exposee a la tirannie d'Espagne. Je vous baise les mains, et suis, Mons^r, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... thy way, for the true-heartedst man That liveth, and as full of honesty, And yet as wanton as a pretty lamb. He'll come again, for he hath lov'd me long, And so have many more besides himself; But I was coy and proud, as maids are wont, Meaning to match beyond my mean estate: Yet I have favour'd youths and youthful sports, Although I durst not venture on the main; But now it will not be so soon espied. Maids cannot, but a wife a fault ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Braboy," she said, covering him with a coy glance, "an' it 's rale 'shamed I am to hev b'en talkin' ter ye ez I hev. It looks as though I 'd b'en doin' the coortin'. I did n't drame that I 'd b'en able ter draw ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... never have allowed it to be otherwise; yet it amused him, venturesome and bold as he was, to find them so coy; and he and Gaud exchanged one of their confidential smiles, seeming to say: "How pretty, but how funny our little ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... for the dessert. At most balls it is customary for the ladies to be seated first at the refreshment-table, where the most substantial articles of diet are boiled ham with sugar frosting, cakes flavored with the native lime, and lemon soda. Like the coy nun in Chaucer's "Prologue," she who is most elegant will take care not to spill the food upon her lap, eat with the fingers, or spit out the bones. At wedding feasts the gentlemen are given ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... j' do, Mr. Wayland." All the curl papers nodded like clover tops in the wind, while the coy brows arched, and an inviting smile played round the simpering headlights. "No, he ain't! Dan ain't in!" The curl papers nodded again and the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Beatrice. Now begin; for look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs close by the ground, to hear our conference." They then began; Hero saying, as if in answer to something which Ursula had said, "No, truly, Ursula. She is too disdainful; her spirits are as coy as wild birds of the rock." "But are you sure," said Ursula, "that Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?" Hero replied, "So says the prince, and my lord Claudio, and they entreated me to acquaint her with it; but I persuaded them, if they loved Benedick, never to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... called "Dafne" for private presentation at the palace of the Corsi. Rinuccini was the first of a long and usually incompetent lineage of librettists. The music was written by Peri and Caccini. It was appropriate that they should have chosen the love affairs of the first musician Orpheus and the coy Daphne, seeing what a vast amount of love-making, pretended and real, the school of opera has handed down upon the world. Reissman has reckoned it out that twenty thousand lovers are joined or are parted every night in the ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... "Girls are uncommon coy critters," said he, with a grave smile in his eyes. He handed back the child, and once more was ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... the naive grace of its environs will please you no less. The country immediately surrounding it is ravishing; the hedges are full of flowers, honeysuckles, roses, box, and many enchanting plants. It is like an English garden, designed by some great architect. This rich, coy nature, so untrodden, with all the grace of a bunch of violets or a lily of the valley in the glade of a forest, is framed by an African desert banked by the ocean,—a desert without a tree, an herb, a ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... gorge; and lies pitched so far as the very waterside, a picturesque jumble of wall and roof. Its banked edges bristle and stand up in the bight of a vaster bay, with a crooked breakwater, like a bent finger, beckoning passing sails to its harbourage—an invitation which most are coy of accepting. For the attractions of King's Cobb are—comparatively—limited, and its nearest station is a full six miles distant along a ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... traditions had depicted a delicate-appearing girl with reserved manners and a studious or artistic temperament, who would take an interest in the garden and like nothing better than to read aloud to them the new books while they did fancy-work. A certain amount of coy coquetry was to be expected—would be welcomed, in fact, for there were too many Miss Ripleys already. Proper facilities would be offered to her admirers, but they took for granted that she would keep them at a respectful distance as became ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... longing—if she could get those thousand francs! But though she was so dizzy and so upset she retained her grip on her native Florentine shrewdness. She said nothing of her need of the money; not a syllable of her sore distress. On the contrary, she was coy and wary, affected great reluctance to part with her pet, invented a great offer made for him by a director of a circus, and finally let fall a hint that less than a thousand francs she could ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... as she'd got to them lines that the Boss began taking a good look at her. I saw him gazin' into her eyes like he'd taken out a search warrant. Don't know as I could blame him much, either. She was a top liner. Wasn't anything coy or kittenish about her. She stood up and gave him as good as he sent. Next I see him make the only fool play but one that I ever knew the Boss to ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... among the gay young bachelors. That would be a beginning; and if all went well they would have an old maiden aunt from Philadelphia to spend the winter with them, and help them to give the dinner parties which do not encourage bachelorhood, but rather convert and reform the coy celibate. ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... easy a matter as my vanity had prompted me to think. I started with a handicap, since Jane had heard my declaration to Mary, and I had to undo all that before I could do anything else. Try the same thing yourself with a spirited girl, naturally laughter-loving and coy, if you think it a simple, easy undertaking. I began to fear I should need another antidote long before I heard her sweet soul-satisfying "yes." I do not believe, however, I could have found in the whole world an antidote to my love for Jane. You see I tell you frankly that ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... understand how any woman could be foolish enough to stand in her own light when he, the great Pepin, who had been so long the catch of the Saskatchewan, had graciously signified his intention to accept her homage. Perhaps she was one of those coy creatures who must have something more than mere conventionalism put into an offer of marriage, so under the circumstances it might be as well for him to go through with the matter to the ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... be the Prince's legal wife, and no light-o'-love to be petted and flung aside when he chose, butterfly-like, to flit to some other flower; and this she made abundantly clear to Henry Frederick. Her favours—after a period of coquetry and coy reluctance—were at his disposal; but the price to be paid for them was a wedding-ring—nothing less. And such was the infatuation she had inspired that the Duke—flinging scruples and fears aside, consented. One October day they ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... from the eyes of the world. I fancied as she came—'twas all in a flash—that into this rare creation He had breathed a spirit harmonious with the afflatus of its conception. And being thus overcome and preoccupied, I left the maid's coy lips escape me, but kissed her long, slender-fingered hand, which she withdrew, at once, to give to John Cather, who was most warm and voluble in greeting. I was by this hurt; but John Cather was differently affected: it seemed he did not care. He must be off to the ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... Shall weigh his titles down, and make you equals. Now for the means to assure him thine, observe me; Remember he's a courtier, and a soldier, And not to be trifled with; and therefore, when He comes to woo you, see you do not coy it. This mincing modesty hath spoil'd many a match By a first refusal, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
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