United States or Cyprus ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A small garden two yards wide, surrounded by a low wall so that one could see the passers-by, separated the house from the road; there was a beautiful rose-laurel, extending its southern foliage above the evening bench, and there were yuccas, a palm tree, and enormous bunches of those hortensias which are giants here, in this land of shade, in this lukewarm climate, so often enveloped by clouds.
On the stage, partly cleared of the débris of fifteen hundred years, trees had been left where they had grown, among fallen columns, fragments of capital and statue; near the front a superb rose-laurel recalled the Attic shores. To the right, wild grasses and herbs alternated with thick shrubbery, among which Orestes hid later, during the lamentations of his sister.
There an Arch of pale-blue fire spanned the dome from left to right, . . there, from huge bronze vessels mounted on tall tripods the smoke of burning incense arose in thick and odorous clouds, there children clad in white, and wearing garlands of vivid scarlet blossoms, stood about in little groups as still as exquisitely modelled statuettes, their small hands folded, and their eyes downcast, . . there, the steps were strewn with branches of palm, flowering oleander, rose-laurel, and olive-sprays, but the Sanctuary itself was not visible.
A hundred steps in front of the temple a little clump of rose-laurel shook in the twilight haze on the edge of a rivulet all but dried up. There it was that Tartarin went and ensconced himself, one knee on the ground, according to the regular rule, his rifle in his hand, and his huge hunting-knife stuck boldly before him in the sandy bank. Night fell.
Myrtle and rose-laurel branches were strewn upon the ground, and from the walls of the palaces were suspended by little rings of bronze rich tapestries, whereon the needles of industrious captives intermingling wool, silver, and gold had represented various scenes in the history of the gods and heroes: Ixion embracing the cloud; Diana surprised in the bath by Actaeon; the shepherd Paris as judge in the contest of beauty held upon Mount Ida between Hera, the snowy-armed, Athena of the sea-green eyes, and Aphrodite, girded with her magic cestus; the old men of Troy rising to honour Helena as she passed through the Skaian gate, a subject taken from one of the poems of the blind man of Meles.
In the gardens, the rose-laurel which is beginning to bloom in profusion is becoming already magnificently pink. At the end of each work day, the good folks sit outside, in front of their doors, to look at the night falling the night which soon confuses, under the vaults of the plane-trees, their groups assembled for benevolent rest.
As he came to where the street turned somewhat, even such a carline was sitting on a clean white door-step on the sunny side, somewhat shaded by a tall rose-laurel tree in a great tub, and she sang as she sat spinning, and Ralph stayed to listen in his idle mood, and he heard how she sang in a dry, harsh voice: Clashed sword on shield In the harvest field; And no man blames The red red flames, War's candle-wick On roof and rick.
She stayed later and later in this place which she liked, under the shelter of the rose-laurel coming into bloom, and sometimes even, she came out noiselessly through the window, like a little, sly fox, to breathe there at length, after her mother had gone to bed. Ramuntcho knew this and, every night, the thought of that bench troubled his sleep.
Word Of The Day