Quotations and Authors:
And so doth it480 apere,
The Tunning of Elinour Rumming Skelton, John 1520
For481 the grene bare thredes 60
Loke lyke sere wedes,
Wyddered lyke hay,
The woll worne away;
And yet I dare saye
She thynketh herselfe gaye
Vpon the holy daye,
Whan she doth her aray,
And gyrdeth in her gytes482
Stytched and pranked with pletes;483
All so my lustfull leafe is drye and sere,
My timely buds with wayling all are wasted:
The blossome, which my braunch of youth did beare,
With breathed sighes is blowne away, & blasted,
And from mine eyes the drizling teares descend,
As on your boughes the ysicles depend.But now the gray mosse marred his rine,
His bared boughes were beaten with stormes,
His toppe was bald, & wasted with wormes,
His honor decayed, his braunches sere.How falls it then, that this faded Dake,
The Shepheardes Calendar Spenser, Edmund 1579
Whose bodie is sere, whose braunches broke,
Whose naked Armes stretch vnto the fyre,
Vnto such tyrannie doth aspire:
Hindering with his shade my louely light,
And robbing me of the swete sonnes sight;
So beate his old boughes my tender side,
That oft the bloud springeth from wounds wyde:
There ‘s small pity in ‘t:
The White Devil Webster, John 1612
Like mistletoe on sere elms spent by weather,
Let him cleave to her, and both rot together.
I cannot, nor I will not hold me still.
The Comedy of Errors Shakespeare, William 1595
My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will.
He is deformed, crooked, old, and sere,
Ill-fac’d, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere;
Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind,
Stigmatical in making, worse in mind.
Explore all instance of sere in Shakespeare.
…which bids us seek
Paradise Lost Milton, John 1667
Som better shroud, som better warmth to cherish
Our Limbs benumm’d, ere this diurnal Starr
Leave cold the Night, how we his gather’d beams 1070
Reflected, may with matter sere foment,
Or by collision of two bodies grinde
The Air attrite to Fire, as late the Clouds
Justling or pusht with Winds rude in thir shock
Tine the slant Lightning, whose thwart flame driv’n down
Kindles the gummie bark of Firr or Pine,
And sends a comfortable heat from farr,
…with fear
Psalms Milton, John 1673
Jehovah serve and let your joy converse
With trembling; Kiss the Son least he appear
In anger and ye perish in the way
If once his wrath take fire like fuel sere.
Happy all those who have in him their stay.
And soon I heard a roaring wind:
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 1797
It did not come anear; 310
But with its sound it shook the sails,
That were so thin and sere.
Explore sere in Coleridge.
As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow,
Don Juan Byron, George Gordon 1824
And wish’d that others held the same opinion;
They took it up when my days grew more mellow,
And other minds acknowledged my dominion:
Now my sere fancy ‘falls into the yellow
Leaf,’ and Imagination droops her pinion,
And the sad truth which hovers o’er my desk
Turns what was once romantic to burlesque.
the bright and velvet lawn closely girdling the grey base of the mansion; the field, wide as a park, dotted with its ancient timber; the wood, dun and sere, divided by a path visibly overgrown, greener with moss than the trees were with foliage; the church at the gates, the road, the tranquil hills, all reposing in the autumn day’s sun; the horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white.
Jane Eyre Brontë, Charlotte 1847
Here, the peach tree showed her thousand cheeks of down, kissed often by the wooing winds; here, in swarms; the yellow apples hived, like golden bees upon the boughs; here, from the kneeling, fainting trees, thick fell the cherries, in great drops of blood; and here, the pomegranate, with cold rind and sere, deep pierced by bills of birds revealed the mellow of its ruddy core. So, oft the heart, that cold and withered seems, within yet hides its juices.
Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) Melville, Herman 1849
Sere in Melville.
Our talk had been serious and sober,
Poetical Works Poe, Edgar Allan 1849
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere–
Our memories were treacherous and sere–
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year–
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
Sere in Poe.
…looking with a half-fantastic curiosity to see whether the tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him, and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown, across its cheerful verdure.
The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne, Nathaniel 1850
WE’LL go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
Poems Henley, William Ernst ~1872 – 1897
November glooms are barren beside the dusk of June.
The summer flowers are faded, the summer thoughts are sere.
We’ll go no more a-roving, lest worse befall, my dear.
The corn, stack’d in its cone-shaped stacks, russet-color’d and sere–a large field spotted thick with scarlet-gold pumpkins–an adjoining one of cabbages, showing well in their green and pearl, mottled by much light and shade–melon patches, with their bulging ovals, and great silver-streak’d, ruffled, broad-edged leaves–and many an autumn sight and sound beside the distant scream of a flock of guinea-hens–and pour’d over all the September breeze, with pensive cadence through the tree tops.
Complete Prose Works Whitman, Walt 1897
And through all the world go our children, our sons the old world would have made into servile clerks and shopmen, plough drudges and servants; our daughters who were erst anaemic drudges, prostitutes, sluts, anxiety-racked mothers or sere, repining failures; they go about this world glad and brave, learning, living, doing, happy and rejoicing, brave and free. I think of them wandering in the clear quiet of the ruins of Rome, among the tombs of Egypt or the temples of Athens, of their coming to Mainington and its strange happiness, to Orba and the wonder of its white and slender tower. . . . But who can tell of the fullness and pleasure of life, who can number all our new cities in the world?–cities made by the loving hands of men for living men, cities men weep to enter, so fair they are, so gracious and so kind. . . .
In the Days of the Comet Wells, Herbert George 1906
Sere in Wells.
The cab-rank in Sloane Square is really a Home for Superannuated Horses. It is a sort of equine Athenaeum. No horse is ever seen there till it has passed well into the sere and yellow. A Sloane Square cab-horse may be distinguished by the dignity of its movements. It is happiest when walking.
Not George Washington Wodehouse, P. G. 1907
She stands in her unholy oily leer
A statue losing feature, weather-sick
Mid draggled creepers of twined ivy sere.We see a spirit on Earth’s loftiest peak
Poems Meredith, George 1909
Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear:
See a great Tree of Life that never sere
Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms might wreak.
Noëra, when sad Fall
Has grayed the fallow;
Leaf-cramped the wood-brook’s brawl
In pool and shallow;
When, by the woodside, tall
Stands sere the mallow.So have I seen a clear October pool,
Poems (Selected by the Author) Cawein, Madison Julius 1911
Cold, liquid topaz, set within the sere
Gold of the woodland, tremorless and cool,
Reflecting all the heartbreak of the year.
The slopes of the steep wild hills came down shaggy and bushy, with a few berries lingering, and the long grass-stalks sere with the frost. Again the dark valley sank below like a ravine, but shaggy, bosky, unbroken. It came upon me how I loved the sight of the blue-shadowed, tawny-tangled winter with its frosty standstill.The young oaks keep their brown leaves. And doing so, surely they are best with a thin edge of rime.
Sea and Sardinia Lawrence, D. H. 1921
Sere in Lawrence.
Frail the white rose and frail are
Pomes Penyeach Joyce, James 1924
Her hands that gave
Whose soul is sere and paler
Than time’s wan wave.
Rosefrail and fair–yet frailest
A wonder wild
In gentle eyes thou veilest,
My blueveined child.
The book which he used for these visits was an old neglected book written by saint Alphonsus Liguori, with fading characters and sere foxpapered leaves. A faded world of fervent love and virginal responses seemed to be evoked for his soul by the reading of its pages in which the imagery of the canticles was interwoven with the communicant’s prayers.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Joyce, James 1904
Sere in Joyce.