"Overgrown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... am not now as when thou saw'st me last, That favour soon is vanished and past; That rosy blush lapt in a lily vale, Now is with morphew overgrown and pale." ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... tendency to weaken court influence. He could only, however, make an offer, and if it was rejected the people must effect their own salvation. All the grievances of the nation, he observed, arose from the overgrown influence of the crown, and this influence was the creature of the prodigality of the commons. The operation of this influence, he said, was not confined to the superior orders of the state; it had insinuated itself into every section of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... like Ticonderoga, from a view of its gray and broken ruins. Here and there, perchance, the walls may remain almost complete, but elsewhere may be only a shapeless mound, cumbrous with its very strength, and overgrown, through long years of peace and neglect, with grass ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he calls a hobby! He buys and gloats over every silly detective story that was ever written; practises disguises and making himself up, as he calls it; takes lessons in conjuring; haunts the police courts; consorts with criminals—in short, behaves like a great overgrown child in his own native city, where the name of Bundercombe—from the feminine standpoint—realizes everything that stands for freedom and greatness. The time came when it was necessary for me to put down my foot once and for all. ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... observed, never is to be found for any great length of time in any single line of men; consequently, there are few great monied men, except such as have acquired their own fortunes, and those can never be very numerous nor overgrown. ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... containing three or four thousand inhabitants, situated near the northern end of an oblong valley, at least two-thirds of which are occupied by Llyn Tegid. It has two long streets, extending from north to south, a few narrow cross ones, an ancient church, partly overgrown with ivy, with a very pointed steeple, and a town-hall of some antiquity, in which Welsh interludes used to be performed. After gratifying my curiosity with respect to the town, I visited the mound—the wondrous ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... It was overgrown with pines, and in such places one seldom finds grassy ground. But now the dry moss and brown pine-needles suddenly disappeared, the stiff cranberry bushes vanished, and Reor felt under foot velvet like turf. ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... white of the house had long since faded. The stucco had cracked, and, here and there, had fallen from the stones. The paint on the pillars was dingy, peeling in round blisters and narrow strips from the grey wood underneath. The trees were ragged and untended, the grass uncut, the driveway overgrown with weeds and gullied by rains—the whole place looked forsaken. Carmichael had always supposed that it was vacant. But he had not passed that way for nearly a month, and, meantime, it might have been reopened ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... the mere thought of seeing her kindly face. But the old building was quite deserted, and, when he forced open the rusty lock, and entered, he found nothing but a low, dark, comfortless room. The walls were bare and damp, and the little window was so overgrown with ivy that scarcely any light could get in. There was not even a chair or a table in it, nothing but a long rope with a noose at the end of it, which hung dangling ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... has destroyed many of the trees along the shore, and filled the upper portion with driftwood, which blocks the channel and is altogether unsightly. There is a winter road, a mile in length, cut through the forest from the Lower to the Upper Pond. This road is so overgrown that in summer it is a mere pathway. The Upper Pond reached, we again embarked in a light boat, our young athlete rowing. Uncle David had quitted us at the upper lake. This row was not necessary, the path to Tahawus, or Mount Mercy, as our guides called it, turning off at a right angle ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... into a wide glade, from which rose a precipitous ascent, crowned with the ruins of an old castle. The traveller dismounted, led his horse up the ascent, and, gaining the ruins, left his steed within one of the roofless chambers, overgrown with the longest grass and a profusion of wild shrubs; thence ascending, with some toil, a narrow and broken staircase, he found himself in a small room, less decayed than the rest, of which the roof and floor ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the servants, in rear of the ladies and gentlemen. So, to the chant of, perhaps, a score of nightingales and other birds, the queen, her ladies and the three young men trooping beside or after her, paced leisurely westward by a path little frequented and overgrown with herbage and flowers, which, as they caught the sunlight, began one and all to unfold their petals. So fared she on with her train, while the quirk and the jest and the laugh passed from mouth to mouth; nor had they completed more than two thousand paces when, well before half tierce,(1) they ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... to King Philippe of France, who was glad to annoy his overgrown vassal by patronizing the rebellious son, and accordingly placed Robert in the Castle of Gerberoi, where he might best be a thorn in his father's side. There William besieged him, bringing the two younger sons with him, though Henry was ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... place, outstripped by towns of ten years' existence, as it has neither a port nor a river. There was an agricultural show, and monster pumpkins and overgrown cabbages were displayed to admiring crowds, under the shadow of a ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... left there had multiplied; the domestic cats had become wild, and the trees were thronged with pigeons and doves. The ruined walls and blackened chimneys spread over with the unpruned vine, the coffee plant, the orange tree: the road overgrown, the stone enclosure beset with rank vegetation, amidst which many a garden flower grew wild, presented a scene, perhaps, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... a hedge overgrown. One meadow's breadth away I passed it day by day. Now the soil was ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... overgrown cherub with a monocle," I laughed. Ned shall not think me one of those odious, ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... lightning flashes they saw, set some distance back from the road, a large house. By the same flashes they saw leading up to it a path, much overgrown with weeds. And back of the house were big trees. The rest was not very distinct, but at ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... last hours together. Glennard had planned no course of action—he simply meant to let himself drift. They both drifted, for a long time, down the languid current of reminiscence; she seemed to sit passive, letting him push his way back through the overgrown channels of the past. At length she reminded him that they must bring their explorations to an end. He rose to leave, and stood looking at her with the same uncertainty in his heart. He was tired of her already—he was always tired of her—yet he was not sure that he wanted ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... bounding along to meet and to greet her father, in a manner that showed that the stern-looking man had a tender nature within. The two men had crossed the last stile, while Mary loitered behind to gather some buds of the coming hawthorn, when an overgrown lad came past her, and snatched a kiss, exclaiming, "For old ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... less than three men who called me Jack, and that, out of flies or in libraries, and one of these, chose occasionally, by way of making himself particularly agreeable, to address me by the familiar appellation of Jacky. At length, and that only three weeks after my fall, an overgrown tallow-chandler met us on the Steyne, and stopped our party to observe, "as how he thought he owed me for two barrels of coal tar, for doing over his pigsties." This settled it—we departed from Brighton, and made a tour of the coast; but we never rallied; and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... landing huge Spanish chestnuts, one lying dead, others standing stark and peeled, like gigantic antlers, and others flourishing in their viridis senectus, and in a thicket of wood you see the remains of a monastery of great beauty, the design and workmanship exquisite. You wander through the ruins, overgrown with ferns and Spanish filberts, and old fruit-trees, and at the corner of the old monkish garden you come upon one of the strangest and most touching sights you ever saw—an oval space of about 18 feet by 12, with the remains of a double ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... in lat. 15 deg. 12', and they judged it to be 925 leagues west from the coast of Peru.[111] The interior of this island is so low, that it seemed mostly overflowed at high water, its outskirt being a sort of dike or mound, overgrown with trees, between which the salt water penetrates ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... soon spread over Edinburgh—at that time only an overgrown village, in so far as regarded local facilities for the spread of wonders. It had begun there, where the mother was in recurring faints, the father in distraction and not less mystery, George Lindsay ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... the poor remnant of the Essenes, Marcus passed four or five miserable months. As he grew stronger he would limp down to the village where his hosts were engaged in rebuilding some of their dwellings, and sit in the garden of the house that was once occupied by Miriam. Now it was but an overgrown place, yet among the pomegranate bushes still stood that shed which she had used as a workshop, and in it, lying here and there as they had fallen, some of her unfinished marbles, among them one of himself which she began and cast aside before she executed that bust which ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... the poetic vision before me! I think she was pleased with the drawing, but on our way back to the castle a foolish word of mine brought our friendship to an end. We came to a picturesque little lake, at the end of which was a waterfall, overgrown with brambles. In order to show what a good swimmer her dog was, Marguerite threw something in the current and told him to fetch it, but he got carried over the waterfall and caught in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the trees it was rather dark, yet the trail was wide enough to allow of Claude following his guide without any difficulty whatever. For about an hour they walked on in this way, ascending steadily most of the time, until at length Claude found himself upon an open space overgrown with shrubbery, and altogether bare of trees. Here several dusky figures appeared, and the guide conversed with ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... the "back fields" of the farms that ran out to the upper Carmody road. Just before them, hemmed in by beeches and firs but open to the south, was a little corner and in it a garden . . . or what had once been a garden. A tumbledown stone dyke, overgrown with mosses and grass, surrounded it. Along the eastern side ran a row of garden cherry trees, white as a snowdrift. There were traces of old paths still and a double line of rosebushes through the middle; but all the ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... also, there are stones so large and so overgrown that our wonder is incited, it being incomprehensible how the power of man could have placed them where we see them. They are variously wrought, and some of them, having the form of men, must have been idols. Near the walls are many caves and excavations under the earth, but in ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... invocation he cast the stunned reptile far out into the garden. Returning, he said—"The aodaisho[u] is the most harmless of snakes. The farmers keep it to destroy the rats which infest house and store rooms. How can Hana be afraid of snakes, living in this yashiki overgrown by weeds and grass, from roof to garden?" O'Hana did not reply in direct terms—"It is evil fortune to take a snake in the hand."—"Never mind such talk. It is the priest who speaks. This Iemon knows all about snakes. Go to sleep." She obeyed, knowing nothing about O'Iwa ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... his wheelbarrow, spade, and pickaxe were visible, but there was no sign of the man himself along the various pebbly watercourses, for the wayward mountain streams had hollowed out channels that were almost overgrown ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... not tied together by the same governments; which their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which, opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty. In this sense it is, that your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... the day was (many degrees below freezing), I heard and saw bluebirds, and as we passed along, every sheltered tangle and overgrown field or lane swarmed with snowbirds and sparrows,—the latter mainly Canada or tree sparrows, with a sprinkling of the song, and, maybe, one or two other varieties. The birds are all social and gregarious in winter, and seem drawn together ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... unconsciously and unpretentiously, the all negligibly or superfluously handed-down, of a rare case of the provincial and academic cuistre; though even while I record it I see the good man as too helpless and unaggressive, too smothered in his poor facts of person and circumstance, of overgrown time of life alone, to incur with justness the harshness of classification. He rested with a weight I scarce even felt—such easy terms he made, without scruple, for both of us—on the cheerful innocence of my barbarism; ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... places of worship and of refuge to the Covenanters in days of peril and alarm; and some of Scotland's martyrs were immolated at the doors of their own huts, the foundation of which may still be traced, overgrown with the green turf or the heather-bell. To a Scottish pastor such scenes are classic, grand even in a higher sense than those of Marathon or Thermopylae—for it was the immutable and holy spirit which was there kindled, and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... beyond the limits of nature and history, when he affirms, "that, in those desert countries, nothing was left except the sky and the earth; that, after the destruction of the cities, and the extirpation of the human race, the land was overgrown with thick forests and inextricable brambles; and that the universal desolation, announced by the prophet Zephaniah, was accomplished, in the scarcity of the beasts, the birds, and even of the fish." These complaints were pronounced about ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... of roadways by half or a third, to construct them of smooth concrete from grass to grass, leaving no soil to be disturbed by wind or water, and such ways once built, last like Roman roads, and can never be overgrown by vegetation. These paths, penetrating every nook and corner of the land, have, together with the electric motors, made travel such a luxury that as a rule we make all short journeys, and when time does not press even very long ones, by private conveyance. Had land travel remained in the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... pointed led off the road at right angles, past the gable-end of the cottage, and thence (as it seemed to me) up into the moorland, where it was quickly lost in darkness, being but a rutted cartway overgrown with grass. But as I stepped close to examine it my eye caught the moon's ray softly reflected by a pile of masonry against the uncertain sky-line, and by-and-by discerned the roof and chimney-stacks of a farmhouse, ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Elbows: I cannot say they were ragged, since they had no Cloaths, they had nothing to cover them but the Skins of Beasts without any tanning, but with all the Hair on, nor a Shoe nor Stocking, so they looked like the Pictures of Hercules in the Lion's Skin; and being overgrown with Beard, and Hair upon their Bodies, they appeared the most savage Figures that ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... mean that big overgrown boy who helped us to carry Lois home the day she sprained her ankle at ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... beware of the slippery grass, he sidled out alongside the jutting slab, and suddenly ducked under it. The Lord Proprietor, following, crawled under the stone, and found himself staring into the mouth of the adit—a dark hole less than four feet in height, and overgrown with ivy. Sam had spoken the truth. The passage, whithersoever it led, had been disused ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... never open, and there is no lodge-keeper. The forest adjoins the garden, and the garden runs down to the water's edge. The original owner of the estate was a crank who lived in a hut, which was so overgrown with moss and creepers that I did not pull it down. Never in my life has anything given me such delight as the anticipation of this hermit-like existence. At the same time, I have engaged a first-rate cook, called Torp, who ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... lead through hills and levels lone, Green fields, and woodlands overgrown, And where deep waters ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... reached to the foot of the hill, and delivered up the path to its grassy area. Among the ferns grew holly bushes deeper in tint than any shadow about them, whilst the whole surface of the scene was dimpled with small conical pits, and here and there were round ponds, now dry, and half overgrown with rushes. ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... travelers so much that they soon re-embarked and pursued their voyage. Leaving the lake they entered another branch of the Kabekanka, and found that at its mouth the stream ran between low shores, and that its bed was so overgrown with wild rice as to make it almost impossible for a canoe to work its way through. Further up the river narrowed and ran more swiftly, the wild rice giving place to snags and driftwood, which made navigation even more toilsome. Almost worn out, our weary voyagers began to ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... heart is hypertrophied, the lungs do not overlap it to the same extent as when it is of its ordinary size. In the latter state, the elastic cushion of the lung muffles the heart's impulse. In the former state, the lung is pushed aside by the overgrown heart, the strong muscular walls of which strike forcibly against the ribs ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... were lighted up and the garden as well. The air was balmy, the pines spread their branches motionless under the starry sky, and bright coloured lanterns glittered in the bushes and along the paths that were overgrown with ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... foster-parents, had to pass this place. Of every little town hereabout he had heard stories during the long winter evenings; now he saw the castle, with its double moats, its trees and bushes, its ramparts overgrown with bracken. But the most beautiful sight was the lofty linden trees, that filled the air with so sweet a perfume. Towards the north-west, in a corner of the garden, stood a large bush with flowers that were like winter's snow amidst summer's green. It was an elder ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... Iskender—i.e. Alexander the Great—who, however, never was in these regions. King Noushirvan repaired it, and placed a guard along it. More than once since that time it has been restored; and again it fell into ruin, and became overgrown, as it now is, with the trees of centuries. A tradition exists, that this wall formerly extended from the Caspian to the Black Sea, cutting through the whole Caucasus, and having for its extremity the "iron gate" of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest, slender, violet-nature of a girl, whom an alien mass of earthliness has unkindly overgrown; for an English maiden in her teens, though very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood, shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... every Indian went down out of sight, leaving a swamp to this day. He declared that he once stuck a pole in there, which went down easily several feet, but then struck the skull-bone of an Indian, when instantly all the hassocks and flags began to shake; he heard a yell as from fifty overgrown Pequots; that he left the pole and ran for life. Mr. West also said that no Indian had ever been known to go near that swamp since, but that whenever one came that way, he turned out of the road near the house of Mr. West, and ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... rock and covered with tiles, leads up to the portal; but as the building has been closed to the public since the application of the law dispersing religious communities, these steps look as if they belonged to the Castle of Indolence, so overgrown with grass are they and abandoned to the wandering wild-flowers. Great mulleins have been allowed to spring up from the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... lofty helmet, triple-tressed with horse-hair, holds high a Chimaera breathing from her throat Aetnean fires, raging the more and exasperate with baleful flames, as the battle and bloodshed grow fiercer. But on his polished shield was emblazoned in gold Io with uplifted horns, already a heifer and overgrown with hair, a lofty design, and Argus the maiden's warder, and lord Inachus pouring his stream from his embossed urn. Behind comes a cloud of infantry, and shielded columns thicken over all the plains; the Argive men and Auruncan forces, the Rutulians and old Sicanians, the Sacranian ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... "hard up" and were advancing through a level field; our rangers and some few other light troops under the command of Col. Knowlton, of Connecticut and Major Leitch of (I, believe) Virginia, were in waiting for them. Seeing them advancing, the rangers, &c, concealed themselves in a deep gully overgrown with bushes; upon the western verge of this defile was a post and rail fence, and over that the forementioned field. Our people let the enemy advance until they arrived at the fence when they arose and poured in a volley upon ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... from longing! Her cottage, he knew, lay on the same side as the village, and just beyond an island. She had told him of a hedge of yew-trees, and a white dovecote almost at the water's edge. He came to the island, and let his boat slide into the backwater. It was all overgrown with willow-trees and alders, dark even in this early morning radiance, and marvellously still. There was no room to row; he took the boathook and tried to punt, but the green water was too deep and entangled with great roots, so that he had to make his way by ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... beyond the stream, as you go west from Washington, are the plains of Manassas,—level lands, which years ago waved with corn and tobacco, but the fields long since were worn out by the thriftless farming of the slaveholders, and now they are overgrown with ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... and beaten track: it was bordered on each side by a deep ditch, nearly overgrown with weeds and brambles. He traversed the intricate windings of the road with considerable facility; but an hour had nearly elapsed ere he gained the brow of an eminence of no very conspicuous height, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... out a clear path through an ethical jungle overgrown with the exuberance of human life. I have not succeeded, and it is probably impossible to succeed. In the subject itself there is paradox. Conflicting elements enter into the very constitution of a person. To ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... neutrality. They have on several occasions destroyed this fortress, which has been occupied again by the Turks. It gives then little annoyance, being distant, I should think, five miles from the head of the lake. All was now water, but the principal channels above were passable, the rest being overgrown with weeds. At several of these, long consultations occurred as to our best route. It began to rain a little, and the place of our destination seemed doubtful. At length we emerged on the broad beautiful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... can be more sensible than is the Author that the present is an overgrown book of a nondescript class, neither the "tale" for the young, nor the novel for their elders, but ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... he was! His son was little comfort to him in his loneliness. Except on their ocean voyage, Pat and his father had not been together for three years and they had grown apart. Pat was no longer just a merry little chap, ready for a romp with his father. He was a tall, overgrown lad, absorbed in the sports and work of his school-world, at a loss what to say to the silent, reserved business man who made such an effort to talk ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... exploring woods and fields and lanes were quite so thorough when it came to the private examination of their own lofts and outhouses. Stories were afloat of a mysterious figure being occasionally seen in some old overgrown trackway or other, remote from turnpike roads; but when a search was instituted in any of these suspected quarters nobody was found. Thus the days and ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... plenty of mouse-brown hair and a short, straight nose. She was striking and well-bred-looking, and her plenitude of good-natured interest in everybody, and her pleasure in everything out of which pleasure could be wrested, gave her big eyes a fresh look which made her seem rather like a nice overgrown girl than a mature woman whose life was a continuous struggle with the narrowest of ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... every good thing. The walk through the woods to Black Rock House was a joy, very slightly alleviated by the poor condition of the trees under which Peter passed. It was primeval forest even here, with valuable trees stunted and poor ones vastly overgrown according to nature's law which provides for the survival of the fittest. This was the law too, which was to be applied to Peter. Would he grow straight and true in this foreign soil or gnarled and misshapen like ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... with a slimy growth of marine vegetation; the pressure on him was something enormous. It was very dark and he groped for some time without discovering anything. He signaled the boat to move with him as he pursued his explorations. At last his heart was gladdened by the sight of a wreck overgrown with a heavy mass of weeds and sea plumes. After a closer investigation he was disappointed to find that she was not nearly as large as the vessel described by the Indian; but by her appearance he judged she must have been under water many, many years. All the iron work was eaten away ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... whole year he travelled, till at length he came, footsore and weary, to a deserted palace standing in the midst of an overgrown garden. The great gates, which lay wide open, were overrun with creepers, and the paths were green with weeds. That morning he had thought that he saw far away on the hills the gleam of his silver Plough, and now hope rose high, ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... should be taught every American schoolboy, for when that schoolboy becomes a voter he should have learned the lesson that the United States, while it ought not to become an overgrown military power, should always have a first-class navy, formidable from the number of its ships, and formidable still more from the excellence of the individual ships and the high character of the officers and men. Farragut saw the war of 1812, in which, though our few frigates ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... Permanent Council had (p. 018) progressed so far that the Council had ceased entirely to be a working unit. In the end what happened was that, precisely as the Permanent Council had been derived by selection from the original Great Council, so from the overgrown Permanent Council was constituted, in the fifteenth century, a smaller and more compact administrative body to which was assigned the designation of ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... had always tended it, and a new head-board had been put up when the old one had rotted away below. The upper part of it was in the shape of a wheel, as Ole himself had desired. The grave was in a sunny spot, and was thickly overgrown with wild flowers. Every churchgoer that had ever stood by it had heard from some one or other how a botanist in government pay, making a collection of the plants and flowers of the valley and the mountains round about, had found flowers on that grave that did ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... though the valley of the Creuse, in its upper and wilder part, through which our road now wound, offered no objects of a kind to soften my anger against the governor. I saw enough of ruins, of blocked defiles, and overgrown roads; but of returning prosperity and growing crops, and the King's peace, I saw no sign—not so much as ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... feet; With what a pretty skipping grace It oft would challenge me to race; And when 't had left me far away, 'Twould stay, and run again, and stay; For it was nimbler much than hinds, And trod as if on the four winds. I have a garden of my own, But so with roses overgrown And lilies, that you would it guess To be a little wilderness; And all the spring-time of the year It only loved to be there. Among the lilies, I Have sought it oft, where it should lie Yet could not, till itself would rise, Find it, although before mine eyes; For in the flaxen lilies' shade, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... whose central shafts lead to their nests. The highest levels, only a few feet above water, are grown with a dense bush that wants the matchet. Here are remains of plantations, a little knot of bananas, a single tall cocoanut, many young palms, and a few felled trunks overgrown with oysters. Europeans have proposed to build bungalows on Bobowusua, where they find fresh sea-air, and a little shooting among the red-breasted ring-doves, rails, and green pigeons affecting the vegetation. It appears to us a good place for mooring ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... rows of royal palms. These stately trees shaded the avenue by day and lent it a cavern-like gloom by night. Near the public causeway the road was cut through a bit of rising ground, and was walled by steep banks overgrown ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... of one of his oldest friends, the author Octave Bertin; for they had been school-fellows at the Lycee Henri IV. Bertin, a little Parisian, quick-witted, elegant, and precocious, had welcomed the awkward enthusiastic advances of the overgrown youth fresh from the country,—ungainly in body and mind, his clothes always too short for his long legs and arms, a mixture of innocence, simplicity, ignorance, and bad taste, always emphatic, with overflowing spirits, yet capable ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... class of merchants and the vigorous order of landlords were far overgrown by the two classes that gave tone to society—the mass of beggars, and the world of quality proper. We have no statistical figures to indicate precisely the relative proportions of poverty and riches for this epoch; yet we may here perhaps again recall the expression ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... a walk calls the attention of his companions to the condition of the hedges; when he notices that the road wants mending, or that the ditches are either clean or overgrown; when, moreover, he comments on the early discolouration of the leaves of certain distant trees, it can clearly be due only to one of two causes: either his conversation never rises above the level of such subjects, or else, some influence is ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... This was a magnificent palace on the Quai d'Orsay, next door to the Spanish embassy, whose long terraces succeeded its own, having its principal entrance in the Rue de Lille, and a door upon the side next the river. Between two lofty walls overgrown with ivy, and united by imposing vaulted arches, the brougham shot in, announced by two strokes of a sonorous bell which roused Jenkins from the reverie into which the reading of his newspaper seemed to have plunged him. Then the noise of the wheels became deadened on the sand ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... him into what used to be the garden of the mill, but the enclosure was now overgrown with rank and poisonous weeds. There was a path running through it paved with flagstones; the spectre pointed with its finder to one of them. Sam stooped down, and, much to his astonishment, raised it with ease. Beneath there was an iron chest, the lid of which ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... wet clothes and putting them on, we again proceeded along a similar narrow forest track as before, choked with rotten leaves and dead trees, and in the more open parts overgrown with tangled vegetation. Another hour brought us to a smaller stream flowing in a wide gravelly bed, up which our road lay. Here w e stayed half an hour to breakfast, and then went on, continually crossing the stream, or walking on its ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... him, old Mrs. Headley and her son did not take notice of his blunders, but only Dennet fell into a violent fit of laughter, when he presented the stately alderman with a nutmeg under the impression that it was an overgrown peppercorn. She suppressed her mirth as well as she could, poor little thing, for it was a great offence in good manners, but she was detected, and, only child as she was, the consequence was the being banished from the table and sent ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... on a wild and lonely mountain side. No village was in sight, no cottage, not even the hut of a charcoal burner, so often to be found on the outskirts of the forest. He had been following a faint and much overgrown path, but at length, even that was lost sight of. Twilight was coming on, and in vain he strove to recover the lost track. Each effort seemed only to entangle him more hopelessly in the briers and tall grasses ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... and the hermits came to that fairy isle they found it overgrown with cedars and full of beautiful birds; and he sat down under the cedars and preached to all the birds in the air. And they liked his sermons so well that they told the fishes in the sea; and they came, and St. Brandan preached to them; and the fishes told the water-babies, ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... shut out the main waters of the bay. For miles on the outer side of the curving prongs of land stretched a rugged, desolate coast, indented with coves and creeks, lined with bowlders of granite half sunken in the sea, and edged by beaches overgrown with pale sedge, or covered with beds of seaweed. Nothing alive, except the gulls, abode on these solitary shores. No lighthouse stood on any point, to shake its long, warning light across the mariners' wake. Now and then a drowned man floated in among the ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... we recognise as our Mussaul is not the whole of him. By birth he is an agriculturist, and there is in the environs of Surat a little plot of land and a small dilapidated hut in one corner of it, overgrown with monstrous gourds, which he thinks of as home, sweet home. There are his young barbarians all at play, but he, their sire, is forced to seek service abroad because, as he practically expresses it, the ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... take leave, but they told him that on such a day the best thing was to stay where one was, and he agreed; he stayed. In the back room where he was sitting with the ladies of the household, coolness reigned supreme; the windows looked out upon a little garden overgrown with acacias. Multitudes of bees, wasps, and humming beetles kept up a steady, eager buzz in their thick branches, which were studded with golden blossoms; through the half-drawn curtains and the lowered blinds this never-ceasing hum made its way into the room, telling of the sultry heat in ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... the bardic literature the preservation of an ordered historical sequence, amidst that riotous wealth of imaginative energy, may appear an impossibility. Can we believe that forestine luxuriance not to have overgrown all highways, that flood of superabundant song not have submerged all landmarks? Be the cause what it may, the fact remains that they did not. The landmarks of history stand clear and fixed, each in its own place unremoved; and through that forest-growth ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... there was a clearing with a few huts giving shelter to a scanty population of herdsmen and hunters. In those shadowy times the river was broad and shallow, unconfined to one course, here swift and clear, there sluggish and thick, feeding creeks and marshes by the way, and overgrown with rushes and water weeds; of no use probably as a water-way but prolific ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... find himself the cynosure of three pairs of eyes. These were all kindly and full of cheer. Two pairs were contributed respectively by the nurse and Lady Touchstone, while the third was set in the face of an overgrown cherub, who smelt agreeably of Harris tweed and was gently furbishing his pince-nez with ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... an overgrown youth, apparently belonging to the house, who sat in one corner, tilting his chair, said, addressing all of us at once, 'Wal, you've got the wust half the road before yer now. Thur's a hill a mile an' a half long, jest out here a little ways. You'll have to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... over the fields. The peasants had never touched them; they were too heavy to be removed; moreover, there was a superstition that the rebellious devils had in the first days of the creation thrown these stones at the angels, and that it was unlucky to touch them. Overgrown with moss they each lay in an island of green grass; the shepherds lit their fires beneath them on chilly nights, the ploughmen lay down in their shade on a hot afternoon, the hawker would sometimes hide his treasures ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... than five or six hundred feet in breadth. On either side high walls rise towering up; and on the left we see the ruins of an aqueduct quite overgrown with ivy. This aqueduct is seven or eight hundred paces in length, and extends as far as the spot where the Dog's-river rushes over rocks and stones, forming not a lofty, but yet a fine waterfall. Just below this fall a bridge of Roman architecture, ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... sea-shore, when a place appeared, which, far from being trimmed, like other parts of the coast, into walks of embankments, seemed, on the contrary, abandoned to neglect, and was covered with the mouldering ruins of antiquity, where these had not been overgrown by the luxuriant vegetation of the climate. These fragments of building, occupying a sort of recess of the bay, were hidden by steep banks on each side, and although in fact they formed part of the city, yet they were not seen from any part of it, and, embosomed in the manner we have described, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... gloomy enough, as we drove along facing each other in Ballyfuchsia's one 'inside-car'—a strange and fearsome vehicle, partaking of the nature of a broken-down omnibus, a hearse, and an overgrown black beetle. It holds four, or at a squeeze six, the seats being placed from stem to stern lengthwise, and the balance being so delicate that the passengers, when going uphill, are shaken into a heap at the door, which is represented by a ragged leather flap. I have often seen it strew the hard ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... propellers clogged by seaweed, its keels overgrown with barnacles, the grand armada crossed the Indian Ocean and headed northward for the China Sea. On May 27, steering for the Korean channel, it fell into a snare which a blind man ought to have been able to foresee. Togo's fleet had the freedom of the seas. Where could it be, if not in that very ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... A woman's first desire should be her husband's goodness; her next, his greatness. Matrimony is a bondage, but one that carries with it the protection which is as necessary to a woman as the air she breathes; with a tender husband, after a little time, she will find the chains so overgrown by affection, which is the woodbine of the moral garden, that, instead of being enslaved, behold, she finds peace, love, and ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... to the big town, Dawn, old girl," he would say. "We're buried alive in this overgrown Dutch village. I came here in the first place on your account. Now it's up to you to get me out of it. Think of what New York means! Think of what I've been! And I can ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... perpendicularly, the everlasting rocks, to a height of a thousand feet, covered with the richest foliage that imagination can picture, while here and there a sharp steeple—like pinnacle of grey—stone, overgrown with lichens, shot up, and out from the face of them, into the blue sky, mixing with the tall forest trees that overhung the road, festooned with ivy and withes of different kinds, like the rigging of a ship, round which the tendrils of many a beautiful ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the Ghoda, and walked into the forest. I found the large umgwenya tree without any difficulty, and underneath it were the two piles of stones close together. They were much overgrown with ferns and creepers. A large bush-buck leaped up and crashed through the undergrowth. His doe followed immediately afterwards, passing so close that I could see the dew-drops glistening on her ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... much less rocky, and more fit for culture. Our road lay S.W. b. S. The village of Feteyry, lies about one hour and a half south of Aweyt. After travelling three hours we came in sight of the Orontes, and then began to descend. The mountain on this side is rather steep, and its side is overgrown with herbs which afford an excellent pasturage. The plant asphodel (Siris [Arabic]) is very common; the inhabitants of Syria, by pulverising its dried roots, and mixing the powder with water, make a good glue, which is superior to that made with flour, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... me the old ramparts that had defended the crest of the hill. A double bank of earth, now all overgrown with trees and shrubs, not unlike the outlines of ancient British and Roman encampments. On every point around us similar traces could be found, showing that the district had been thickly inhabited. As the Maoris had no grazing ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... us to draw the line. The time has come for the responsible leaders of both political parties to take a stand against overgrown Government and for the American taxpayer. We are not spending the Federal Government's money, we are spending the taxpayer's money, and it must be spent in a way which guarantees his money's worth and yields the fullest possible benefit ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... picturesque hills and valleys, the woodland interspersed with deciduous and evergreen trees, the wide landscape, extending to the Blue Ridge on the west, the low lands and ridges of Maryland and the hills about Mt. Vernon. The city of Washington, however, was then far from attractive. It was an overgrown village, with wide unpaved avenues and streets, with 61,000 inhabitants badly housed, hotels and boarding houses badly kept, and all depending more or less upon low salaries, and employment by the government. All this has been ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... little stone church, all overgrown with ivy, that the Chadwicks had built generations ago. The high arched door was never opened of late years, except at long intervals, when some one came out from the city to hold services. But the side door was certainly ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... sight to see that tall, overgrown boy playing with that little girl of eight, humoring her caprices, adoring her as he yielded to her, so that later, when he fell genuinely in love with her, no one could have said at ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... these islands, when first raised above the sea, must have been active volcanoes, sending out hot from their craters the flood of lava and the heated rocks which now lie cold and hard, and overgrown with moss, to tell us ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... though you are an overgrown ox." He darted in behind the man-mountain like a twisting snake. His deft fingers reached in through the shattered crystal, pressed something on the inside. The door slid into its wall pocket with a sound ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... side down the thick rows of young saplings. There was a cool bank overgrown with trumpet-creeper. Inside, he caught sight of a little recess or cave, and a gray old bench on which was just room ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... grandeur in graves, there's a glory in gloom, For out of the gloom future brightness is born, As after the night looms the sunrise of morn, And the graves of the dead, with grass overgrown, May yet form ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... who were following behind, in order to implore their testimony—sad women, equally dirty, their ragged garments smelling of fire, poverty and death. All assented, adding their outcries to those of the mother. Some even went so far as to say that the overgrown boy was only sixteen . . . fifteen! And to this feminine chorus was added the wailing of the little ones looking at their brother with eyes ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fancies, it is strange to come upon a little sandstone dell furrowed by trickling streams and overgrown with English primroses; or to enter the village of Roccabruna, with its mediaeval castle and the motto on its walls, Tempora labuntur tacitisque senescimus annis. A true motto for the town, where the butcher comes but once a week, and where men and boys, and dogs, and palms, and lemon-trees ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... been handed down from man to man in the same family, but once they have passed into other hands, they have been tended in a makeshift way or left to go to rack and ruin altogether. You have seen those old forlorn places, where the site is overgrown with grass, and the heather has been allowed to spread all over the yard. They remind me of graves. I tell you the truth: if such a fate were in store for my farm, I should wish for nothing but to be lying under the ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... Dolores, who, more angry than she had ever been in her life, snatched it up, unheeding that it had no point to speak of, rushed headlong in pursuit, while, with a tremendous shout, Valetta and Wilfred flew before her to a waste overgrown place at the end ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge |
