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Mossy   Listen
adjective
Mossy  adj.  (compar. mossier; superl. mossiest)  
1.
Overgrown with moss; abounding with or edged with moss; as, mossy trees; mossy streams. "Old trees are more mossy far than young."
2.
Resembling moss; as, mossy green.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mossy" Quotes from Famous Books



... enormous cedars which would not have shamed their sacred prototypes sighing in Syrian breezes along the rocky gorges of Lebanon. The branches were low and spreading, and even at mid-day the sunshine barely freckled the cool, mossy knolls where the animals sought refuge from the summer heat of the open and smoothly-shaven lawn. Here and there, on the soft, green sward, was presented that vegetable antithesis, a circlet of martinet poplars standing vis-a-vis to a clump of willows whose long hair ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... Australia—which appears to take real delight in bright things, especially pebbles and flowers for their own sake. Its little lean-to, or bower of sticks, which has been built in our own Zoological Park in New York City, is fronted by a cleared space, which is usually mossy. To this it brings its colorful treasures, sometimes a score of bright star blossoms, which are renewed when faded and replaced by others. All this has, probably, something to do with courtship, which should inspire ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... on which the olives, mulberries, and vineyards join their colours and melt subtly into distant purple. After crossing this we reach L'Isle, an island village girdled by the gliding Sorgues, overshadowed with gigantic plane-boughs, and echoing to the plash of water dripped from mossy fern-tufted millwheels. Those who expect Petrarch's Sorgues to be some trickling poet's rill emerging from a damp grotto, may well be astounded at the rush and roar of this azure river so close upon its fountain-head. It has a volume and an arrow-like rapidity that ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... masonry and majestic decay. She all life, a creature of the present, and yet still more of the future, as bright with the sunshine of a hope that could never die; and they, those mouldering stones, that broken tracery, those mossy arches, sad in the desolation of the present, sadder still in the memories of an unenlightened past. Frank finished his sketch, and, holding it behind him, stole gently up to the side ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... old and young, and they did not enter the house, but waited outside, upon the mossy rocks, or sat among the trees, and watched the heavy sun roll down and the Golden Pipes flame in the light of evening. Far beneath in the valley the water ran lightly on, but there came no sound from it, none from anywhere; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... They used to go ashore and, in spite of their ridiculously short legs, make most respectably long journeys through the woods to some other stream, pretending, I suppose, that the fish over there had a different flavor. Sometimes, too, when they came upon a patch of smooth, mossy ground, they would have a wild romp, as if they had just been let out of school—a sort of game of tag, in which the father and mother played just as hard as the youngsters. Or they would have a regular tug of war, pulling on opposite ends of a stick, till the moss ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... fish-monger, asking him to meet the Prettiloves at high tea. It's swelled head, my dear chap; that's what it is. Just swelled head. None of us are good enough for him and his laurels. He's going to remain the modest mossy violet of a hero blushing unseen. Oh, damn ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... pensive pair Of picnickers, straying there— By green fields and running brooks, Sylvan shades and mossy nooks! ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley

... walked away at a steady pace, over hill and dale, through woods and fields, and at last found themselves on a grassy elevation studded with mossy rocks and red cedars. Just beneath them, in a great shining curve, flowed the goodly Connecticut. They flung themselves on the grass and tossed stones into the river; they talked like old friends. Rowland lit a cigar, and Roderick refused one with ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... had broken up and vanished, stealing through the numerous paths in the brushwood, or along the brook, as it descended through tall sedges and bulrushes. The valley was soon as lonely as it had been populous; the pulpit remained a mere mossy bank, more suggestive or fairy dances than of Calvinist sermons, and no one remained on the scene save Beranger with his pony, Jacques the groom, a stout farmer, the preacher, and a tall thin figure in the plainest ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... was the mate, bareheaded, his gray locks lying in rings upon his bronzed brow, and his keen eye scanning the crowd as if he knew their every thought. His frock hung loosely, exposing his round throat, mossy chest, and short and nervous arm embossed with pugilistic bruises, and quaint with many ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... have seen a quaintly despondent little figure, whose curly head issued from a hooded cloak, staggering hopelessly from a hammock, and seating herself on a mossy stump. From the limpness of her attitude and the pathetic expression of her eyes, I fear Polly was reviewing former happy nights spent on spring-beds; and at this particular moment the realities of camping-out hardly ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... unreclaimed land of Lord Cumnor's, which was close to Squire Hamley's property; that very piece for which he had had the Government grant, but which now lay neglected, and only half-drained, with stacks of mossy tiles, and lines of up-turned furrows telling of abortive plans. It was not often that the squire rode in this direction now-a-days; but the cottage of a man who had been the squire's gamekeeper in those more prosperous ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... imagination considers them as the paths to yet wilder scenes of silvan solitude. Here the red rays of the sun shot a broken and discoloured light, that partially hung upon the shattered boughs and mossy trunks of the trees, and there they illuminated in brilliant patches the portions of turf to which they made their way. A considerable open space, in the midst of this glade, seemed formerly to have been ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... full of springs. It was a very rapid brook, nowhere more than three or four feet deep, and never more than twenty feet across, even near its mouth. Below my uncle's house it was full of little falls, with great mossy boulders which checked its flow, and pools where the bubbles spun. Further down, its course was gentler, for the last mile to the sea was a flat valley, with combes on each side covered with gorse and bramble. The sea ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... our history begins Michu was leaning against a mossy parapet on which he had laid his powder-horn, cap, handkerchief, screw-driver, and rags,—in fact, all the utensils needed for his suspicious occupation. His wife's chair was against the wall beside the outer door of the house, above which could still be seen the arms of the ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... boat. The strong eddies caught it, but the controlling paddle was stronger than the eddies and kept it to the line of its safest descent. Past rocks that stood in mid current, against which the swift-going water beat and dashed—past mossy banks and shadowed curves where the great eddies whirled—down over miniature falls into bubbles and froth the light craft swept, and with a final plunge and leap jumped the last cascade, and, darting out into the great ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... they gather in the night, Beseeching him for song ... And when he took His clarsach, from the magic strings he shook A maze of trembling music, falling sweet As mossy waters in the summer heat; And soft as fainting moor-winds when they leave The fume of myrtle, on a dewy eve, Bound flush'd and teeming tarns that all night hear Low elfin pipings ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie

... immersed in their own thoughts upon the desperate nature of the attempt they were about to make, they went on and on, in and out amongst the trees that grew more open as they progressed for quite an hour, when coming upon a patch of mossy stones Mark uttered the word, "Rest," and setting the example he sank down upon one of the stones, to lean his head ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn

... entered a village inn, and ate our simple luncheon; and now we stood in some hamlet lane, or by its mossy well, with a group of children about us, among whom not a child appeared more child-like or more delighted than the old man. Nay, as we came back from a fifteen or twenty miles' stroll, he would leap over a stile with the activity of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... returns with the revolving year. The airs and streams renew their joyous tone; The ants, the bees, the swallows, re-appear; Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' bier; 5 The amorous birds now pair in every brake, And build their mossy homes in field and brere; And the green lizard and the golden snake, Like unimprisoned flames, ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... quog, quog, quog! When the morning sky is red, He sits on the slippery, mossy log, With the rushes over his head. He does his best, with a good intent, The little sprawling man; For every frog must sing in Lent, As loud as ever ...
— The Nursery, March 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... you. I have not ceased to do so since I arrived here; and being quite unable to restrain my feelings, I have betaken myself to the little shady walk you so loved, to write to you, and am sitting on the mossy bank where you so often used to lie. But, my dear, where in this place have I not seen you? Do not thoughts of you haunt my heart everywhere I turn?—in the house, in the church, in the field, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... Sequestered was the word that the little valley suggested, and peace the feeling the road evoked. The farmer, whose fields lay about us, half grown with weeds and bushes, evidently did not make stir or noise enough to disturb anything. Beside this rustic highway, bounded by old mossy stone walls, and within a stone's throw of the farmer's barn, the quail had made her nest. It was just under the edge of a ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... could bear it no longer, and turned away into the forest. When she looked back the Captain of the Guard was gone, and she was alone, except for Patypata, Grabugeon, and Tintin, who lay upon the ground. She could not leave the place until she had buried them in a pretty little mossy grave at the foot of a tree, and she wrote their names upon the bark of the tree, and how they had all died to save her life. And then she began to think where she could go for safety—for this forest was so close ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... all but faded from the heights, when one of the company, stumbling over a round and mossy rock, measured his length upon the ground, amid his own oaths at his mishap, and the exclamations of the man immediately in his rear, whose progress he had thus unceremoniously blocked. The horse of the fallen man, startled by the dragging at ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... torn his lovely spouse from hence; Misanthropy and fear o'ercame each sense; Of the world grown tired, he hated all around:— Too oft in solitude is sorrow found. His partner's death produced distaste of life, And made him fear to seek another wife. A hermit's gloomy, mossy cell he took, And wished his child ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... what Mayflowers are like and NOT to miss them. Do you know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I think they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer and this is their heaven. But we had a splendid time today, Marilla. We had our lunch down in a big mossy hollow by an old well—such a ROMANTIC spot. Charlie Sloane dared Arty Gillis to jump over it, and Arty did because he wouldn't take a dare. Nobody would in school. It is very FASHIONABLE to dare. Mr. Phillips gave all the Mayflowers he found to Prissy Andrews and I heard him to say 'sweets ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... late in the day, in a bend of the river, about fifteen miles above the Vaux ranch, forming a jungle of several thousand acres. In this thickety covert the fugitive made his final stand, taking refuge in an immense old live-oak, the mossy festoons of which partially screened him from view. The larger portion of the cavalcade remained in the open, but the rest of us, under the leadership of the two rancheros, forced our horses through the underbrush and reached the hounds. The pack were as good as exhausted by the long ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... place was inviting enough and a child wouldn't have feared to be there. Dean Burn came down from its cradle far away in the hills and threaded Dean Woods with ripple and flash and song. The beck lifted its voice in stickles and shouted over the mossy apron of many a little waterfall; and then under the dark of the woods it would go calm, nestle in a backwater here and there, then run on again. And of all fine spots on a sunny day the Hound's Pool was finest, for here Dean Burn had scooped a hole among the roots of forest ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... months after this conversation that Amine and Philip were again seated upon the mossy bank which we have mentioned, and which had become their favourite resort. Father Mathias had contracted a great intimacy with Father Seysen, and the two priests were almost as inseparable as were Philip and Amine. Having determined ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... exquisite plant with delicate flower and trefoil leaves grows on many mossy banks, especially on one ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... the city early That Saturday afternoon; I sat with Beatrix under the trees In the mossy orchard; the golden bees Buzzed over clover-tops, pink and pearly; I was at peace, ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.

... clinking song—a perfect ecstasy of crystal notes—then as suddenly died down, babbling and gurgling, and flowed smoothly on, whispering and murmuring to itself of the delights to come in the heart of the cool woods. Just here, with a swift sweep between mossy, curved banks, the stream turned its back to him and hurried away among the trees with a coy invitation that was well-nigh maddening. He remembered just such a creek as that where, as a boy, he had used to go with his companions ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... the Echo-dwarf upon the ground, but the little rogue did not go away. He concealed himself between some low, mossy rocks, and he was so much of their color that you would not have noticed him if you had been looking ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... was now the evening calm, and before Rolf had gone half a mile he heard the distant "Thump, thump, thump, thump—rrrrrrr" of a partridge, drumming. He went quickly and cautiously toward the place, then waited for the next drumming. It was slow in coming, so he knelt down by a mossy, rotten log, and struck it with his hands to imitate the thump and roll of the partridge. At once this challenge ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... you will look beside the brook You 'll see, I know quite well, That hidden in each mossy nook Is ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum

... their foe, No towers defenced with rampire, moat, or wall, No stream, no wood, no mountain could forslow Their hasty pace, or stop their march at all; So when his banks the prince of rivers, Po, Doth overswell, he breaks with hideous fall The mossy rocks and trees o'ergrown with age, Nor aught withstands ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... streams and waving trees and deep, cool forests. It made their nostrils dilate with pleasure as they whirled past fern-filled ravines, out of which the rivulets stole with stealthy circuits under mossy rocks. They were both forest-born, and it was like getting back home out of a strange desert country to come back ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland

... distiller pricked his ears. A flute at Fairmilehead? and playing, "Over the Hills and Far Away"? This must be his friendly enemy, the gauger. Instantly, horses were harnessed, and sundry barrels of whisky were got upon a cart, driven at a gallop round Hill End, and buried in the mossy glen behind Kirk Yetton. In the same breath, you may be sure, a fat fowl was put to the fire, and the whitest napery prepared for the back parlour. A little after, the gauger, having had his fill of music for the moment, came strolling down with the most innocent air imaginable, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... his steps wide through the bosom of night, to where the trees of Loda shook amid squally winds.... I beheld the dark moon descending behind thy resounding woods. On thy top dwells the misty Loda, the house of the spirits of men. I saw a deer at Crona's stream; a mossy bank he seemed through the gloom, but soon he bounded away. A meteor played round his branching horns; the awful faces of other times looked from the clouds of Crona. These are the signs of Fingal's death. The king of shields is ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... catch the light that faintly falls Through my leaf-latticed window of the skies, And I will listen to the voice that calls From heaven, where the wind stricken forest sighs. And I will read of dim Creation's morn, From the deep archives of these mossy hills— On wings of wizard thought, my fancy, borne Back by the whispers of these pouring rills, Shall read the unwritten record of the land— For God, unwitnessed here hath walked the dell, These cliffs have quivered at his loud command, These ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich

... benches—possibly tables—and shingles for covering such structures as need roofing in, unless bark is used for this purpose. Of course bark gives more of a "rustic" look to a roof, but it is not an easy matter to obtain a good quality of it, and shingles, stained a mossy-green or dark brown, will harmonize charmingly with the rest of the building, and furnish a much more substantial roof than it is possible to secure with even ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... down on a mossy log, and thought how nice and cool it was, and pretty soon, she heard water running and splashing over the stones. That made her cooler than ever and she was feeling very happy, and wishing Buddy was with her, when ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis

... find sympathetic magic invoked on every page. Take, for example, the famous vulnerary ointment attributed to Paracelsus. For this there were a variety of receipts, including usually human fat, the fat of either a bull, a wild boar, or a bear, powdered earthworms, the usnia, or mossy growth on the weathered skull of a hanged criminal, and other materials equally unpleasant—the whole prepared under the planet Venus if possible, but never under Mars or Saturn. Then, if a splinter of wood, dipped in the patient's blood, or the bloodstained weapon that ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... the Flood, thou, with thy lusty crew, False titled Sons of God, roaming the Earth, Cast wanton eyes on the daughters of men, 180 And coupled with them, and begot a race. Have we not seen, or by relation heard, In courts and regal chambers how thou lurk'st, In wood or grove, by mossy fountain-side, In valley or green meadow, to waylay Some beauty rare, Calisto, Clymene, Daphne, or Semele, Antiopa, Or Amymone, Syrinx, many more Too long—then lay'st thy scapes on names adored, Apollo, Neptune, Jupiter, or Pan, 190 Satyr, or Faun, or Silvan? But these haunts ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton

... high, and Anthems cleer, As may with sweetnes, through mine ear, Dissolve me into extasies, And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes. And may at last my weary age Find out the peacefull hermitage, The Hairy Gown and Mossy Cell, Where I may sit and rightly spell 170 Of every Star that Heav'n doth shew, And every Herb that sips the dew; Till old experience do attain To somthing like prophetic strain. These pleasures Melancholy give, And I with ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... little people of the Rootmen. They were pretty little creatures, in form and look like human beings,—the tallest about six inches high, and the smallest as long as your little finger. In summer they lived in mossy bowers and under the leaves of the tall fern; in winter they nestled among the roots of trees, in the holes of some gnarled old trunk, and crept into the clefts in the rocks. Their dress was fine and elegant: the little men wore coats ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick

... intimate with only one family in our neighbourhood; and I think it was the example of the son of that house which first induced me to think of leading a different existence from that in which my father had grown as green and mossy as a felled tree. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... secret plan for driving a four-in-hand, seconded Tom's idea, and finally it was decided that they should go to Mossy Pond, a beautiful glen ten miles from Westerton, in a rocky region on the lake shore apart from the farming country. Sibyl took the list, and went out to deliver the invitations which Aunt Faith ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March

... waters in removing diseases of the skin. The square basin or reservoir of stone immediately adjoining the head of the spring was made at the commencement of this century for the convenience of bathers, and occupies a very secluded position, overshadowed by a large beech-tree, and closed round with mossy banks. The water is abundant in quantity, and contains iron and lime, derived from the strata through which it percolates. The general temperature is ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... them a spirit. But when he commenced the ascent of the hill, the long plumes of his cap streaming through rocks and trees, appearing and disappearing as he clambers up, they rush into pursuit. Separated only by mossy banks and rocky terraces, they seek the same hilltop. He reaches it the first. Before him flashes upon his eyes a full view of the illuminated castle with its towers and battlemented turrets; at his feet lies the abyss, thundering with the roar of falling waters. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... a green and mossy bank There flows a clear and fairy stream; There the pert squirrel oft has drank, And thought, perhaps, ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen

... Wytham, Now so far, so far from me, Where the grand old beeches be, And the deer-herds feeding by them: 'Mid the mossy Woods of Wytham, Oft I roam ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... Darwin read his chapter on instinct "to a lady who was in the habit of rearing canary birds. She observed that the pair which he then saw building their nest in her cage, were a male and female, who had been hatched and reared in that very cage, and were not in existence when the mossy cradle was fabricated in which they first saw light." She asked him, and quite reasonably, "how, upon his principle of imitation, he could account for the nest he then saw building, being constructed even ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... building on the street. Here the land made a slight ascent, giving a more extended view of the valley and distant hills than at any other point. The business character of this street mingled oddly in summer with the rural life around it. At several right-angles, green and mossy lanes, arched by venerable elms, seemed to be offering their crooked elbows to lead it back to the simple pastoral life from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... beautiful. I call it "The Awakening". It is a woodland scene. I come back from my work here, hot and tired, and a mere glance at that wood refreshes me. It is so cool, so green. The sun filters in golden splashes through the foliage. On a mossy bank, between two trees, lies a beautiful girl asleep. Above her, bending fondly over her, just about to kiss that flower-like face, is a young man in the dress of a shepherd. At the last moment he has looked over his shoulder to make sure that there is nobody near ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... by plants are eminently liable to be modified by changed conditions of life, we may believe it possible that various parts of a plant might be modified through the agency of its own altered secretions. Compare, for instance, the mossy and viscid calyx of a moss-rose, which suddenly appears through bud-variation on a Provence-rose, with the gall of red moss growing from the inoculated leaf of a wild rose, with each filament symmetrically branched like a microscopical ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... wish to see it, you must go down yon field, the house is called after the bridge." Bidding him farewell, we crossed the road and going down the field speedily arrived at Pont y Meibion. The bridge is a small bridge of one arch which crosses the brook Ceiriog—it is built of rough moor stone; it is mossy, broken, and looks almost inconceivably old; there is a little parapet to it about two feet high. On the right-hand side it is shaded by an ash. The brook when we viewed it, though at times a roaring torrent, was stealing along gently, on both sides it is overgrown with alders, noble hills ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... of clear, crystal pools, a long winding chain, doubling back on itself in loops and curves—form the source of the permanent flow of the Roper; pools only a few feet deep, irregular and wide-spreading, with mossy-green, deeply undermined, overhanging banks, and lime-stone bottoms washed into terraces that gleam azure-blue through ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... will maintain their greatness, though it be in the poverty, ruin and hardship of their Bretheren: Witness the practice of Kings and their Laws, that have crushed the Commoners of England a long time. And have we not experience in these days that some Officers of the Commonwealth have grown so mossy for want of removing that they will hardly speak to an old acquaintance, if he be an inferior man, though they were very familiar before these wars began? And what hath occasioned this distance ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... ever discovered the nook to gather them. They rejoiced in the spring sunshine and gentle breezes, the greeting of the birds, and the musical chatter of the brook; then when their brief visit to the upper world was over they nestled happily down in their warm mossy beds and slept till April ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless

... shepherd king and queen, Painted and frail amid her nodding bows, Under the sombre branches, and between The green and mossy garden-ways she goes, With little mincing airs one keeps to pet A darling and provoking perroquet. Her long-trained robe is blue, the fan she holds With fluent fingers girt with heavy rings, So vaguely hints of vague erotic things ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons

... Borrowing this creature's mossy legs, two or three gentlemen in Washington are seeking to fix these upon the Federal Constitution, to make that instrument walk backward in like style. For instance, the Constitution has never laid any legal disabilities upon ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... burying-place in some corner of the home farm, sometimes at the foot of garden or orchard. Such is noticeably the case throughout Narragansett; almost every farm has a grave-yard, now generally unused and deserted. Sometimes the burying-place is enclosed by a high mossy stone wall, often it is overgrown with dense sombre firs or hemlocks, or half shaded with airy locust-trees. Beautifully ideal and touching is the thought of these old Narragansett planters resting with their ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... clouds parted, the deep shadow covering the Vallee du Diable cleared away, and the dismal solitude began to smile. Count Abel arose, picked up his staff, and shook himself. As he passed before the cavern, he discovered, among the tufts of aconite which covered it, a mossy hollow, and he perceived that this hollow was ornamented with beautiful blue campanulas, whose little bells gracefully waved in the gentle breeze which was stirring. He gathered one of these campanulas, carried it to his lips, and found its taste ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... disappointment at finding instead of Madame Taverneau a strange face, who gruffly announced that the post-mistress had gone away for a few days with Madame Louise Guerin. The dove had flown, leaving to mark its passage a few white feathers in its mossy nest, a faint perfume of grace in this ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... and adjuncts of the ancient home of the Hattons, and John Hatton looked up at the old face of it with a conscious love and pride. The house was built of dark millstone grit in large blocks, many of them now green and mossy. The roof was of sandstone in thin slabs, and in its angles grass had taken root. In front there was a tower and tall gables, with balls and pinnacles. The principal entrance was a doorway with a Tudor arch, and a large porch resting on stone pillars. Within this ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... is a large ancient one-story dwelling with side front, in good preservation. Its ivy mantle does not conceal the frame, which is filled in with stuccoed brick, and which alone would proclaim the age of the building. The long slope of the mossy roof must hide a wonderful old attic, for it is full of tiled "eyes" to admit light and air, and two or three single panes of glass are inserted in different places for the same purpose. Three ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... swelter and keep warm the rootlets of the newly planted weigelias and spruces, until the snows and February suns and April mists and May heats shall have transmuted them into fat and unctuous mould. A close, pelting, unceasing rain, trying all the leaks of the mossy roof, testing all the newly laid drains, pressing the fountain at my door to an exuberant gush,—a rain that makes outside work an impossibility; and as I sit turning over the leaves of an old book of engravings, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... an adjoining copse. The moonlight was everywhere, bathing the flower-beds, spiritualizing the trees, lying on the grass like snow, and casting deep shadows from the quaint figures of many a statue, and a deeper shadow still from the mossy dial-stone. ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables

... placed in the closest proximity to some mountain-stream, on the rocks and boulders of which the male so loves to warble; sometimes on a mossy bank; sometimes in some rocky crevice hidden amongst drooping maiden-hair; sometimes on some stream-encircled slab, exposed to view from all sides, and not unfrequently curtained in by the babbling waters of some little waterfall behind which it has been constructed. ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... up and along a winding valley to the park gates at Damelioc. Beyond these the valley narrowed to a sylvan gorge, and the speckless carriage-road mounted under forest trees alongside a river tumbling in miniature cascades, swirling under mossy footbridges, here and there artfully delayed to form a trout-pool, or as artfully veiled by thickets of trailing wild roses and Traveller's Joy. For a mile and more he rode upward under soft green shadows, then lifted his eyes to wide daylight ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... heart luxuriates with indifferent things, Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones, And on the vacant air. Then up I rose, And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash And merciless ravage: and the shady nook 45 Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower, Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up Their quiet being: and unless I now Confound my present feelings with the past, Ere from the mutilated bower I turned 50 Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings, ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... down to the quiet little brook. 'Enough,' I said again, as I drank in the resinous fragrance of the pinewood, strong and pungent in the freshness of falling evening. 'Enough,' I said once more, as I sat on the mossy mound above the little brook and gazed into its dark, lingering waters, over which the sturdy reeds thrust up their pale ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... sigh. Surely her paradise was very brief! Enrica had thought in her simplicity that, once met, they two never should part again, but spend the live-long days together side by side among the woods, lingering by flowing streams; or in the rich shade of purple vine-bowers; or in mossy caves, shaded by tall ferns, hid on the mountain-side, and let time and the world roll by. This was the life she dreamed of. Could any grief ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... beyond all price, Even yet it was a place of paradise; And here were coral bowers, And grots of madrepores, And banks of sponge, as soft and fair to eye As e'er was mossy bed Whereon the wood-nymphs lie With languid limbs in summer's sultry hours. Here, too, were living flowers, Which, like a bud compacted, Their purple cups contracted; And now in open blossom spread, Stretch'd, like green anthers, many a seeking head. And arborets of jointed stone were ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... wave, And the high branches of the slender poplar Shiver aloft in air their rustling leaves. Cool breaths the rising breeze, and with it wakes The worn out spirit from its state of stupor. The lazy boy springs from his mossy bed, To chace the gaudy tempting butterfly, Who spreading on the grass its mealy wings, Oft lights within his reach, e'en at his seer, Yet still eludes his grasp, and o'er his head Light hov'ring round, or mounted high in air Temps his young ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie

... the gay greenwood, The greenwood o'er the mossy stream, That roll'd in rapture's wildest mood, And flutter'd in the fairy beam. Through light clouds flash'd the fitful gleam O'er hill and dell,—all Nature lay Wrapp'd in enchantment, like the dream Of her ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... and on. Two hours of this still-hunting found him on the bank of a shallow gully through which a brook went rippling and babbling over the mossy green stones. The forest was dense here; rugged oaks and tall poplars grew high over the tops of the first growth of white oaks and beeches; the wild grapevines which coiled round the trees like gigantic serpents, spread out in the upper branches and ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... the blue ether. Brightly fell her golden beams on the tall, old forest trees, that pointed spar-like toward the starry heaven, and down, through their interlacing branches, upon gray, mossy rocks and uprooted trunks, over which wild vines wreathed in untrained exuberance; and dim, star-eyed flowers reared their slender heads among the rank ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... in the Highlands, he made his home among the lakes at Elleray. This home was a rambling, mossy-roofed cottage, of very picturesque appearance, overhung by ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... slumbered truly, this engarlanded weaver, his lids concealing all bright speculation, his jowl of vanity (foe of the Philistine) at peace: and I might gaze unperceived. The moon filled his mossy cubicle with her untrembling beams, streamed upon blossoms sweet and heavy as Absalom's hair, while tiny plumes wafted into the night the scent of thyme ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... unusually magnificent, lacking, this year, those garish and discordant hues which Americans think it necessary to admire. Oak brown and elm yellow, deep chrome bronze and sombre crimson the hard woods glowed against backgrounds of pine and hemlock. Larches were mossy cones of feathery gold; birches slim shafts of snowy gray, ochre-crowned; silver and green the balsams' spires pierced the canopy of splendid tapestry upborne by ash and oak and towering pine under a sky of blue so deep and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... As ships are toss'd by waves and wind, Steals out her hand, by nature led, And brings a vessel into bed; Fair utensil, as smooth and white As Chloe's skin, almost as bright. Strephon, who heard the fuming rill As from a mossy cliff distil, Cried out, Ye Gods! what sound is this? Can Chloe, heavenly Chloe,——? But when he smelt a noisome steam Which oft attends that lukewarm stream; (Salerno both together joins,[10] As sov'reign med'cines for the loins:) And though ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... coasted down all the hills, for there was a strong brake to keep it safe. And the dogs were either invited to ride with Jones, or were permitted to get to the bottom as best pleased them with Ben, which meant a scamper through fields of blue forget-me-nots and purple lupine, over damp and mossy dells, and along the slopes where tiny birds were hidden in cozy nests about which the frightened ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling

... brains for an excuse to refuse, but, as there wasn't a buttonless glove, or a holey stocking among the party, she reluctantly gave me leave. I darted away, plunged into the forest, and did not stop walking until I had got well out of sight of the hotel. Then I sat down on a mossy log under a great tree, and ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... Park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. As we went along there were more, and yet more; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw there was a long belt of them along the shore. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about them; some rested their heads on the stones as on a pillow; the rest tossed, and reeled, and danced, and seemed as if they verily danced with the wind, they looked so gay ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... locality in the interior of New York, I know, every season, where I am sure to find a nest or two of the slate-colored snow-bird. It is under the brink of a low, mossy bank, so near the highway that it could be reached from a passing vehicle with a whip. Every horse or wagon or foot passenger disturbs the sitting bird. She awaits the near approach of a sound of feet or wheels, and then darts quickly ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... talk very softly—in whispers," he went on, laughing. "Do you suppose the trout are so observant as to mind it? If you sit here,—on this mossy stone, close by me, can't I enjoy ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... the mossy green, Up-curling and springing, See trees circling round them, And the straight brook like a lily-stem: Hear the water laughing At the stern old pine-tree Who keeps sighing to himself all day long What's the ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling

... desolate and austere place until, as at the date when Mark first came there, it was graced by the perfume and gold of acacias, by wistaria and jasmine and honeysuckle, by the ivory goblets of magnolias, by crimson fuchsias, and where formerly its grey walls grew mossy north and east by pink and white camelias and the waxen bells of lapagerias. The garden was a wilderness of scarlet rhododendrons from the thickets of which innumerable blackbirds and thrushes preyed upon ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... prayer for the dead, when I am gone, And let the azure tide that floweth on Cover us lightly with its murmuring surf Like a green sward of melancholy turf. Thou mayest, if thou wilt, thou mayest rear A cenotaph on this lone island here, Of some rude mossy stone, below a tree, And carve an olden rhyme for her and me Upon ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart

... the brim with many a torrent swelled, And the mixed ruin of its banks o'erspread, At last the roused up river pours along: Resistless, roaring, dreadful, down it comes From the rude mountain and the mossy wild. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... for little girls to sit under, and the ground was covered with pretty green moss and wood- flowers. Birds flew about in the pines, squirrels chattered in the oaks, butterflies floated here and there, and from the pond near by came the croak of frogs sunning their green backs on the mossy stones. ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott

... sank to a seat upon a mossy, rotting log. Blake, erect, but leaning lightly against the scaling, mottled body of a giant sycamore, at first gave no heed to his companion. He gazed straight ahead down the river, emaciated by the drought till the bowlders of its bottom protruded through the surface like so ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... the forest, the wooded hillside and the little lake may not be the exact words, but the thought is there just as White Pigeon expressed it to me that evening when we sat on the mossy bank of the lake at Grasmere and threw pebbles ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... decked With unrejoicing berries—ghostly shapes May meet at noontide; FEAR and trembling HOPE, SILENCE and FORESIGHT; DEATH, the Skeleton, And TIME, the Shadow; there to celebrate, As in a natural temple scattered o'er With altars undisturbed of mossy stone, United worship; or in mute repose To lie, and listen to the mountain flood Murmuring from Glazamara's ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the bright rainbows. She liked to gather the sweet wild flowers, that breathe out their little day of sweetness in some sheltered nook; she liked the cunning little squirrel, peeping slily from some mossy tree-trunk; she liked to see the bright sun wrap himself in his golden mantle, and sink behind the hills; she liked the first little silver star that stole softly out on the dark, blue sky; she liked the last faint note of the little bird, as it folded its soft wings to sleep; ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... railing again she sat on a mossy mound at the foot of a huge beech tree. Her manner of doing so subtly indicated that she did not only know the spot, but was in the habit of sitting there, possibly to think. A youthful privilege of doubtful value, for, as we get busier in life we have to do the thinking as ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... strongest men have fortified bits here and there. The walls of Aurelian, broken and war-worn and full of half-repaired breaches, enclose a desert, a world too wide for its inhabitants, a vast straggling heterogeneous mass of buildings in every stage of preservation and decay, splendid temples, mossy and ivy-grown, but scarcely injured by time, then wastes of broken brick and mortar; stern dark towers of Savelli, and Frangipani, and Orsini, and Colonna, dominating and threatening whole quarters of ruins; strange small ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... like wool." Very beautiful is this snow as it softens the rugged, corky limbs of the mossy cup oaks. It is not like the hard, granular snow which stung your face like sand when you were out in the storm a month ago, when the trumpets of the sky were doing a fanfare, the wind raged from the northwest, the top of a tall black cherry snapped like a shipmast and crashed through the ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... from the stack; if it be built in a bush by the side of a river, and (which is frequently the case) below flood mark, it is generally covered on the outside with the rubbish which has been left there by the flood; and if it build in a mossy stump, the front of the nest is composed of the dark- coloured moss which grows there. ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett

... autumn; through dark green cedars the crimson creeper threaded its sprays of blood-red; birches, gilded to their tops, swayed to every wind, and drooped their graceful boughs earthward to shower the mossy sward with glittering leaves; heavy oaks turned purple-crimson through their wide-spread boughs; and the stately chestnuts, with foliage of tawny yellow, opened wide their stinging husks to let the nuts fall for squirrel and blue-jay. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... to be empowered to vindicate his friend's fair name, George seized his hat, and strode quick along the path towards the basketmaker's cottage. As he gained the water-side, he perceived Waife himself, seated on a mossy bank, under a gnarled fantastic thorntree, watching a deer as it came to drink, and whistling a soft mellow tune,—the tune of an old English border-song. The deer lifted his antlers from the water, and turned his large bright eyes towards the opposite bank, whence ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the river of the Cherokees, the most numerous and powerful tribe of the south, there are two high mountains nearly covered with mossy rocks, and lofty cedars, and pines. These mountains, rugged and terrible to behold, are made yet more fearful to the mind of the red man of the forest, who sees the Great Being in the clouds, and hears him in the winds, and fancies a spirit in every thing that moves, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... died away, The clouds, beneath the glancing ray, Melt off, and leave the land and sea Sleeping in bright tranquillity. Below, the lake's still face Sleeps sweetly in th' embrace Of mountains terraced high with mossy stone." ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed

... turn," and he patted the good steed as it sucked up the refreshing water, and Walter proceeded to release it from saddle and bridle. Edmund, meanwhile, stretched himself out on the mossy bank, asked a few questions about his mother, Rose, and the other children, but was too tired to say much, and presently fell sound asleep, while Walter sat by watching him, grieving for the battle lost, but proud and important ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge

... another I stepped from a lovely road upon the Aventine into an old garden where, at the end of a long, lofty, and narrow alley of trimmed evergreens, stood the Dome of St. Peter's filling the vista against an afternoon sky. In these mossy and silent old places, the trees and plants seem to have sucked their vigor from the sun and soil of many long-gone centuries, and to remain ghosts of themselves and hoary reminiscences of their day in the soft splendor of modern light. ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... an ivy-clasped gable, or even a mossy stone remains to claim the "passing tribute" of a sigh, or a vain regret for the golden days of our Irish Church. Yet its very barrenness of ruins made it dearer to my heart, for one never clings more fondly to the memory of a dear friend than when all mementoes of him are lost. As warned ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... spent my youth Is on yon lofty mountain side, The stream which flowed beside the door Adown the mossy slope doth glide; The holly tree that hid one end Is shaken by the moaning wind, Like as it was in days of yore When 'neath its ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins

... a mitigation of the cruel sentence, or at least that a circle of fire shall be drawn around her resting-place, so that none but a hero of valour and determination can hope to win her. Moved by her entreaties, Wotan consents. He kisses her fondly to sleep, and lays her gently upon a mossy couch, covered with her shield. Then he strikes the earth with his spear, calling on the fire-god Loge. Tongues of fire spring up around them, and leaving her encircled with a rampart of flame, he passes from the mountain-top with the words, 'Let him who fears ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... not the cypress young As it waves towards the sky, moved by the breeze! So beautiful is not the mossy fountain That sings like bard and nourishes like mother! So beautiful is not sunrise or sunset! Another world's day hangs from thy high crest! So beautiful is not the tranquil lake! Gods and their hymns god-sung ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas

... The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has pressed In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... silhouettes of the palms stand etched against the rose-tinted heavens, the hot noontide in the shadows of the colossal kanari-trees, the sunset gold transfiguring the foliage into emerald fire, and spilling pools of liquid amber upon the mossy turf, or the white moonlight which transmutes the forest aisles into a fairy world of sable and silver, invest this vision of Paradise with varied aspects of incomparable beauty. The surrounding scenery, though ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... its childlike charm, As candor leads desire, Now with a clasp of blossomy arm, A butterfly kiss of fire; Now with a toss of tousled gold, A barefoot sound of green, A breath of musk, of mossy ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse



Words linked to "Mossy" :   unstylish, moss-grown, mossy saxifrage, moss, fogyish, stick-in-the-mud, stodgy, mossy-cup oak, covered



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