"Mossy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the babbling stream which had been the fishing-ground of boyhood, and lay once more on mossy beds, and bathed his face in the same friendly tide. He gazed far up into the leafy trees and saw the very nooks where boyhood's form had rested; again he saw the sun gleam on the happy heads of those ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... There was light under the trees, faint, impalpable without visible cause, but they caught the first sparkle of the rain drops on leaf and branch; they saw the silvery rivulets coursing down the mossy trunks of old trees; last of all through a narrow rift in the clouds, the sun showed them its golden rim, and day broke in the steaming woods. With the sun, with a final rush of the hurrying wind, a final torrent, the storm spent itself, and there was only ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Steele—some other Ranger finish it. I swear I don't plead for my uncle or my cousin, for their sakes. If they are vile, let them suffer. Russ, it's you I think of! Oh, my pitiful little dreams! I wanted so to surprise you with my beautiful home—the oranges, the mossy trees, the mocking-birds. Now you'll never, ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... wished I might get free and come to live there. He told of the lovely dragon flies, with purple, burnished wings that floated in the forest, mingling their drowsy hum with the chirping of the birds. He told of the great mossy carpet spread under the trees; how at set of day the owls came out, and the moles rustled in the fallen leaves, and the frogs raised their evening ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... The front of the lot was only broad enough for the house and an alley hardly four feet wide between the house's end and a high, tight board fence. The alley led into a small, square back yard one of whose bounds was the back fence of the house. On a second side was a low, mossy, picturesquely old wing-building set at right angles to the larger house, its doors and windows letting into the yard. A third boundary was the side of one well weathered barn and the back of another, with a scanty glimpse between them of meadows stretching down to the Connecticut River. The fourth ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... ourselves in a lovely glade, where the light shone so soft and golden, and where the songs of the birds sounded so sweet and melodious, that I felt as though we were stepping through an enchanted world, and well could I believe that the fairies danced around the well, sunk deep in its mossy dell, and fringed about with ferns and flowers and the shade of ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... mossy rock 'Lena had been watching him. She was very ardent and impulsive, strong in her likes and dislikes, but quite ready to change the latter if she saw any indications of improvement in the person disliked. For her uncle she had ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... ago, Since here abode another race, The men of tomahawk and bow, The savage sons of war and chase; Yet where, ah! where, abide they now? Go search, and see if thou canst find, One trace which they have left behind, A single mound, or mossy grave, That holds the ashes of the brave; A single lettered stone to say That they have lived, and passed away. Men soon will cease to name their name, Oblivion soon will quench their fame, And the wild story of their fate, Will yet be subject of debate, 'Twixt ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... an unhung and travelling basket, heavy, iron-ribbed, anciently mossy, oozy of slime, fell with neat exactitude upon the bald, bare cranium of Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith, head gardener, and dour, irascible ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... half their work for them already. How they laugh and sing and shout to each other as they gather the smooth brown nuts, filling their baskets, and running to pour them into the great bags! It is merry autumn work. The sun looks down upon them through the yellow leaves, and the rocks give them mossy seats; while here and there comes a bird or a squirrel to see what these strange people are ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... maidens begin to sing and frolic. The appearance of Junker Heinz frightens them away. Heinz, who has ridden long, thinks to take a little rest, now that he sees the towers of Speier before {167} him. He stretches himself on a mossy bank and is soon asleep.—Shortly afterwards the Princess Agnes peeps about with her companion Bertha. She is highly pleased with the appearance of the strange hunter, and seeing him asleep, she gazes at him, until she insensibly falls in love with him. Observing the ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... Butler and Lake counties. On damp earth and mossy rocks. Not previously reported from Ohio, and probably not widely distributed in the State. ...
— Ohio Biological Survey, Bull. 10, Vol. 11, No. 6 - The Ascomycetes of Ohio IV and V • Bruce Fink and Leafy J. Corrington
... off, near some fresh and mossy grass, under the delicious shade of some trees, I discovered a spring of fresh water, in which we voluptuously laved our faces, hands, ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... creeping buttercup, marsh buttercup, small-flowered crowfoot, dandelion, yellow woodsorrel, bell-wort, star-grass, downy yellow violet, pappoose root, lousewort, prickly ash, hop hornbeam, white oak, mossy-cup oak, butternut, sugar maple. ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... of his comrades, August Peterson, died April 12th in a Bolshevik hospital. His Corporal, Earl Collins, was in the same hospital severely wounded. His fate is still unknown but doubtless he is under the mossy tundra. His comrade, Josef Romatowski, was killed in the ambush, comrade John Frucce was liberated via Finland and his comrade, Earl Fulcher, as we have seen, was exchanged on the railroad front ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... so grave that she was quite at a loss how to answer them. And then she felt that somebody was looking at her; and raising her eyes, she saw Axel on the mossy path quite close ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... the Orkneyan skerries and pass through Stromness. All untouched by the development of that busy continent to the south which has grown up within its lifetime, Chipewyan is a little pearl of the periwigged days of the early Georges. From its red sands, tamarack swamps, and mossy muskeg one almost expects to see arise the forms of those great of old who outfitted here, making Chipewyan the base of their northward explorations. The ghostly company is a goodly one—Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Sir George Simpson, and Sir John Franklin (their honorary prefixes coming to them in ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... fall proved to be a very short one, though to Tad it seemed as if they had been falling for an hour. Boy and horse landed on a soft, mossy bank, rolling over and over, the pony kicking and squealing with fear, until, finally, both came to a stop at the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... stillness. Great trees reared their majestic heads to mingle their foliage and shut out the light; every creeping, flying, walking creature seemed awed into a vague murmuring that was deeper than silence. The Grove of Mysteries was a semicircular space of cool, mossy sward, bowered in great trees and tangled vine screens; its background was the bare rock of the cliffside itself—actually, though unknown to the rabble, the outer rocky wall of the great chamber—and ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... dry upon the Meadow of Clamei, lo, the Bailiff of Hanoverian Buhlitz, Unpicturesque Traveller will find the peat-smoky little Village of Buhlitz near by a dusty little Town called Luchow, midway from Hamburg to Magdeburg; altogether peaty, mossy country; in the Salzwedel district, where used to be Wendic populations, and a Marck or Border Fortress of Salzwedel set up against them:—Bailiff of Buhlitz, I say, sallies forth with several carts, with all the population ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... my horse's head toward Thebes, which we reached in two hours. It was a pleasant scene, tho so different from that of two thousand years ago. The town is built partly on the hill of the Cadmeion, and partly on the plain below. An aqueduct, on mossy arches, supplies it with water, and keeps its gardens green. The plain to the north is itself one broad garden to the foot of the hill of the Sphinx, beyond which is the blue gleam of a lake, then a chain of barren hills, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... children of the East, the most daintily piquant of exotic stimulants. The Nature-worship of the early ages, which saw in all things the action of the male and female principles of generation, did not fail to discover in the mossy rose (as it had done in the cup, the ring, the gate, the mountain-path, and every other imaginable type of opening, passing through, and receiving) a striking symbol of the Queen of Love, and of her chief attribute. In accordance ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hungry, energetic inmates. And now I struck off from the river-side by a narrow tangled pathway, to visit it once more. I could have found out the place blindfold: there was a piece of flat brown heath that stretched round its edges, and a mossy slope that rose at its upper side, at the foot of which the taste of the proprietor had placed a rustic chair. The spot, though itself bare and moory, was nearly surrounded by wood, and looked like a clearing in an American forest. There were lines of graceful larches on two ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... formed a large, noble, shaded space. The ground was somewhat sloping, and made the worth of the old trunks only the more perceptible. Round this open circle closed the densest thickets, from which the mossy rocks mightily and venerably peered forth, and made a rapid fall for ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... timid, for there is no place in earth or air or water, outside his own little doorway under the mossy stone, where he is safe. Above him the owls watch by night and the hawks by day; around him not a prowler of the wilderness, from Mooween the bear down through a score of gradations, to Kagax the bloodthirsty little weasel, but will sniff under every ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... bristle above it. Its shores are strewn with wreckage from the cliffs and crags above, and this is here and there cemented together with winter's drifted snow. Miniature icebergs float upon its surface. Around it are mossy spaces, beds of sedge, and scattered alpine flowers, which soften a little the fierce aspect of this ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... Mossy's hair, cut off after he was dead by dear Drum, August 22, 1819. He was the greatest darling that ever lived (son of Maria and Mr. Webb's 'Ruler,' a famous dog given him by Lord Rivers), and was, when he died, about seven or eight years old. He was a large black dog, of the largest ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... in the grand old forest, with the mossy carpet beneath his feet, and the magnificent arches over his head, through which the breezes came like the cool breath of the ocean, the Huron struck into his peculiar rapid trot, which was continued until sunset, by which time ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... the sparrows build! Can anything be more exquisite than a sparrow's nest under a grassy or mossy bank? What care the bird has taken not to disturb one straw or spear of grass, or thread of moss! You cannot approach it and put your hand into it without violating the place more or less, and yet the little architect has wrought day after day and left no marks. There has been an excavation, and ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... uneasiness and hastened his departure. She assured him that the others were close behind, and that nothing could suit her better than to rest on a mossy stone that happily presented ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... blazed; scarlet and green maples, with erect heads, sentinelled the street, gay lifeguards of 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. Splendid sadness clothed all the world, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Clustered 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 World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... most spicy odour, some almost scentless, but all so beautiful and so nicely trimmed. The changeless amaranth was there, the pale, sweet-scented heliotrope, always looking towards the sun; the pure lily; and the blue violet, which, though it had been taught to bloom far away from the mossy bed where it had first opened its meek eye to the light, had not yet forgotten its gentleness and modesty; and not far from them were the fickle hydrangea, the cardinal flower with its rich, showy petals, and the proud, vain, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... she; "and then we will have that lovely maroon and crimson carpet that I saw at Lowe's;—it is an ingrain, to be sure, but has a Brussels pattern, a mossy, mixed figure, of different shades of crimson; it has a good warm, strong color, and when I come to cover the lounges and our two old arm-chairs with a pretty maroon rep, it will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... terminated in a long bow and ends behind—with deep falling mantles over dresses never cognizant of crinoline: gentlemen, with cocked-hats, their bag-wigs and ties appearing behind; and beneath their puce-coloured coats, delicate silk tights and gossamer stockings were visible, as they trod the mossy lawn of the Palace Gardens at Richmond, or, followed by a tiny greyhound, prepared for the lazy ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... reclined upon the mossy bank beneath an aged oak; their dress, no less than their general demeanour, denoted them to be the sons of some substantial thane. They were clad in hunting costume: leggings of skin over boots of untanned leather protected ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... about Havre, and Liverpool, and about going up into the ball of St. Paul's in London. Indeed, during my early life, most of my thoughts of the sea were connected with the land; but with fine old lands, full of mossy cathedrals and churches, and long, narrow, crooked streets without sidewalks, and lined with strange houses. And especially I tried hard to think how such places must look of rainy days and Saturday afternoons; ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... experience in this crooked world, had made the most wonderful efforts to redeem his character and to recover his equilibrium by leaning the contrary way aloft from what he did below. Poor fellow! he had been but badly conducted in his youth, and was nobly endeavouring to correct his ways in a mossy and dilapidated old age. The tracery of much of the wood-work carvings, and particularly of the windows, varies greatly, and in some places is so minute that it requires close inspection to find out the design. Of these the Zenana windows ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... passing through the white gates, made his way by a raised cattle track towards the sea. On either side of him flowed a narrow dike filled with salt-water. Beyond stretched the flat marshland, its mossy turf leavened with cracks and creeks of all widths, filled also with sea-slime and sea-water. A slight grey mist rested upon the more distant parts of the wilderness which he was crossing, a mist which seemed to be blown in from the sea ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... branches, walking in so uncertain a place was attended with a good deal of danger; for not only was there a likelihood of falls leading to broken legs, but broken necks also were an easy possibility by the chance of a slip upon the mossy edge of one or another of the many ledges, followed by a spin through the air ending suddenly upon the jagged rocks below. Indeed, so ticklish did I find my way that I began to think that the Indians ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... hills stood an ancient house, many-gabled, mossy-roofed, and quaintly built, but picturesque and pleasant to the eye; for a brook ran babbling through the orchard that encompassed it about, a garden-plot stretched upward to the whispering birches on the slope, and patriarchal elms stood sentinel upon the lawn, as they had stood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Peggy, bouncing on her mossy seat, till Lobelia shrank away scared and trembling. "Do you think we live in the Middle Ages, Lobelia Parkins? This is what comes of reading history; it puts all those old-fangled notions into your ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... caressingly and playfully; wonderful birds, growing out of bushes, sang joyful songs; over the velvet turf, upon which Heimbert ever kept his eyes fixed, there glided gleaming serpents of green and gold, with little golden crowns, and brilliant stones glittered on the mossy carpet. When the serpents touched the jewels, they gave forth a silvery sound. But Heimbert let the serpents creep and the gems sparkle, without troubling himself about them, intent alone on following ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... Duc de Rhetore are of the race of Nimrod, and the best shots of the faubourg Saint-Germain—was attracted by a loud altercation; and they spurred their horses to an open space at the entrance to the forest of Rosembray, famous for its mossy turf, which was appointed for the meet. The cause of the quarrel was soon apparent. The Prince de Loudon, afflicted with anglomania, had brought out his own hunting establishment, which was exclusively Britannic, and placed it under orders of the Master ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... (who had played an important part in promoting the acquaintance thus far) forsook his perch above Balder's head, and after hovering for a moment in mid-air, as if to select the best spot, he alighted on the mossy cushion at the foot of the twin palm-trees. Such a couch might Adam and Eve have rejoiced to find in Paradise. Balder took the hint, and without more ado threw himself down there, while Gnulemah half knelt, half sat beside him, propped on her arm, her warm fingers buried in the cool ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... of snowy foam and the flash of hurrying waters. Leaving the boat by the shore in charge of four men, he went with Marais, La Routte, and five others, to explore the wild before him. They pushed their way through the damps and shadows of the wood, through thickets and tangled vines, over mossy rocks and mouldering logs. Still the hoarse surging of the rapids followed them; and when, parting the screen of foliage, they looked out upon the river, they saw it thick set with rocks where, plunging over ledges, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... derision, suddenly bubbled into a bar of 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
... others went over to the other side of the chteau. The baroness began to take her exercise, leaning on the arm of the baron and accompanied by the two priests. Jeanne and Julien went toward the wood and walked along one of the mossy paths. Suddenly seizing her hands, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... bold promontory around which we bend our course, as, emerging from our little harbor, we gain the comparatively open sea. The only remnant of this once proud dwelling of the Lords of Lorn which remains entire is the old mossy tower or keep, around which are grouped numerous ivy-grown fragments, attesting the former greatness of a stronghold whose chieftain once had power to defy and defeat Robert Bruce. Many are the traditions and associations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... that place no longer? There has been time enough for it to become all of one colour; grey, mossy, half-decayed. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... brick, were crowded wall against wall along the sidewalk; in the rear were little gardens of flowers and of vegetables. The street itself was well shaded; and one forest tree, the roots of which bulged up through the mossy bricks of the pavement, hung its boughs before his windows. Throughout life he had found so many companions in the world outside of mere people, and this tree was one. From the month of leaves to the month of no leaves—the period of ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... convent-relics, in the shape of old and huge fruit-trees, yet consecrated the spot; and, at the foot of one—a Methuselah of a pear- tree, dead, all but a few boughs which still faithfully renewed their perfumed snow in spring, and their honey-sweet pendants in autumn—you saw, in scraping away the mossy earth between the half-bared roots, a glimpse of slab, smooth, hard, and black. The legend went, unconfirmed and unaccredited, but still propagated, that this was the portal of a vault, imprisoning deep ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... 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
... perfection, is the representative poem of the second half of the 18th century, as the Rape of the Lock is of the first. The romanticists were quietists, and their scenery is characteristic. They loved solitude and evening, the twilight vale, the mossy hermitage, ruins, glens, and caves. Their style was elegant and academic, retaining a little of the stilted poetic diction of their classical {200} forerunners. Personification and periphrasis were their favorite mannerisms: Collins's Odes were largely addressed to abstractions, such as ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... appear, in wandering around St. Mary's Church, which stood upon a hill commanding a view of the castle and of the surrounding country for miles away. Here Katy also came, rambling with him through the village graveyard where slept the dust of centuries, the gray, mossy tombstones bearing date backward for more than a hundred years, their quaint inscriptions both puzzling and amusing Katy, who studied ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... artificial terrace of liberal dimensions, which is walled around with masonry. From the walls the vineyards and olive groves of the estate slant away toward the valley.... Roses overflow the retaining walls and the battered and mossy stone urn on the gate-post, in pink and yellow cataracts, exactly as they do on the drop-curtains in the theaters. The house is a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... beneath the trees, Even to the boughs whose lowest circling tips Whisper with the anemones Thick-strewn as though a cloud had made Its drifting way through spray and leafy braid And sunk with unremembering ease To humbler heaven upon the mossy heaps. And here a warmer flow Urges thy melody, yet keeps The cool of bowers; as might a rose blush through Its unrelinquished dew; Or bounteous heart that knows not woe, Put on the robe of sighs, and fain Would hold in love's surmise ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... large mossy root under a great oak, and, hot with his cutting, Bevis sat down upon it. Along came a house martin, the kind of swallow that has a white band across his back, flying very low, and only just above the grass. The swallow flew to and fro not far from Bevis, who watched it, and presently asked ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... I love on mossy couch to sing A Spanish roundelay, And see my sweet companions Around commingling gay,— A roving band, light-hearted, In frolicsome array,— Who 'neath the screening parasols Dance down the merry day. But more than ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... balsams, while the sturdy, rugged oaks and delicate, trembling poplars clung to the rocky sides and clambered up and out to the canyon's sunny lips. Back of all, the great black rocks, decked with mossy bits and clinging things, glistened cool and moist between the parting trees. From many an oozy nook the dainty clematis and columbine shook out their bells, and, lower down, from beds of many-colored moss the late wind-flower and maiden-hair and tiny violet lifted up brave, ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... was gone before he could invite her on such a lofty flight; the wife at Lucca sent her fleeting down the mossy slopes like a hare. It was too dark for men to see her face when she tiptoed into Pitecchio and slipped up to her chamber. Safe at last there, she shivered and drowsed the night away; but waking or sleeping she did ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... among the trees, across an angle of the park, at some two or three hundred yards' distance from the herd, so as not to unnecessarily attract their attention; and then to scale the fence at a point higher up the hill. Following this advice, they walked quietly across the mossy grass, keeping behind trees, and escaping the notice of the cattle. They had reached midway in their proposed path, and, with silent admiration, were watching the movements of the herd as they placidly ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... went down the mossy steps, leading from the gallery to the further shore, and, lying under the oaks, whiled away the noon-time by re-peopling the spot with the shapes that used to inhabit it. A very happy hour it was, dreaming there by the little river, with the scent of new-mown hay in ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... moved by her tears, for she seldom wept. She herself sometimes confessed, with her calm smile, that she did not know how to weep. But now her heart was melting, and for a moment she remained overcome, leaning on the mossy, crumbling sarcophagus, whilst the clear water falling from the gaping mouth of the tragic mask still sounded its flutelike note. And a sudden thought of death came to the priest as he saw her, so young and so radiant with beauty, half fainting beside that marble resting-place where ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... low square neck, and a bodice with deep points back and front, laced with a silver cord. The front breadth, "petticoat," as it was called, was white satin, creamy now with age, embroidered with pink and yellow roses and mossy green leaves. The brocade fell away in a long train, and at the joining was a cascade of fine old lace called Mechlin. The elbow-sleeves were edged with it, and at the neck, the lace had a fine wire run through it at the back that made it stand ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... April, and at the end of July, when work was growing slack, they would be married. They were going North for the honeymoon. A wealthy and grateful patient of Saxham's had placed at his disposal a grey, historic Scotch turret-mansion, standing upon mossy lawns, with woods of larch and birch and ancient Spanish chestnuts all about it, looking over the silver Tweed. In the heat and hurry of his daily round of work, Saxham, who had spent an autumn holiday at this place, would find himself dreaming about ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the water drew her irresistibly. He wondered what strange thoughts wandered through her head. At last she got up, and for a minute or two she was hidden from his gaze; then he saw her again, wearing a Mother Hubbard, and with her little bare feet she stepped delicately over the mossy bank. She came to the water's edge, and softly, without a splash, let herself down. She swam about quietly, and there was something not quite of a human being in the way she swam. He did not know why ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... me, his friend, this happy chance. Now I make my supplication to you, to whom I would be that, and more. All this week have I vainly sought for speech with you alone. But now these blessed trees hem us round; there is none to spy or listen—and here is a mossy bank, fit throne for a faery queen. Will you ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... and twigs of the underbrush enlace themselves before you, so that you must stoop your head to pass under, or thrust yourself through amain, while they sweep against your face, and perhaps knock off your hat. There are rocks mossy and slippery; sometimes you stagger, with a great rustling of branches, against a clump of bushes, and into the midst of it. From end to end of all this tangled shade goes a pathway scarcely worn, for the leaves are ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wanting to get just this quartet together," remarked the captain, when his brother-in-law had cooled off and was lying comfortably stretched along a mossy knoll. ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... last when the smiling sun Glanced down from a summer sky, And a music rang where the rivers run, And the waves went laughing by; And the rose peeped over the mossy bank While the wild deer stood ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... a gleaner bringing down her one sheaf of corn to an old watermill, itself mossy and rent, scarcely able to get its stones to turn. An ill-bred dog stands, joyless, by the unfenced stream; two country boys lean, joyless, against a wall that is half broken down; and all about the ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... light. 160 There let the pealing Organ blow, To the full voic'd Quire below, In Service 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 thee will choose ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... on one knee, examined the ground growth, gingerly lifted the lace of vertebrae forming a spine. That ended in a crushed break which he studied briefly before he laid the bones gently back into the concealing cover of the mossy stuff. ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... 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; only a general ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Springs—a chain 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 ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... I came o'er the distant hills I heard a nestling sing: 'Oh, pleasant are the primrose buds In the perfumed breath of spring! And pleasant are the mossy banks Beneath the birchen bowers— But a home wherein no children play Is a ...
— Nestlings - A Collection of Poems • Ella Fraser Weller
... 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 are at ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... not gone beyond the woods when Kasya had seated herself under the mossy stone to weave her garlands. Its rays were thrown upon her face, broken by the shadows of the leaves and twigs. The work did not proceed rapidly, for Kasya was tired from heat and running in the woods. Her sunburnt hands moved slowly at her work. The warm breeze kissed ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... is the summit of a hill, covered, as you perceive, with wood, and with those mossy stones scattered at random under ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... had come from 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, and inclined ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... around me! some newly put up, and others mossy and grey; it was a humbling yet an edifying sight, preaching, as forcibly as ever Maister Wiggie did in his best days, of the vanity and the passingness of all human enjoyments. Mouldered to dust beneath the turfs lay the blithe laddies with whom I ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... but the fact is, a man never knows with what impetus he is going till he comes up against a post. I like to see a man firm as a rock in his opinions. I have a sort of a respect for a rock, even if it is a little mossy. But when I come across a post, I like to give it a shaking, to find out whether it's rotten at the foundation. As to things in general, I calculate to be an obliging neighbor; but I shall keep a lookout on these Carolina folks. If they've brought any blacks with 'em, I shall ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... the humble buildings erected for the use of the first settlers on what is now the Custom-house Square. The little stream—not much more than a rivulet except in spring—which for many years rippled between green, mossy banks, now struggles beneath the ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... on a mossy bank on the hillside, with green fields before them and a wood on the right, in which the leaves were bursting forth fresh and bright, and a wide piece of water some hundred yards below, in which several wild fowl were dipping their wings; while beyond rose a range of smooth downs, the intermediate ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... Round the mossy rim of the basin into which the waters fell, and which appeared to be always damp with spray, grew a profusion of exquisitely delicate ferns; the sward beyond was thickly starred with a species of double daisy and the elegant ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... they resumed their journey, climbing more steeply now, until, when the sun was low, they quit the stream-bed and made through the forest towards the shoulder of an untimbered ridge that ran down into the valley. And there, high up on the edge of the spruce, they selected a mossy shelf ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... wood placed there as sentinel, I came upon a charming declivity, at the foot of which foamed and gurgled a little brook, which I crossed on a culvert of mossy stones, superb in color, the prettiest of all the mosaics which time manufactures. The avenue continues by the brookside up a gentle rise. In the distance, the first tableau is now seen,—a mill and its dam, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... and then suddenly thrusting his spear down through the house. If well aimed, the spear went through the poor beaver rat as it lay cuddled up in the snug nest it had made for itself in the fall with so much far-seeing care, and when the hunter felt the spear quivering, he dug down the mossy hut with his tomahawk and secured his prey,—the flesh for food, and the skin to sell for a dime or so. This was a clear object lesson on dogs' keenness of scent. That Indian was more than half a mile away across a wooded ridge. Had the hunter been a white man, I suppose ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... laugh rivalling the trill of the blackbird which flew over their heads chattering for very joy. Before him lay the pretty brook with its rustic bridge reflecting itself in the clear water as in a mirror. That path along the bank led down to the willows where the big mossy stones lay in the stream and the silvery salmon and speckled trout lay fanning the water gently with their fins as they contemplated their shadows on the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... aching localized itself in her right arm, which began to swell. We led her down to the creek and got her to hold it in the cold water and Aggie, being still nervous and unsteady, slipped on a mossy stone and sat down in about a foot of water. It was then that our dear Tish became like herself again, for Aggie was shocked into saying, "Oh, damn!" and Tish gave her a ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the desolate mossy-green cobbles of the great solitary yard into a square, tall, bare, whitewashed place. Already from the outside one caught a droning voice. There might have been three hundred people there, boxed off in pews, with turnkeys ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... upon the journey. It might be made in less time; but the party prefer to take it easily, and at midday make a halt by a running stream, where, seated upon a fallen log or mossy bank, they open their well-stored baskets, and dine. The horses utter impatient whinnies as their drivers dip their buckets into the sparkling water of the little stream, and, when these are lifted to their heads, thirstily thrust their ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... mossy glen Turned and trooped the goblin men, With their shrill repeated cry, "Come buy, come buy." When they reached where Laura was They stood stock still upon the moss, Leering at each other, Brother with queer brother; Signalling each other, Brother with sly brother. One set his basket down, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... picture, and looking just like a natural stream, the banks as rude and wild as the shrubbery, interspersed with broom, and furze, and bramble, and pollard oaks covered with ivy and honeysuckle; the whole enclosed by an old mossy park paling, and terminating in a series of rich meadows, richly planted. This is an exact description of the home which, three years ago, it nearly broke my heart to leave. What a tearing up by the root it was! I have pitied cabbage-plants and celery, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... threw the rope down to us, then it was made fast to my waist and I began to climb, Pete hauling in the slack as I advanced, finding the way giddy but easy to climb. The danger was a slip upon the mossy rocks, wet with the fine spray which rose from ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... mist into tatters, and lighting the dew-drops, set the birds singing. Rome rode, heedless of it all, under primeval oak and poplar, and along rain-clear brooks and happy waterfalls, shut in by laurel and rhododendron, and singing past mossy stones and lacelike ferns that brushed his stirrup. On the brow of every cliff he would stop to look over the trees and the river to the other shore, where the gray line of a path ran aslant Wolf's Head, and was lost in woods ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... luxuriant forest vegetation. Nothing to my eyes is sadder than the monotonous desolation of such scenery. We in England, when we read and speak of the primeval forests of America, are apt to form pictures in our minds of woodland glades, with spreading oaks, and green, mossy turf beneath—of scenes than which nothing that God has given us is more charming. But these forests are not after that fashion; they offer no allurement to the lover, no solace to the melancholy man of thought. ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... spirits of the air, which are his kin, and upon the spirits of the earth, which are his friends, and these made cause. The small drop of dew, which hung upon the green beard of the wild rice-plant, dropped down into the hands of Father Messasebe. It did not tarry, as had once been its wont, upon the mossy floor of the wilderness, but hastened on. It met rain-drops shaken from the trees, these drops also hastening. The fountains, once slow and deliberate among the roots of the ancient forest floor, tarried not now upon their beds, but hurried on to join the dew and the rain in a great ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... 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 ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... 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 in being the guardian ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... going home through the Dargle, he sat down on a mossy stone, and fell to thinking of his hard lot, and wondering what Providence had against the O'Dalys, that he had not been made a lord, or at least, a ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... By the brook with mossy brink Where the cattle came to drink. They trilled and piped and whistled With the thrush and bobolink, Till the kine in listless pause, Switched their tails in mute applause, With lifted heads and ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... haunt. This place and the adjoining piece of waste land, called the Wilderness, had for us all the charms of a primeval forest. Here in the early spring we used to come and watch the first violet uplifting its head from the dark green leaves behind the mossy boles, and listen for the first note of the blackcap, the nightingale's herald, and the first coo of the wood-pigeons among the bare and newly-budding trees. And here, in the summer, we used to come as soon as breakfast ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... swinging censer of flower incense rising from below. The farm had put on its gayest bridal raiment; and looking at the old farm-house shadowed with foliage and green with creeping vines, it was difficult to conceive that snow had ever lain on its porches, or icicles swung from its mossy eaves. ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... broke away sharply, in a series of steplike sandy benches, to where the Rio Grande bore quartering across the desert, turning to the Mexican sea; the Mesilla Valley here, a slender ribbon of mossy green, broidered with loops of flashing river—a ribbon six miles by forty, orchard, woodland, and green field, greener for the desolate gray desert beyond and the yellow hills of sand edging the valley floor. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... this, Ben?" he whispered behind his hand, pointing to the portrait of a red-haired Diana sitting on a low, mossy stump in a lonely spot. Her back was turned toward us, and she seemed to be taking a sun bath. He looked stealthily around to make sure his curiosity was not noted by the ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... charm'd mine infant ear. Soon stored with much of legendary lore, The sports of childhood charm'd my soul no more; Far from the scene of gaiety and noise, Far, far from turbulent and empty joys, I hied me to the thick o'erarching shade, And there, on mossy carpet, listless laid; While at my feet the rippling runnel ran, The days of wild romance antique I'd scan; Soar on the wings of fancy through the air, To realms of light, and pierce ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... sword; And when its work was done, for centuries lay Like marble, 'mid the catacombs, unchanged, In sleep-resembling death. From earliest dawn That maiden's eyes had watched: wearied at noon Their silver curtains closed. Huge mossy roots Pillowed her head, that slender book wide-leaved In stillness, like some brooding, white-winged dove, Spread on her bosom: 'gainst its golden edge Rested, gold-tinged, the dimpled ivory chin— Loud thunders broke that sleep; the tempest blast Came up against the ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... on sea-weeds or on floating logs, there may often be observed a growth of exquisitely delicate branches, looking at first sight more like a small bunch of moss than anything else. But gather such a mossy tuft and place it in a glass bowl filled with sea-water, and you will presently find that it is full of life and activity. Every branch of this miniature shrub terminates in a little club-shaped head, upon which are scattered a number of tentacles. They are in constant motion, extending and contracting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... fine grounds, with their soft mossy sloping lawns, and tranquil brimful waters and shadowy groves of oak and elm, great immemorial trees, looked lovelier than they did that day to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... wild and weird scene, one of those noble English parks at midnight, with its rough forest-ground broken into dell and valley, its never-innovated and mossy grass, overrun with fern, and its immemorial trees, that have looked upon the birth, and look yet upon the graves, of a hundred generations. Such spots are the last proud and melancholy trace of Norman ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down between banks of bright green grass, and fuss over the mossy rocks that lie in their beds. Deer lift heads often to listen and look and sniff the breeze between mouthfuls of the tender twigs they love. Shambling, slack-jointed bears move shuffling through the thickets, ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... the big bridge, the Confederate forces being on that side. He drove them off, capturing 150 of the party and five cannon. He not only destroyed the bridge, but captured and burnt large quantities of military stores and camp equipage. On he went along the railway to Mossy Creek, where another bridge 300 feet long was burned. He now turned homeward toward the north-west, having greatly injured a hundred miles of the East Tennessee Railroad. Turning like a fox under ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... day, gentlemen. A fine, balmy spring day. Let us be out and away to mossy dells. Why stay in this low drinking-place when all Nature beckons? Come on back to Hoffmuller's. Besides,"—he cast a reproachful look at the bar-tender,—"the hospitality of this place is not what an upright citizen of this great republic has a right to expect when he's ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... this dictum as best she could. She eat down on a mossy rock while he stripped the horses of their gear and staked them out. Then Bill started a fire and fixed the roll of bedding by it for her to sit on. Dusk crept over the forest while he cooked supper, making a bannock in the frying pan to take the place of bread; and when they had finished eating ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... "The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom; And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Waverley had just ascended. [Footnote: See Note 24.] The borders of this romantic reservoir corresponded in beauty; but it was beauty of a stern and commanding cast, as if in the act of expanding into grandeur. Mossy banks of turf were broken and interrupted by huge fragments of rock, and decorated with trees and shrubs, some of which had been planted under the direction of Flora, but so cautiously that they added to the grace without diminishing the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of the dusty, white strip of road along which he had travelled over the moors from the station, Tallente leaned forward and watched the unfolding panorama below with a little start of surprise. He had passed through acres of yellowing gorse, of purple heather and mossy turf, fragrant with the aromatic perfume of sun-baked herbiage. In the distance, the moorland reared itself into strange promontories, out-flung to the sea. On his right, a little farm, with its cluster of out-buildings, nestled in the bosom of the hills. On either side, the fields still ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at, with its tiny little blue eggs; but not to touch, for, though Fred wanted to take it, Harry and Phil said "No;" for Papa did not approve of the birds being disturbed. Then there was a beautifully-formed mossy little cup-shaped nest in the fork of a tree, just inside the coppice, smooth, round, and soft-edged, with the horsehair and wool lining all plaited together, and made as even as possible. It was so low down that, by ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... particular in their tastes, is in the way of exercise the most fortunate of all. He is ever passing from pool to pool, lightly equipped, changing his scenery every hour, now whipping in the shadow of overhanging branches, now crouching behind a mossy crag, and now brushing the sedges of an open section of the stream. The broad tranquil flow is exchanged for merry ripples and sparkling shallows, and these are succeeded by strong and concentrated streams foaming and eddying down a rocky gorge. Trout here and there ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... read on the mossy stones the unchanging little histories, so brief but so eloquent, some of them. The stone that interests her most and that each time seems like a freshly new adventure is the simple shaft that bears no name, no date, just the tenderly ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... left that spot, beautiful as it was, directly, and I have no hesitation in confessing that it was the most uncomfortable meal I ever ate. But I kept my fears to myself, and only once was caught by Gunson looking anxiously around at the slope clotted with tree, bush, and clump of mossy rock, when his smile made me turn to my tin mug ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... enclosure were great trees that locked their green arms above the silent, grass grown, graves as though in sheltering kindness for the dead. Tempted by the beauty of the place the man entered, and, in the deep shade of the old trees, screened from the road by their mossy trunks, found a seat. Here and there, among the old graves under the trees, a few people moved slowly; pausing often to decipher the inscriptions upon the leaning and fallen tombstones. So old was that ancient burying place that there was left among ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... fountain's sliding foot Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside My soul into the boughs does glide; There, like a bird, it sits and sings, Then whets and claps its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... yearned for this day! How I have longed to hear your sweet and well-remembered voice! In the desolate solitudes of the far north I have thought of you. Amid the silent glades of the forest, when alone and asleep on my mossy couch or upon my bed of snow, I have dreamed of you—dreamed of you as you were, a fair, sweet, happy child, when we wandered together among the mountains of Ungava—and dreamed of you as I fancied you must have become, and as I now ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... Wilson 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 a device ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... 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 ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the center of the color-splashed town rose the square tower of the ancient cathedral, white in a coat of plaster for two-thirds of its height, but gray at its top in the nakedness of mossy stone. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... cornucopia-like head-gears there might now and then be seen the vanity of a ribbon. The girls carried their shoes in their hands until they came in sight of the meeting-house, when they would sit down on some mossy plat under an old tree, "bein' careful of the snakes," and put them on. All wore linsey-woolsey dresses, of which four or five yards of cloth were an ample pattern for a single garment, as they had no use for any ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... beautiful! The trunks of the old trees were big and rough and mossy. And there were tall ferns and gray rocks and little brooks, and there was a sweet smell ...
— The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone • Margaret A. McIntyre
... exquisite nest of moss on the side of some shelving cliff or overhanging rock. The other day, passing by a ledge, near the top of a mountain in a singularly desolate locality, my eye rested upon one of these structures, looking precisely as if it grew there, so in keeping was it with the mossy character of the rock, and I have had a growing affection for the bird ever since. The rock seemed to love the nest and claim it as its own. I said, what a lesson in architecture is here! Here is a house that was built, but ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... allotted to me looks down from its high tower on to a mossy moat choked with pink and white water lilies; on a stone terrace this side of a sunken garden, a peacock plays sentinel, with his tail spread like a jewelled shield; and against the sky dark, horizontal ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... steep side of a canon, and he heard the music of the mountain torrent far below. Half a mile further on, where the trail crossed the brook at the head of the canon, it doubled back on itself along the other side. The traveler refreshed himself at a mossy spring by the side of the trail, then, as he emerged from the canon at a sudden turn, Downieville appeared. It lay far below him, at the forks of the North Yuba. How musically the roar of the river came up through the autumn stillness! Sign boards pointing to the Ruby Mine, and to the City of Six, ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... of a venerable rose-bush; and there is something analogous to this in human life. Persons who can only be graceful and ornamental—who can give the world nothing but flowers—should die young, and never be seen with gray hairs and wrinkles, any more than the flower-shrubs with mossy bark and scanty foliage, like the lilacs under my window. Not that beauty is not worthy of immortality. Nothing else, indeed, is worthy of it; and thence, perhaps, the sense of impropriety when we see it triumphed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... the chestnut trees. How the frost has opened the burs! It has done half their work for them already. 8. How they laugh and sing, and shout to each other as they fill their baskets! The sun looks down through the yellow leaves; the rocks give them mossy seats; the birds and squirrels wonder what these strange people are doing in their woods. 9. Jeannette really helps, though she is only a little girl; and her father says at night, that his Jane is ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... 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 ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... roarin' to the sea, And tumbles o'er it's rocky bed, Like spirit wild and free. The mellow mavis tunes his lay, The blackbird swells his note, And little robin sweetly sings Above the woody grot. There meet me, love, by a' unseen, Beside yon mossy den, Oh, meet me, love, at dewy eve, In Morag's fairy glen; Oh, meet me, love, at dewy eve, In Morag's ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Solyma! begin the Song: To heav'nly Themes sublimer Strains belong. The Mossy Fountains, and the Sylvan Shades, The Dreams of Pindus and th' Aonian Maids, Delight no more—O Thou my Voice inspire, Who touch'd Isaiah's [hallow'd [2]] Lips with Fire! Rapt into future Times, the Bard begun; A Virgin shall conceive, a ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... green and mossy bank There flows a clear and fairy stream; There the pert squirrel oft has drank, And thought, perhaps, 'twas ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... A mossy footfall in this wood A peal of thunder were, Or autumn tempest-shriek, compared With the unwhispered stir Of massy fluids lift in air, To ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... alternately at the mountains and on the page of the book, and without asking leave began to improve upon it, strengthening a line here, lightening a shadow and giving greater breadth, and then growing deeply interested in his work, he sat down without ceremony on the mossy bank, took a piece of india-rubber, and erasing here, adding lines there, sometimes laying in a shadow, giving strength to the foreground and lightness to the background, he ended by making a really pretty ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... house, with a group of wide-eyed youngsters about her, relating again the wonder-tales which she had gathered from him. Marvelous tales they were, too, of knight and hidalgo, of court and camp, of fairies, pyxies, gnomes and sprites, of mossy legend and historic fact, bubbling from the girl's childish lips with an engaging naivete of interpretation that held the man enchanted. Even the schoolmaster, who had besought Jose in vain to turn Carmen over to him, was often a spellbound ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... well: old, and a student yet; My mossy friend, even a learned man Still studies on, because naught else he can: Thus a card-house each builds of medium height; The greatest spirit fails to build it quite. Your master, though, that title well may claim— ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... nave were alternately a round, solid one and a clustered one. Now, what remains of some of them is even with the ground; others present a stump just high enough to form a seat; and others are, perhaps, a man's height from the ground,—and all are mossy, and with grass and weeds rooted into their chinks, and here and there a tuft of flowers, giving its tender little beauty to their decay. The material of the edifice is a soft red stone, and it is now extensively overgrown with a lichen of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... By a mossy bank a little girl—a miniature Audrey—stout, rosy, and ragged, stood with a yellow straw hat aslant on her yellow hair, eating the leaves from a spray of beech in her hand. Audrey looked at us, eating the beech leaves steadily, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... the Vocal piety seemed conclusively to have retired (or excursed?) into that mossy hermitage, above Little Langdale. The Unvocal piety, with the uncomplaining sorrow, of Man, may have had a somewhat wider range, for aught we know: but history disregards those items; and of firmly proclaimed and sweetly canorous religion, there really seemed at that ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... gleamed and fell. Thus Tarn the hunter took me to the world that faces across the sea of the west on the gate of Munra-O. And so it was that there grew upon me the glamour of the hunt, though I had forgotten Tarn, and took me into mossy places and into dark woods, and I became the cousin of the wolf and looked into the lynx's eyes and knew the bear; and the birds called to me with half-remembered notes, and there grew in me a deep love of great rivers and of all western seas, and a distrust of cities, and all the while ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... ago. You will see a railway line from Tuam to Athenry, Athlone, and Mullingar. Anybody can visit Mullingar—it is for the million; but only the elect may go to Devorgilla. It is the captive of our bow and spear; or, to change the figure, it is a violet by a mossy stone, which we refuse to have plucked from its poetic solitude and worn in the bosom or in the ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... cap, And the roses from his lap, When his eyes were, for the nap, Slowly closing: Wit his sunny curls outspread, On its fragrant mossy bed, Now his precious ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... daisies blow beneath the sun, 20 The brooks run purling down with silver waves, The planted lanes rejoice with dancing leaves, The chirping birds from all the compass rove To tempt the tuneful echoes of the grove: High sunny summits, deeply shaded dales, Thick mossy banks, and flowery winding vales, With various prospect gratify the sight, And ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett |
