United States or Australia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Passing suburban villas, close- shuttered, vine-trellised, handsome chateaux, each approached by stately avenues of plane or mulberry, cypress groves and vineyards, we are soon in the heart of the country. Little farmhouses are seen on either side, their ochre-coloured walls gleaming against the deep-blue sky fig-trees in every garden, with peach-orchards beyond, showing the brilliant fruit.
We can see their vine-trellised balconies and little gardens, and sometimes the pet cats run down to the water's edge to look at us. And all this time, from the beginning of our journey to the end, the river winds amid the great walls of the Causses to our left the spurs of the Causse Mejean; to our right those of Sauveterre.
The house was cheerful and pleasant; a vine-trellised walk, a pergola, as it is called in Italian, led from the hall-door to a summer-house at the end of the garden, which Shelley made his study, and in which he began the "Prometheus"; and here also, as he mentions in a letter, he wrote "Julian and Maddalo". A slight ravine, with a road in its depth, divided the garden from the hill, on which stood the ruins of the ancient castle of Este, whose dark massive wall gave forth an echo, and from whose ruined crevices owls and bats flitted forth at night, as the crescent moon sunk behind the black and heavy battlements.
Meanwhile, in a picturesque, vine-trellised cottage, not fifty yards off, ladies went about their domestic duties as usual, apparently oblivious of all danger. One I saw quietly knitting in the cool, shaded stoep, and her busy needles only stopped for one moment, when a shell burst in the roadway beyond, then went on again as nimbly as ever.
Enrica's eyes languidly followed the direction of his hand. The cavaliere, standing on his other side, was adjusting his spectacles, the better to distinguish the distance. "To the south," continued the count, pointing with his finger "in the centre of that rich vine-trellised Campagna, lies Pescia, a garden of luscious fruits.
No trim, green verandahed villa, no inviting vine-trellised walk, no luxuriant vegetable garden or brilliant flower beds greeted my eyes; instead, dilapidated walls, abutting on these a peasant's cottage, and in front an acre or two of bare dusty field!
There they would dine at some rustic Gasthof, and afterwards, whilst her father and his friends smoked, drank their Rhine wine, and brought out the inevitable cards and dice in the shady, vine-trellised garden, Madelon, wandering about here and there, in and out, through yard and court, and garden and kitchen, poking her small nose everywhere, gained much primary information on many subjects, from the growing of cabbages to the making sauerkraut from the laying of eggs by ever-hopeful hens, to their final fulfilment of a ruthless destiny in a frying-pan.
A month had not elapsed before Hogg left him in order to begin his own law studies at York; and Shelley abode "alone in the vine-trellised chamber, where he was to remain, a bright-eyed, restless fox amidst sour grapes, not, as his poetic imagination at first suggested, for ever, but a little while longer." The records of this first residence in London are meagre, but not unimportant.
"We'll find a cottage somewhere ... a pretty little cottage within our means," I replied, visioning a vine-trellised place such as poets and their brides must live in. "Our money is giving out ... soon we'll have to turn back to New York!" "If we do, that need not part us.... I'll get a job on some newspaper or magazine and take care of you."
Enimie has grown terrace-wise, zigzagging the steep sides of the Causse, its quaint spire rising in the midst of rows of whitewashed houses, with steel-gray overhanging roofs, vine-trellised balconies, and little hanging gardens perched aloft.
Word Of The Day