"Briar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pagoda, I did the same, and also took my gun in case of a wet place and snipe. They saw a procession to a priest's funeral—one of the regular shows of Burmah, I only saw jungle, and brakes of white roses with rather larger blossoms than our sweet briar, growing to about twenty feet high. These grew many feet below the level of the river in the wet season, so I gather they spend several months in the rains under water: I also saw vultures, eagles, hawks, and ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... I had begun to fear. I owe you an apology, Sir Thomas," he went on with manly dignity, producing the briar, "I am entirely to blame. How the mistake arose I cannot imagine, but I find it ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... me to swear on that holy Bible, I would swear I never until this day heard that dog-roses were our provender; and yet did I, no longer ago than last summer, write, not indeed upon a dog-rose, but upon a sweet-briar, what would only serve to rinse the mouth withal after ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... sooner or later her ruse would be discovered by the watchers of the conspiracy, but she asked only two hours of freedom. After that she would be as difficult to find as the rabbit that has gained the heart of the briar patch. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... hedge with wild briar overtwined, And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind Upon their summer thrones; there too should be The frequent chequer of a youngling tree, That with a score of light green brethren shoots From the quaint mossiness of aged roots: Round which is heard a spring-head ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... her, and saw that out of his own shirt, washed and bleached, she had made a lovely garment. And round it, from the hem upward, ran a climbing briar of exquisite delicacy, and with a beautiful design of spines and leaves; but the only flower upon it was a golden rose, worked on the heart of the smock in her own gold hair. And Hobb took it from her ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... great object of the Poocah seems to be to obtain a rider, and then he is in all his most malignant glory. Headlong he dashes through briar and brake, through flood and fall, over mountain, valley, moor, and river indiscriminately; up and down precipice is alike to him, provided he gratifies the malevolence that seems to inspire him. He bounds and flies over and beyond them, gratified by the distress, and utterly reckless ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... people of all others with whom I would like to worship to-day," I thought; "and I hope that that rotund old lady, whose face beams under the shadow of her deep bonnet like a harvest moon through a fleecy cloud, will feel moved to speak." I plucked a few buds from the sweet-briar bush, fastened them in my button-hole, and promptly followed the old lady into the meeting-house. Having found a vacant pew I sat down, and looked around with serene content. But I soon observed that ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... paths puzzled Louisa more than they had puzzled Archie in the morning; for she wanted to keep her way, which he did not. She lost it, however, continually. Her eyes were scratched by boughs and brambles, the tree roots tripped her up, her dress caught in a briar and was torn. "Archie! Archie!" she cried, as she went along. Her voice came back from the forest in strange echoing tones which made her start. At last, after winding and turning for a long time, she ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... of the spring. A warm wind from the Pacific set the cedars rustling, the sun shone bright and hot, and the open fringe of the forest was garlanded with flowers, while a torrent made wild music in every ravine. I was sitting outside our shanty one morning smoking a pet English briar, whose stem was bitten half-way, and reveling in the warmth and brightness, when the unexpected happened. By degrees, perhaps under the spell of some influence which stirs us when sleeping nature awakens once more to life, I lost myself in reverie, and recalled drowsily a certain deep, oak-shrouded ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... with a coat buttoned clear to the neck, and a countenance like a funeral sermon, with no more expression than a wooden decoy duck, who was smoking a briar-wood pipe that he had picked up on a what-not that belonged to the host, knocked the ashes out in ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... but went up to her room, and presently Jeff, moodily puffing at his briar in the porch, heard the notes of her piano overhead. She played softly for some little time, and Jeff's pipe went out before it was finished—a most rare occurrence ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... and steal away Through grain and briar shoulder high, There are secrets hid in the heart of day, In the hush and ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... pleasant and friendly. He would talk to himself in English, ruffling his hands through his hair: "And then, at three o'clock I must go with Andrey Vassilievitch ..." or "I wonder whether she'll mind if I ask—" He had a large briar pipe at which he puffed furiously, but could not smoke without an endless procession of matches that afterwards littered the floor around him. "The tobacco's damp," he explained to us a hundred times. "It's ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... privilege that God has given us in allowing us to visit each other. We can help so much by it if we will. Wasn't that a lovely visit that the old school master made to Marget that time in "Beside the Bonny Briar Bush" when he came to tell her that she had a "laddie of parts"? And wasn't it still more beautiful when he came later, rugged old Scotchman that he was, to burst into tears of wild joy over the good news he brought her that her son had won first ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... thy starveling peers Till death clipt close their flight with shameful shears; Till shifts came short and loves were hard to hire, When lilt of song nor twitch of twangling wire Could buy thee bread or kisses; when light fame Spurned like a ball and haled through brake and briar, Villon, our sad bad glad ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... runs straight between the flowering rows, A moonlit path, hemmed in by beds of bloom, Where phlox and marigolds dispute for room With tall, red dahlias and the briar rose. 'T is reckless prodigality which throws Into the night these wafts of rich perfume Which sweep across the garden like a plume. Over the trees a single bright star glows. Dear garden of my childhood, here ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... and sank into an arm-chair by the study fire, knocking out his briar on a coal and carefully refilling and lighting that invaluable collaborator. With his data presently arranged in better mental order, he returned to the table and covered page after page with facile reasoning. Then the drowsiness ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... silent; she was tired, and not quite inclined for repartee. They had turned into a long, lovely lane, so narrow that no vehicle could have passed them, and the thick hedgerows were full of pink and white briar roses and other wild flowers; on either side lay hop fields. Bessie uttered a ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... little muscle, and said to herself in her Spartan manner, "I can bear it without either wincing or blenching." She went home early, at a tearing, passionate pace, trampling and breaking through all obstacles of briar or bush. Willie was moping in her absence—hanging listlessly on the farm-yard gate to watch for her. When he saw her, he set up one of his strange, inarticulate cries, of which she was now learning the meaning, and came towards her with his loose, galloping run, head and limbs all ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the smaller trees: the Yew with its thick green foliage; the wild Guelder rose, which lights up the woods in autumn with translucent glossy berries and many-tinted leaves; or the Bryonies, the Briar, the Traveler's Joy, and many another plant, even humbler perhaps, and yet each with some exquisite beauty and grace of its own, so that we must all have sometimes felt our hearts overflowing with gladness and gratitude, as if the woods were full ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... straying fingerlets, that clutched At good and bad, they so did glove, That they might pick the flowers of love, Unscathed, from every briar ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... its sloping, cloak-like roof was old and forgotten. It belonged to the old England of hamlets and yeomen. Lost all alone on the edge of the common, at the end of a wide, grassy, briar-entangled lane shaded with oak, it had never known the world of today. Not till Egbert came with his bride. And he had come to fill it ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... your judgments give ye not the reins With too much eagerness, like him who ere The corn be ripe, is fain to count the grains: For I have seen the briar through the winter snows Look sharp and stiff—yet on a future day High on its summit bear the tender rose: And ship I've seen, that through the storm hath passed, Securely bounding o'er the watery way, At entrance of the harbor ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... my faithful briar pipe, indulging in the fragrance of my tobacco as I look out on the campus from my many-paned window, and things are different with me from the way they were way back in Freshman year. I can see now how boyish in many ways I was then. I believe what ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... the small footpath, of which I have already spoken. It led in a zigzag manner through thickets of hazel, elder and sweet briar; after following its windings for somewhat better than a furlong, I heard a gentle sound of water, and presently came to a small rill, which ran directly across the path. I was rejoiced at the sight, for I had already experienced ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... charm over all this country, not solely due to its beauty. It is true that it is rather drowsy, that the 'spell of the briar-rose' in part lies over it, but it may be that this adds to the charm. There is an absence of competition, an air of plenty and of kindness, a golden glamour that gives the impression that Nature has told the people theirs is a generous ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... heavy briar and proceeded to envelop himself in a cloud of smoke. He gasped out a great sigh of satisfaction, and his leathery eyelids half closed. Presently a gentle tap came at the glass door, which partitioned off the office from the store. Lablache called ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... responded Roy. "I've got it now. Inte, minte, cute corn, apple seeds and briar thorn, briar thorn and limber lock, three geese in a flock, one flew east and one flew west, one flew into a cuckoo's nest, O-U-T out, with a ragged dish ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... their yellow leaves. But the rain is over now, the sky once more a pure lucid blue above me—all around me, in fact, since I am standing high on the top of the ancient stupendous earthwork, grown over with oak wood and underwood of holly and thorn and hazel with tangle of ivy and bramble and briar. It is marvellously still; no sound from the village reaches me; I only hear the faint rustle of the dead leaves as they fall, and the robin, for one spied me here and has come to keep me company. At intervals he spurts ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... John broke in on his meditations. Then there was a clatter as a briar pipe dropped on to the floor of the boat, and his ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... which we inspire When it is free to come and go; And sound of brook and scent of briar Rise freshest where the breezes blow, That feed our ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... wood. We had already discovered, to our pain, that almost everything in the bush had prickles, of all imaginable shapes and sizes; and now, touching a low tree, one of our party was seized as by a briar, through clothes and into skin, and, in escaping, found on the tree (Guilandina, Bonducella) rounded prickly pods, which, being opened, proved to contain the gray horse-nicker-beads of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... hated to see anybody or anything but himself have his way, had chained a heavy block to him to keep him from doing what nature had intended him to do—roam the woods and poke his long nose in every briar patch after rabbits. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... above the general din, calling "Fair lemons and oranges, oranges and citrons!" "Cherries, sweet cherries, ripe and red!" "New flounders and great plaice; buy my dish of great eels!" "Rosemary and sweet briar; who'll buy my lavender?" "Fresh cheese and cream!" "Lily-white vinegar!" "Dainty sausages!" which calls, being frequently intoned to staves of melody, fell with pleasant sounds upon the ear. [These hawkers ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... briar and weed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name; Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Snug and safe in that nest of ours, Hidden among the summer ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... breath of the briar I bring, And wafted scents of mint and clover, Rain-distilled balms the hill-winds fling, Sweet-thoughted as a lover; Incense from lilied urns a-swaying, And the green smell of grass ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... the lower portion of the Raven Hill estate we stumbled quite by accident into Dark Forest, vaguely hinted at by the negroes as a place to be avoided. This Dark Forest is a large tract of scrub oak, birch and holly, with dense undergrowths of briar; the haunt of innumerable small birds that dart in and out, chirping faintly. In its depressed portions the 'forest' has degenerated into a marsh through which a sluggish stream wends it way to the distant river. Slimy reptiles bask in ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... about the house gave perhaps half an acre of good garden ground; from the very edge of that, the grey rising ledges of granite and rank greensward between held their undisputed domain. There the wild roses planted themselves; there many a flourishing sweet-briar flaunted in native gracefulness, or climbed up and hung about an old cedar as if like a wilful child determined that only itself should be seen. Nature grew them and nature trained them; and sweet wreaths, fluttering in the wind, gently warned the passer-by that nature ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... now is the Summer's last Rose, That reigned like a queen on the briar? 'T is faded! and o'er its grave glows The glad warmth of Winter's ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... from the myriad field-flowers that gem the earth with beauty! And then in sickness! What, what is so refreshing as the perfume of sweet plants? We speak not of the glazed and costly things that come from foreign lands, but of the English nosegay—(how we love the homely word!)—the sweet briar, lavender, cowslip, violet, lily of the valley, or a sprig of meadow sweet, a branch of myrtle, a tuft of primroses, or handful of wild thyme! Such near the couch of sickness are worth a host of powdered doctors! Again we say, a blessing on sweet flowers! And now for one who loved them well, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... savage lands, ye barbarous climes, Where angry England sends her outcast sons— I hail your joyless shores! my weary bark Long tempest-tost on Life's inclement sea, Here hails her haven! welcomes the drear scene, The marshy plain, the briar-entangled wood, And all the perils of a world unknown. For Elinor has nothing new to fear From fickle Fortune! all her rankling shafts Barb'd with disgrace, and venom'd with disease. Have pierced my bosom, and the dart of death Has lost its terrors ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... expectation, went beyond belief, and soared above all the natural powers of description! she was nature itself! she was the most exquisite work of art! she was the very daisy, primrose, tube rose, sweet-briar, furze blossom, gilliflower, wall-flower, cauliflower and rosemary! in short she was a bouquet of Parnassus. Where expectation was raised so high, it was thought she would be injured by her appearance; but it was the audience who were injured—several of them fainted before ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... fern, and filled with rank undergrowth. Often the stream is overhung and invisible, or dammed and left in soak, breeding frogs, gnats, and flies. The trees are always tall and beautifully grown, whatever their age, for the moisture and warmth force vertical growth; the smaller bushes—hawthorn, briar, and wild guelder-rose—also assume graceful forms unhidden, for they always bow their heads towards the sun-reflecting stream. Part of the charm of the transformation of these brookside jungles into the brookside garden lies in the gradual and experimental method ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... in the grove is there seen, But with tendrils of woodbine is bound; Not a beech's more beautiful green, But a sweet-briar entwines it around. Not my fields in the prime of the year, More charms than my cattle unfold; Not a brook that is limpid and clear, But it glitters with fishes ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... what she should sing; and then followed a wonderful story of Giles Collins, who loved a lady: Giles and the lady both died of true love; Giles was laid in the lower chancel, and the lady in the higher; from the one grave grew a milk-white rose, and from the other a briar, both of which climbed up to the church top, and there tied themselves into a true-lover's knot, which made all the parish admire. At this part, Anna was seen looking up at the ceiling; but the rest had ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... had sunk behind a tor, but the warmth kept rising from the ground, and the sweet-briar on a cottage bathed them with its spicy perfume. From the converging lanes figures passed now and then, lounged by, staring at the strangers, gossiping amongst themselves, and vanished into the cottages that headed the incline. A clock struck seven, and round the shady lime-tree a chafer or some ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... addressing himself to a tiny brown bird which had alighted on a branch of briar-rose hard by, and was looking at him with bold and lively inquisitiveness,—"I think I have managed the whole thing very well! I have left no clue anywhere. My portmanteau will tell no tales, locked up in the cloak-room at Bristol. If it is ever sold with its contents 'to defray expenses,' ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... it runs so clear by my bonny lassie O! And the blackbird singeth near my bonny lassie O! And there the wild briar rose Wrinkles the clear stream as it flows By the smoky camp ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... furniture; not a stool, or bench, or board is seen in them, no brush seems to be known, and the clothes they wear are often filthy bark, or rags, or sacking. Along the paths where they daily pass to and from their provision grounds, not an overhanging bough or straggling briar ever seems to be cut, so that you have to brush through a rank vegetation, creep under fallen trees and spiny creepers, and wade through pools of mud and mire, which cannot dry up because the sun is not allowed ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... and she stopped suddenly. "Peter," she said, "I'm going to give you a pipe. Those chocolates you gave me at Christmas were too delicious for anything. What sort do you like? A briar? Let me see if it blows nicely." She put it to her lips. "I swear I shall start a pipe soon, in my old age. By the way, I don't believe you have any idea how old I am—have ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... delighting and sanctifying the heart of man. "As far as possible;" that is, as far as is consistent with the fulfilment of the sentence of condemnation on the whole earth. Death must be upon the hills; and the cruelty of the tempests smite them, and the briar and thorn spring up upon them: but they so smite, as to bring their rocks into the fairest forms; and so spring, as to make the very desert blossom as the rose. Even among our own hills of Scotland and Cumberland, though often ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... rose and knocked the ashes out of his briar pipe. He looked at the eager face of the ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... perfectly, heartily. Braxies, sheep that have died of braxie (a disease). Breastie, dim. of breast. Breastit, sprang forward. Brechan, ferns. Breeks, breeches. Breer, brier. Brent, brand. Brent, straight, steep (i.e., not sloping from baldness). Brie, v. barley-brie. Brief, writ. Brier, briar. Brig, bridge. Brisket, breast. Brither, brother. Brock, a badger. Brogue, a trick. Broo, soup, broth, water; liquid in which anything is cooked. Brooses, wedding races from the church to the home of the bride. Brose, a thick mixture of meal and warm water; ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Mein Aug' ist trueb (My Eye is Heavy): like the candid and silly dialogues with the Roeselein (The Little Rose), with the brook, with the turtle dove, with the lark: like those idiotic questions: "If the briar could have no thorns?"—"Is an old husband like a lark who has built a nest?"—"Is she newly plighted?": the whole deluge of stale tenderness, stale emotion, stale melancholy, stale poetry.... How many lovely things ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... the woods; And the buds that break Out of the briar's boughs, When March winds wake, So old with their beauty are— Oh, no man knows Through what wild ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... seated on either side of the fireplace in Shears's sitting-room. The great detective's pipe had gone out. He knocked the ashes into the grate, re-filled his briar, lit it, gathered the skirts of his dressing-gown around his knees, puffed away and devoted all his attention to sending rings of smoke curling gracefully up ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... soaking damps, Where the vapours pitch their camps, Follow me, follow me, For a midnight ramble! O! what a mighty fog, What a merry night O ho! Follow, follow, nigher, nigher - Over bank, and pond, and briar, Down into the croaking ditches, Rotten log, Spotted frog, Beetle bright With crawling light, What a joy O ho! Deep into the purple bog - What a joy O ho! Where like hosts of puckered witches All the shivering agues sit Warming hands and chafing feet, By the blue marsh-hovering oils: O the fools ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... point we'll discuss without passion or fear With the aim of instructing the listeners here; And haply some few who instruction require May profit derive like the bee from the briar. ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... applaud Mr. Pettit's plays. Impossible that an audience that could sit out Edward II. could find any pleasure in such sinks of literary infamies as In the Ranks and Harbour Lights. Artistic atrophy is benumbing us, we are losing our finer feeling for beauty, the rose is going back to the briar. I will not speak of the fine old crusted stories, ever the same, on which every drama is based, nor yet of the musty characters with which they are peopled—the miser in the old castle counting his gold by night, the dishevelled woman whom he keeps for ambiguous ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... as he put his bare heels, protruding from his Chinese slippers, up on the edge of the mahogany reading-table in his living-room, and began to pull at a long, evil-smelling, briar pipe. "Nothing ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... boiling hot upon them, and the remainder into a tub, with seven pecks of cowslip pips. Let them remain there all night; then put the liquor and the lemons to eight spoonfuls of new yeast, and a handful of sweet-briar. Stir all well together, and let it work for three or four days; then strain and tun it into a cask. Let it stand six months, and ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the distance, and so pursued a survey of meadow and woodland, yet without seeing what she sought. Beneath and beyond, separated from her standpoint by grasslands and a hedge of hazel, tangled thickets of blackthorn, of bracken, and of briar sank to the valley bottom. Therein wound tinkling Teign through the gorges of Fingle to the sea; and above it, where the land climbed upward on the other side, spread the Park of Whiddou, with expanses of sweet, stone-scattered herbage, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... and briar-thorn, Wire, briar, limber-lock, Three geese in one flock; One flew east and one flew west And one ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... just to save a few minutes of time or for some other equally foolish reason. The fact is, Peter didn't stop to think what dreadful thing might happen if his plans didn't work out as he intended. He didn't once think of little Mrs. Peter over in the dear Old Briar-patch and how she would feel if he never came home again. That's the trouble with thoughtlessness; it never remembers ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... gate into the next field, he skirted the base of a high, precipitous crag, on which grew a thicket of dwarf-trees and shrubs, and at the foot of which the burn warbled. Here, on his left, stood the briar bush out of which had whirred the first live grouse he ever set eyes on. It was at this bird, that, in the madness of his excitement, he had flung first his stick, then his hat, and lastly his shout of disappointment and defiance. A little further on was that other bush out of which he had started ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... measures may be taken as nearly correct; it is simply impossible to determine any exact rule, even for bituminous coal of the same district: Briar Hill coal, 44.8 cubic feet per ton of 2,240 pounds; Pittsburgh, 47.8; Wilmington, Ill., 47; Indiana block coal, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... the point. That letter was from an old friend of mother's, Mrs. Leighton. She has a home up in the country, Sweet Fern Cottage I think they call it, or is it Sweet Briar—" ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... a short man with grotesquely wide shoulders, wore a long flowing moustache, and a black coat, covered with dust, that reached to his knees. He held a smoking briar pipe in his hand, and with it beat time for a row of men sitting on a long stone under the store window and pounding on the sidewalk with their heels to make a chorus for the song. Sam's smile broadened into a grin as he looked ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... right hand lightly touching those of his left, listening attentively. Richard Seaton strode up and down the room before his friend, his unruly brown hair on end, speaking savagely between teeth clenched upon the stem of his reeking, battered briar, brandishing a sheaf ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... beginning. Perry's cult is the inaccessible—present him with all the virtues and he will run away; ignore him utterly and he'll make your life insupportable by his presence. For the last twenty-four hours I assure you he's stuck to me—like a briar." ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... a hedge upshoots, and shows At distance like a little wood; Thorns, ivies, woodbine, misletoes, And grapes with bunches red as blood; All creeping plants, a wall of green Close-matted, bur and brake and briar, And glimpsing over these, just seen, High ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... which I used to watch the tramps, as they came into the town on those wet evenings, at dusk, and limped past, with their bundles drooping over their shoulders at the ends of sticks, came freshly back to me; fraught, as then, with the smell of damp earth, and wet leaves and briar, and the sensation of the very airs that blew upon me in ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free; To hear the lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the sweet-briar, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine; While the cock, with lively din, Scatters the rear of darkness thin, And, to the stack or the barn-door, Stoutly struts his dames before: Oft listening how the hounds and horn ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... all, is the Eglantine, Which of the field is cleped the sweetest briar, Inflamed with ardour to that mystic shine, In Moses' bush unwasted in ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... that you will agree that tribulation is every such thing as troubleth and grieveth a man either in body or mind, and is as it were the prick of a thorn, a bramble, or a briar thrust into his flesh or into his mind. And surely, cousin, the prick that very sore pricketh the mind surpasseth in pain the grief that paineth the body, almost as far as doth a thorn sticking in the heart surpass and exceed in pain the thorn that ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... off the beat, isn't it?" mused my acquaintance, as sheltered from the keen wind I began to load my briar. "Very inconvenient I've always thought it for a gentleman who gets about as much ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... fond presumptuous Elf, Exclaim'd a thundering Voice, Nor dare to thrust thy foolish self Between me and my choice!" A falling Water swoln with snows Thus spake to a poor Briar-rose, That all bespatter'd with his foam, And dancing high, and dancing low, Was living, as a child might know, In an ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... walk, a discovery, a day of leisure, an hour of idleness." On a ramble with her children she came upon what she calls "a nook in a wild paradise;" a mill, whose owner had allowed everything to grow around the sluices that chose to spring up, briar and alder, oaks and rushes. The stream, left to follow its devices, had forced its way through the sand and the grass in a network of little waterfalls, covered below in the summer time with thick ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... beneath them, of that gentian blue which makes one think of Alpine heights. They can flash and gleam, on occasions, and sometimes look almost purple. He wears a heavy brown moustache, and his jaw and chin are terrifying in their masterful strength. Yet he smokes an old briar pipe; whistles like a blackbird; and derives immense amusement from playing up to naughty Susie's coyness, when the cameo brooch is turned another way. I have seen his eyes twinkle with fun when Miss Susannah has purposely let fall ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... the cord, and the cope, The dread of the devil and trust of the Pope; For to gather life's roses, unscathed by the briar, Is granted alone to ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... was seated in his old chair, at his old desk, behind the counter of the Metropolitan Store. His pipe, the worn, charred briar that he had left in the drawer of that very desk when he started for the railway station and Scarford, was in his mouth. Over the counter, beyond the showcases and the tables with their piles of oilskins, mittens, ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... vitality still in the roots. The "Mightier" than the "strong man" must now come and pluck up the roots. The work of eradication thus accomplished, the absolute reign of Christ will be established. The heart will now become the Garden of the Lord, without briar, thorn, or thistle. Relieved of these hindrances, the graces will ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... Forgive the past! Henceforth flowers shall bloom upon the surface Of your dwellings. The lilac in the spring Shall blossom, and the sweet briar shall exhale Its fragrant smell. E'en the drooping fuchsia Shall not be wanting to adorn your tombs; While the weeping willow, pointing downwards, Speaks significantly to the living, That a grave awaits ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... so soon as a sufficient force could be collected, and attempting to recover the upper parts of Georgia. Before he was able to execute this plan, General Prevost withdrew his troops from Augusta to Hudson's Ferry. Ash was then ordered to cross the Savannah, and take post near the confluence of Briar Creek with that river. This camp was thought unassailable. Its left was covered by a deep swamp, and by the Savannah. The front was secured by Briar Creek, which is unfordable several miles, and makes an acute angle ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... knight of old, laid his lance in rest and tilted against the prickly briar hedge that had grown up around the Sleeping Beauty, Romance. But he could not win through and wake the princess. And although Burns and Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, all knowing it or not, fought on his ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... just passed, for the carcase is yet warm. With considerable difficulty, but aided by the hard slippery ground, we drag it to the brink of the precipice, and send it crashing down through bush and briar, to fall with a loud splash into a foaming torrent far below. During this performance one of the ponies gets loose, and half an hour is ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... the second assistant engineer, hurrying along the deck to relieve the first assistant on watch, found Mr. Reardon leaning over the rail meditatively puffing his old briar pipe. In answer to the former's query as to what kept the chief up so late, the latter replied that he was burning sulphur in his ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... on a bright spring night, and Abercrombie Smith lay back in his arm-chair, his feet upon the fender, and his briar-root pipe between his lips. In a similar chair, and equally at his ease, there lounged on the other side of the fireplace his old school friend Jephro Hastie. Both men were in flannels, for they had spent their evening upon the river, but ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... another fashion, "fads" we should call them nowadays. A school-bag—they didn't call them satchels then—was made of a piece of blue and white bed-ticking, folded at the bottom. Every white stripe you worked with zephyr worsted in briar stitch or herring-bone or feather stitch. You could use one color or several. And now the old work and the bed-ticking has come back again and ladies make the old-fashioned bags ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... into a drawer of his desk and pulled out an old blackened briar pipe. Methodically he filled it, a thoughtful frown on his face; then carefully lighting it, he leaned back, puffing out a thin ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... century as a bridal present to his daughter when she married Philip Moran, a lawyer who grew to eminence among colonial judges. The great linden trees which shaded the garden had been planted by Van Clyffe; so also had the high hedges of cut boxwood, and the wonderful sweet briar, which covered the porch and framed all the windows filling the open rooms in summer time with the airs of Paradise. On all these lovely things the old Dutchman had stamped his memory, so that, even to the third generation, ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... when they were not black outright; and Dandie, at sight of this daintiness, put two and two together. It was a silk handkerchief, then they would be silken hose; they matched - then the whole outfit was a present of Clem's, a costly present, and not something to be worn through bog and briar, or on a late afternoon of Sunday. He whistled. "My denty May, either your heid's fair turned, or there's some ongoings!" he observed, and ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dress, her pretty, flushed face bent over her work, to all appearances the most industrious of Cinderellas, while the pendulum of the old oak clock clicked noisily to and fro, and through the open door came a whiff of clean cool air, laden with the scent of flowers and sweet-briar, with the pungent aromatic odour of growing herbs, with the ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... signs of May, The lily sweet and briar, Perfuming every shady way Beside the warbling river; And thou, gay cuckoo! hast returned To ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... bar-parlour he was confronted by the bulky figure of Benjamin Tresco, who was enjoying a glass of beer and the last issue of The Pioneer Bushman. Between the goldsmith's lips was the amber mouthpiece of a straight-stemmed briar pipe, a smile of contentment played over the breadth of his ruddy countenance, and his ejaculations were made under some deep and ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... reflection he rose to fill and light a briar pipe, his inseparable companion, before grappling ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Lady Nicotine! Saint and Sorceress and Queen! Saint, whose purple halo rings Lift our eyes from earthly things; Witch, whose wand of scented briar Transmutes dead weeds to fragrant fire; Queen, whose rod her slaves adore! What can ...
— Happy Days • Oliver Herford
... can easily imagine, it keeps Bunny Cottontail moving to outwit his many enemies. He has no briar patches in that rugged country, though the jumper thickets might serve as such, so he lives beneath the rocks, usually planning a front and back door to his burrow. In this way he has a private exit when weasels or bobcats make their uninvited visitations. ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... you would not renew the lease for Farmer Darrell," she said gently; "he is almost heart-broken at having to leave Briar Farm." ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... centre, and the making of Christ the Beloved the centre round which it moves, and from which it draws radiance and light and motion. By all these methods, and many more that I cannot dwell upon now, the problem is triumphantly solved by Christianity. The tree is made good, and 'instead of the briar shall come up ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and soon they were rejoicing in the luxury of bare feet, but not long, for Paul struck his toe against a stone, then getting a briar in his foot, sank down upon a green bank and took ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... resemblance to its neutral-tinted name. It had green alleys, and sheltering trees, and a great expanse of smoothly kept lawn. It possessed flower-beds and flower borders innumerable. There was more than one bower composed entirely of rose-trees, and there were very long hedges of sweet briar and ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... wonderful power of fortune-tellers, there she saw him! there sat the very man: his hair as light as flax, his eyes as blue as buttermilk, and his shoulders as round as a tub. Every tittle agreed, to the very nosegay in his waistcoat buttonhole. At first, indeed, she thought it had been sweet-briar, and glad to catch at a straw, whispered to herself, It is not he, and I shall marry Jacob still; but on looking again, she saw it was southernwood plain enough, and that of course all was over. The man ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... village of Withyham, upon the Kent and Sussex border. It was on the 15th September last that an agricultural labourer, James Flynn, in the employment of Mathew Dodd, farmer, of the Chauntry Farm, Withyham, perceived a briar pipe lying near the footpath which skirts the hedge in Lower Haycock. A few paces farther on he picked up a pair of broken binocular glasses. Finally, among some nettles in the ditch, he caught sight of a flat, canvas-backed book, which proved to be a note-book ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Rendal felt in his pockets for a cigar-case; was annoyed and amused (in a sub-conscious sort of way) to find only a briar pipe and a pocketful of coarse-cut tobacco; filled and lit his pipe, and ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... she had been dragging branches of lilacs, and laburnums, roses, and sweet-briar, to ornament the bower in which her fate was to be decided. It was excessively hot, but her mind was engaged, and she was indefatigable. She stood still, at last, to admire her works; her companions all joined in loud applause. ...
— The Bracelets • Maria Edgeworth
... and remarked mysteriously that the captain had his reasons. Mr. Tredgold relapsed into silence, and for some time the only sound audible came from a briar-pipe which Mr. Stobell ought to have thrown away some ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... the chestnut mare travelled together as on one snaffle- bar, step by step, for they were foaled in the same stable. Through stretches of reed-beds and wastes of osiers they passed, and again by a path through the jungle where the briar-vines caught at them like eager fingers, and a tiger crossed their track, disturbed in his night's rest. At length out of the dank distance they saw the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Lord, if thou tak'st from me all the rest, Thyself with each resumption drawing nigher, It shall but hurt me as the thorn of the briar, When I reach to the pale flower in its breast. To have thee, Lord, is to have all thy best, Holding it by its very life divine— To let my friend's hand go, and take his ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... I am like a briar—I die where I grow; only, instead of your finding me, as you did the first time, on the first or second floor, you will have to look for me on the fifth or sixth, seeing that, by a very natural see-saw movement, as my funds lower I ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... tranquility brooded over the Glen; the sky was fleeced over with silvery, shining clouds. Rainbow Valley lay in a soft, autumnal haze of fairy purple. The maple grove was a burning bush of colour and the hedge of sweet-briar around the kitchen yard was a thing of wonder in its subtle tintings. It did not seem that strife could be in the world, and Susan's faithful heart was lulled into a brief forgetfulness, although she had lain awake most of the preceding night thinking ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... practice under their influence. The motives which it brings to bear on our evils will be powerless to smite them, unless these motives are made sovereign in us by many an hour of patient meditation and of submission to their sweet and strong constraint. One sometimes sees on a wild briar a graft which has been carefully inserted and bandaged up, but which has failed to strike, and so the strain of the briar goes on and no rosebuds come. Are there not some of us who profess to have received the engrafted word ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... whether he had gone through the hedge, or kept up the lane. On, on they went! at last a pathway, over a stile, appeared on the right, leading through a thick copse. They dashed into it, but soon found that the pathway had not been kept; and through briar and underwood they had to force a passage; now losing the scent, now catching it again; a wide, dry, sunny field lay before them; along it, and two or three others of a similar character they had to go; and then across another brook, over which, one after the other, they boldly ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... we passed out of the old church through a side door leading into a small green enclosure, now gloomy in the shade of the old stone walls. At one end was a tangle of briar, and here were some old graves, each with a tinsel wreath or two on the iron cross. And presiding over these was the limp figure of a one-legged man on two crutches, who saluted us. We passed along to the end of the inclosure, where lay a chance beam of sunshine like a bar of dusty ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... a bishop was seen the other day passing the House of Commons smoking a briar pipe. We can only suppose that he did not recognise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... thinking of this as he sat at the edge of the dear Old Briar-patch, looking over to the Green Forest. The Green Forest was no longer just green; it was of many colors, for Old Mother Nature had set Jack Frost to painting the leaves of the maple-trees and the beech-trees, and the birch-trees and the poplar-trees ...
— The Adventures of Lightfoot the Deer • Thornton W. Burgess
... cried a voice from a remote corner. Buck looked over and saw a lean, dark man hugging his knees and smoking a well-burnt briar pipe. The same voice went on: "Guess you'd sicken most anybody, Beasley. You got a mean mind. Guess the Padre's a hell of a ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... seamstress in the parish, the one who sewed for the young ladies at Loevdala Manor, and when Glory Goldie tried it on the effect was so perfect that one would have thought the two had blossomed together on one of the lovely wild briar bushes ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... briar and reed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: 'Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link! Spink, spank, spink! Snug and safe is that nest of ours, Hidden among the summer ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... wait!" called Grace, and, stopping in the briar path, Madaline glimpsed the imperturbable Grace, making her way through the thicket and ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... down the steepy linn That hems our little garden in, Low in its dark and narrow glen You scarce the rivulet might ken, So thick the tangled greenwood grew, So feeble thrilled the streamlet through: Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen Through bush and briar, no longer green, An angry brook, it sweeps the glade, Brawls over rock and wild cascade, And foaming brown, with doubled speed, Hurries its ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... of the language keeps for us the freshness of the imagery—the sweet-briar and the hawthorn, the mavis and the oriole—which has so long become publica materies. It is not withered and hackneyed by time and tongues as, save when genius touches it, it is now. The dew is still on all of it; and, thanks to ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... for their strange love's sake Rode Balen forth by lawn and lake, By moor and moss and briar and brake, And in his heart their sorrow spake Whose lips were dumb as death, and said Mute words of presage blind and vain As rain-stars blurred and marred by rain To wanderers on a moonless main Where ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... someone. She was a superb comic actress. I mentally compared her with our young ladies, and even the handsome, dignified Anyuta Blagovo could not stand comparison with her; the difference was immense, like the difference between a beautiful, cultivated rose and a wild briar. ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov |
