Random Sequence

"When the rich midsummer trailed its affluence of splendor through the lengthened days, filling the land with the flush of blossoms and the song of birds, we wandered through the silent, odorous woods, and up the slanting hill-sides, where the wild roses trailed over the thickets, and held up their delicate pink goblets for the sunlight to pour in its golden wine -- through shady, brier-hedged lanes and sun-gilt meadows, where the yellow lilies swung their burnished bells."
--from "Unto the End", by Margaret Hunter Grant, in Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine, June 1864

(I found a bound copy of Godey's in my basement and have been flipping through the dusty pages.)

Ahem! This is a classic example of what we call "purple" writing, but it's rather amusing in its over-the-top layering on of "poetic" prose. This is just a short excerpt, though -- it goes on an on in the same vein ad nauseum. Quite "odorous", in the end, to use one of Hunter Grant's old-fashioned adjectives. Odorous, as you might guess, means "having an odor". It's not a word much used these days, except when one is being facetious.