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Blossom   Listen
verb
Blossom  v. i.  (past & past part. blossomed; pres. part. blossoming)  
1.
To put forth blossoms or flowers; to bloom; to blow; to flower. "The moving whisper of huge trees that branched And blossomed."
2.
To flourish and prosper; to develop into a superior type. "Israel shall blossom and bud, and full the face of the world with fruit."
3.
To appear or grow as if by blossoming; to spread out rapidly.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Blossom" Quotes from Famous Books



... varieties, while the opposite is true of the Lemoines. The typical spike should have two rows of flowers facing the same way, and near enough together to conceal the stem, or the most of it, but not so close as to look crowded. The blossom should be finely arched, and open enough to bring out that frank, engaging expression which is peculiar to this flower, and one of its special charms. The petals should be of ample width, to give the bloom a rich, generous appearance. Substance in the petals is of very great importance ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford

... wish to employ in labor says he is tired and would seem to have been born so; where ague would prevail if the people would take the trouble to shake; where a large orange-tree will bear several thousand oranges—leaves, buds, blossom, half-grown and full-grown fruit, all at once—and every twenty-five feet square of sand will sustain such a tree; where, in many parts, cold weather is an impossibility, and perpetual verdure reigns; ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous

... Mr. Blossom smiled appreciatively, and sat down beside Scattergood. "I'm interested in the new Higgins's Bridge Pulp Company. You've heard of it, ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland

... summer. Sorrento has a perfect climate, All the seasons are blended together here, and in the orange groves, that surround the town, there may be seen at the same time the strange spectacle of trees in blossom side by side with trees that are loaded with ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... them was tall and majestic, and the other low, and of a shape and figure the most alluring. This appeared to be like a blossom in May, whose colours discovered to the attentive observer all their attractions, without being expanded to the careless eye: And that might be supposed to be a few summers farther advanced to a delicious maturity. The majesty of the one had nothing in it of the gross, the indelicate, and the ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... day, alack the day! Love, whose month is ever May, Spied a blossom passing fair Playing in the wanton air: Through the velvet leaves the wind All unseen 'gan passage find; That the lover, sick to death, Wish'd himself the heaven's breath. Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow; Air, would I might triumph ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... blossom, O prairies! Snowy and golden and red; Peers of the Palestine lilies Heap for your glorious dead! Roses as fair as of Sharon, Branches as stately as palm, Odors as rich as the spices— Cassia and aloes and balm— Mary the loved and Salome, All with a gracious accord, Ere the first glow of the morning ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... nestling upon the blossom of a helianthus. Cudjo approached it stealthily, and with an adroit movement inverted the glass upon it, so as to inclose both bee and flower; at the same instant one of his hands—upon which was a strong buckskin glove—was ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... and built houses. Old wooden meeting houses were torn down, and handsome brick churches went up in their places. Let the prejudiced scoffer say what he will, the Negro has done his full share in making the now illfated city blossom as the rose. We who have for so many years made our abode elsewhere, have made our boast in Wilmington as being ahead of all other Southern cities in the recognition of the citizenship of all of her inhabitants; unstained by such acts of violence that had disgraced ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... grass, with its nests of daisies, was not under the highest and most careful cultivation. It was such a scene as is only to be found in an old country town; the walls jealous of intrusion, yet thrusting tall plumes of lilac and stray branches of apple-blossom, like friendly salutations to the world without; within, the blossoms drooping over the light bright head of Lucy Wodehouse underneath the apple-trees, and impertinently flecking the Rev. Frank Wentworth's ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... eyes, around the pair of diamonds in her delicately moulded, but alert and generous ears. Her fine gold watch-chain, twice dependent from her neck, disappeared in the snowy mould of her bosom, on whose heaving drift swam a magnolia-bud and blossom, each with a leaf. Her father's picture, in a careful miniature set in pearls, lay higher on her breast, fastened by a pearl necklace. Her hands were covered with white gloves, and her arms were without ornament. Her hair, dropping in dark ringlets around her forehead and temples, was combed upward ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... come in with streamers! Come in, with boughs of may! Who knows but old Methuselah May hobble the green-wood way? If Betty could kiss the sexton, If Kitty could kiss the clerk, Who knows how Parson Primrose Might blossom in the dark? ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes

... skirts swayed to and fro against the imperial yellow of Foh-Kyung's robe. Her face coloured like a pale spring blossom, looked strangely ethereal above her brocade jacket. Her heart still beat thickly, half with fear and half with the secret rapture of their quest and her ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... she walked to a great tangle of honeysuckle that clustered about and overtopped a garden seat, to pluck a bunch and stick it in the neckerchief that was folded over her bosom; then she went to her favourite rose-bush and kissed the one blossom July had left to it. "I'll not pick you," she said, "since you are ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... there suck I: In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... mortified at his dignity being lessened by the writer, in comparing his lordship with their late friend Pope.—"I venture to foretell, that the name of Mr. Pope, in spite of your unmanly endeavours, shall revive and blossom in the dust, from his own merits; and presume to remind you, that yours, had it not been for his genius, his friendship, his idolatrous veneration for you, might, in a short course of years, have died and been forgotten." Whatever the degree of genius Bolingbroke may claim, doubtless ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... of lemon myrtle. Ellen watched him as the bunch grew in his hand, and could hardly believe her eyes as one beauty after another was added to what became a most elegant bouquet. And most sweet too; to her joy the delicious daphne and fragrant lemon blossom went to make part of it. Her thanks, when it was given her, were made with few words but with all her face; the old gardener smiled, and was quite satisfied that his gift was not thrown away. He afterwards showed them his hothouses, where Ellen was astonished and very much interested ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... Mr. Chairman, there is one point raised by the last speaker that's not understood; that the young black walnut trees, when they first blossom, they come out with a mass of male blossoms. Then the English walnut, when it comes out, it sometimes comes out with a mass of pistillate flowers which people might not know are the female flowers. They make the nuts, but there is ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various

... cherish it in my heart—'tis a rough soil I own, but 'tis a warm one; and when the hand of delicacy shall have cultivated this flower that is rooted there, the blossom shall be everlasting love! ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... happen if you used what I have often told you is the only rouge a lady should use, that is, the sap of the geranium blossom—that gives an absolutely natural tint to the skin, and my own dear mother always used it. You remember how Louis XVIII. complimented her on her beautiful complexion at the first Royal ball held after the Restoration? Well, the Sovereign's gracious words were entirely owing to the ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... in the hole of the bumble-bee. Weary with culling sweets from the lime-trees, the heather-bloom, the apple-blossom and the ivy-flower be had sought his humble couch. Suddenly great claws tear away his roof-tree. Red Head is at work. Bees and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... be those who watch a serpent crawl And, blackening, sleep within a blossom's heart, Who will not slay, but call their gazing "Peace." Even thus within the bosom of our land Creeps, serpent-like, Sedition, and hath gnawed In silence, while ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... so it is to me. Though the house is situated on the street of a village, the street is beautifully arched with trees for some distance, and my room is very pleasant. One window is wholly shaded by sweet honeysuckle, which is now in blossom, filling the room with its mild fragrance. The little humming-birds visit its flowers frequently without being disturbed by ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... old time Surges malignant before me; Old voices, old kisses, old songs Blossom derisive about me; While the new days Pass me in endless procession: A pageant of shadows Silently, leeringly wending On . . . and still on . . . ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... in Russia by his very stringency caused a great fictional literature to blossom, despite his forbidding blue pencil. In America the sentiment of the etiolated, the brainless, the prudish, the hypocrite is the censor. (Though something might be said now about the pendulum swinging too far in the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... would provide far better "copy" To the industrious drivers of the quill If you were more emotional and sloppy, More richly dowered with journalistic skill; To make despatches blossom like the poppy You never have essayed and never will; In short, you couldn't earn a pound a week As a reporter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various

... thorough and intimate acquaintance with the tree. Therefore, the story at first had no idea of such a tree, sir, then gradually found it in winter, carried it through the changing season, saw it bud, saw it blossom, saw it bear fruit, saw the fruit ripen; in short, cultivated the tree in that diligent and minute manner before it got out of the bed-room window to steal the fruit, that many thanks had been offered up by belated listeners for the trees having been planted and grafted prior to Lord ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... side by side with this weed of villainy there was growing in Crane's mind a most peculiar flower of sentiment, a love blossom. Strive as he would—though the apathy of his rebellion somewhat startled him—Crane could not obliterate from his thoughts the wondrous gray eyes of Allis Porter. Even after Langdon was gone, the atmosphere of the room still smirched ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... that "he learned to speak Italian perfectly, his pronunciation being marred only by a slight French accent." Addison's three years of foreign travel, and the friendly society of the highest and best wherever he journeyed, had caused him to blossom out into a most exceptional man. Nature had done much for him, but her best gift was the hospitable mind. Travel to many young men is the opportunity to indulge in a line of conduct not possible at home. But Addison, ripening slowly, appreciated the fact ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... fool who followed him," said Yasmini, poising herself like a nodding blossom and smiling like the promise of new love, as she paused to be insolent and let the insolence sink ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy

... so much going on around him, the Tree quite forgot to look to himself. The court adjoined a garden, and all was in flower; the roses hung so fresh and odorous over the balustrade, the lindens were in blossom, the Swallows flew by, and said, "Quirre-vit! My husband is come!" but it was not the Fir ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... be enough, though, enough nor half a part; There'd be shells because they're sorrowful, and pansies since they're wise, The smell of rain on lilac-bloom, less fragrant than your heart, And that small blossom of your name, ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... grassy plots Are now resorts of vicious ease, Were then laid out in little lots, With useful beans and early peas: Each merely ornamental sod They dug with spades and hoed with hoes: The wilderness in every quad Was made to blossom as the rose. ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... she-society. They boated and they cricketed; they talked At wine, in clubs, of art, of politics; They lost their weeks; they vext the souls of deans; They rode; they betted; made a hundred friends, And caught the blossom of the flying terms, But missed the mignonette of Vivian-place, The little hearth-flower Lilia. Thus he spoke, Part banter, part affection. 'True,' she said, 'We doubt not that. O yes, you missed us much. I'll stake my ruby ring upon ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... suck I, In a Cowslips bell, I lie, There I cowch when Owles doe crie, On the Batts backe I doe flie after Sommer merrily. Merrily, merrily, shall I liue now, Vnder the blossom that hangs ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... that blossom and wither Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song; Only the sun and the rain ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... lightning across the infinite space which our inner vision allows us to perceive. This radiant idea, springing into existence like a will-o'-the-wisp, dies out never to return; an ephemeral life, like that of babes who give their parents such infinite joy and sorrow; a sort of still-born blossom in the fields of the mind. Sometimes an idea, instead of springing forcibly into life and dying unembodied, dawns gradually, hovers in the unknown limbo of the organs where it has its birth; exhausts us by long gestation, develops, is itself fruitful, grows outwardly in all the ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... of Arabia, Where the princes ride at noon, 'Mid the verdurous vales and thickets Under the ghost of the moon; And so dark is that vaulted purple, Flowers in the forest rise And toss into blossom 'gainst the phantom stars, Pale in the ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various

... brains and of an equipment that will facilitate her use of them. When through generations of experience she has fully learned her true position in the order of the universe and of human unfoldment, a new created world of humanity will blossom on this ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... of the brake where we were sitting there was a great elder tree covered with blossoms, and on the other side there was a clump of meadowsweet, and when I think of that day the smell of the meadowsweet and elder blossom seems to fill the room, and if I shut my eyes I can see the glaring blue sky, with little clouds very white floating across it, and nurse who went away long ago sitting opposite me and looking like the beautiful white lady in the wood. So we sat down ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... into western Nebraska we passed through a succession of thriving cities. The Platte has been turned to splendid service through the process of irrigation. Great canals lead its life-giving waters out to the thirsty plains that now "blossom as the rose." Rich fields of grain and hay and beets cover the valley. Great sugar factories, railroads, business blocks, and fine homes tell of the prosperity that has leaped out of the parched plains ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... the monstrous creeping things. With the Lords of Air he descended and conquered; he dwelt in a new land, a world of light, where all things were of light, where the trees put forth leaves of living green, where the rose would blossom into a rose of light and lily into a white radiance, and over the vast of gleaming plains and through the depths of luminous forests, the dreaming rivers would roll in liquid and silver flame. Often he joined in the mad dance upon the highlands, whirling round and round ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... everyone else was anxiously wondering what was going to happen to the ship, he suddenly became the brightest individual on board. For a man to be moody and distraught while danger was impending was not at all surprising; but for a man, right in the midst of gloom, to blossom suddenly out into a general hilarity of manner, was something extraordinary. People thought it must be a case of brain trouble. They watched the young man with interest as he walked with a springy step up and down the deck. Every now and again a bright smile illuminated his face, and ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr

... I get rid of discord, but in the latter I have the positive enjoyment of music. The Stoics would have the passions rooted out, Aristotle would have them cultivated to use an apt figure (whose I know not), They would pluck the blossom off at once, he would leave it to fall in due course when the fruit was formed. Of them we might truly say, Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. See on this point Bishop Butler's fifth Sermon, and ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... number of tobacco-houses in or near London was estimated at seven thousand. In 1620 was chartered the Society of Tobacco-pipe Makers of London; they bore on their shield a tobacco-plant in full blossom. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... of the Slavic race alone is the living flower still to be found, growing in its native luxuriance; but even here, only among the Servians and Dalmatians in its full blossom and beauty. For centuries these treasures have been buried from the literary world. Addison, when he endeavored to vindicate his admiration of the ballad of "Chevy-Chace," by the similarity of some of its passages with the epics of Virgil and Homer, had not the remotest idea, that the immortal ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... it's that nasty hemlock!' said Martha, in surprise, pulling the white flowers out of the bunch; 'and I never knew it was there. Pah!' and she threw the blossom down with a gesture of ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... foretold that "knowledge should cover the earth, even as the waters cover the sea," and that "the wilderness should blossom as the rose," was given in an ecstatic vision, and was simply a spiritual comprehension of the ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... reckon," he announced, and once more the driver started up his car. It curved perilously near the bundle she had set down, with the handkerchief containing her cherished blossom lying atop; the mud-guard swept this latter off, and Buckheath set a foot upon it as he followed the machine in ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... vases, that are ranged along the terrace, there flourished a beautiful and rare rose. I forget its name. Some of my readers will remember. It is first to bloom—first to wither. Its fragrant petals were now strewn upon the terrace underneath. One blossom only remained untarnished, and Dorcas plucked it, and with it in her fingers, she returned to ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... city had grown up in the vicinity of the forest, tribes of wandering boys broke up the simple tastes and quiet habits which old Mother Nature had always kept up in those parts. They pulled the young checkerberry before it even had time to blossom, rooted up the sassafras shrubs and gnawed their roots, fired off guns at the birds, and on several occasions, when old Dr. Bullfrog was leading a concert, had dashed in and broken up the choir by ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... did not contain the father or mother of the deceased, but I understood that the mourners who composed it were all relatives. The oblong tablet with the "dead name" of the deceased was carried first by a priest, then the lotus blossom by another priest, then ten priests followed, two and two, chanting litanies from books, then came the coffin on a platform borne by four men and covered with white drapery, then the widow, and ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... three walked together to the little green quiet churchyard, where, by his own request, Edwin had been buried. Many a silent visit had the friends paid to that grave, on which the turf was now green again and the daisies had begun to blossom. A stone had recently been placed to mark the ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... full blossom, and an anti-slavery man could do nothing in the South. As I had always been a man somewhat after the John Brown stamp, aiding slaves to escape, or keeping them employed, and running them into Canada when in danger, I did not ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... now privileged to announce that this mighty scheme which will turn a desert into a rolling sea bearing the commerce of nations and cause the waste places of the earth to teem with population and to blossom like the rose, has been completed in its necessary if dull financial details and will within a few days be submitted to investors among whom it has already caused so much excitement. These details we will deal with fully in succeeding ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... the alder grows into quite a fine tree, and if its catkins be picked at Christmas and are brought into the warm house, they soon blossom out and spread their green pollen over everything. Rather a nice way of bringing a reminder of ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse

... have happy homes, too, even if it is hard to make both ends meet at the end of the year. They are often men of taste and culture, to whom such trials are particularly hard. They carry their culture into their homes, and the fruits of it blossom all around them. Wealth could not give them these pleasures, nor can poverty deprive them of them. They bring up their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and, thanks to the free schools and their own efforts, give them a good education. They ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... church. These servants all do as they please, and the lady of the house concerns herself very little about the indolence which her want of vigilance encourages. She rises at a late hour, and having dressed herself and decorated her hair with sprigs of jasmine and orange blossom, she takes her breakfast. That meal being ended, she goes out to make visits. During the sultry hours of mid-day she reposes, either by swinging in a hammock or reclining on a sofa, and meanwhile smokes a cigar. After dinner she again makes visits, and ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... against my life they conspired! Had it been another Roman's, mercy might have been a crime! Dearest, may Adrian love thee half as well as I; and yet, my sister and my child, none can know thy soft soul like he who watched over it since its first blossom expanded to the sun. My poor brother! had he lived, your counsel had been his; and methinks his gentle spirit often whispers away the sternness which, otherwise, would harden over mine. Nina, my queen, my inspirer, my monitor—ever thus let thy heart, masculine in my distress, be ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... spring And blossom of my youth, Taste all the sorrowing Of life's extremest ruth, And take delight in ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... my first yucca in blossom," said Banneker, "it was just before sunrise after I had been riding all night, and I came on it around a dip in the hills, standing alone against a sky of pearl and silver. It made me think of a ghost, the ghost of a girl who had died too young to know womanhood, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... well received. Wherever we cast our eyes, we see some face of friendship, and love, and gratulation: All nature smiles around us. Now the amiable tempers of which we have been speaking naturally spring up. The soil suits, the climate favours them. They appear to shoot forth vigorously and blossom in gay luxuriance. To the superficial eye, all is fair and flourishing; we anticipate the fruits of Autumn, and promise ourselves an ample produce. But by and by the sun scorches, the frost nips, the winds rise, the rains descend; our golden dreams are blasted, all our fond expectations are no more. ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... All night the Prince sat motionless and all through the night the evil forces strove to turn him from the truth that they knew he was about to achieve. In the morning they departed, and the Prince as he sat, saw flowers spring up and blossom all around him with miraculous swiftness. The air seemed purer than ever before, the sun was wonderfully bright and a peaceful serenity seemed to enfold the entire earth. And when night came and the stars awoke, the truth for which the Prince ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... whole tribe had crossed the plains, on the hard surface of which we lost their tracks. On this ride I found a beautiful little kidney bean growing as a runner amongst the grass, on small patches of land subject to flood. It had a yellow blossom, and the seed was very small and difficult to collect, as it appeared to be immediately attacked ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... little children, boys and girls, passed in single file across the stage, each bearing a rose. Slowly they marched, keeping time to music, and, as they reached the spot where Miss Anthony sat, each child deposited a blossom in her lap, a rose for every year. It was a surprise so complete, so wonderfully beautiful, that for a few moments she could do nothing more than grasp the hand of each child. Then she began kissing the little people, and the applause which greeted this act was deafening. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... humble as well as the strong and great, for the foolish as well as the wise, for all subjects as well as for all States. Put out your power, then, for that most sacred tree; deny yourself no pang that she may flourish; labor according to your strength that her blossom shall win the worship of humanity and her fruit be worthy of the blood of heroes that has poured ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... branch just breaking into bloom seen against the sunrise sky, or a bough bending its blossoms to the bosom of a stream, is subject enough for their greatest masters, who thus wed, as it were, two arts in one,—the spirit of poesy with pictorial form. This plum-tree is but a blossom. Precocious harbinger of a host of flowers, its gay heralding over, it vanishes not to be recalled, for it bears ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... in London, and certainly not in the country, though only a little while ago there were fields and lanes where rows of houses now stand. There are, indeed, bits of hedgerow still left where the hawthorn tries to blossom in the spring, and dingy patches and corners of field where flowers used to grow; but these have nearly all disappeared, and instead of them heaps of rubbish, old kettles, empty sardine-boxes, and broken crockery ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton

... her own natural right the long heavy coil of hair bound so many times around the back of Helen's head, ornamented with neither ribbon, comb, nor bow—only a single geranium leaf, with a white and scarlet blossom, was fastened just below the ear, and on the side where Mark could see it best, admiring its effect and forgetting the arrangement of the hair in his admiration of the well-shaped head, bending so industriously over the work which Helen had resumed—not crocheting, nor yet embroidery, but the very ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... will tend the invention of every labor-saving machine; increasing the product and shortening the hours of labor. With the physical man thus properly nourished and developed; the intellectual and spiritual man, will for the first time in history, have the necessary conditions in which to expand, blossom and bear fruit. Under such circumstances, life in the country will be both altruistic and idealistic. By comparison, life in cities will become a hardship which few will care to choose. The few, it may be taken ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... world. In the Botanical Gardens, near a certain tree, the familiar, and I thought the unmistakable, odour of a skunk was most perceptible. Hailing a gardener and drawing his attention to it, he replied that the smell came from the tree ("malotus" he called it), but the crushed leaves, the bark and the blossom certainly gave no sign of it and I remained mystified. Fruit of many kinds is cheap, abundant and good. Sydney is not a prohibition town! Far from it. Drink conditions are as bad as in Scotland. Many of the people, ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... which swains, in bands youthful and gay Danc'd 'round the trunk of the sweet blossom'd poplar, With greater rapture inspir'd my heart, Than Alps dazzling heights in ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... accept dead truths or blunt ones; which can be fitted harmlessly into spare niches, or shrouded and coffined at once out of the way, we holding complacently the cemetery keys, and supposing we have learned something. But a sapling truth, with earth at its root and blossom on its branches; or a trenchant truth, that can cut its way through bars and sods; most men, it seems to me, dislike the sight or entertainment of, if by any means such guest or vision may be avoided. And, indeed, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... indescribable and savage grandeur; and for nature, which disconcerts the petty arrangements of man, and which sheds herself always thoroughly where she diffuses herself at all, in the ant as well as in the eagle, to blossom out in a petty little Parisian garden with as much rude force and majesty as in a virgin forest of the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... not anything better than letting him go scot-free? Would you have me sit still and watch him blossom into a millionaire peer, a man of society, drinking deep draughts of all the joys of life, with never a thought for the man he left to rot in an African jungle? Oh, any way of punishing him is better than that. I have declared war ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... so completely orphaned, so desolate and destitute, and withal so puny, fragile and lifeless that Marian took her to her own heart day and night, imparting from her own fine vital temperament the warmth and vigor that nourished the perishing little human blossom to life and health. If ever a mother's heart lived in a maiden's bosom, it was in Marian's. As she had cherished Miriam, she now cherished Angel, and she was as fondly loved by the one as she had been by the other. And so for five years past Angel had been Marian's ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... the Will in plant-life. Passing rapidly over the wonderful evidences in the cases of the fertilization of plants by insects, the plant shaping its blossom so as to admit the entrance of the particular insect that acts as the carrier of its pollen, think for a moment how the distribution of the seed is provided for. Fruit trees and plants surround the seed with a sweet covering, that it may be eaten by insect and animal, and the seed ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... white jessamine, trained to grow over and shade the windows; the white paling, tipped with green; the clean gravel walk that led up to the door, the borders of which were skirted with white and with red roses; the clusters of tulips, lilies and hyacinths—all contributed to make the wilderness "blossom as the rose;" and every day the kind-hearted man sought to add some ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... magazines. Then he stood by the stall, looking on to the distances near and far behind it. Our feverish contact had not spoilt much of the landscape there as yet. Beyond a few railway sheds showed some bushes, as it were, of wild cherry-blossom, flaunting a true white under the sky's true blue. Spring colors dressed the woodland behind them red and bronze, and also the two famous colors of Faeryland. Behind that, again, the view was spread out widely diverse, certain blue ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... came almost sooner than she had dared to hope, for, on passing the library door just after the morning lessons were over, she saw him sitting there alone; and trembling between hope and fear, she hurried at once to her room, plucked the beautiful blossom from its stem, and with it in her hand hastened ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley

... she said, resisting the little one's effort to stoop and pick a wild-pea blossom, and the mother and child started slowly back the way they had come. The spy turned his horse, and moved still more slowly in the opposite direction. But before he had gone many rods he turned the animal's head again, rode as slowly back, and, beside the spot where Mary had stood, got down, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... white rough-cast walls melted into the hillside as if it had been there from the beginning of things. The vale below was ordered in lawns and gardens. A blue lake received the rapids of the stream, and its banks were a maze of green shades and glorious masses of blossom. I noticed, too, that the little grove we had explored on our first visit stood alone in a big stretch of lawn, so that its perfection might be clearly seen. Lawson had excellent taste, or he ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... with instinctive taste Which all my books had failed to teach; Fresh rose herself, and daintier Than blossom of the peach. ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... always count upon it that, whatever place Zura chose, from there one could obtain the most splendid view of vast stretches of sea, the curve of a temple roof, a crooked pine, or a mass of blossom. She was as irresistibly drawn to the beautiful as love is to youth. Her passion for the lovely scenery of Japan ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... a little farther. The golden-rod and the asters were in blossom now, and the road was bordered with waving fringes of blue and gold. They came in sight ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... its continuous sunshine, when the older ranches revelled in miles of pink and white apple blossom, when the small, wild sunflowers spread themselves like a sea of gold over the hills and valleys bursting in fairy splendour even through the hard roads and the rock fissures; when the air was redolent with the hypnotising, cloying ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... the room. Wolkenlicht now understood that Lilith was a frozen bud, and could not blossom into a rose. But pure love lives by faith. It loves the vaguely beheld and unrealised ideal. It dares believe that the loved is not all that she ever seemed. It is in virtue of this that love loves on. And it was in virtue of this, that Wolkenlicht ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... a-maying, a-maying, Come and be my Queen of May and pluck the may with me? The fields are full of daisy buds and new lambs playing, The bird is on the nest, dear, the blossom's ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit

... the thought that the seed, the child of the plant, is at the heart of every flower, that it is for this nascent life, this new venture into the great world, that the blossom unfolds in beauty and sheds its perfume on the summer air, yet more expands the joyous interest taken in the blossom. The mind, through a knowledge of these facts, can leap out into wider spaces of feeling and imagination. Thus every truth the ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley

... troubles does prepare, Like theirs who curious in their fortunes are. To say, I could with more content be yours, Tempts you to hope; but not that hope assures. For since the king has right, And favoured by my father in his suit, It is a blossom which can bear no fruit. Yet, if you dare attempt so hard a task, May you succeed; you have ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... from me," said Dionea, breaking off a twig of myrtle starred over with white blossom; and raising her head with that smile like the twist of a young snake, she sang out in a high guttural voice a strange chant, consisting of the word Amor—amor—amor. I took the branch of myrtle and ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... at once, in one asphyxiating gust, so offensive, so violent, as to choke him. He tried to close his senses, to subdue and annihilate them. But Albine reappeared before him like a tall flower that had sprung and grown beautiful in that soil. She was the natural blossom of that corruption, delicate in the sunshine, her white shoulders expanding in youthfulness, her whole being so fraught with the gladness of life, that she leaped from her stem and darted upon his mouth, scenting him with her long ripple ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... can touch the case merely. The soft, tremulous notes, even convey an impression through the nerves, similar, I fancy, to that which others obtain through the ear. But the real music for us comes through the eye. The rippling of waves, the tremulous vibration of leaf and blossom and twig, all these sights make for us a harmony perhaps as perfect as ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe

... from Liverpool on the Elletania as Mr. Douglas Romilly, occupied a room at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel as Mr. Douglas Romilly, and absconded from there, leaving his luggage and his identity behind him, to blossom out in an attic of the Monmouth tenement house as Mr. Merton Ware, a young writer of plays. Now I don't think," Mr. Dane went on, leaning a little further over the table, "that the Mr. Douglas Romilly who has disappeared was ever capable of writing a play. I don't think he was a man ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... an awning, the table was set, gay with white linen and glistening glass and silver, a centrepiece of flowers and jugs of red and yellow wine. The wistaria was in blossom, a world of colour and fragrance, shaken at odd moments by the swift dartings of innumerable lizards. The sun shone hot and clear; the still air, as you touched ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... When a wife "goes astray" the chances are as one to infinity that the misstep is her husband's fault. Love is the very life of woman. She can no more exist without it than the vine can climb heavenward without support,—than it can blossom and bear fruit without the warm kiss of the summer sun. Woman's life is a flame that must find an altar upon which to blaze, a god to glorify; but that sacred fire will not forever burn 'mid fields of snow nor send up incense sweet to an unresponsive idol, even ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... the best, Flora; it is my plan. I have found it true wisdom. Put on your bonnet, and take a ramble through the garden and meadows; it will refresh you after so many harassing thoughts. Your favourite trees are in full leaf, the hawthorn hedges in blossom, and the nightingales sing every evening in the wood-lane. You cannot feel miserable among such sights and sounds of beauty in this lovely month of May, or you are not the same Flora ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... the handsome screen. The altar and the table of the commandments were almost obscured by the wreaths of exotics that hung over them, and the columns of the colonnade, the font and offertory boxes were similarly buried in rich and lovely blossom. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... consisted of one large, shaggy, black dog (breed uncertain) named Kaiser; one large black-and-white cat named Pawsy; one cow named Blossom; two bronco horses, one named Dick, the other Ned; twenty-two hens and one rooster, without any particular names except that I called one of ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth

... two sorts: one sort was given to me by my father! they grow as plentifully as weeds; I have been looking for them these two days, and cannot find them. There are flowers out there, yellow, blue, and red; and that centaury has a very pretty blossom: but I can find none of them." I observed his peculiarity, and therefore asked him, with an air of indifference, what he intended to do with his flowers. A strange smile overspread his countenance. Holding his finger ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... 'The dew, the blossom on the tree, With charms inconstant shine; Their charms were his, but woe to me, ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... prisoners, was broken alive at Ladeveze, and Bonnet, a third, was hanged at St. Andre. They all suffered without flinching. Seguier's last words, spoken amidst the flames, were, "Brethren, wait, and hope in the Eternal. The desolate Carmel shall yet revive, and the solitary Lebanon shall blossom as the rose!" Thus perished the grim, unflinching prophet of Magistavols, the terrible avenger of the cruelties of Chayla, the earliest leader in the insurrection of ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... near our dear Lord, and hold by His hand, and try to shape our lives in accordance with His will—whatever be their outward circumstances and texture—then we may be very sure of this, that when the end comes, and we are far enough away from some of the sorrows to see what they lead to and blossom into, then we shall be able to say, It was all very good, and to thank Him for all the way by which the Lord our God ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... her small head, somewhat bent, her pale, sweet face, and large, bashful, inquiring, drooping eyes formed such an engaging, modest, and unspeakably touching picture, that Euryale dared to hope that even in the Circus none but hardened hearts could harbor a hostile feeling against this gentle, pure blossom, slightly drooping with silent sorrow. She could not resist the impulse to kiss Melissa, and the half-formed purpose ripened within her to venture the utmost for the child's protection. The pity in her heart had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... no words for expressing spiritual relations or spiritual operations. The new nomenclature of moral graces, humility, resignation, the spirit of forgiveness, &c., hitherto unrecognised for such amongst men, having first of all been shown in blossom, and distinguished from weeds, by Christian gardening, had to be reproduced in the Gothic language, with apparently no means whatever of effecting it. In this earliest of what we may call ancestral translations, (for the Goths were of our own blood,) and, therefore, by many degrees, this most interesting ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... fact, just so far as he has followed in the footsteps of the old Greek. Yet who would for a moment compare his Pitt, his Goldsmith, or his William IV., as biography, with Plutarch's Alcibiades, or Cato the Censor? We remember the fact that Goldsmith sometimes wore a peach-blossom suit, but we see ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... is a cloudless midsummer evening, and as the west fades the stars beam down upon the city, the evening-star hanging like a jonquil blossom. They are dimmed by the unwonted radiance which spreads around and above Carlton House. As viewed from aloft the glare rises through the skylights, floods the forecourt towards Pall Mall, and kindles with a diaphanous glow the huge tents in the gardens that overlook ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... corridors, came the scent of citron-blossom and jasmine, with sometimes a bird's song before dawn, sometimes a flute's wail at sunset, and always the call of the muezzin in the night, but no sunlight reached the apartment except in remote rays through the clerestory, and no air except ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... too, descendant of Amycla,[26] in the heavens, if the stern Fates had given him time to place thee there. Still, so far as is possible, thou art immortal; and as oft as the spring drives away the winter, and the Ram succeeds the watery Fish, so often dost thou spring up and blossom upon the green turf. Thee, beyond {all} others, did my father love, and Delphi, situate in the middle[27] of the earth, was without its guardian {Deity}, while the God was frequenting the Eurotas, and the unfortified Sparta;[28] and neither ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... continue our observations with the Persian walnut blight and there is only one further point to be emphasized and brought out at this time. Those of you who have informed yourselves on this matter know that the serious period of infection on the Pacific Coast is in the spring. It is a blossom blight. During the past two years the period of infection in the East has been in the late summer and it has not been serious on that account. It is well known that in certain dry springs on the Pacific ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... rock's brown bosom, Bright as a thorny cactus-blossom, I saw a butterfly at rest; Then first of both I felt the beauty; The airy whim, the grim-set duty, Each from the other took ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... a blossom now,' went on Mrs Gray, tossing the baby up, who laughed and crowed and stretched its arms. Yes, he could see the likeness, he was sure of it; and it brought back to his mind with sudden vividness a young mother's look of pride and love as she held ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker

... elder daughter. The rent I shall ask of her will be only Each year's first violets, white and lonely, The first primroses and orchises— She must find them before I do, that is. But if she finds a blossom on furze Without rent they shall all for ever be hers, Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch, Roses, Pyrgo and Lapwater,— I shall give them all to my ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas

... he deserves to be loved—Why, he's as handsome as a peach tree in blossom; and his mind is as free from weeds as my favourite carnation bed. But, Thomas, run to the castle, and receive Sir Abel ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton

... disturbed its sweet serenity. So like her soul, I thought, was the soul of this! Yet could her soul be undisturbed? Was it not, indeed, turbulent with apprehensions? Did it—I asked the question eagerly—did it sometimes hope that I would come? And something in the water answered yes. So I picked a blossom of the iris—that had taken its color from her eyes—and put it carefully away. By the spirit of her glance, by the unspoken message of this place, I swore—oh, why put down here all I swore? Men have stood beside solemn pools before, and women, too. Those who commune in the woods ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... he should reach at last that final gutter, To-day, or to-morrow, Or, maybe, after the death of himself and time; And stand at the ultimate curbstone by the stars, Above dead matches, and smears of paper, and slime; Would the secret of his desire Blossom out of the dark with a burst of fire? Or would he hear the eternal arc-lamps sputter, Only that; and see old shadows crawl; And find the stars were street ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... to leave off; and sometimes it beautifies them so that they find they love one another very much—as Mr. Chrome and Miss Kent did, though we have nothing to do with that except to tell how they made the poor little tree grow and blossom. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... walking along the road with her little girl. It was a child with a face like a bud of apple-blossom, and glistening fair hair like thistle-down sticking out in straight, wild, flamy pieces, and very dark eyes. The child clung jealously to her mother's side when he looked at her, staring with resentful black eyes. But the mother ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... known by the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," who has sung the achievements of Scottish knights and ladies. This village, at the foot of Skiddaw, though much visited in the summer, has still all the wildness of nature. Daffodils were in blossom when I walked there; and primroses, daisies and violets opened, among the trees, upon every bank and grass plat, while the mountains, clustering about Derwent Water, assumed such tints and shades of purple and blue as are peculiar to a ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... life must be, Since it is worthy care from thee; et life I hold but idle breath When love or honor's weighed with death. Then let me profit by my chance, And speak my purpose bold at once. I come to bear thee from a wild Where ne'er before such blossom smiled, By this soft hand to lead thee far From frantic scenes of feud and war. Near Bochastle my horses wait; They bear us soon to Stirling gate. I'll place thee in a lovely bower, I'll guard thee like a tender flower—' 'O hush, Sir Knight! 't were female art, To say ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... the grand celebration," said they in answer to his question. "For one night in the year the Little People are coming out for sport before midnight. The Queen will be here, and we are to drop leaves upon her." But the Cherry Blossom was unable to carry the news back, for the winds were not favourable. It was as the Lilacs had said. This was the Queen Faery's reception night, being the first night of the year, and it was under the Lilac that she was to receive ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder

... their own minds to flit away in daydreams and romance; there, in short,—for why should we shape out the vague sunshine of their hopes?—there all pure delights were to cluster like roses among the pillars of the edifice, and blossom ever new and spontaneously. So, one breezy and cloudless afternoon, Adam Forrester and Lilias Fay set out upon a ramble over the wide estate which they were to possess together, seeking a proper site for their Temple of Happiness. They were themselves ...
— The Lily's Quest (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... a pretty little visage of her own; but it's not so well worth looking at as yours,' said Aubrey. 'One has seen to the end of it at once; and it won't light up. Hers is just the May blossom; and yours the—the—I know—the orchis! I have read of a ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge



Words linked to "Blossom" :   flowering plant, stamen, pistil, flower, perigone, blossom out, carpel, period of time, peak, ovary, ray flower, develop, flush, floral leaf, ray floret, effloresce, chlamys, reproductive structure, orange-blossom orchid, prime, heyday, golden age, perigonium, chrysanthemum



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