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Reedy   Listen
adjective
Reedy  adj.  
1.
Abounding with reeds; covered with reeds. "A reedy pool."
2.
Having the quality of a reed in tone, that is, harsh and thin, as some voices.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Reedy" Quotes from Famous Books



... horse and set off on her quest. Alice, left alone, secured her horse and proceeded to disgorge the contents of her saddle-bags, and also those on her friend's saddle. This done, she stepped down to the water's edge, and, pushing the reedy vegetation on one side, filled the kettle. As she rose from her task she looked out down the wide inlet. The view was an enchanting one. The wooded banks opposite her rose abruptly from the water, overshadowing it, ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... and hummed With lights and people. Gebnitz was to sing, That rare soprano. All the fiddles strummed With tuning up; the wood-winds made a ring Of reedy bubbling noises, and the sting Of sharp, red brass pierced every eardrum; patting From muffled ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... was, it held me less than the solitary singing of a sedge-warbler that lived by himself, or with only his mate, higher up where the stream was narrow, so that I could get near him; for he not only tickled my ears with his rapid, reedy music, but amused my mind as well with a pretty little problem in bird psychology. I could sit within a few yards of his tangled haunt without hearing a note; but if I jumped up and made a noise, or struck the branches with my stick, he would incontinently burst ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... mount the exhausted horses, but led them, stumbling, foaming and sweating, while they hunted for water. It was an hour before they found a little mud-pool in a reedy hollow. They had drunk nothing for twelve hours and were parched with thirst, but the water of the pool was like thin jelly, slimy and nauseating, and they could drink only a mouthful. Supper consisted of a dry biscuit, previously baked by Lincoln under direction of his father, who insisted ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... prairie between Lake Michigan and the Rio Grande, where man's most pretentious achievement was the Ead's Bridge at St. Louis, Nature's most spectacular effort, the Ozark Mountains, and literature's most worthy resident representative, William Marion Reedy. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... What will they do with us?" whispered the willow-trees as they shivered and trembled on the reedy margin of the stream. The kingfisher was preening his small many-hued ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various

... days the travellers saw no human being, so scanty was the population of these plains. Game, however, was abundant. Deer sprang from the tall, reedy grass of the river bottoms; buffalo tramped by in ponderous columns, or dotted the swells of the distant prairie with their grazing thousands; antelope approached, with the curiosity of their species, to gaze at the passing ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... why she did not speak to him. They drove on in silence through the dusk. So they came to the point at which the coast road turns inward towards Lapton Huish, a lonely spot where the cliffs break away into low hills, and the highroad runs between a ridge of shingle on one side and on the other two reedy meres. The night was windless, and they heard no sound but a faint shivering of reed-beds, and the plash and withdrawal of languid waves lapping the miles of fine shingle with a faint hiss like that of grain falling on ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young

... grounds of the Powder and the Yellowstone. They were hardened to the scorching heat and bitter cold of the dry plains and pine-clad mountains. They were accustomed to sleep in the open, while the picketed horses grazed beside them near some shallow, reedy pool. They had wandered hither and thither across the vast desolation of the wilderness, alone or with comrades. They had cowered in the shelter of cut banks from the icy blast of the norther, and far out on the midsummer prairies they had known the luxury of lying in the shade of the wagon during ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt

... and dewy breast, Soars upward like a spirit strong, From reedy nest, The gentle lark, To tune on high ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones

... in vain our eyes his progress mark'd: "In the light dust his feet were printed, he, "Rapt from the view, was vanish'd. Swifter flies "The darted spear not: nor the leaden ball "Hurl'd from the whirling sling;—nor reedy dart "Shot from the Cretan bow. A central hill "High-towering, all the subject plains o'erlooks; "Thither I climb, and there behold the chase; "A novel scene. Now seems the beast safe caught; "Now from the grasp light-springing. Flight ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... with easel and camp-chair. His vigorous strokes sent him rapidly by Strand-on-the-Green, that secluded bit of a village which so few Londoners have taken the trouble to search out. A narrow paved quay, fringed with stately elm trees, separated the old-fashioned, many-colored houses from the reedy shore, where at high tide low great black barges, which apparently go nowhere, lie ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... hill and valley. And we went onward until we came to the village that men call Senlac, where the long hill ridge ends and sinks sharply into the valley of the little river Asten, and there we thought that a heron or mallard would lie in the reedy ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... was attracted by the water-lilies and the rushes, the water-lilies with their large round leaves lying outspread on the water like green plates, and the rushes with their sun-warmed, reedy stalks. ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels

... sacrifice yourself to keep up your name, you may as well choose some one that will be of some ultimate use to it. Now we want a strain of thick red blood in our veins; ours is a great deal too blue. We are becoming reedy shaped, and more or ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... the Yolofka about noon. This river empties into the Kamchatka from the north, twelve versts above Kluchei. Its shores are generally low and marshy, and thickly overgrown with rushes and reedy grass, which furnish cover for thousands of ducks, geese, and wild swans. We reached, before night, a native village called Harchina (har'-chin-ah) and sent at once for a celebrated Russian guide by the name of Nicolai Bragan (nick-o-lai' brag'-on) whom we hoped to induce ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of the accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the flickering campfire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney, —story-telling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions caring ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... a historic lake of Italy; lies amid hills between the towns Cortona and Perugia; shallow and reedy, 10 m. long; associated with Hannibal's memorable victory over the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... the fair, the reedy Cnidos Hauntest, Amathus and the lawny Golgi, Or Dyrrhachium, hostel ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... neither were stars forthcoming, suddenly a wailing voice rose along the valleys, and a sound in the air, as of people running. It mattered not whether you stood on the moor, or crouched behind rocks away from it, or down among reedy places; all as one the sound would come, now from the heart of the earth beneath, now overhead bearing down on you. And then there was rushing of something by, and melancholy laughter, and the hair of a man would stand on end before he could ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... The reedy old voice carried the funeral hymn for a few minutes and then trailed off. James was thinking back ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... black night which grew each moment blacker, and the rhythmic ebb and flow of the clear, untrained voice of a cowboy singing to his charge. If he could put it into words; if he could but picture the broody stillness, with frogs cr-ekk, er-ekking along the reedy creek-bank and a coyote yapping weirdly upon a distant hilltop! From the southwest came mutterings half-defiant and ominous. A breeze whispered something to the grasses as it crept away down ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower

... smoke it has drifted and faded afar on the hill; No wood-nymphs haunt the hollows; the reedy pipes are still; No more the youth Apollo shall walk in his sunshine clear; No more the maid Diana shall follow the fallow-deer (The woodmen grew so wise, the woodmen grew so old, The gods went back to Italy—or ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various

... the reedy pond, Beside the water-hen, so soon affrighted; And in the weedy moat the heron, fond ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... through this region, neither water nor land, that the hapless Evangeline, the heroine of Longfellow's famous poem, was rowed, seeking her lover in these flooded wilds, and not dreaming that he lay behind one of those reedy barrens, almost within touch, yet as unseen as if leagues ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... drifting about a reedy bay (the same bay in which the almost forgotten kingfisher had cheated me out of my bear, after eating a minnow that my paddle had routed out for him) shooting frogs for my table with a pocket rifle. How different ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long

... meeting high overhead, gave to it the character of a cathedral aisle. These trees lent a deeper solemnity to the early light; but there was still light enough to perceive, at the further end of this gothic aisle, a light, reedy gig, in which were seated a young man, and, by his side, a young lady. Ah, young sir! what are you about? If it is necessary that you should whisper your communications to this young lady—though really I see nobody at this hour, and on this solitary ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... would come; Mrs. Sivendson said you might be able to find time," he said simply. His voice was thin and reedy. "I am very glad to see you, Dr. Silence. It is 'Doctor,' is ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... animal life. The principal occupant of these marshes is the elephant, and hundreds of these monster animals may be seen in one herd, feeding like cattle in a meadow. Owing to the almost impenetrable nature of the reedy jungle, however, it is impossible to follow them, and anxious though Disco was to kill one, he failed to obtain a single shot. Buffaloes and other large game were also numerous in this region, and in the ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... through our marsh, on rush and reed; And while he eats or chews the cud, Will trample on us in the mud. Alas! to think how frogs must suffer By means of this proud lady heifer!" This fear was not without good sense. One bull was beat, and much to their expense; For, quick retreating to their reedy bower, He trod on twenty of ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... lecture-room are a weariness and a vexation of spirit; she seeks not to define virtue, and cares little for the categories; she smiles on the swift athlete whose plastic grace has pleased her, and rejoices in the young Barbarians at their games; she watches the rowers from the reedy bank and gives myrtle to her lovers, and laurel to her poets, and rue to those who talk wisely in the street; she makes the earth lovely to all who dream with Keats; she opens high heaven to all who soar with Shelley; ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... the shed, sniffing at the smoke from burning leaves—the scent of autumn and migration and wanderlust. He glanced down between houses to the reedy shore of Joralemon Lake. The surface of the water was smooth, and tinted like a bluebell, save for one patch in the current where wavelets leaped with October madness in sparkles of diamond fire. Across the lake, woods sprinkled with ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... last on the track, and saved only by a mere chance, or the grace of St. Owen, my patron. I had dropped my quiver of arrows, and had gone back a few steps to fetch it; they brought me to the edge of the reedy marsh, and I was just returning, having found the quiver, when I heard a cry, followed by echoes as from a chain of sentinels all round the marsh—'Fire the reeds!' I ran back to the main land, climbed ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... strand of Dardan, where they fought, To Simois' reedy banks the red blood ran, Whose waves to imitate the battle sought With swelling ridges; and their ranks began To break upon the galled shore, and than Retire again, till, meeting greater ranks, They join and shoot their foam at ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... imagination, though to her it too was a tedious hole. Martin could not forget the Broomhill of old days—the glamour of taverns and churches and streets lay over the few desolate houses and ugly little new church which huddled under the battered sea-wall. Great reedy pools still remained from the thirteenth century floods, brackish on the flat seashore, where the staked keddle nets showed that the mackerel were beginning ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... under the same magnolia tree, gazed at him from under my tilted Panama. Terry is tall and dark. Stretched out in the basket chair, he looked very big and rather formidable. Beside him, I felt a small and reedy person. I really hoped he would not give me much trouble. The day was too hot to cope with troublesome people, especially if you were fond of them, for then you were the more likely to ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... quality to the crowing of Gildersleeve's rooster, and his hens chant cheerily as they kick the litter about. But it wasn't these cheerful sounds that wakened us with a start. There! Hear that? Hear it? Two or three long-drawn, reedy notes, and an awkward boggle at a trill, but oh, how sweet! How sweet! It is the song-sparrow, blessed bird! It won't be long now; it won't ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... such a life-like position that we fired a shot into him to make sure. When we were skinning him the poor man expired. In the same jungle, I think about a year afterwards, an English visitor at my house wounded a tiger, which went into one of those reedy and cactus-grown bottoms which make tiger shooting on foot so dangerous. I then declared that none of my people should go into this, and that they might return the next day and see if the tiger was dead (by no means ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... it was morning, and the travellers were encamped by that reedy point where they had left the big boats which they cut loose from the island. From the earliest dawn Leonard had been superintending the transport across the river of the hundreds of slaves whom they had released. They there were put on shore by the Settlement ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... for miles and chief among the offenders in this respect were the terns whose shrill voices and incessant clatter were like the cries of woe of demented souls. Below, the occasional bellow of a crocodile hidden in the reedy bed of a marsh or the high-pitched wail of the great brown wolf added its note to the ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... within, we were all eyes to see the Duke of Cambridge and his Duchess, wondering if we might remember their faces and they ours. In a moment they came tottering in; he, bent and withered and bald; she, blooming with wholesome old age. He peered through his glasses a moment, then screeched in a reedy voice, "Come to my arms! Away with titles—I'll know ye by no names but Twain and Twichell!" Then fell he on our necks and jammed his trumpet in his ear, the which we filled with shoutings to this effect: "God bless you, old Howells, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... pewter mugs of a value, I should suppose, approximating fifty cents. Neither he nor I had any idea that I could do anything, but I was entered in the lightweight contest, in which it happened that I was pitted in succession against a couple of reedy striplings who were even worse than I was. Equally to their surprise and to my own, and to John Long's, I won, and the pewter mug became one of my most prized possessions. I kept it, and alluded to it, and I fear ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... expresses a pitying contempt for everything that is characteristically English, and for the unfortunate English who are imbued with the prejudices of their native land. He gives a practical expression to his scorn by quavering in a reedy voice, the feeble chansonnettes of an inferior French composer, and by issuing a volume of poems in which the laws of English Grammar are trampled under foot, and the restrictions of English metre are defied. In his lyrical effusions he breathes the passionate desire ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various

... comes whispering to me of the country green and cool— Of redwing blackbirds chattering beside a reedy pool; It brings me soothing fancies of the homestead on the hill, And I hear the thrush's evening song and the robin's morning trill; So I fall to thinking tenderly of those I used to know Where the sassafras and snakeroot ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... Russian border, from the vast Liechtenstein game preserves to the South of Vienna, and from the still larger sporting property of Belyer, in Hungary, belonging to Archduke Frederick, all the way to the Schorfhaide on the reedy banks of the Werbellin Lake, in order to flock ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... Etheldreda, queen and abbess of Ely, on these wolds. One does not know what were the visions of this rude and ardent saint, as he paced the low heights day by day, looking over the monstrous lakes. At night no doubt he heard the cries of the marsh-fowl and saw the elfin lights stir on the reedy flats. Perhaps some touch of fever kindled his visions; but he raised a tiny shrine here, and here he laid his bones; and long after, when the monks grew rich, they raised a great church here to the memory of the shepherd of the sheep, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... true and tried Our leader frank and bold: The British soldier trembles When Marion's name is told. Our fortress is the good greenwood, Our tent the cypress-tree; We know the forest round us, As seamen know the sea. We know its walls of thorny vines, Its glades of reedy grass; Its safe and silent islands ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... disgraceful," said the rivet. "Fatter than me, was he, and in a steamer not half our tonnage? Reedy little peg! I blush for the family, sir." He settled himself more firmly than ever in his place, and the ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... him with compassionate eyes. The archduke's bellow, for all his huge round bulk, was but a thin and reedy cry. No answer came to it; no one came from ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... would not go back at all, and cheering the other, with death in his own heart, he struggled along, half swimming, half wading, but always moving on, how he hardly knew. Then at last he saw a dark head, and a face, white in the moonlight, floating seemingly on the reedy surface of the lagoon, like a water ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson

... head of the vessel and we shipped much water. Staggering along under bare poles at about five miles an hour. The true banks of the river are about five hundred yards distant from the actual stream, this space being a mass of floating water-plants, decayed vegetable matter, and a high reedy grass much resembling sugarcanes; the latter excellent food for my animals. Many very interesting water-plants and large quantities of Ambatch wood (Anemone mirabilis)—this wood, of less specific gravity than cork, is generally used for rafts; at this season it is in full bloom, its ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... to sing that, and the two tones above very softly. The change in tone will be quite apparent. The tone used in ascending the scale of C, singing loudly, will be reedy, thick and harsh— the thick register. ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard

... adjudged, after ample and cautious probation, to be of docile temper; to-day, however, she decided to leave his docility untested, for the usually tranquil beast was roaming with every sign of restlessness from corner to corner of his meadow. A low, fitful piping, as of some reedy flute, was coming from the depth of a neighbouring copse, and there seemed to be some subtle connection between the animal's restless pacing and the wild music from the wood. Sylvia turned her steps in an upward direction and climbed ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... that is, naething to ye, sirs; but to me, O yes, to me everything. Ah," said he, plaintively, "how mony days hae I sat through storm, and frost, and sleet! how mony nights hae I watched in the still moonlight, amang the reedy creeks! how mony times I hae weized a slug through a bird a'maist amang the clouds! but I hae had a' my labor ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... who rowest the boat of the dead in the water of this reedy lake, for Hades, stretch out thy hand, dark Charon, to the son of Kinyras, as he mounts the ladder by the gang-way, and receive him. For his sandals will cause the lad to slip, and he fears to set his feet naked on the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... suspiciously yellow head and smiled provocatively. Martin fled to the cloak-rack near the door. Hurriedly he donned top-coat and hat. Until he finally closed the front door behind him, a tinny wail poured out of the little parlor and assailed his ears, a reedy soprano declaiming passionately that she had raised no son of hers to ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... at first as if that battle would be lost, and as if the name and fame of the Ostrogothic people would be swallowed up in the morasses of the reedy Hiulca. Already the van of the army, floundering in the soft mud, and with only their wicker shields to oppose to the deadly shower of the Gepid arrows, were like to fall back in confusion. Then Theodoric, having called for a cup of wine, and drunk to the fortunes of his people, in a few spirited ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... day, accompanied by his friend, Sturt proceeded to examine the river. He found it still running strong, without any sign of diminution in its flow, but the reedy flats were so dense and thick that no passage for the teams was practicable. At noon the leader halted, and announced his intention of returning to camp. He had come to the determination to construct the whaleboat he had with him in sections, to ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... not know it when we set out from Tabuk at about seven in the morning. Gallman, Harris, and I kept together; our first business was to cross a vast, roughly circular plain fifteen miles in diameter, and densely overgrown with a rough, reedy grass two feet and more high. A foot-path ran across the plain, visible for only a very short distance ahead as long as one was in it, but imperceptible twenty yards to the right or left. To lose this path would have been a serious matter, ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... abstractions, that "his heart was bad" very often. And then the long withheld rains came one night on the wings of a fierce southwester, beating down their frail lodge and scattering it abroad, quenching their camp-fire, and rolling up the bay until it invaded their reedy island and hissed in their ears. It drove the game from Jim's gun; it tore the net and scattered the bait of Li Tee, the fisherman. Cold and half starved in heart and body, but more dogged and silent than ever, they crept out in their canoe into the storm-tossed bay, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... on one of the walls. That which covered the rest of the room was entire. It was all of good Gobelins work—somewhat tame in colour. The damaged portion represented a wooded landscape with water and reedy flowers and aquatic fowl, towards which in the distance came a hunter with a crossbow in his hand, and a queer, lurcher-looking dog bounding uncouthly at his heel; the edge of the vacant space cut off the dog's tail and the top ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... his bones, as if she were passing into him in a black, electric flow. Her being suffused into his veins like a magnetic darkness, and concentrated at the base of his spine like a fearful source of power. Meanwhile her voice sounded out reedy and nonchalant, as she talked indifferently with Birkin and with Maxim. Between her and Gerald was this silence and this black, electric comprehension in the darkness. Then she found his hand, and grasped it in her own firm, small clasp. It was so utterly dark, and yet such a naked statement, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... pure soprano, reaching perhaps from A or B to D in alt, and, though uniform in its quality, it was a little reedy in the lower notes, but its flexibility was marvelous: in the high octave, from F to C in alt, her notes rang out like the tones of a silver bell. The clearness of her notes, the precision of her intonation, the fertility of her invention, and the facility of her execution, ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... determined to go in and get it for herself. She had never been in John's place of business before. She went from the spring warmth and dazzle of the street into the pleasant dimness of the big store that smelled pleasantly of reedy things, wickerwork ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... alarmed, most gracious!" he begged in a thin reedy voice. "I come with a message from the captain sahib. He has been detained in the city; but all is well with him. He bids me to say that he desires the mem to eat alone this morning, but to have no fear. He will be with her again ere the ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... had been better When I built my fortress there, Out in the reedy waters wide, I had stood on my mud wall and cried: 'Take England all, from tide to tide— Be ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton

... Tomlinson; he looks mortal like one of the same kidney; and here comes another chap" (as the stranger, was joined by a short, stout, ruddy man in a carter's frock, riding on a horse less showy than his comrade's, but of the lengthy, reedy, lank, yet muscular race, which a knowing jockey would like to bet on). "Now that's what I calls a comely lad!" continued Nabbem, pointing to the latter horseman; "none of your thin-faced, dark, strapping fellows like that Captain Lovett, as the blowens raves about, but a nice, tight little ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Vauclin to his own chauffeur. Again they were left alone. Talk between them was almost impossible; Fanny was so muffled, Foss so anxiously watched for Alfred. The reedy singing between the boards where the wind attacked her occupied all her attention. The very core of warmth seemed extinguished in her body, never to be lit again. She remembered their last fourier, or special body-servant, who had gone on leave upon an open truck, and who had grown colder ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... of April we put again to sea with a favourable wind, and coasting along a series of reedy islands, we arrived on the 26th of that month at the mouth of the Wolga, a large river which flows from Russia into the Caspian. From the mouth of this river it is computed to be seventy-six miles to the city of Citracan[1], which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... approached so near. Riding to the N. N. E. in about two hours we came upon the identical river we had so long followed up. It was accompanied, as usual, by the Acacia pendula; had its rounded bergs; reedy water holes; and an open strip along the left bank. Crossing it I rode over towards an elevated part of the open downs, in hopes to obtain a sight of what the country was beyond, but I found that to be impossible, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... of a mile long and seventy yards wide, the water appearing to be about ten feet deep, although unusually low at the present time. A high range of hills exist to the north of this creek, and the watercourses all trend to the north-west; and, as our latitude is the same as the Reedy Brook of Leichhardt on the south-west side of the Valley of Lagoons, it is evident that these streams do not join the Burdekin, but are tributary to the Lynd, joining it probably ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... Sweet Flag (Acorus calamus), though this is not an Iris, but belongs botanically to the family of Arums. It grows on the edges of lakes and streams allover Europe, as a highly aromatic, reedy plant, with an erect flowering stem of yellowish green colour. Its name comes from the Greek, koree, or "pupil of the eye," because of its being used ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... still capable. At last he stood on the margin of the forest and hill-embosomed waters of that lovely little lake. It was solitary and silent, but for the weird sounds of night birds and aquatic animals that frequented its reedy margin, and a soft, silvery mist was just rising from its unruffled surface, that gathered in a translucent veil against the dark forest of the opposite shore. Its simple, serene and quiet beauty, under the stars and rising moon, was not lost upon the poetic nature of Barton, ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... the speech of man, and his words striking against the caves resound, and from the groves cometh the echo of his voice. The cliffs of the coast cry out, the rivers murmur, the hedge hums with the bees that feed upon it, the reedy banks have their own harmonious notes, the foliage of the pine talks in trembling whispers to the winds: what time the light south-east falls on the pointed leaves, songs of Dindymus give answer in the Gargaric grove. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... a Mr. David Howell of 105 Cheapside, and a thoroughgoing, unprincipled rascal he proved to be. He was a small, spare, undersized man, with little beady eyes, light complexion, red hair, and stubby beard, and when he spoke it was with a thin reedy voice. From first to last he managed our case in exactly the way the prosecution would have desired. He bled us freely, and altogether we paid him nearly $10,000, and our defense by our eight lawyers—four Queen's Counsels and four barristers—was about the lamest ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... precincts of this hamlet we find ourselves in a bluish-green land of mingled wood and water; above the reedy marsh, haunt of wild fowl, willows grew thick; here and there the water flowed freely, its surface broken by the plash of carp and trout. At this season all hands hereabouts were busy with threshing out the newly garnered corn and getting in potatoes. ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... may be, can get in touch With Nature there, or Earth, or such. And clever modern men have seen A Faun a-peeping through the green, And felt the Classics were not dead, To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head, Or hear the Goat-foot piping low . . . But these are things I do not know. I only know that you may lie Day long and watch the Cambridge sky, And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass, Hear the cool ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... should not be used in the construction of boilers, as in the manufacture it becomes reedy, and is apt to split up in the direction of its length: it is much the safer practice to bend the plates at the corners of the boiler; but this must be carefully done, without introducing any more ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... fine large leaves and tubers like those of the potato, but not so good when roasted. Very graceful is the appearance of the plantain, or banana, which varies from twelve to fifteen feet in height, and has fine large leaves like those of the palm, but a brittle reedy stem, not more than eight inches in diameter. It attains its full growth in the first year, bears fruit in the second, and then dies; thus its life is as brief as it ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... have done with these for ever; By the loud resounding sea, Where the reedy jav'lins quiver, There is now no place for me. Day by day our ranks diminish, We are falling day by day; But our sons the strife will finish, Where man ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... had touched him. He felt the velvety waters grasp his body and rejoiced in it; the little waves which he sent to the reedy bank made him smile with their huddling and back-rushing and laughing; he held up his arm as he swam to see the sun flash through the drops of water from his hand. What a sweet bed of death! No hard-eyed ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... pianissimo. The Germans further displayed that ingenuity in fancy stops Mersenne had attributed to them in harpsichords more than a hundred and fifty years before, by a bassoon pedal, a card which by a rotatory half-cylinder just impinging upon the strings produced a reedy twang; also by pedals for triangle, cymbals, bells, and tambourine, the last ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... heedless feet from under Slip the crumbling banks for ever: Like echoes to a distant thunder, 55 They plunge into the gentle river. The river-swans have heard my tread. And startle from their reedy bed. O beauteous birds! methinks ye measure Your movements to some heavenly tune! 60 O beauteous birds! 'tis such a pleasure To see you move beneath the moon, I would it were your true delight To sleep by day and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Rank scenting clings! See! how the morning dews They sweep, that from their feet besprinkling drop Dispersed, and leave a track oblique behind. Now on firm land they range, then in the flood They plunge tumultuous; or through reedy pools Rustling they work their way; no holt escapes Their curious search. With quick sensation now The fuming vapour stings; flutter their hearts, And joy redoubled bursts from every mouth In louder symphonies. Yon hollow trunk, That with its hoary head incurv'd ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... the 9th, after passing four villages, we breakfasted at an old friend's, Tombanyama, who lives now on the mainland, having resigned the reedy island, where he was first seen, to the buffaloes, which used to take his crops and show fight to his men. He keeps a large flock of tame pigeons, and some fine fat capons, one of which he gave us, with a basket of meal. They have plenty of salt ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... him—or life would be simply insupportable. Meanwhile from the public drawing-room below came sounds of revelry, innocent enough yet hardly calculated to soothe over- strained nerves. Little Mr. Farge—whose thin and reedy tenor carried as does a penny whistle—gave forth the refrain of a song just then popular ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... Anthony had come prepared to hear, he quite knew what,—a child's voice, pretty, perhaps, thin and reedy, nasal, of course. His good friend Brown was an excellent physician, but with no knowledge of music; how should he have any, living buried in the country, twenty miles from a railway, forty miles from a concert? Brown had said so ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards

... master's eye Peers not about, some secret fault to spy; Nor voice severe is there, nor censure known; - Hope, profit, pleasure,—they are all his own. Here grow the humble cives, and, hard by them, The leek with crown globose and reedy stem; High climb his pulse in many an even row, Deep strike the ponderous roots in soil below; And herbs of potent smell and pungent taste, Give a warm relish to the night's repast. Apples and cherries ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe

... sister to Miss Abrahama White, and Abrahama White's mother and my mother were own cousins on the mother's side. My mother was a White," she said. The voice came like a slender, reedy whistle from between her moveless, widened lips. She stood as if encased in armor. Her apron-strings stood out fiercely and were quite evident over each hip. She held her head very high, and the cords on her ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... loss, she sprang to her feet, and bursting into tears, called aloud to the stream, "Bring back my flowers!" But the stream danced along, regardless of her sorrow; and as it bore the blooming burden away, her words came back in a taunting echo, along its reedy margin. And long after, amid the wailing of the breeze and the fitful bursts of childish grief, was heard the fruitless ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... Rat said, with a note of boredom in his reedy voice. "Why, with hyperspace drive you'd be able to flit all over the galaxy without suffering the time-lag you experience with regular drive. And then you'd accomplish your pet dream of going everywhere and seeing everything. ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg

... is by lonely meres To sit, with heart and soul awake, Where water-lilies lie afloat, Each anchored like a fairy boat Amid some fabled elfin lake: To see the birds flit to and fro Along the dark-green reedy edge. MARY HOWITT. ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... Cusha! Cusha!" calling, Ere the early dews were falling, Farre away I heard her song. "Cusha! Cusha!" all along; Where the reedy Lindis floweth, Floweth, floweth. From the meads where melick groweth ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... children. Zigzagging leisurely, now along the north shore, now along the south, pausing to hunt, pausing to explore, pausing to powwow with the Indians, the adventurers came, on September 28, to the reedy shallows and breeding grounds of wild fowl at Lake St. Peter. Here they were so close ashore the Emerillon caught her keel in the weeds, and the explorers left her aground under guard and ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... (Motacilla boarula).—This pretty bird is really partly yellow. It is not very frequent here, but is sometimes found on the Itchen bank; likewise the nest in a reedy meadow. ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... stalks the stately white heron, Seeking his food from the deep without fear, Gracefully waving wide wings as he rises When the canoe of the Indian draws near. Through reedy brake and the tangled sea-grasses Wander the stag and the timid-eyed doe[C] Down to the water's edge, watchful and wary For arrows that fly from the red hunter's bow. Fearless Red Hunter! his birthright the forest, Lithe ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten

... one of those not uncommon yet indescribable skies (in quality, not details or forms) of limpid blue, with rolling silver-fringed clouds, and a pure-dazzling sun. For underlay, trees in fulness of tender foliage—liquid, reedy, long-drawn notes of birds—based by the fretful mewing of a querulous cat-bird, and the pleasant chippering-shriek of two kingfishers. I have been watching the latter the last half hour, on their regular evening frolic over and in ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... a bitter wind driving the sea mist in billows over the marshes, and a waning half moon shining fitfully through the dingy clouds which scudded across a lead-coloured sky. By the light of the moon he saw the figure of the girl, already some distance from the house, swiftly making her way along the reedy canal path which threaded ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... had lazily swum For hours in a reedy pool, Seeing the shadows come, And feeling the air grow cool. With a "Quack, quack, quack," came out She meant, "It is time to sup!" So finding the froggies about, She gobbled ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... songs sound, some as were a war-horn braying, Some softly purl like streams on reedy strand. Half nature-sprite and half as man you stand, The two not yet one law of ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... sinuous brook toward its source, now skirting its quiet depths along the edge of reedy meadows, and then chasing it into the hills where it boiled and complained as it dashed and spumed ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... thee, hush! and listen to yon blithesome, bubblesome, babbling brook how it sigheth 'mid the willows, whispereth under reedy bank and laugheth, rogue-like, in the shallows! Listen how ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... we here?" said the knight in a reedy voice like a boy's. His pale eyes contemplated the figures—the wounded man, now faint again with pain and half-fallen on the litter of branches; his deliverer, tall and grim, but with laughing face; the two murderers cringing ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... young prisoner, in a shrill and reedy voice, lisping in an affected manner, "I was betrayed by Jobert, a man who proposed an affair in the ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... has got the absurd appellation of the Rabbit Ground. The marshy banks of this river are skirted by low barren rocks behind which there are some groups of stunted trees. As we advanced the country, becoming flatter, gradually opened to our view and we at length arrived at a shallow, reedy lake, the direct course through which leads to the Hill Portage. This route has however of late years been disused and we therefore turned towards the north and, crossing a small arm of the lake, arrived at Hill Gates by sunset; having come ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... good many days' distance from Ma-mochisane, without whose presence nothing could be settled; but besides, the reedy banks of the rivers were found to be unsuitable for a settlement, and the higher regions were too much exposed to the attacks of Mosilikatse. Livingstone saw no prospect of obtaining a suitable station, and with great reluctance he made up his mind to retrace the weary road, and return ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... green, wimpling vales, studded with laurel, arched with vine-draped pergolas, dotted widi flocks, dimpled with reedy marshes where red oxen browsed; and beyond the pale pink ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... nests among the rushes. To his sleep went Hiawatha, And Nokomis to her labor, Toiling patient in the moonlight, Till the sun and moon changed places, Till the sky was red with sunrise, And Kayoshk, the hungry sea-gulls, Came back from the reedy islands, Clamorous for their morning banquet. Three whole days and nights alternate Old Nokomis and the sea-gulls Stripped the oily flesh of Nahma, Till the waves washed through the rib-bones, Till the sea-gulls came no longer, And upon the sands lay nothing But the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... listened as to the pronouncement of a foreman juror, and replied, "No, sir," with the relieved air of a man surprised to find himself still living. "I see Flamby Duveen, I did," he continued, in his reedy voice—"poachin', same as ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... of the river on which they were was a shallow, reedy marsh, where the water was from a few inches to a foot in depth. In these shallow waters, at certain seasons of the year, different varieties of fish are to be found. The principal is the Jack fish, or pike, some of which are over three feet long. As they ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... degrees 30 minutes. About eight miles in the same direction there is the appearance of a long salt lake. At nine miles and a half, on a sand hill, I obtained the following bearings: Mount North-west, 60 degrees 30 minutes; Mount Deception, 95 degrees. At eleven miles and a half passed a large reedy swamp on our left, dry. At seventeen miles sand hills ceased. At eighteen miles and a half the sand hills again commenced, and we changed our course to north for three miles. Camped for the night at a creek ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... half buried for an instant, but struggling up immediately, and shrieking with horror as she missed John and the boy, who had both been swept in by the tree. The next moment she heard a call, and scrambling up the bank, saw John among the reedy pools a little way down, dragging the ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... square piers; but the piers of St. Mark's are set square to the walls of the church, and those of Beauvais obliquely to them: and this difference is even a more essential one than that between the smooth surface of the one and the reedy complication of the other. The two squares here in the margin (Fig. XV.) are exactly of the same size, but their expression is altogether different, and in that difference lies one of the most subtle distinctions between the Gothic and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... Its beautiful clearness tempted me to strip off and swim about the floating garden resting on its bosom, and I was just about to undress when I heard a shot quite near. The moment after, I fired in return, and gave a loud hail; then the high reedy cane grass on the other side parted, and a man and a woman came out, stared at me, and then laughed in welcome. They were one Nalik and his wife, people living in my own village. The man carried a long single-barrelled German shot-gun, the woman ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke

... that nuptial song that raised[77] its strains on the Libyan reed, and with the dance-loving lyre, and the reedy syrinx, when o'er Pelion at the feast of the Gods the fair-haired muses, striking their feet with golden sandals against the ground, came to the wedding of Peleus, celebrating with melodious sounds Thetis, and the son of AEacus, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... meadows that are dotted with clumps of rounded trees, as in an English park. Now it narrows to a deep and sinuous bed, through alders so rank and reaching that they meet overhead and form a shade of golden green; and again it widens out into reedy lakes, the summer home of countless Ducks, Geese, Tattlers Terns, Peetweets, Gulls, Rails, Blackbirds, and half a hundred of the lesser tribes. Sometimes the foreground is rounded masses of kinnikinnik in snowy flower, or again a far-strung growth of the needle bloom, richest and reddest of its ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... country to hide in, as you know well, no caves, or hills, or mazy coombes, just a wide, flat, reedy place, broken by open woods. The only refuge for both now was the sea. 'Twas a wild run you two made, side by side, down that shore, keeping close within the gloom of the sand-hills, the coast-guards coming after, pressing you closer than they thought at the time, for Tom Doane had been wounded ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... natural prairie to a cleared district which twenty years ago had been forest. The country seemed to stretch unchanging to the North Pole: low hill, brush-scraggly bottom, reedy creek, muskrat mound, fields with frozen brown clods ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... worse because it has just a slight look of kinship with that other famous visit which Sir Roger de Coverley paid to Philips's Distrest Mother. Or take again, as utterly unlike either of these, that burlesque Homeric battle in the churchyard, where the "sweetly-winding Stour" stands for "reedy Simois," and the bumpkins round for Greeks and Trojans! Or take yet once more, though it is woful work to offer bricks from this edifice which has already (in a sense) outlived the Escorial, [Footnote: The Escorial, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... placed each familiar belonging where he had known it all his life. And as he finished, his mother's head shone darkly golden by the piano; her fingers swept over the keys; he heard all their voices, the dear never-forgotten voices. Hark! They were singing his hymn—little Alice's reedy note lifted above the others—"God shall charge His ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... Zerka [Arabic] is at one day's journey from Fedhein. The Hadj rests here one day, during which the Hadjis amuse themselves with hunting the wild boars which are found in great numbers on the reedy banks of Wady Zerka. The castle is built in a low Wady which forms in winter-time the bed of a river of considerable size, called Naher Ezzerka [Arabic], whose waters collect to the south of Djebel ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... gasping, his nostrils expanded, his coat stark and reeking. On he flew down the long Sunday Hill until he reached the deep Kingsley Marsh at the bottom. No, it was too much! Flesh and blood could go no farther. As he struggled out from the reedy slime with the heavy black mud still clinging to his fetlocks, he at last eased down with sobbing breath and slowed the tumultuous gallop ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... passing through scenes and pastures, quiet fields and farms, of which many of Oxford's famous students and scholars had written and sung. Matthew Arnold had painted these fields and villages, hills and gliding, reedy streams in some of his poems, and they were the objective of ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... rowed back again, Giles described the habits of the birds which frequented this reedy spot. Jamie listened open-eyed to his accounts of the moor-hen, flapper, coot, water-rail, dab-chick, and sand-piper, to say nothing of rats in abundance, and an otter now and then. If you crept upon the islet very quietly, you could hear ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney

... the Gulmore household were in some respects primitive. Though it was not yet seven o'clock two negro girls were clearing away the breakfast things under the minute supervision of their mistress, an angular, sharp-faced woman with a reedy voice, and nervously abrupt movements. Near the table sat a girl of nineteen absorbed in a book. In an easy-chair by the open bay-window a man with a cigar in his mouth was reading a newspaper. Jonathan Byrne Gulmore, as he always signed himself, was about fifty years of age; his heavy frame ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... spot where it seemed that deadness made encampment. It could not be seen in the sweep of the eye, you must have travelled and looked vigilantly to find it; but it was there—a lake shimmering in the eager sun, washing against a reedy shore, a little river running into the reedy lake at one end and out at the other, a small, dilapidated house half hid in a wood that stretched for half a mile or so upon a rising ground. In front of the house, not far from the ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... which he lay down comfortably, placing his knife and bow beside him, and using the hammock rolled up as a pillow. As the sun was setting, and while he leaned on his elbow looking down through the leaves with much interest at the alligators that gambolled in the reedy lake, his attention was attracted to a slight rustling in the bushes near the foot of the tree. Looking down, he perceived a large jaguar gliding through the under-wood with cat-like stealth. Martin now observed that a huge alligator had crawled ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... Her clustering curls the hyacinth displays; O'er her tall blades the crested fleur-de-lis, Like blue-eyed Pallas, towers erect and free; With yellower flames the lengthened sunshine glows, And love lays bare the passion-breathing rose; Queen of the lake, along its reedy verge The rival lily hastens to emerge, Her snowy shoulders glistening as she strips, Till morn is sultan ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... to the limping Godhead would devote With slowly-burning wood of illest note. This was the vilest which my girl could find With vow facetious to the Gods assigned. 10 Now, O Creation of the azure sea, Holy Idalium, Urian havenry Haunting, Ancona, Cnidos' reedy site, Amathus, Golgos, and the tavern hight Durrachium—thine Adrian abode— 15 The vow accepting, recognize the vowed As not unworthy and unhandsome naught. But do ye meanwhile to the fire be brought, That teem with boorish jest of sorry ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus



Words linked to "Reedy" :   reed, reedlike, thin



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