"Fosse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soon I found my fault, Fa la! Too soon I found my fault; The fairest of the fair brigade Advanced to mine assault. Alas! against an adverse maid Nor fosse can serve nor palisade— Too soon I ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... we too often see these wider considerations ignored in favour of some exigency of the moment. A historic British town has recently furnished a striking object-lesson in this connection. The town possesses portions of an ancient city wall and fosse that were made at a time when the town was, for the moment, the most important in Great Britain. Yet the Town Council, a year ago, destroyed part of this wall and filled a section of the fosse for the purpose of providing a site for a new elementary school. No doubt, in that school, books ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... the things they bring, when you see them trooping to the castle from the valley. So they trooped this morning; and when they reached the fosse, all stopped but one: ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... animal. About a field's breadth below this quarry of the Coccosteus minor,—if I may take the liberty of extemporizing a name, until such time as some person better qualified furnishes the creature with a more characteristic one,—there are the remains, consisting of fosse and rampart, with a single cannon lying red and honeycombed amid the ruins, of one of Cromwell's forts, built to protect the town against the assaults of an enemy from the sea. In the few and stormy years during which this ablest of British governors ruled over Scotland, he seems to have exercised ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... body of the Danes covered themselves with their shields and rushed forward with the greatest determination, pouring through the gap in the outer bank in a solid mass, and then turned along the fosse towards the inner gate. Closely packed together, with their shields above their heads forming a sort of testudo or roof which protected them against the Saxons' arrows, they pressed forward in spite of the shower of missiles with which the Saxons ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... trees overgrow the old tower! And see what a solid mass of masonry lies in the great fosse down there, toppled from its base by the explosion of a mine! It is like a rusty helmet cleft in twain, but ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Malachy erected an oratory of wattles and clay on the sea-shore near Port Patrick. St. Bernard relates that the saint not only directed the work but laboured with his own hands in its construction. He blessed the cemetery adjoining, which was arranged according to Irish usage, within a deep fosse. The second visit to Scotland was shortly before St. Malachy {158} set out on that last journey to the continent from which he never returned, dying on November 2nd, 1148, in St. Bernard's own Abbey of Clairvaux. He had set his heart on founding a monastery in Scotland at a place called Viride ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... were placed thickly together; there were, he thought, six or seven times as many as he had previously seen, and they were thatched or shingled, like those in his own country. It stood in the midst of the fields, and the corn came up to the fosse; there were many people at work, but, as he noticed, most of them were old men, bowed and feeble. A little way farther he saw a second boathouse; he hastened thither, and the ferrywoman, for the boat was ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... young son of Sweyn, "I foresaw from the first, that as our fate will be thine;—only round thee will be wall and fosse; unless, indeed, thou wilt lay aside thine own nature—it will give thee no armour here—and assume ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Lichfield (Letocetum), to Wroxeter and Chester. It also gave access by a branch to Leicester and Lincoln. A fourth served Colchester, the eastern counties, Lincoln and York. The fifth is that known to the English as the Fosse, which joins Lincoln and Leicester with Cirencester, Bath and Exeter. Besides these five groups, an obscure road, called by the Saxons Akeman Street, gave alternative access from London through Alchester ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... grossiere et barbare, qui ne serait pas supportee par la plus vile populace de la France et de l'Italie. Hamlet y devient fou au second acte, et sa maitresse folle au troisieme; le prince tue le pere de sa maitresse, feignant de tuer un rat, et I'heroeine se jette dans la riviere. On fait sa fosse sur le theatre; des fossoyeurs disent des quolibets dignes d'eux, en tenant dans leurs mains des tetes de morts; le prince Hamlet repond a leurs 'grossieretes abominables par des folies non moins degoutantes. Pendant ce temps-la, un des acteurs fait la conquete de la Pologne. ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... splintered, and point all ways. The dug-outs are filled to the brim with earth and with—no one knows what. It is all like the dried bed of a river, smashed, extended, slimy, that both water and men have abandoned. In one place the trench has been simply wiped out by the guns. The wide fosse is blocked, and remains no more than a field of new-turned earth, made of holes symmetrically bored side by side, in length and ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... surround the town to the north, and fall into the harbour; that where the Paglion now runs to the westward of the city walls, there should be a deep ditch to be filled with sea-water; and that a fortress should be built to the westward of this fosse. These particulars might be executed at no very great expence; but, I apprehend, they would be ineffectual, as the town is commanded by every hill in the neighbourhood; and the exhalations from stagnating sea-water would infallibly render the air unwholesome. ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... the gateway a deep fosse or ditch is dug, and over it is suspended by two cords an enormous beam. On the "auspicious" day for the sacrifice, the innocent, unresisting victims—"hinds and churls" perhaps, of the lowest degree in Bangkok—are mocked with a dainty and elaborate banquet, and then conducted ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... has to go to Vaugirard at four o'clock: then he must go to bed earlier. Perhaps you do not know that our burying ground is at Vaugirard: as that burying ground is not much in fashion, we have been allowed to retain our privilege of having a fosse to ourselves.' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... accessible from behind, where the ridge joined the mountains. Across this neck of land a deep fosse had been dug, so as to cut off all approach. The houses were crowded thickly on the steep slope of the ridge, which was so abrupt that the houses seemed to overhang one another. On the southern crag, which ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... Thornhill was greatly the fashion; he was the successor of Verrio, and the rival of La Guerre, in the decorations of our palaces and public buildings. His demands for the painting of Greenwich Hall were contested; and though La Fosse received two thousand pounds for his works at Montague House, besides other allowances, Sir James, despite his dignity as Member of Parliament for his native town of Weymouth, could obtain but forty shillings a square yard for painting ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... imposing; they are constructed of carefully-squared stone joined with cement of such extreme hardness that the weather has had no destructive effect. The perimeter of the fortress is about 4000 yards; the shape is nearly a parallelogram. The fosse varies in depth and width, but the minimum of the former is twenty-five feet, and of the width eighty feet, but in some places it exceeds one hundred and forty. This formidable ditch is cut out of the solid rock, which is the usual calcareous sedimentary limestone, and the stone ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... foreshadowing his death,[FN263] which happened, as becomes a good Moslem, during a military expedition to Khorasan, he ordered his grave to be dug and himself to be carried to it in a covered litter: when sighting the fosse he exclaimed, "O son of man thou art come to this!" Then he commanded himself to be set down and a perfection of the Koran to be made over him in the litter on the edge of the grave. He was buried (aet. forty-five) at Sanabad, a village ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... many parts of Sicily in such enmity that they quarrelled even about the thing most sacred to Sicilians—religion. It was not enough that hatred grew up between the natives of two different but neighboring localities: it was often born and perpetuated "between those whom one wall and one fosse shut in," and assumed considerable proportions. Thus we see as far back as the fifteenth century the inhabitants of a certain "fifth" (Palermo was divided into five wards) so hostile to those of another ward that the intervention of the senate was necessary in order to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the white steel in his fist, and then sheathed the blade, and rode down soberly over the turf bridge across the ancient fosse, and so came on to the green road made many ages before by an ancient people, and so trotted south along ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... that Sir Robert de Shurland, Lord of the Isle of Sheppey, and of many a fair manor on the main land, was a man of worship. He had rights of free-warren, saccage and sockage, cuisage and jambage, fosse and fork, infang theofe and outfang theofe; and all waifs and strays belonged to him in ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... self-approbation before he had begun to flush. For a few moments, using the idioms of Burns' love-lyrics, which were the only dignified and unobscene references to passion he had ever encountered, he thought of that night when he had persuaded little Isabella to linger in the fosse of shadow under the high wall in Canaan Lane and give up her mouth to his kisses, her tiny warm dove's body to his arms. Never in all the forty-five intervening years had he seen such a wall on such a night, its base in velvety ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... summit of a steep hill; but it is still protected by a vallum from thirty to forty feet high, and between the sea and the entrance nearest to it, a length of about three hundred yards, by a wide exterior ditch with other out-works, as well as by an inner fosse, faint traces of which only now remain. Hence to the next and large entrance is a distance of about two thousand feet; and in this space the interior fosse is still very visible; but the great abruptness of the ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... to himself, and he followed Mather into the fort. In the corners of the mud walls, in any fissure, in the very floor, young trees were sprouting. Rearward a steep glacis and a deep fosse defended the works. Durrance sat himself down upon the parapet of the wall above the glacis, while the pigeons wheeled and circled overhead, thinking of the long months during which Tewfik must daily have strained his eyes from this very spot toward the pass ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... AVANT-FOSSE. In fortification, an advanced ditch without the counterscarp, and stretching along the foot ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... built on a site as strong as it is delightful. On one side enclosed by the Scheldt and another smaller river, and on the other protected by deep ditches, thick walls, and towers, it appears capable of defying every attack. But Noircarmes had discovered a few points where neglect had allowed the fosse to be filled almost up to the level of the natural surface, and of these he determined to avail himself in storming. He drew together all the scattered corps by which he had invested the town, and during a tempestuous night carried the suburb of Berg without the loss of a single man. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... desiderato Un damo aver che fosse sonatore! Eccolo qua che Dio me l'ha mandato Tutto coperto di rose e viole; Eccolo qua che vien pianin pianino, A capo basso, e suona ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... the town was situated. It was pentagonal in form, and was built in 1565, and was the earliest fortification in Europe in this style, and was considered a masterpiece. It was separated from the town by its glacis. A deep fosse ran along the foot of the wall. The town itself was walled, and extended to the foot of the citadel, and was capable of offering a sturdy resistance even after the citadel had fallen, just as the citadel could protect itself after the capture of the town by an enemy. ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... of Gibourc grew red when she heard the porter's words, and she left the Palace and mounted the battlements, where she called across the fosse, 'Warrior, ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... been driven quite far enough. Led by an officer of the staff named Mailly, the French rushed forward as soon as the mine exploded. They clambered down over the breach that had been made on the counterscarp, crossed the fosse by three ladders they had brought with them, and reached the foot of the breach. There was, however, too great a distance between the pile of rubbish at the foot of the wall and the great hole above it for them to enter without ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... seen this lugubrious stone cage before. But the magic of his morning walk across the moor, the sight of the pagan tors, the songs of the last cuckoo, had unprepared him for that dreary building. He left the street, and, entering the fosse, began a circuit, scanning the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... weather; and this is good husbandry for moist grounds; but where the land lies high, and is hot and gravelly, I prefer the lower fencing; which, though even with the area it self, may be protected with stakes and a dry hedge, on the fosse side, the distance competent, and to very good purposes of educating more frequent ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... farmers agree to find stall-room and straw for sheep, and furnish fodder at the market price, for the dung. The dung and moisture are collected in a fosse in the stable. Lime is mingled with the scouring of the ditches, vegetable garbage, leaves, &c. On six-acre farms, plots are appropriated to potatoes, wheat, barley, clover, flax, rye, carrots, turnips, or parsnips, vetches, and rye, as green food for cattle. The flax is ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... drew out their forces at the very foot of the mountain, and challenged us to battle. Caesar, however, did not interrupt his work, relying on the protection of the three legions, and the strength of the fosse. After staying for a short time, and advancing no great distance from the bottom of the hill, they led back their forces to their camp. The third day Caesar fortified his camp with a rampart, and ordered the other cohorts which he had left in the upper camp, and his ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... apparently wishing them a good journey. The road now lay over an undulating country, through plantations of millet, yams, and maize, and at three hours from Laboo, led to Jannah, which was once a walled town, but the gate and fosse are all that remain of the fortifications. It is situated on a gentle declivity, commanding an extensive prospect to the westward; to the eastward the view is interrupted by thick woods. The inhabitants may amount to from eight hundred to a ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... circular, and thus difficult to hit, with walls of vast thickness, pierced by loop-holes, and the bomb-proof roof is armed with one heavy traversing gun. They are 30 to 40 feet high, surrounded by a dry fosse, and the entrance is by a ladder at a door ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... between Slopes smooth and fair for courser's tread; Not the most timid maid need dread To give her snow-white palfrey head On that wide stubble-ground; Nor wood, nor tree, nor bush are there, Her course to intercept or scare, Nor fosse nor fence are found, Save where, from out her shattered bowers, Rise Hougomont's ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... earth as she supposed, the range of windows which gave light as well to the two anterooms as to the mysterious chamber itself, looked down upon an ancient moat, by which they were divided from the level ground on the farther side. The defence which this fosse afforded seemed to have been long neglected, and the bottom, entirely dry, was choked in many places with bushes and low trees, which rose up against the wall of the castle, and by means of which it ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... peace which is not fellowship And which includes not mercy. I would have Rather the raking of the guns across The world, and shrieks against Heaven's architrave; Rather the struggle in the slippery fosse Of dying men and horses, and the wave Blood-bubbling.... Enough said!—by Christ's own cross, And by this faint heart of my womanhood, Such things are better than a Peace that sits Beside a hearth in self-commended mood, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Nellie reached the first mining extension of Indian Spring, which surrounded it like a fosse, she descended for one instant into one of its trenches, opened her parasol, removed her duster, hid it under a bowlder, and with a few shivers and cat-like strokes of her soft hands not only obliterated all material traces of the stolen cream of Carquinez Woods, but assumed a feline demureness ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... forward toward the castle. Seeing a knight approaching alone the garrison judged that he was friendly, and it was not until it was seen that instead of approaching the drawbridge he turned aside and rode to the edge of the fosse, that they suspected that he was a foe. Running to the walls they opened fire with arrows upon him, but by this time Archie had seen all that he required. Across the promontory ran a sort of fissure, some ten yards wide and as many deep. From the opposite edge of this the wall rose abruptly. ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... perseverance had succeeded in forming a hole just large enough to enable him to see the light of the torch carried by the gentlemen. On his side, he said, there was nothing but a strong iron door, and a heavily-barred window, looking, like that in the passage, into the fosse within the walled garden; but, on the other hand, if he could enlarge his hole sufficiently to creep through it, he could escape with them in case of their finding a subterranean outlet. The opening within his cell ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by, and then took she farewell of Aucassin, and so fared till she came unto the castle wall. Now that wall was wasted and broken, and some deal mended, so she clomb thereon till she came between wall and fosse, and so looked down, and saw that the fosse was deep and steep, whereat she was ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... be made for his reception. He accordingly regulated his dispositions, and at four o'clock in the morning, on the sixteenth day of September, the signal was made for the assault. A prodigious quantity of bombs being thrown into the ravelin, his troops threw themselves into the fosse, mounted the breaches, forced open a sally-port, and entered the place almost without resistance. In a word, they had time to extend themselves along the curtains, and form in order of battle, before the garrison could be assembled. Cronstrom was asleep, and the soldiers ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Over brake and under tree, Thro' the bosky tanglery, Brushwood and bramble! Follow me, follow me, Laugh and leap and scramble! Follow, follow, Hill and hollow, Fosse and burrow, Fen and furrow, Down into the bulrush beds, 'Midst the reeds and osier heads, In the rushy 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, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The first of these foure waies is named Fosse, and stretcheth from the south into the north, beginning at the corner of Totnesse in Cornewall, and so passing foorth by Deuonshire, and Somersetshire, by Tutherie, on Cotteswold, and then forward beside Couentrie vnto Leicester, and from thence by wild plaines towards Newarke, and endeth ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (3 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... of Vincennes was formerly a royal palace of the French court: it then dwindled to a state-prison; in its fosse, March 21, 1804, the Duke d'Enghien was murdered, the grave in the ditch on the left being where the body of the ill-starred victim was thrown immediately after being shot. The reader knows this act as one of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... and where the soldier advances with the water up to his waist; marches straight to the first redoubts; takes them almost without striking a blow; seizes successively a league of fortifications; reaches Denain; crosses the fosse which surrounds it, penetrates into the town, and on arriving at the place, finds his young protege, the Chevalier d'Harmental, who presents to him the sword of Albemarle, whom he has ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... is a man of noble family and coat-armor, being the younger brother of Sir Eustace de la Fosse of Shalford. Time was when I had thought that I might call him son, for there was never a day that he did not pass with my girls, but I fear that his crooked back sped him ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a natural feeling clinging to our mortal nature, and doubtless has its use. But I must not indulge it. The soldier is even less at liberty than other men to choose his own grave. The fosse of a beleaguered fortress, a shallow trench in a well-fought field, the ravine of a disputed mountain pass, the strand of some river to be crossed in the face of the enemy—all these have furnished, and will furnish graves for those who fall, and have the luck to ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... non fosse ch' ancor lo mi vieta la riverenza delle somme chiavi, che tu tenesti nella vita lieta l' ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... trenches which, like those in front of us, are of French extraction—"and so over the parapet. There we extend, as arranged, into lines of half-companies, and go at 'em, making Douvrin our objective, and keeping the Hohenzollern and Fosse Eight upon ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... the Seventh(1448) was so sumptuously banqueted, and imposed that villainous fine for his entertainment, is now shrunk to one vast curious tower, that stands on a spacious mount raised on a high hill with a large fosse. It commands a fine prospect, and belongs to Mr. Ashurst, a rich citizen, who has built a trumpery new house close to it. In the parish church is a fine square monument of black marble of one of the Earls; and there are three more tombs of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... a homicide, and it appears that the fellow retained a certain sense of gratitude. Lorenzino began by telling the man there was a courtier who put insults upon him, and Scoronconcolo professed his readiness to kill the knave. 'Sia chi si voglia; io l'ammazzero, se fosse Cristo.' Up to the last minute the name of Alessandro was not mentioned. Having thus secured his assistant, Lorenzino chose a night when he knew that Alessandro Vitelli, captain of the Duke's guard, would be from home. Then, after supper, he whispered in Alessandro's ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... in his Essay on Landscape Gardening (1828), on the proper domestic ornaments of the Castle Pleasaunce, he has this beautiful burst of lamentation over the barbarous innovations of the Capability men:—"Down went many a trophy of old magnificence, courtyard, ornamented enclosure, fosse, avenue, barbican, and every external muniment of battled wall and flanking tower, out of the midst of which the ancient dome, rising high above all its characteristic accompaniments, and seemingly girt round by its appropriate defences, which again ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... from Penrith is the curious antique relic called Arthur's Round Table, already referred to. It is a circular area above twenty yards in diameter, surrounded by a fosse and mound. Six miles north-east of Penrith are the ancient remains, Long Meg and her Daughters. DACRE CASTLE is situated five miles west-south-west of Penrith. BROUGHAM HALL, the seat of Henry, Lord ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... before her capture she had been compressed into an interstice behind a fireplace, and by the time she was drawn forth into the light she had been ominously scorched. The man who showed me the castle indicated also another historic spot, a house with little tourelles on the Quai de la Fosse, in which Henry IV. is said to have signed the Edict revoked by Louis XIV. I am, however, not in a position to ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... (15) No pious thought of father or of kin; But full in face of brother or of sire, Drive home the blade. Unless the slain be known Your foes account his slaughter as a crime; Spare not our camp, but lay the rampart low And fill the fosse with ruin; not a man But holds his post within the ranks to-day. And yonder tents, deserted by the foe, Shall give us shelter ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... pieces, such as had them, when they had fired the first shot, and risked all on the push of the target and the slash of the broad brand, confident even that our six or seven feet of escarpment would never stay their onset any time to speak of. An abattis or a fosse would have made this step futile; but as things were, it was not altogether impossible that they might surmount our low wall. Our advantage was that the terre-plein on which we stood was three or four feet higher than they were at the outer side of the wall, ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... Canada, openly advanced into the American territory, built a fort at the Miami Rapids, and garrisoned it with British redcoats. Massive parapets were constructed on which were mounted heavy artillery. The outer walls were surrounded by a deep fosse and "frasing" which rendered it secure from escalade. The Indians, thus buttressed, as they supposed, by British support, were openly defiant and refused to ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... This old fosse seemed to strike the somewhat forgotten, out-of-the-world note of the surrounding country. Picturesque to the eye, with bounteous green prospects and smooth, smiling hills, it was not, we were told, as prosperous as it looked. For some vague reason, the tides of agricultural ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... town of Vailly and a strong bridgehead near by. On the western leg of the German salient, whose apex was at Fort Conde on the Aisne, the French struck another decisive blow which gave them the village of Nanteuil-le-Fosse, and endangered the Germans in the fort, who were now in the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... September the Battalion moved back to Mazingarbe, as the men thought, for a rest. They were soon disappointed. At 7 p.m. on the same day orders were received to take up a position at the Slag Heap or Fosse at Loos, known as London Bridge. At 9-0 p.m. the Battalion left its billets in a deluge of rain and marched back to the line in splendid spirits in spite of the fatigue resulting from the recent fighting. It was relieved from the trenches on the 30th September, and after one night spent in ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... the damozel eagerly, and then she said to me, 'This is Sir William de la Fosse, my true knight;' so the knight took my hand and seemed to have such joy of me, that all the blood came up to my ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... threaded the black gorge of the Arc, passing, unperceived in the darkness, Fort Lesseillon, which, erecting its tiers of batteries above this tremendous natural fosse, looks like a mailed warrior guarding the entrance to Italy. It was eleven o'clock, and we were toiling up the mountain. We had left all human habitations far below, as we thought, when suddenly we were startled by a peal of village bells. Never had bells sounded ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... taunt, Careless the knight replied, "No bird whose feathers gaily flaunt Delights in cage to bide; Norham is grim and grated close, Hemmed in by battlement and fosse, And many a darksome tower; And better loves my lady bright To sit in liberty and light, In fair Queen Margaret's bower. We hold our greyhound in our hand, Our falcon on our glove; But where shall we ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... lull reveals itself to be but the precursor of a storm. It begins with a heave of the whole atmosphere, like the sigh of a weary strong man on turning to re-commence unusual exertion, just as I stand here in the second fosse. That which now radiates from the sky upon the scene is not so much light ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... November 26 the Battalion marched to Annequin, Fosse 9, and owing to the road being frequently shelled, orders were given that seventy-pace intervals should be kept between platoons east of Beuvry. To improve matters, it may be mentioned, there was a heavy fall of snow, and in the portion of the village south of La Basse the majority of ...
— The 23rd (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (First Sportsman's) - A Record of its Services in the Great War, 1914-1919 • Fred W. Ward
... utterly demoralized by this appalling disaster, fell back precipitately on their entrenchments, leaving the mangled bodies of two hundred of their comrades, among them the gallant leader, Lieutenant-Colonel Drummond, in the fatal fosse ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... crime. Lady Macbeth passes before us haunted by a vision, and ceaselessly washing her blood-stained hands. During all his life, even in his exile, Napoleon vainly sought to wash off the innocent and illustrious blood which he caused to flow in the fosse of Vincennes on the 20th of March, 1804. The men whom he had employed as the instruments of his heinous crime struggled like himself under this terrible responsibility. In vain has Bonaparte reproached Talleyrand with having perfidiously urged him on in the fatal path; in vain has Real affirmed ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... ora del nostro amor, come se fosse l'ultima, l'ultima ora, ora del nostro amor, del nostro amor? Oh, qual presagio m'assale, come se fosse l'ultima ora del nostro amor, se fosse l'ultima del ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... ahead, skirting the rear of the chateau enclosure, stretched the green profile of what appeared to be a deep forest. It was this which my unconscious guide was approaching. I soon reached the bushes by the fosse, and used them for my own concealment in following him. When he came to the edge of the forest, at a place near a corner of the wall environing the chateau grounds, what did he do but stop before the first tree—a fine oak—and proceed to climb ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... stoutly until overpowered. As soon as the skirmish was over the keys were brought out from the guard- room, and the gate unlocked and the massive bars taken down. In the meantime some of the men-at-arms had run up on to the wall, hoisted the portcullis, and lowered the drawbridge across the fosse. As soon as they returned and mounted the party rode through. As they did so, four men ran out from a lane near the wall and followed them; and Guy at once recognized in them the archer and his three companions. Greatly ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... the unwilling, uninventive Roman, remained unfelt by either. The noble form of the apparent Vault of Heaven—the line which every star follows in its journeying, extricated by the Christian architect from the fosse, the aqueduct, and the sudarium—grew into long succession of proportioned colonnade, and swelled into the white domes that glitter above the plain of Pisa, and fretted channels of Venice, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... forward at a run. The fire of the townspeople at once became hurried and irregular, but the Scots picked off their men with steady aim. The leader of the Imperialists, who carried a petard, advanced boldly to the edge of the ditch. The fosse was shallow and contained but little water, and he at once dashed into it and waded across, for the drawbridge had, of course, been raised. He climbed up the bank, and was close to the gate, when Malcolm, leaning far over the wall, discharged his pistol at him. The ball glanced ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... [63] Thus the Persians closed. But the enemy could not hold their ground; they turned and fled to their entrenchments. [64] The Persians swept after them, many a warrior falling as they crowded in at the gates or tumbled into the trenches. For in the rout some of the chariots were carried into the fosse, and the Persians sprang down after them and slew man and horse where they fell. [65] Then the Median troopers, seeing how matters stood, charged the Assyrian cavalry, who swerved and broke before them, chased ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... effervesced, bubbled out of its holes, and is now but half troglodyte. The heights that form the Northern declivity of the valley of the Loir come to an abrupt end here, and have been sawn through by a small stream creating a natural fosse, isolating the hill of Troo that is attached to the plateau only on the North. The hill rises steeply from the river to a crest occupied by a Romanesque church recently scoured to the whiteness of flour, and beside it is a mighty tumulus, planted ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... behind, a narrow by-path led you through its twisting turns until you reached a tiny, rustic stone bridge—such a tiny, little bridge! This was over the sluice and aqueduct from the adjacent river, which supplied the fosse that in olden times surrounded the prebend's residence, when there were such things as sieges and besiegements in ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to the north, rose the Porte St. Antoine, approached over the city fosse by its own bridge, at the outer end of which was a triumphal arch built on the return of Henri II. from Poland in 1573. Both gate and arch were restored for the triumphal entry of Louis XIV. in 1667; but the gate (before which Etienne Marcel was killed, July, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... surged forward in pursuit, some by motor trucks, while the artillery pressed along the country roads close behind. The First Corps reached Authe and Chatillon-Sur-Bar, the Fifth Corps, Fosse and Nouart, and the Third Corps Halles, penetrating the enemy's line to a depth of twelve miles. Our large caliber guns had advanced and were skillfully brought into position to fire upon the important ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... down of the drawbridge. This latter rebounded slightly as it reached its level: and I think I hear, at this moment, the hollow rumbling noise of our horses' feet, as we passed over the deep yawning fosse below. Our passports were now demanded. We surrendered them willingly, on the assurance given of receiving them the following morning. The gates were now closed behind us, and we entered the town in high glee. "You are a good fellow," said I to the gatesman: ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... enthusiasm, his generosity, all seemed to promise another hero to the heroic race of Conde. He was worthy of conquering in a cause not doomed, of dying sword in hand on the battle field, and not to fall, some years later, in the fosse at Vincennes, by the "lantern dimly burning," with no other friend than his dog, by the balls of a platoon of soldiers, ordered out at dead of night, as if ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... espalier; fence &c. (defense) 717; pale, paling, balustrade, rail, railing, quickset hedge, park paling, circumvallation[obs3], enceinte, ring fence. barrier, barricade; gate, gateway; bent, dingle [U.S.]; door, hatch, cordon; prison &c. 752. dike, dyke, ditch, fosse[obs3], moat. V. inclose, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... da quei primi animali in poi, che ella nei primi giorni del mondo produsse per comandemento del sovrano ed omnipotente Fattore, non abbia mai piu prodotto da se medesima ne erba ne albero, ne animale alcuno perfetto o imperfetto che ei se fosse; e che tutto quello, che ne' tempi trapassati e nato e che ora nascere in lei, o da lei veggiamo, venga tutto dalla semenza reale e vera delle piante, e degli animali stessi, i quali col mezzo del proprio seme la loro spezie conservano. E se bene ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... intrans. to dig, but with special meanings. Derived, like fosse, a ditch, and fossil, through French from Lat. fossus, perfect part. of fodere, to dig. Fossicking as pres. part., or as verbal noun, is commoner than the other parts ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... more natural state than is possible when they are in cages. The great idea is that the animals are not separated from the sight-seers by bars, but by a very deep and wide ditch, ditch isn't the right word, fosse would be better, but fosse is not a very ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... and the knights and the sergeants were cut to pieces crying for mercy in their beds. But Sir Ernault's companions were pitiless, and many a white sheet was dyed red with blood. And at last they tossed the watchman into the deep fosse and broke his neck. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... J. C. Kew) and Corporation were present, accompanied by Canon Hindley, Vicar of Newark, and other Clergy, and there was a dense crowd of onlookers. After an address by the Mayor, who wished us God speed, and a short service, we marched off via the Fosse Way to Radcliffe-on-Trent, leaving behind H Company under Capt. Becher, ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... of that first cave what countless swarm Presses upon the circle's sacred round, But, when they would the magic rampart storm, Finds the way barred as if by fosse or mound; Then back the rabble turns of various form; And when it thrice with bending march has wound About the circle, troops into the cave, Where stands that ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... ces colliers Qu'ont a leur cou les riches dames! Tu trouveras dans les halliers, Des tissus verts, aux fines trames! Ta perle?... Mais, c'est le jais noir Qui sur l'envers du fosse pousse! Et le cadre de ton miroir Est une bordure ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... Dicker, Dickman, Grimsdick, etc. Sometimes the name Dykes may imply residence near some historic earthwork, such as Offa's Dyke, just as Wall, for which Waugh was used in the north, may show connection with the Roman wall. With these may be mentioned the French name Fosse, whence the apparently pleonastic Fosdyke and the name of Verdant Green's friend, Mr. Four-in-hand Fosbrooke. Delves is from Mid. Eng. dell, ditch. Jury is for Jewry, the quarter allotted to the Jews, but Jewsbury is no doubt for Dewsbury; ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... stock of this old place, which must have been built in rough times, for scarce a wall of it is less than five feet thick. The moat is deep all round. Fire cannot harm it, and it is loop-holed for arrows and not commanded by any other building, having the open place in front and below the wide fosse of the ancient wall, upon which it stands. Therefore, even with this poor garrison of two, it can be taken only by storm. This, while we have bows and arrows, will cost them something, seeing that we could hold the ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... fosse l'ultima ora del nostro amor, come se fosse l'ultima, l'ultima ora, ora del nostro amor, del nostro amor? Oh, qual presagio m'assale, come se fosse l'ultima ora del nostro amor, se fosse l'ultima ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... Arthur, whom in his humaine life all the world doubted, see also the noble queene Guenever, which sometime sat in her chaire adorned with gold, pearles, and precious stones, now lye full low in obscure fosse or pit, covered with clods of earth and clay; behold also this mightie champion Sir Launcelot, pearelesse of all knighthood, see now how hee lyeth groveling upon the cold mould, now being so feeble and faint that sometime was ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the morning, Henry gave orders that every man should be at his post. He had his breakfast brought to him on the field, and ate it with a hearty appetite, seated in a fosse with his officers around him. While there a prisoner was brought in who had been ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... autre aueugle guide, L'un par l'autre en la fosse tombe: Car quand plus oultre aller il cuide, La MORT l'homme iecte ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... about three-quarters of a mile. One peculiarity in this lake was a double bank on the eastern side consisting first of a concentric break or slope from the plain, the soil not being clay as usual, but a dry red sand; and then arose the green bank of black earth, leaving a concentric fosse or hollow between. A belt of yarra trees grew around the edge of this singular hollow which was so dry and firm that the carts, in the track of which I was riding, had traversed it without difficulty. I learnt from Mr. Stapylton, on reaching the camp, that the party had previously ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... This is a great city, of two hundred and twenty-five thousand inhabitants. The canals are immense affairs, and the ships and vessels of all sorts give it a very active appearance. All round the city is a wide fosse; and there are four great canals inside, with many minor cuts. Some of these canals are more than one hundred and twenty-five feet wide, and are edged with very fine houses; and the intercourse of the city is kept up by some two hundred ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... semicircular stone seats for the benefit of weary wayfarers. This wall is now grown over with turf, but it can be distinctly traced all round; and the hollow space between it and the tomb is covered with thick grass, and is sometimes filled with water like a fosse. Numerous altars, pedestals, and fine specimens of sculpture in marble and peperino, have been disinterred in this spot, and they are now arranged to advantage at the foot of the huge pile fronting ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... ne benigno Augusto Come la tuba di Virgilio suona: L'aver avuto in poesia buon gusto La proscrizion iniqua gli perdona. Nessun sapria se Neron fosse ingiusto, Ne sua fama saria forse men buona, Avesse avuto e terra e ciel nimici, Se gli ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... only plan that offered, and abandoning the straight road they wound down the defile spanned further on by the old castle arch, and forming the original fosse of ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... was a door, and a draw-bridge, which crossed a long, deep chasm, neatly faced with freestone; then another door leading to several small rooms, all, probably, places of confinement; and those hollows, now fringed with timber trees, in those days constituted a broad, deep fosse. ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... the Catrail, which may be traced from the vicinity of Galashiels to Peel-fell, is upwards of forty five miles. The most entire parts of it show that it was originally a broad and deep fosse; having on each side a rampart, which was formed of the natural soil, that was thrown from the ditch, intermixed with some stones. Its dimensions vary in different places, which may be owing to its remains being more or less perfect. In those parts where it is pretty entire, the fosse ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... Golden Dragon that we had lost and won was unfurled; and the war horns blew bravely enough to wake the mighty dead whose mounds were round about us; and soon the hillside was full of men who crowded upwards and filled the camp and ramparts and fosse, so that before sunset Alfred had a host that any king might be proud to call his own. Yet he would call it not Alfred's force, ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... tiers est situe du cote de terre, vers le couchant. Elle a une bonne enceinte de murailles, et surtout dans la partie qui regarde la terre. Cette portion, qu'on dit avoir six milles d'une pointe a l'autre, a en outre un fosse profond qui est en glacis, excepte dans un espace de deux cents pas, a l'une de ses extremites, pres du palais appele la Blaquerne; on assure meme que les Turcs ont failli prendre la ville par cet endroit foible Quinze ou vingt pieds en avant du fosse est une fausse braie ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... requirements of the national religion by frequent gifts; the tradition has come down to us of the granary for wheat which he built at Babylon, the sight of which alone rejoiced the heart of the god. While surrounding Sippar with a great wall and a fosse, to protect its earthly inhabitants, he did not forget Shamash and Malkatu, the celestial patrons of the town. He enlarged in their honour the mysterious Ebarra, the sacred seat of their worship, and that which no king from ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... grotesque and wild. High on a mound th' exalted gardens stand, Beneath, deep valleys, scoop'd by Nature's hand. A Cobham here, exulting in his art, Might blend the general's with the gardener's part; Might fortify with all the martial trade Of rampart, bastion, fosse, and palisade; Might plant the mortar with wide threat'ning bore, Or bid the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... inn on the Quai La Fosse, where he put up his horse, and where he dined in the embrasure of a window that looked out over the tree-bordered quay and the broad bosom of the Loire, on which argosies of all nations rode at anchor. The sun had again broken through ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... but that the name "Bayfield," in some old deeds and documents written "Bagvil" or "Baggevil," was neither more nor less than a corruption of Bacchi Villa. Axcester and its neighbourhood are rich in Roman remains—the town stands, indeed, on the old Fosse Way—and, tempted by early success, Narcissus rode his hobby further and further afield. Now, at the age of forty-two, he could claim to be an authority on the Roman occupation of Britain, and especially on the conquests of Vespasian. The circle of—the ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the town, although useless against cannon, are considered by the Arabs as impregnable. The walls are of solid mud and sun-baked bricks, carefully loopholed for musketry, while a deep fosse, by which it is surrounded, is a safeguard ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... are very large and massive, and an extraordinarily beautiful work in metal. Between them — for one set is placed at the entrance to an interior, and one at that of the exterior wall — is a fosse, forty-five feet in width. This fosse is filled with water and spanned by a drawbridge, which when lifted makes the palace nearly impregnable to anything except siege guns. As we came, one half of the wide gates were flung open, and we passed over the ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... apostolico su la morte dell' ammiraglio, et altri capi Ugonotti, ha fatti ammazzare a Parigi, saria per metterla in molto sospetto et diffidenza delli Principi Protestanti, et della Regina d' Inghilterra, ch' ella fosse d' accordo con la sede Apostolica, et Principi Cattolici per farli guerra, i quali cerca d' acquettar con accertarli tutti, che non ha fatto ammazzar l' ammiraglio et suoi seguaci per conto della Religione (Cusano to ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Che gran differenza sarebbe se fosse stata commessa la cosa o al S. Cardinale, o alli Serenissimi Principi.—Ormaneto to ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... merry bells ring out!" saith he To my lady of the Fosse;[3] "We will keep the birth-eve joyfully Of our Lord who bore ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... green sod, and shaded by many tall trees growing out of the side of the artificial mound on which the keep was built, the fosse offered all the advantages of a garden to the prisoners who were allowed to take exercise within it. Here, as has been mentioned, King James the First of Scotland first beheld, from the battlements ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ne voudrois pas reprendre mon coeur en ceste sorte: meurs de honte, aveugle, impudent, traistre et desloyal a ton Dieu, et sembables choses; mais je voudrois le corriger par voye de compassion. Or sus, mon pauvre coeur, nous voila tombez dans la fosse, laquelle nous avions tant resolu d' eschapper. Ah! relevons-nous, et quittons-la pour jamais, reclamons la misericorde de Dieu, et esperons en elle qu'elle nous assistera pour desormais estre plus fermes; et remettons-nous au chemin ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... are consequently exposed to very different conditions of wear and tear from those which prevail on these loftier rearward ranges.] The black tents of the Tibetans were still there, but the flocks were gone. The broad fosse-like valley of the Chachoo was at my feet, with the river winding along its bottom, and its flanks dotted with black ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... knives, and several ornaments, with holes through them, by means of which, with a cord passing through these perforations, they could be worn by their owners. On the south side of this tumulus, and not far from it, was a semicircular fosse, which, when I first saw it, was 6 feet deep. On opening it was discovered at the bottom a great quantity of human bones, which I am inclined to believe were the remains of those who had been slain in some great and destructive battle: first, because they belonged to persons who ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... thee are not without war Thy living ones, and one doth gnaw the other Of those whom one wall and one fosse shut in! ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... 31) 'il venerabile lupo.' The members of religious orders are (p. 534) 'ministri de satanasso ... soldati del gran diavolo: (p. 25) 'piu facilmente tra cento soldati se ne trovarebbero la meta buoni, che tra tutto un capitolo de frati ne fosse uno senza bruttissima macchia.' It is perilous to hold any communication with them (p. 39): 'Con loro non altri che usurai, fornicatori, e omini di mala sorte conversare si vedeno.' Their sins against nature (p. 65), the secret marriages of monks and nuns (p. 83), the 'fetide cioache ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... the edge of the sand-hills, and close beside the high road on the last rise before it dips to the coast, stands a turfed embankment surrounded by a shallow fosse. This is none of our ancient camps ('castles' we call them in Cornwall), as you perceive upon stepping within the enclosure, which rises in a complete circle save for two entrances cut through the bank and facing ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... man, with the venerable, shaky head, whose white, silky hair seemed to shed blessings and benedictions, was M. Dussant du Fosse, a philanthropist by profession, honorary president of all charitable works; senator, of course, since he was one of France's peers, and who in a few years after the Prussians had left, and the battles were over, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... killed somewhere by Fosse 8. The two comrades in the Scots Guards were badly wounded. One of the young brothers was killed and the other maimed. I found their names in the casualty lists which filled columns of The Times for ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero, Senza ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... that Simon Fitzmary's land extended from the King's Highway on the east (Bishopsgate Street without) to the fosse called Depeditch on the west. The land of Saint Botolph Church bounded it on the south, and the property of a Ralph Dunnyng on the north. The author of "The History of St. Botolph" (1824), Mr. T. L. Smartt, suggests that the old White Hart Tavern ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... then. In such arms Tregoz could well walk through the village itself unnoticed, as one of the palace guards would be, and so when the time came he would climb from some hiding in the fosse and take the place of his countryman on the rampart, and the watchful captain would see but a sentry there and deem ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... his orders to open the gates; in his gory face and dust-stained figure the defenders did not recognise their brilliant leader. A halt was called, a desperate charge was made upon the pursuing Goths, who were already beginning to pour down into the fosse; they were pushed back some distance, not far, but far enough to enable the Imperialists to reform their ranks, to make the presence of the general known to the defenders on the walls, to have the gates opened, ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... the garden; Set i' the pathless awe Where no star its breath can draw. Life, that is its warden, Sits behind the fosse of death. Mine eyes saw ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... thirty years ago Rangoon consisted of a mere swamp, with a few mat huts mounted on wooden piles, and surrounded by a log stockade and fosse. Now it is a city of 200,000 inhabitants, the terminus of a railway, and almost rivals Bombay in beauty and extent. It possesses fine palaces, public offices, and pagodas; warehouses, schools, hospitals, lovely gardens and lakes, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... more he pressed us politely to do so, the more anxiety we felt, lest we should incommode him. M. de Salaberry relieved us from this embarrassment with the greatest kindness, by placing at our disposal his house at Fosse. At this period ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... Westgate Road, as is well known, follows the course of the Wall for nearly twenty miles. But farther west we may walk along the uneven, broken surface of the mighty rampart, or climb down into the broad and deep fosse which lies closely against it along its northern side, without troubling ourselves with the arguments and uncertainties of antiquaries, who have by no means decided on what was the original function of the Wall, who was its real builder, why and when the earthen walls and fosse which accompany ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... through, than I threw one of my slippers beside the palisades, that it might be supposed I had lost it when climbing over them. These palisades, twelve feet in length, were situated in the front of the principal fosse, and my sentinels stood within. There was no sentry-box at the place ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... death of his relation, who had only been shot ten days before at Vincennes. They accordingly fought, before S— had time even to shave himself or eat his breakfast; he having only just arrived in his coupe from Paris. The meeting took place in the fosse of the fortress, and the first shot from S—'s pistol killed the French officer, who had actually travelled in the diligence from Paris for the purpose, as he boasted to his fellow-travellers, of ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... of wild thyme once again calls up a vision of the Downs; it is not so thick and strong, and it lacks that cushion of herbage which so often marks the site of its growth on the noble slopes of the hills, and along the sward-grown fosse of ancient earthworks, but it is wild thyme, and that is enough. From this bed of varieties of thyme there rises up a pleasant odour which attracts the bees. Bees and humble-bees, indeed, buzz everywhere, but they are much too busily occupied ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... gia che 'I mio saper misura Certa fosse e infallibile di quanto Puo far l'alto Fattor della natura." Tasso, Gerus, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Cain repondit:—Non, il est toujours la. Alors il dit:—je veux habiter sous la terre, Comme dans son sepulcre un homme solitaire; Rien ne me verra plus, je ne verrai plus rien.— On fit donc une fosse, et Cain dit: C'est bien! Puis il descendit seul sous cette voute sombre. Quand il se fut assis sur sa chaise dans l'ombre, Et qu'on eut sur son front ferme le souterrain, L'oeil etait dans la tombe ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... not a single gun was in position on any one of the ninety-five bastions of the ramparts. On the other hand, Palikao was certainly doing all he could for the city. He had formed the aforementioned Committee of Defence, and under his auspices the fosse or ditch in front of the ramparts was carried across the sixty-nine roads leading into Paris, whilst drawbridges were installed on all these points, with armed lunettes in front of them. Again, redoubts were thrown up in advance of some of the outlying forts, or on spots where breaks occurred ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... struggle of war are unknown, and even the sounds of conflict, never reach." Suddenly my musings were broken in upon by hearing the measured tramp of cavalry, as at a walk, a long column wound their way along the zig-zag approaches, which by many a redoubt and fosse, over many a draw bridge, and beneath many a strong arch, led to the gates of Nancy. The loud, sharp call of a trumpet was soon heard, and, after a brief parley, the massive gates of the fortress were opened for the troops to enter. From the position I occupied exactly over the gate, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... aeronaut's fall. Some pretend that Mosment had foretold his death, and that it was caused by a willful carelessness. However this may be, the balloon continued its flight alone, and the body of the aeronaut was found partly buried in the sand of the fosse which surrounds ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... che minacciano, non fosse prima a danno loro.' So it is said in a letter of Sanga, April 1529, Lettere di diversi autori ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... regina micans omnes super urbes, a queenly city resplendent above all towns. The second attack begins with redoubled fury. After battering the walls of the north tower, monstrous machines on sixteen wheels are advanced and the besiegers strive to fill the fosse. Trees, shrubs, slaughtered cattle, wounded horses, the very captives slain before the eyes of the besieged, are cast in to fill the void. Bishop Gozlin brings down the Norman chieftain, who had butchered the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... point ever rushed darkly and stormily along; the mount, though not steep, was full two miles in circumference, from base to brow occupied by the castle, which was erected in that massive yet irregular form peculiar to the architecture of the middle ages. A deep, broad moat or fosse, constantly supplied by the river, defended the castle wall, which ran round the mound, irregularly indeed, for there were indentations and sharp angles, occasioned by the uneven ground, each of which was guarded by a strong turret or ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... Jeanne, whose place had always been with her standard at the immediate foot of the wall, from whence to direct and cheer on her soldiers, pressed forward to this point of peril, descending into the first fosse, and climbing up again on the second, the dos d'ane, which separated them, where she stood in the midst of a rain of arrows, fully exposed to all the enraged crowd of archers and gunners on the ramparts above, testing with her lance the depth of the water. We seem in the story to see her all ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... forces. The popular tradition ran that, after his defeat, Faesulae was destroyed, and its people, together with a colony from Rome, made a settlement on the banks of the Arno, below the mountain on which Faesulae had stood. The new town was named Fiora, siccome fosse in fiore edificata, "as though built among flowers," but afterwards was called Fiorenza, or Florence. See G. Villani, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... day I have never been able to make up my mind whether it was by chance or by treachery on the part of our guides that this fosse was overlooked until we stumbled upon it in the dark. There are some who say that the Bussex Rhine, as it is called, is not either deep or broad, and was, therefore, unmentioned by the moorsmen, but that the recent constant rains had swollen it to an extent ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... coast. Most of these trees stood back a little from the margin of high tide, reluctant to see themselves in the water, for fear of the fate of Narcissus. But where that clandestine boat had glided into gloom and greyness, a fosse of Nature's digging, deeply lined with wood and thicket, offered snug ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... the North-ward is simply ornamented by the church and village of Belgrave, whose inhabitants in 1357, in consequence of a dispute with the Abbot concerning the boundaries of the Stocking Wood, blockaded the North Bridge, and the Fosse, with a determination of depriving the Monks of their usual supply of provision from their Grange, or Farm at Stoughton. This view forms a pleasing contrast to the towering churches and close grouped houses of Leicester. The eye of ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... Bridges, and I have been a soldier. I declare that your entrance into Paris is easy, and as a guarantee of the truth of what I say, I am about to give myself up;" so saying, he passed over the fosse by means of one of the supports of the drawbridge, in spite of several shots fired at him by Federals hidden in the houses at Auteuil, but none of which ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... ran over Parnes' ridge; Gully and gap I clambered and cleared till, sudden, a bar Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the way. Right! for I minded the hollow to traverse, the fissure across: 60 "Where I could enter, there I depart by! Night in the fosse? Athens to aid? Tho' the dive were thro' Erebos, deg. thus I obey— deg.62 Out of the day dive, into the day as bravely arise! No bridge Better!"—when—ha! what was it I came on, of ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... governor of the two cities, was strengthening their works and vigorously repelling every assault of his foes. The city was surrounded by thick and lofty walls and a deep fosse, was amply garrisoned, and was abundantly supplied with provisions, having food-supplies, it was said, sufficient "for a period of ten years." Thus provided, the gallant commandant, confident in his strength and resources, defied the efforts of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... crossing the river in boats, as on the preceding day, they assailed the bulwark of the Tourelles "with light hearts and heavy hands." But Gladsdale's men, encouraged by their bold and skilful leader, made a resolute and able defence. The Maid planted her banner on the edge of the fosse, and then, springing down into the ditch, she placed the first ladder against the wall and began to mount. An English archer sent an arrow at her, which pierced her corselet and wounded her severely between the neck and shoulder. She fell ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... midst a mighty pile arose, Where iron grated gates their strength oppose To each invading step—and strong and steep, The battled walls arose, the fosse sunk deep. Slow round the fortress roll'd the sluggish stream, And high in middle air the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... in their place Their guard's relief, depart the youthful pair, Leave fosse and palisade, and in small space Are among ours, who watch with little care; Who, for they little fear the Paynim race, Slumber with fires extinguished everywhere. 'Mid carriages and arms they lie supine, Up to the eyes immersed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner |
