"Ploughman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the most untutored persons into the highest society, and if they have a reservoir of Love in their hearty they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply cannot do it. Carlisle said of Robert Burns that there was no truer gentleman in Europe than the ploughman-poet. It was because he loved everything—the mouse, and the daisy, and all the things, great and small, that God had made. So with this simple passport he could mingle with any society, and enter courts and palaces from his ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... tired ploughman his dun oxen turns, Unyoked, afield, mid dewy grass to stray, While over all the village church spire burns— A shaft of flame in the last ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... he saw nothing but a kind of kettle or cauldron, depending from the roof over the fire, simmering some heads of unchristened children, limbs of executed malefactors, &c., for the business of the night. It was in for a penny, in for a pound, with the honest ploughman; so, without ceremony, he unhooked the cauldron from off the fire, and pouring out the damnable ingredients, inverted it on his head, and carried it fairly home, where it remained long in the family, a living evidence of ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... should say that even such a condition contrasts favourably with that of an English agricultural labourer. Without doubt, were we to inquire closely into matters, we should discover a sum of money invested or laid by for future purchases utterly beyond the reach of a Suffolk ploughman. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... is, no doubt, by this time pretty well versed in all the dialogue of parting lovers, I shall not intrude upon his or her patience with a repetition of that which has been much too often repeated, and is equally familiar to the prince and the ploughman. I should as soon think of describing the Devil's Punch Bowl, on the road to Portsmouth, where I arrived two days after ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and his saw, and he made a plough. When the plough was made he put a hole in the beam of it, and he said to the lion to go in under the plough till he'd see was he any good of a ploughman. He placed the lion's tail in the hole he had made for it, and then clapped in a peg, and the lion was not able to draw ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... not think that I look with a jaundiced eye upon my remembrances of that most unhappy time, but, as I remember, to have had an education a little better than that of the average ploughman, and to show an inclination to be smart and quick at duty, was a certain passport to the hostility of the non-commissioned officers of the time. They regarded themselves, as I am now inclined to fancy, as a sort of close ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... a hunted animal, "never long at ease," desponding, despairing, on the verge of self-murder,—painted it with an originality, a vividness, a power and a sweetness, too, that rank him with the great authors of all time,—kind Nature, after this gift, sent as his counterpoise the inspired ploughman, whose songs have done more to humanize the hard theology of Scotland than all the rationalistic sermons that were ever preached. Our own Whittier has done and is doing the same thing, in a far holier spirit than Burns, for the inherited beliefs of New England and the country to which New ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... left now. I hardly recognized the farm any more. All these new people had made themselves quite at home there, and I seemed to myself to be a new-comer. The serving-woman looked at me with distrust, and the ploughman avoided talking to me. The servant's name was Adele. All day long you could hear her grumbling and dragging her wooden shoes after her as she walked. She made a noise even when she was walking on straw. ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... thick-driving snow. A little while And night shall darken down. In shouting file The woodmen's carts go by me homeward-wheeled, Past the thin fading stubbles, half concealed, Now golden-grey, sowed softly through with snow, Where the last ploughman follows still his row, Turning black furrows ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... feeling of depression falls slowly upon us, despite the gaudy sunshine and the green cottonfields. This, then, is the Cotton Kingdom,—the shadow of a marvellous dream. And where is the King? Perhaps this is he,—the sweating ploughman, tilling his eighty acres with two lean mules, and fighting a hard battle with debt. So we sit musing, until, as we turn a corner on the sandy road, there comes a fairer scene suddenly in view,—a neat cottage snugly ensconced by the road, and near it a little store. A ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... hill, Through the high wood echoing shrill. Sometime walking, not unseen, By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green, Right against the eastern gate, Where the great sun begins his state, Rob'd in flames, and amber light, The clouds in thousand liveries dight; While the ploughman, near at hand, Whistles o'er the furrow'd land, And the milkmaid singeth blithe, And the mower whets his scythe, And every shepherd tells his tale, Under the hawthorn in the dale. Straight mine eye hath ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... men report Lean, dusk, a gipsy: I alone nut-brown. Violets and pencilled hyacinths are swart, Yet first of flowers they're chosen for a crown. As goats pursue the clover, wolves the goat, And cranes the ploughman, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... be signalized on the title-pages with the suffix of EDITOR. The volumes already published are: Increase Mather's "Remarkable Providences"; the poems of Drummond of Hawthornden; the "Visions" of Piers Ploughman; the works in prose and verse of Sir Thomas Overbury; the "Hymns and Songs" and the "Hallelujah" of George Wither; the poems of Southwell; Selden's "Table-talk"; the "Enchiridion" of Quarles; the dramatic works of Marston ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... the just conclusion, that if ever a country deserved to be called 'musical,' that country was England, in the 16th and 17th centuries. King and courtier, peasant and ploughman, each could 'take his part,' with each music was a part of his daily life; while so far from being above knowing the difference between a minim and a crotchet, a gentleman would have been ashamed not ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... yourself that the supplementing of the law by the common sense of the Privy Council would settle the whole difficulty. But no man knows what he means by common sense, though every man can tell you that it is very uncommon, even in Privy Councils. And since every ploughman is a man of the world, it is evident that even the phrase itself does not mean what it says. As a matter of fact, it means in ordinary use simply a man who will not make himself disagreeable for the ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... Collector; Mister Bill 'Iggins, Publican; Mister Walter Weed, Clerk; Mister Jeremiah Ramsmouth, Local Preacher; Mr. 'Ookey Snagg, Loafer; Mister William Guppy, Potman—place them beside Hybrias, Goat-herd; Damon, Shepherd; Phydias, Writer; Nicarchus, Ploughman; Balbus, Bricklayer; Glaucus, Potter; Caius, Carter; Marcus, Weaver; Aeneas, Bronze-worker; Antonius, Corn-seller; Canidius, Charioteer—and then talk of the glorious modern times of high civilization and the dark ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... more intangibly detained upon canvas so poetic a quality of sentiment as this sterling landscapist, who in Number 136 has most ethereally expressed the profound silence of evening on an English moor. The solemn hush, the brooding quiet, the homeward ploughman—'" ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... when from the field some delver or ploughman goes gladly home to his hut, longing for his evening meal, and there on the threshold, all squalid with dust, bows his wearied knees, and, beholding his hands worn with toil, with many a curse reviles his belly; at that ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... not forget to wash my hands and feet, and plaster up my lacerated flesh; and as soon as she had made me comfortable I retired to rest. I rose refreshed, and returned the next day with renovated vigour to my task. To be brief, I soon because a good ploughman. My father daily witnessed with considerable anxiety my zealous and persevering exertions; and as I proceeded, he encouraged me by the most animating hopes of future prospects; he informed me that he had remarked with no small pleasure my determination ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... Fable: as I smoked a pipe And havered with a black-haired cowman, Grey-eyed, in that fine Celtic type, As much the poet as the ploughman— "Seems kind of lucky here," said I; "The very ducklings look more downy Than others do." He grinned: "An' why? May happen, Sir, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... the hide along its whole length, the women take it in their hands and chew their way along the bend from one end of the skin to the other, working their way back along the next half-inch line. Watching them, one is reminded of the ploughman driving his team afield up one furrow ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... corn am I, Kara! Kara![5] Yoked with the kine we gayly fly, Kara! Kara! The ploughman's hand is strong and drives The glowing soil, the meadow thrives! Before the oxen ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... full opinion of them, for their choise in our seede. You shall know then that when you goe into the market to chuse Barly for your seede, you shall to your best power elect that which is whitest, fullest, and roundest, being as the ploughman calles it, a full bunting Corne, like the nebbe or beake of a Bunting, you shall obserue that it be all of one Corne, and not mingled, that is, clay Barly, and sand Barly together, which you shall distinguish by these differences: the clay Barly is of a palish, white, yellow colour; smoth, full, ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... of however mixed ingredients their ranks might have been composed, and however imbued with the spirit of feudal and aristocratic ideas, the discipline of the wilderness soon brought them to a democratic level; the gentleman felled the wood for his log-cabin side by side with the ploughman, and thews and sinews rose in the market. "A man was deemed honorable in proportion as he lifted his hand upon the high trees of the forest." So in the interior domestic circle. Mistress and maid, living in a log-cabin together, became companions, and sometimes the ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... not make any one lose patience," said Mowbray, "to hear her quoting the rhapsodies of a hobnail'd peasant, when a man is speaking of the downfall of an ancient house! Your ploughman, I suppose, becoming one degree poorer than he was born to be, would only go without his dinner, or without his usual potation of ale. His comrades would cry 'poor fellow!' and let him eat out of their kit, and drink out of their bicker ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... The ploughman ploughs, the sower sows. The reaper reaps the ear; The woodman to the forest goes Before the day grows clear, But of our toil no fruit we see; The harvest's not for you and me: A robber band has seized the land, And we are ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... The roadside trees still dripped with dew, And hung their blossoms like a show. Who heard the cry? 'Twas but a few, A ragged herd-boy, here and there, With his long stick and naked feet; A ploughman wending to his care, The field from which he hopes the wheat; An early traveller, hurrying fast To the next town; an urchin slow Bound for the school; these heard and passed, Unheeding ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... and uncouth, to the loves, the hopes, and the fears of his own bosom. Had a summer sun risen on a winter morning, it could not have surprised the Lowlands of Scotland more than this Kilmarnock volume surprised and delighted the people, one and all. The milkmaid sang his songs, the ploughman repeated his poems; the old quoted both, and ever the devout rejoiced that idle verse had at last mixed a tone of morality with its mirth. The volume penetrated even into Nithsdale. "Keep it out of the way of your children," said ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... rags for jewels and silks. He is no longer the recluse of the lonely cliffs, chatting with the animals and gazing at the stars. He is a man of the world, with schemes of conquest filling his brain and a love of dominion ruling his heart. He is no longer a ditch-digger and a ploughman, but the proud master of councils or the cultured professor of the university. He still swears to the three vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience, but they do not mean the same thing to him that they did to the more ignorant, less ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... suck'd vp from the sea Contagious fogges: Which falling in the Land, Hath euerie petty Riuer made so proud, That they haue ouer-borne their Continents. The Oxe hath therefore stretch'd his yoake in vaine, The Ploughman lost his sweat, and the greene Corne Hath rotted, ere his youth attain'd a beard: The fold stands empty in the drowned field, And Crowes are fatted with the murrion flocke, The nine mens Morris is fild vp with mud, And the queint Mazes in the wanton greene, For lacke of tread ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... ploughman plods his homeward way, The ploughman, weary, plods his homeward way, His homeward way the weary ploughman plods, His homeward way the ploughman weary plods, The weary ploughman homeward plods his way, The ploughman, weary, homeward plods his way, His way, the weary ploughman ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... lies bare Between the hills and the sea: Come, ploughman Life, with thy sharp ploughshare, And plough ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... were they permitted to return to earth, would find it hard to recognise the scene of their brief existence. But there are things and powers which gold cannot purchase. That worn-out old millionnaire would give tons of it for a mere tithe of the health that yonder ploughman enjoys. Youth cannot be bought with gold. Time cannot be purchased with gold. The prompt obedience of thousands of men and women may be bought with that precious metal, but one powerful throb of a loving heart could not be procured by all the yellow gold ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Babylonians broke up their land with the plough; to draw which they seem to have employed two oxen, placed one before the other, in the mode still common in many parts of England. The plough had two handles, which the ploughman guided with his two hands. It was apparently of somewhat slight construction. The tail rose from the lower part of one of the handles, and was of unusual length. [PLATE XXIV., ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... certain negative signs, that one is already in another world. On the cold February day when we turned out of Meaux and took the road to the Argonne, the change was chiefly shown by the curious absence of life in the villages through which we passed. Now and then a lonely ploughman and his team stood out against the sky, or a child and an old woman looked from a doorway; but many of the fields were fallow and most of the doorways empty. We passed a few carts driven by peasants, a ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... more than an obliquely placed mattock, whose handle was lengthened in order to harness oxen to it. Whilst the ploughman pressed heavily on the handle, two attendants kept incessantly goading the beasts, or urging them forward with voice and whip, and a third scattered the seed in the furrow. A considerable capital was needed to ensure ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... rushing steeds, until the camp Was reached by foremost line Of the brigade of fearless men, Who rode through wood, and brake, and fen, As speeds the red deer to his glen. No gorgeous suit of war array, No uniform of red or gray In that rude band were seen; The ploughman's dress, but coarse and plain, And marred by toil with many a stain, Betrayed no gilded sheen; Their only badge the white cockade, No dagger's point or glittering blade Was worn with martial pride, But ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... letters in such handwritings, such grammar, and such orthography, that they burned them without replying. A common sort of case was that of the young farmer whose widowed mother had set her heart on marriage with 'a bonny labouring boy,' a ploughman. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... throughout from its Cathedral crypt, and so abounding in vestiges of monastic graves, that the Cloisterham children grow small salad in the dust of abbots and abbesses, and make dirt-pies of nuns and friars; while every ploughman in its outlying fields renders to once puissant Lord Treasurers, Archbishops, Bishops, and such-like, the attention which the Ogre in the story-book desired to render to his unbidden visitor, and grinds their bones to ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... Edric's actions, dropped one by one into lazy silence, or set their tongues to whistling cleverly turned answers to the bird-calls in the hedges. Another mile, and from somewhere in the fields came the swinging chant of a ploughman, as he turned the soil between the rows of ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the autumn advanced, and the rooks followed the ploughman. Dolly gradually recovered something of her physical buoyancy; her former light-heartedness never returned. Sometimes an incident would cause a flash of the old gaiety, only for her to sink back into subdued quietness. The change was most noticeable ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... Randal Leslie, and my business was to visit your master's family—that is, if you are, as I guess from your manner, Mr. Hazeldean's ploughman!" ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... Though Langland had a keen eye to those miseries of the poor which are always with us, the impression of the time gathered from his writings is not so much one of material suffering, as of social unrest and discontent. The poor ploughman, who cannot get meat, still has his cheese, curds, and cream, his loaf of beans and bran, his leeks and cabbage, his cow, calf, and cart mare.[1] The very beggar demanded "bread of clean wheat" and "beer of ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... speculative as to whether he would return before dark. However, a recommencement of drizzling rain apparently cooled his ardour, and restored him to the party. The nomads gladly turned their thoughts and coaches towards the section house, realising as they went the sweet truth of the words, "The ploughman homeward plods his weary way." Lunch awaited them, and the fish of the morning appeared in a more pleasant guise, to be enjoyed by all. After lunch, the rain showing no signs of clearing off, the party had to give up ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... sought Sole on the church's northern slope. As when, Some father, absent long, returns at last, His children rush loud-voiced from field to house, And cling about his knees; and they that mark— Old reaper, bent no more, with hook in hand, Or ploughman, leaning 'gainst the old blind horse— Beholding wonder not; so to that grave Rushed they; so clung. Around that grave ere long Their own were ranged. That plague which smote the sire Spared not his sons. With ministering ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... of much greater antiquity. It appears in the Chronicle of Battel Abbey, p. 27 (Lower's translation), and in The Vision of Piers Ploughman, line ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... immediately makes his purchase, settles, and begins his operations. Here his eyes are soon opened. He must send to England for all his implements; and even then his French labourers neither can or will learn the use of them. An English ploughman becomes necessary; the English ploughman accordingly comes, but shortly becomes miserable amongst French habits ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... vitally connected with the spiritual constitution. Edwards' contemporaries, such as Lardner or Sherlock, thought that to be a Christian was to accept certain results of antiquarian research. With a curious naivete they sometimes say that a ploughman or a cobbler could summarily answer the problems which have puzzled generations of critics. Edwards sees the absurdity of hoping that a genuine faith can ever be based on such balancing of historical probabilities. The cobbler was to be awed by the learned man; ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... delight, running round him, then forward a yard or two, then back to him and gambolling beside him as they went round the garden. But in spite of her joy she was full of fear. At every noise, a cow lowing, a cock crowing, or a ploughman in the distance hulloaing to scare the rooks, she started, her ears pricked to catch the sound, her muzzle wrinkled up and her nose twitched, and she would then press herself against his legs. They walked ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... ploughman settles the share More deep in the grudging clod; For he saith: "The wheat is my care, And the rest is the ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... which occupies the western side of the pedestal, peasants are resting from the labour of the plough; a yoked ox shows the nature of their employment; a ploughman takes a refreshing draught, from his wooden bottle, while a youth blows a horn to call his fellow labourers to an humble repast, which a female is busily ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... a source of the sublime, peculiarly suited to children; accuracy of observation and distinctness of perception, are essential to this species of the sublime. In Percy's collection of ancient ballads, and in the modern poems of the Ayreshire ploughman, we may see many instances of the effect of simplicity. To preserve our pupil's taste from a false love of ornament, he must avoid, either in books or in conversation, all verbose and turgid descriptions, the use of words and epithets ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... and Piety, (that banished train!) Justice and Truth, with you return again. 110 The city's trade, and country's easy life, Once more shall flourish without fraud or strife. Your reign no less assures the ploughman's peace, Than the warm sun advances his increase; And does the shepherds as securely keep From all their fears, as ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... neighbors were humble, hard working people, but they taught me "the great art of cheerful poverty." I was early cured of several follies by standing under the shadow of rustic wise men. I drove their oxen to the plow, and often fell behind alongside the ploughman and picked up the scattered seeds of old, traditional wisdom in his furrows. With these the sagacious urchin sometimes astonished his little mother. Visitors, a cloudy day, a gentle rain did not prevent Uncle Lyman ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... general. We see it reflected in a remarkable poem of the time, "The Vision of Piers Ploughman," in which the unfortunate position of the peasant is vividly portrayed.[185] This is only the most notable example of a great number of pamphlets, some in prose and some in bad verse, which were calculated to make the people more discontented ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... without any intervention, and lures and draws the absent one so that he cannot rest until he returns. But why attribute this spell to Paris alone? Every place where we have been young, dreamed, loved, and suffered, possesses it. We feel the affection for it which the ploughman has for the field to which he entrusted his seed. We have the desire to see whether we shall still find traces of our wanderings, and are joyously surprised when we discover that wherever we sowed our youth, the best part of ourselves, invisible to others, but tangible to us, a rich harvest of ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... beneath their burdens, this enlarging prosperity must be maintained; and on the steamships, and the telegraph lines, which interweave us with all the world. The swart miner must do his part for it; the ingenious workman, in whatever department; the ploughman in the field, and the fisherman on the banks; the man of science, putting Nature to the question; the laborer, with no other capital than his muscle; the sailor on the sea, wherever ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... not seem at all impressed by the fervent interrogation nor by this picture of prospective delights: "Many of your countrymen have seen the wonders of the Indian Empire and enjoyed the soft calm of Malta, and of Ceylon, the Paradise of the Ancients." It does not evince much knowledge of a ploughman's mind to seek to awaken his martial ardour by old myths about the Garden of Eden; nor is it specially alluring to him to mention, as the acme of glory, that he may distinguish himself so much as to gain "thanks from both Houses of Parliament." Such ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... th' infected air "Contagion suck'd; millions of vipers swarm'd "In our uncultur'd fields, our running streams "Tainting with poison. First the sudden plague "Its power display'd, on sheep, on dogs, on fowls, "Cattle, and forest beasts with deadly power. "The hapless ploughman, wondering, at his work "Sees his strong oxen in the furrow sink. "The woolly flocks with sickly bleatings waste "In body, while their wool spontaneous falls. "The steed so fiery, on the dusty plain "So fam'd, the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... make poets happy. Nay, have we not seen another instance of it in these very days? Byron, a man of an endowment considerably less ethereal than that of Burns, is born in the rank not of a Scottish ploughman, but of an English peer: the highest worldly honors, the fairest worldly career, are his by inheritance: the richest harvest of fame he soon reaps, in another province, by his own hand. And what does all this avail him? Is he happy, is he good, is he true? Alas, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... was a remarkable man even by what was known of him; and that was but a small part of what he actually did. Although of a placid temper in ordinary circumstances, and accustomed to take the world with as much philosophy as any ploughman, the Prince of Bohemia was not without a taste for ways of life more adventurous and eccentric than that to which he was destined by his birth. Now and then, when he fell into a low humour, when there was no laughable play to witness in any of the London theatres, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from all kinds of people, and now he marked with human sympathy each little homestead with its belt of firs against the winter's storms, and its stackyard where the corn had been gathered safe; the ploughman and his horses cutting brown ribbons in the bare stubble; dark squares where the potato stalks have withered to the ground, and women are raising the roots, and here and there a few cattle still out in the fields. His eye fell on the great wood through which he had rambled in August, now one blaze ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... plods his homeward way, The ploughman, weary, plods his homeward way, His homeward way the weary ploughman plods, His homeward way the ploughman weary plods, The weary ploughman homeward plods his way, The ploughman, weary, homeward plods his way, His way, the weary ploughman homeward plods, His ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herds Mind slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way And leaves the world to ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... knowledge; and, but a comparatively small part of useful knowledge comes from books. Men are not to be called ignorant merely because they cannot make upon paper certain marks with a pen, or because they do not know the meaning of such marks when made by others. A ploughman may be very learned in his line, though he does not know what the letters p. l. o. u. g. h mean when he sees them combined upon paper. The first thing to be required of a man is, that he understand well his own calling, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... The ploughman inly smiles to see upturn His mellow globe, best pledge of future crop: With glee the gardener eyes his smoking beds; E'en pining sickness feels ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... to the calamity, or our national credit must be destroyed, by showing the public creditors the inability of the nation to repay them their principal money.—Bounties had already been given for recruits which exceeded the year's wages of the ploughman and reaper; and as these were exhausted, and husbandry stood still for want of hands, the manufacturers were next to be tempted to quit the anvil and the loom by higher offers.—France, bankrupt France, had no such calamities impending over ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... have occasionally beheld a ploughman, bricklayer, gardener, weaver, or blacksmith, begin his work in the morning, I have envied him the readiness and willingness with which he took to it. The plough-man, after he has got his horses ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... didst outswim the flood; Tortoise! whereon earth hath stood; Boar! who with thy tush held'st high The world, that mortals might not die; Lion! who hast giants torn; Dwarf! who laugh'dst a king to scorn; Sole Subduer of the Dreaded! Slayer of the many-headed! Mighty Ploughman! Teacher tender! Of thine own the sure Defender! Under all thy ten disguises Endless praise ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... Peter wears a huge greatcoat threadbare and patched itself, yet carefully so disposed and secured by what buttons remain, and many supplementary pins, as to conceal the still more infirm state of his under garments. The shoes and stockings of a ploughman were, however, seen to meet at his knees with a pair of brownish, blackish breeches; a rusty-coloured handkerchief, that has been black in its day, surrounded his throat, and was an apology for linen. His hair, half grey, half black, escaped in elf-locks around a huge wig, made of ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... public regeneration. "The French people," says Robespierre, "seems to have outstripped the rest of humanity, by two thousand years; one might be tempted to regard them, living amongst them, as a different species. In the rest of Europe, a ploughman, an artisan, is an animal formed for the pleasures of a noble; in France, the nobles are trying to transform themselves into ploughmen and artisans, but do not succeed in obtaining that honor."[21111] Life in all directions is gradually assuming democratic forms Wealthy ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Marston, more tired than any ploughman or watchman, or any other son of labour from this to John O'Groat's House. I was sent for, from the House, six hours ago, and every hour since have I been poring over those puzzled papers. How long I can stand this wear and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... whichever way you turned, that ledger in the road, with none to read it, was the gospel promising that life should rise again; the suggestion of a forgotten but surviving virtue which would return, and cover the dread we knew, till a ploughman of the future would stop at rare relics, holding them up to the sun, and dimly recall ancient ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... seaman's star, The ploughman from the sun his season takes; But still the lover wonders what they are, Who look for day before his mistress wakes. Awake, awake! break thro' your veils of lawn! Then draw your curtains, and ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... be planted and nails can be hammered, bill-hooks can be wielded and faggots chopped, no matter what the inward care. The ploughman is deeply in debt, poor fellow, but he can, and does, follow the plough, and finds, perhaps, some solace in the dull monotony of his labour. Clods cannot feel. A sensitive mind and vivid imagination—a delicately-balanced organization, that almost lives on its ideas as ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... work as he deified strength; and so often stimulated his imitators to attempt to leap beyond their shadows. Hard work will not do everything: a man can only accomplish what he was born fit for. Many, in the first flush of ambition doomed to wreck, are blind to the fact that it is not in every ploughman to be a poet, nor in every prize-student to be a philosopher. Nature does half: after all perhaps the larger half. Genius has been inadequately defined as "an infinite capacity for taking trouble"; no amount of pumping can draw more water than is in the ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... of the flower uprooted in the ploughed field? The ploughman who does not look beyond its boundaries and does not raise his eyes from the ground? No,—but the poet who sees that field in its relations with the universe, and looks oftener to the sky than on the ground. Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though, in truth, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the period of my infatuation for Psyche, there were complaints from every province of the universe. It was said that unless my attention could be in a measure diverted from that admirable girl, there would be something like a stagnation of general vitality. Phoebus remarked one day, that if the ploughman became the plough the cessation of harvests ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... lumber, furs, and salted fish were beginning to be sent to England in exchange for manufactured articles; 4000 goats and 1500 head of cattle grazed in the pastures, and swine innumerable rooted in the clearings and helped to make ready the land for the ploughman. Political meetings were held, justice was administered by magistrates after old English precedents, and church services were performed by a score of clergymen, nearly all graduates of Cambridge, though one or two had their degrees from Oxford, ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... looks at our little diversion in the benevolent spirit of the giant whose daughter brought home ploughman, oxen, and all in her apron for playthings," said Viola, who with Eustace had found her way to us, but we were all divided again, Viola being carried off by some grandee, Eustace having to search for some noble damsel to whom he had been introduced, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by Science than an excellence of art: in the other sense, we think some to be Scientific in a general way, not in any particular line or in any particular thing, just as Homer says of a man in his Margites; "Him the Gods made neither a digger of the ground, nor ploughman, nor in any ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... be gaping and marvelling and rushing about, and what then? In a week or two the ploughman would settle down to his plough, the carpenter to his bench, the smith to his anvil, the merchant to his money, and the dead come to life would be utterly forgotten. No matter in what manner the possibilities of human life are put before the world, the crowd ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... and he was always careful to set his hat, his riding-whip and his gloves and cape behind the door. Then, bareheaded, he took his place on the right hand of his host at the long oaken table, to which in due order came son, daughter, house-maiden, out-lass, ploughman and herd. The only difference was that when it came to the blessing upon the food to be partaken of, Adam the Laird stood up, while the others sat still with bowed heads. Why this was, no one knew, not even Adam or Diarmid. But so it had been in the time of their fathers, and so it would continue ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... rose, through all this garden-land, May shed its rich perfume, But I would rather wander 'mong My country's bonnie broom. There sings the shepherd on the hill, The ploughman on the lea; There lives my blithesome mountain maid, O Scotland's hills ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... many a toil-worn weaver at life's heavy loom. To lay aside the world's distressing cares at sunset, to wipe his moistened brow, and "homeward plod his weary way" to his cabin small and lowly, where glows this cheerful love in one dear breast, in one sweet face, is to the uncouth "ploughman" a joy, a comfort, which many a prince ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... the Old World,—that part of it which is the seat of ancient civilization! The stakes of the Britons' stockades are still standing in the bed of the Thames. The ploughman turns up an old Saxon's bones, and beneath them is a tessellated pavement of the time of the Caesars. In Italy, the works of mediaeval Art seem to be of yesterday,—Rome, under her kings, is but an intruding new-comer, as we contemplate her in the shadow of the Cyclopean ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... was the experience of Archie's father. At the best, it had been only with thrift ends could be got to meet, but as he aged it was a struggle. The children had to help. Archie hired with a farmer and in time rose to be ploughman; Mirren after learning to be a dressmaker, found to be in service was preferable. What they could spare of their earnings it was their pride to give in order to keep a home for their parents. While still a boy Archie had shaped in ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... you a prime character as a drover or a ploughman or a carter or a dairyman or a housemaid or a curate or anything you like except a looker. Why should I give you eighteen shillun a week as my looker—twenty shillun, as I've made it now—when my best wether could ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... the gravestone of Burns,—the very same that was laid over his grave by Jean Armour, before this monument was built. Displayed against the surrounding wall is a marble statue of Burns at the plough, with the Genius of Caledonia summoning the ploughman to turn poet. Methought it was not a very successful piece of work; for the plough was better sculptured than the man, and the man, though heavy and cloddish, was more effective than the goddess. Our guide informed us that an old man ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... whose favored ear In golden days to come shall hear The ploughman, as he tills the ground, The tarter, as he drives his round, The shopman, as his task he plies, With psalms or sacred melodies Whiling the hours of toil away! O, happy he who hears the lay Of shepherd and of shepherdess, As ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body. This sense is submitted, indeed, in some degree, to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a less one than what we call common sense. State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules. In this branch, therefore, read good books, because they will encourage, as well as direct your feelings. The ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... flight of his countrymen in the battle of Luncarty and won the victory over the Danes by the help of the yoke of his oxen—exhausted with the fray uttered the exclamation "Hoch heigh!" The grateful king about to ennoble the victorious ploughman at once replied: ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... age of twelve, when my head reached but little above the handles, and for many years I had to do the greater part of the ploughing. It was hard work for so small a boy; nevertheless, as good ploughing was exacted from me as if I were a man, and very soon I had to become a good ploughman, or rather ploughboy. None could draw a straighter furrow. For the first few years the work was particularly hard on account of the tree-stumps that had to be dodged. Later the stumps were all dug and chopped out to make way for the McCormick reaper, and because I proved to be the best chopper ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... may cast himself at length under the first tree that invites him, and repose there as safely as if he were in a palace. Fearless of damps, and unmolested by noxious insects, his sleep is as sound as it is refreshing, and he rises with renewed spirits to pursue his journey. Equally so may the ploughman or the labourer seek repose beside his team, and allow them to graze quietly around him. The delicious coolness of the morning and the mild temperature of the evening air, in that luxurious climate, are beyond the power of description. ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... the earth To the god's pregnant footing thrilled within. Or whiles, beside the sobbing stream, he breathed, In his clutched pipe unformed and wizard strains Divine yet brutal; which the forest heard, And thou, with awe; and far upon the plain The unthinking ploughman ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... protection." Here the effect naturally to be expected from the clashing of inconsistent revenues appeared in its full light, as well as the state of the unfortunate peasants of Bengal between such rival protectors, where the ploughman, flying from the tax-gatherer, is obliged to take refuge under the wings of the monopolist. No dispute arises amongst the English subjects which does not divulge the misery of the natives; when the former are in harmony, all is well ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... tea, coffee, and chocolate. I was instantly obliged to provide cold fowl, ham, oysters, white wine, &c. I marvel not at the strength and vigour of these French belles. In appetite, they would cope with an English ploughman, who had just turned up an acre of wholesome land on ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... break, grind, and digest it. And, indeed, if day-laborers, and handicraftsmen were allowed the high, strong food of men of condition, and the quiet and much-thinking persons were confined to the farmer and ploughman's food, it would be much ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... him more than he can use so he will not ask for more, and will not take it: it is true that his work may be more special than another's, but it is not more necessary if you have organized labour properly; the ploughman and the fisherman are as necessary to society as the scientist or the artist, I will not say more necessary: neither is the difficulty of producing the more special and excellent work at all proportionate to its speciality or excellence: the higher workman produces his work as easily ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... The ploughman, tho' he labour hard, Yet on the holy-day Heigh trolollie lollie foe, etc. No emperor so merrily Does pass his time ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... The ploughman stopped his team, to watch The train, as swift it thundered by; Some distant glimpse of life to catch, He strains his ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... aw despise;— False pride an wild ambition; Tho' ivvery man should strive to rise, An better his condition. Aw hate a meean an grovlin soul, I' breast ov peer or ploughman, But what aw hate the mooast ov all, Is th' chap 'at ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... The ploughman mounting up the height Becomes a glowing shape, as though 'Twere young Triptolemus, plough in hand, While Ceres in her amber scarf With gentle love directs him how To wed the willing earth and hope ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... devolve upon us and the innumerable demands increasing with the accumulation of means and workers call for a new kind of service in leadership. Political necessity has supplanted the reform epoch; the reapers of the harvest have replaced the ploughman and seed sower, each equally needed in the process of the cultivation and the development of an ideal as in the harvest of the land. When this movement began its pioneers were reformers, people who saw a vision and dreamed dreams of the time when all mankind should be free ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... robb'd by turns, the dreamer sees:— Land of poor-grinding lords and faithless priests, Where wisdom starves and folly thrones at ease 'Mid lavishness and lusts and knaveries; Times out of joint, a universe of lies, Till Love divine appear in Ploughman's guise ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... what?" echoed the King with rising voice. "For this; that the ploughman on the plain may reap what he has sown; that the shepherd on the hillside may enjoy the increase which comes to his flock; that taxation may be light; that my nobles shall deal honestly with the people, and not use their position ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... formation, which the old ice sheet had broken and shouldered and transported about. About every five or six acres had loose stones and rock enough to put a rock-bottomed wall around it and still leave enough in and on the soil to worry the ploughman and the mower. All the farms in that section reposing in the valleys and bending up and over the broad-backed hills are checker-boards of stone walls, and the right- angled fields, in their many colours of green and brown and yellow and red, give ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... idea by the present generation, of the folly in such respects, of these early ages. But these follies were not confined to the laiety. Affectation of parade, and gaudy cloathing, were admitted among many of the clergy, who incurred the severest invectives of the poets on that account. The ploughman, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, is full upon this point. He gives us the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... tremors and gave him the appearance of being asleep. Early next morning, with his terror still on him, he told what he had heard to his brother, and by and by, unable to keep the dreadful secret, they related it to someone—a carter or ploughman on the farm. He in turn told the farmer, who at once gave information, and in a short time the man and woman were arrested. In due time they were tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged in the parish where the crime ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... horses, bullocks, or heifers. Bullocks and heifers are, however, more commonly used than horses, though it is no unusual sight to see a horse and a heifer yoked together. There is no boy to drive; but the ploughman, as in Scotland, at once holds the stilts of the plough, and with his voice, and a long halter, guides the cattle. With respect to the harrows, I saw little difference between them and our English implements, except that those in Germany are lighter, and never have more than one horse or one bullock ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... come, and to the siege of Aberdeen marched a hungry half-dozen—three of them from Thrums, two from the Glenuharity school. The sixth was Tod Lindertis, a ploughman from the Dubb of Prosen, his place of study the bothy after lousing time (Do you hear the klink of quoits?) or a one-roomed house near it, his tutor a dogged little woman, who knew not the accusative from the dative, but never tired of holding the book while ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... rude vplandisshe ploughman, on a tyme[185] reprouynge a good holy father sayd, that he coude saye all his prayers with a hole mynde and stedfaste intention, without thinkyng on any other thynge. To whome the good holy man sayde: Go to, saye one ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... trouble was not in vain; it seemed to invite all those who waited and were anxious to trust their care to Him and seek repose. It was all this, and much more, to many people: and yet, when it spread in another direction over the fields, it meant nothing to the yawning ploughman, either musical or poetical, had no significance whatever for him if it were not of the time of day, gathered, however, with the help of sundry other sensations of which hunger and fatigue were chief. It probably conveyed as much, and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... I ran and opened the door; and wha think ye I saw but Jean Graham, Mr. Napier's cook, with een like twa candles, and her mouth as wide as if she had been to swallow the biggest sup of porridge that ever crossed ploughman's craig?" ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... find a desolation pregnant with the dire lesson of example? The fields had been left uncultivated, weeds and gaudy flowers sprung up,—or where a few wheat-fields shewed signs of the living hopes of the husbandman, the work had been left halfway, the ploughman had died beside the plough; the horses had deserted the furrow, and no seedsman had approached the dead; the cattle unattended wandered over the fields and through the lanes; the tame inhabitants of the poultry yard, baulked of their ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Ossian, for any thing that I have heard, could neither write nor read.' The author is indeed a striking example of native genius bursting through the obscurity of poverty and the obstructions of laborious life. He is said to be a common ploughman; and when we consider him in this light, we cannot help regretting that wayward fate had not placed him in a more favoured situation. Those who view him with the severity of lettered criticism, and judge him by the fastidious rules of art, will discover that he has not the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... again, that prudence and foresight are the gifts of God; and God's gifts are surely meant to be used. Isaiah, too, tells us that the common work of the farm, tilling the ground, sowing, and reaping, were taught to men by God; and says of the ploughman, that 'His God doth instruct him to discretion and doth teach him.' Neither can God mean us to sit idle with folded hands waiting to be fed by miracles. Would He have given to man reason, and skill, and the power of bettering his mortal condition by ten thousand ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley |
