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Reedy   /rˈidi/   Listen
Reedy

adjective
1.
Having a tone of a reed instrument.  Synonym: wheezy.
2.
Resembling a reed in being upright and slender.  Synonym: reedlike.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Reedy" Quotes from Famous Books



... west lettered from A to Z, and thriving, light-hearted throngs were pursuing their various occupations upon ground which had once seemed like a Noah's ark to me. Yes, this was the very spot where with wondering eyes I had watched nature's untamed herds winding through the reedy paths to the river bank, to quench ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

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

... in the west end of the church, in which stood a little organ, whose voice, weakened by years of praising, and possibly of neglect, had yet, among a good many tones that were rough, wooden, and reedy, a few remaining that were as mellow as ever praiseful heart could wish to praise withal. And these came in amongst the rest like trusting thoughts amidst "eating cares;" like the faces of children borne in the arms of a crowd of anxious mothers; like hopes that ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

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

... gully. Being quite a young horse we thought he might regain strength, and did not like to kill him, so we left him and proceeded to find a good place for camping, which we did after travelling about four miles in the north-west direction, by the side of a fine river, with steep reedy banks, lined with large casuarinas and flooded-gum trees, and abundance of grass growing in the valley of the river. At this camp the feet of our horses were all carefully examined by Costigan, who was a blacksmith: it was also ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... next year was out the poor boy was dead—murdered by some miscreant for the handful of gold in his possession, down in the lonely bush about Reedy Creek. ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt

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

... broad plains; reedy marshes along Iranian border in south with large flooded areas; mountains along borders with ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

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

... fours, the Chisee crept through the circular exit, and straightened up. As he did so, from out of the darkness a score or more of his fellows rushed up, gathering around him, and blocking the exit with their reedy legs. We could hear than talking excitedly in high-pitched, squeaky whispers. Then, suddenly I received an expression from the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

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

... kingfisher, the partridge, and the sparrow-may be classed with our European species, while others betray their equatorial origin in the brightness of their colours. White and black ibises, red flamingoes, pelicans, and cormorants enliven the waters of the river, and animate the reedy swamps of the Delta in infinite variety. They are to be seen ranged in long files upon the sand-banks, fishing and basking in the sun; suddenly the flock is seized with panic, rises heavily, and settles away further ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... and scare rats and kill cockroaches with slippers, until driven by the solar heat to rise again unrefreshed to wrestle through another relentless day. We read the "Idylls of the King" and talked of misty meres and reedy fens, of the cool north, with its purple hills, leaping streams, and life-giving breezes, of long northern winters, and ice and snow, but the realities of sultriness and damp scared away our coolest imaginations. In this dismal region, when about forty miles east of Tutuila, a beast popularly ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

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

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

... off, just where one did not expect her. She would have been in the lake of a night too, if she could have had her way; for the balcony of her window overhung a deep pool in it; and through a shallow reedy passage she could have swum out into the wide wet water, and no one would have been any the wiser. Indeed when she happened to wake in the moonlight, she could hardly resist the temptation. But there was the sad difficulty ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... road is perfectly level for thirteen miles, through gravel flats and swamps, very monotonous, but with a wild charm of its own. There were swampy lakes, with wild ducks and small white water-lilies, and the surrounding levels were covered with reedy grass, flowers, and weeds. The early autumn has withered a great many of the flowers; but enough remains to show how beautiful the now russet plains must have been in the early summer. A dwarf rose, of a deep crimson colour, with orange, medlar-shaped hips, as large as crabs, and corollas ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... reedy Nile Thou hast ever held thy way, Where the embryo crocodile In the damp sedge lay; When the river monster's eye Kindled at thy passing by, And the pliant reeds were bending Where his blackened form was wending, And the basking serpent ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard

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

... it over here. Come to my room after dinner and bring Landor and James with you. I'll have Reedy and Keller there. I'll mention casually that it's a big game of poker, and I'll have cards and drinks sent up. You want to remember we can't be too careful. If it ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... the shrubbery calling her to come forth, beating the currant and gooseberry bushes in search of her. A shadow flitted past me toward the house, and at the gate I intercepted the girl. Better I had let her alone. My heart misgave me at sight of her face; indeed the whole sweep of her lithesome reedy figure was pregnant ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... to give battle, and the men of Chlat pressed him sorely. His horse was caught in the reedy marsh of Tschechur.[30] With difficulty he crawled out of the bog and reached the waters of ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous

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

... wilderness, on the sandy shores of the inland seas. You have seen the trails of the Indian and the deer replaced by highways of steel, and upon the spots where the first immigrants corralled their wagons, and the voyagers dragged their canoes upon the reedy shore, you have seen arise great cities, centres of industry, of commerce, of art, attaining in a generation the proportions and the world-wide fame of cities that were already famous ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

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

... belief," that reedy youth said, with profound finality, "they're working fer a bust up. I'd gamble one o' Arizona's hogs to a junk o' sow-belly ther' ain't no more of them rustlers around come the fall. Things is hot, an' they're goin' to hit the trail, takin' all ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... horse and set off on her quest. Alice, left alone, secured her horse and proceeded to disgorge the contents of her saddle-bags, and also those on her friend's saddle. This done, she stepped down to the water's edge, and, pushing the reedy vegetation on one side, filled the kettle. As she rose from her task she looked out down the wide inlet. The view was an enchanting one. The wooded banks opposite her rose abruptly from the water, overshadowing it, and throwing a black reflection upon its still surface. There was not a breath ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... the Gods! Fulvia," he replied, "I am but a sorry epicure, and I love the boar better in his reedy fen, or his wild thicket on the Umbrian hills, with his eye glaring red in rage, and his tusks white with foam, than girt with condiments and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... below, on the south, is the head of Barnegat Bay, a deep, narrow estuary which runs into and along the Jersey coast for more than half its extent, leaving outside a strip of sandy beach, never more than a mile wide. All kinds of sea fish and fowl take refuge in this bay and the interminable reedy marshes, and for a few weeks in the snipe-and duck-season sportsmen from New York find their way to "Shattuck's" and the houses of other old water-dogs along the bay. But during the rest of the year the wooden ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... he went on, gazing over towards where a flock of wild ducks had suddenly settled upon a reedy swamp, and were noisily revelling in the water, "did your uncle ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... other ways. Oh! I know it! I know it! I am a woman, and I know a woman's heart. What were the lack of food or the plenitude of it; what were feast or famine to this woman, born in a palace, with the shadow of the Crown of the Two Egypts on her brows! What were reedy morasses or the tinkle of running water to her whose barges could sweep the great Nile from the mountains to the sea. What were petty joys and absence of petty fears to her, the raising of whose hand could hurl ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

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

... bridge below the lake where the woods divided to right and left at the foot of the great home-park. A cold fog lay over the water and the reedy islands where the wild duck and moorhens were just beginning to stir, but above it a glint or two of sunshine touched the wintry boughs, and while it grew and ran along them and lit up their snowy upper surfaces as with diamonds, a full morning beam ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

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

... to think this out. The country was changing now. They had left stubble fields and hedges behind, and before them the granite road stretched like a white ribbon, with moors on either hand, dotted with peat-ricks and reedy pools and cropping ponies, and rimmed in the distance with clay-works ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... figure of Mrs. Baker was very out of place in this setting. Her voice was poignant, reedy. A look at her made it evident that she was a conventional, good woman. She had soft, cloudy golden eyes and a pathetic mouth, and she seemed on the point ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

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

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

... amid sparse and stunted trees and reeds, a great wide sluggish river with low banks, flowing so slowly that it hardly seemed to flow at all. Rooks flew past, but they are hardly wilding birds; a crow—yes, we saw one; and I thought of a heron rising slowly out of one of the reedy islands; maybe an otter or two survives the persecution of the peasant, and I liked to think of a poacher picking up a rabbit here and there; hares must have almost disappeared, even the flock and the shepherd. France is not as picturesque a country as England; only ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... of felled trees cumbered the ground, more tobacco, and then, in worn fields where the tobacco had been, knee-deep wheat rippling in the evening breeze. The wheat ran down to a marsh, and to a wide, slow creek that, save in the shadow of its reedy banks, was blue as the sky above. Haward, riding slowly beside his green fields and still waters, noted with quiet, half-regretful pleasure this or that remembered feature of the landscape. There had been little ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... water, nay, in running fresh water; for in still water, however pure, the eggs in a few weeks addle and die. The eggs of the common trout also require to be deposited in running fresh water; while other fresh water fishes, such as the tench and carp, are reared most successfully in still, reedy ponds. The fresh water fishes spawn, too, at very different seasons, and the young remain for very different periods in the egg. The perch and grayling spawn in the end of April or the beginning of May; the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... runs to the river and the river to the sea; But the reedy banks of Bullington are good enough for me; Oh the road runs to the highway and the highway o'er the down, But it's just as good in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various

... Fig. 2) made of the inner fibre of what I was told was another creeping plant [36] and the stem of a plant which I believe to be one of the Dendrobiums [37]; made and worn by men only. The fibres of the former plant are stained black; the reedy stems of the other plant are put in short bamboo stems filled with water, and then boiled. They are then easily split up into flattish straws, and become a colour varying from rather bright yellow to brown. ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... cross-pieces. Then rafters of bamboo were bound in position with the strong creepers which abounded, and this done, he began thatching, first with green boughs, then with a layer of palm-like leaves, which he made to overlap, and a strong reedy grass, that grew abundantly in a low moist place by the river, was bound on ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn

... no reply, And would have turned to toss the grass to dry; But he turned first, and led my eye to look At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook, A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared. I left my place to know them by their name, Finding them butterfly weed when I came. The mower in the dew had loved them thus, By leaving them to flourish, not for us, Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him. But from sheer morning gladness at the brim. ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost

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

... barren furrower of anointed fields; The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky, Her hated enemy, too long her scourge: Great Ares. And they gagged his trumpet mouth When they had seized on his implacable spear, Hugged him to reedy helplessness despite His godlike fury startled from amaze. For he had eyed them nearing him in play, The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled, Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there On Earth's original fisticuffs they called ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... with its many churches and towers, and for many miles you see the magnificent Tagus, rolling by banks crowned with trees and towers. But to arrive at this enormous building you have to climb a steep suburb of wretched huts, many of them with dismal gardens of dry cracked earth, where a few reedy sprouts of Indian corn seemed to be the chief cultivation, and which were guarded by huge plants of spiky aloes, on which the rags of the proprietors of the huts were sunning themselves. The terrace before the palace was similarly encroached upon by these wretched ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... have taken to drink through love; she remembered that lovers' existences were said to be punctuated with heavy sighs. Once she went to the little cottage piano that was in the corner of the hall and began to play. It was a tinkly, reedy instrument, for none of that household had any turn for music. Nancy herself could play a few simple songs, and she found herself playing. She had been sitting on the window seat, looking out on the fading day. Leonora had gone ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... new creek, running westerly into another, or else into a large eucalyptus flat or swamp, which had no apparent outlet. This heavy timber could be seen for two or three miles. Advancing still further, I soon discovered that we were upon the reedy banks of a fast flowing stream, whose murmuring waters, ever rushing idly and unheeded on, were now for the first time disclosed to the delighted ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... were leaping up to assail him. Being recognized, they say, in spite of his disguise by some one who met him he was saluted as emperor; consequently he turned aside from the road and hid himself in a kind of reedy place. There he waited till daylight, lying flat on the ground so as to run the least risk of being seen. Every one who passed he suspected had come for him; he started at every voice, thinking it to be that of some one searching for him: if a dog barked anywhere or a bird chirped, or a ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... follows fast in the wake of Tamdka. On the slopes of the emerald shores leafy woodlands and prairies alternate; On the vine-tangled islands the flowers peep timidly out at the white men; In the dark-winding eddy the loon sits warily, watching and voiceless, And the wild goose, in reedy lagoon, stills the prattle and play of her children. The does and their sleek, dappled fawns prick their ears and peer out from the thickets, And the bison-calves play on the lawns, and gambol like colts in the clover. Up the still flowing ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... about the steading A fortnight, say, or more; A blanket for his bedding We spread beside the door; And when the cocks crowed clearly Before the dawn was ripe, He'd call the milkmaids cheerly Upon a reedy pipe! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

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

... grassy corners and followed many such reedy and silent reaches of river; but before the search had become monotonous they had swung round a specially sharp angle and come into the silence of a sort of pool or lake, the sight of which instinctively arrested them. For in the middle of this wider piece of water, fringed on ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... had started when she reached the theatre. As she entered the dark auditorium, voices came to her with that thin and reedy effect which is produced by people talking in an empty building. She sat down at the back of the house, and, as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, was able to see Gerald sitting in the front row beside a man with a bald head fringed with orange hair ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... I hadde in custom / to come to scole late Nat for to lerne / but for a contenaunce with my felawys / reedy to debate to Iangle and Iape / was set al my plesaunce wherof rebukyd / this was my chevisaunce to forge a lesyng / and therupon to muse whan I trespasyd / my ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... his pillow, pulling the blankets tight about his body. He closed his eyes and tried not to listen to the distant screams, pipings and reedy cries filtering down from the ...
— Small World • William F. Nolan

... gray sky and leaden clouds softly shaded in regular billows, like an India-ink ocean, overhead, and a somewhat muddy lane before you. Then to pick one's way across the plashy meadows, and, after a ticklish pass of jumping from one reedy tussock to another, to get once more upon the firm soil, while the grass, dry and crisp under your feet, gives a pleasant whish, whish, as it does the duty of street-door-mat to your mud-beclogged ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... we turned to the left down a narrow canal, and soon the Wular lay—a sheet of molten gold—upon our right; and by the time we had moored alongside a low strip of reedy bank, the glorious rosy lights had faded from the snows of the Pir Panjal, and their royal purple and gold had turned to soft ebony against the primrose of ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... deep into the water, but it stopped somewhere, and I made a cast. The black water boiled, and the trout went straight down and sulked. I merely held on, till at last it seemed "time for us to go," and by cautious tugging I got him through the reedy jungle, and "gruppit him," as the Shepherd would have said. He was simply but decently wrapped round, from snout to tail, in very fine water-weeds, as in a garment. Moreover, he was as black as your hat, quite unlike the comely yellow trout who live on the gravel ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... head of an enormous reptile, of lizard shape, that had crawled out from a reedy covert on the opposite side of the river, and having silently let itself down into the water, was now swimming toward the terrified bather. There could be no mistaking the monster's intent, for it was ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... dry-rotted 'native apple-trees' (about as much like apple-trees as the native bear is like any other), and a nasty bit of sand-dusty road that I was always glad to get over in wet weather. To the left on our side of the creek were reedy marshes, with frogs croaking, and across the creek the dark box-scrub-covered ridges ended in steep 'sidings' coming down to the creek-bank, and to the main road that skirted them, running on west up ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... infiltration of the Nile, which caused the growth of a vegetation sufficient to support the flocks during a few weeks; and it may also have included the imperfectly irrigated provinces which were covered with pools and reedy swamps after ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... twenty miles above Tientsin.—September 10th.—Two P.M.—This morning we started at about five, and reached this encampment soon after seven. A very nice ride, cool, and through a succession of crops of millet; a stiff, reedy stem, some twelve or fourteen feet high, with a tuft on the top, is the physiognomy of the millet stalk. It would puzzle the Tartar cavalry to charge us through this crop. As it is, we have seen no enemy; and Mr. Parkes has induced the inhabitants to sell us a good many sheep and oxen. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... of whistling shaft in forefront of the fight, A youth, e'en Tyrrheus' eldest son, by name of Almo hight, Was laid alow: there in his throat the reedy bane abode, And shut with blood the path of speech, the tender life-breath's road. And many a body fell around: there, thrusting through the press With peaceful word, Galaesus old died in his righteousness; Most just ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... resounded uproariously through the dome. Suddenly the character of the music changed, ... from an appealing murmurous complaint and persuasion, it rose to a martial and almost menacing fervor; the roll of drums and the shrill, reedy warbling of pipes and other fluty minstrelsy crossed the silvery thread of strung harps and viols, ... the light from the fiery globe shot forth a new effulgence, this time in two broad rays, one a dazzling, pale azure, the other a clear, pearly ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... marsh stream; yet for some distance in from the mouth tall cypresses stand along the reedy banks. These trees protected us from the high wind and made it easy for us to take Gadabout up ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... last fellow said," remarked the hill billy, grinningly. "Reedy Jenkins was out yesterday figuring on buyin' the lease; and he said: 'If I ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby

... down by the reedy river, he saw Argo sliding up beneath the bank, and many a hero in her, like immortals for beauty and for strength, as their weapons glittered round them in the level morning sunlight, through the white mist of the stream. But Jason ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... figure might have been that of some Christian martyr, the probable patron saint of Cagayan. Before the principal altar stood quaint prayer stools of ebony carved to resemble kneeling human figures, and in the loft was a very good organ, though somewhat high-pitched and reedy in tone. ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... the starboard bow, the low, reedy levels of Foam Island came into view, and in a few minutes more the dory lay in the shallows, oars, mast, and rag stowed; and the two young people splashed busily about in their hip boots, carrying guns, ammunition, ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers

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

... cayman-haunted Apure, and we shall gaze upon a different scene. All around us, the plain extends in the same desolate immensity that we noticed when we looked upon it from the hato; still, as before, we see it covered with a dense wilderness of reedy grasses that overtop the tallest trooper in Morillo's army; as before, we notice the scattered palm-islands, breaking here and there the uniformity of level; and hosts of cattle and wild horses are still roaming ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... dwelt contentedly for years on the banks of a reedy stream, looked up one day and saw ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips

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

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

... lips . . ." in a whisper which gradually developed into a reedy soprano. She had forgotten half the words, but Adam lit a pipe and ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... our organist, averred his superiority to Packy Soule, whom he superseded, and was supported in this estimate by the remainder of the choir, with the exception of Roland Barnette, who helped with his reedy tenor. Josie Lockwood sang contralto and Bess Gabriel what we were informed was soprano—only Radville called it a treble. Tracey Tanner pumped the organ and puffed audibly in the pauses—a singular testimony to his devotion ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

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

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

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

... then the voluble, reedy voice continued, "But he was wild when he came home and found you and Mary so thick, and everybody just waiting for the announcement that it was a match. Why, he had the whole thing planned, the very day ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

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

... was a very reedy oboe or clarinet, a pipe played with a reed, the pitch determined by holes stopped by the fingers. These instruments were so hard to blow that the players wore bands over their cheeks because there were cases ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... the living things that do not sleep by night, but make music by reedy pools, in underwood, among the blades of grass and along the banks of streams, were audible to her again, filling her mind with the mystery of existence. The glassy note of the frogs was like a falling of something small and pointed upon a sheet ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

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

... the east and west by vast reedy swamps, is the haunt of numerous flocks of ducks, storks, and vultures, which act as scavengers to the town. In this market, stocked with all the provisions in use in Africa, beef, mutton, goats' and sometimes even ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

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

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

... can,' I answered, gazing out over the broad, reedy, dead-coloured plain, which extended from the other side of the winding Parret to the distant Polden Hills. 'I can see them over yonder in the direction of Westonzoyland, as bright ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... dusty men, its quivering mirage of hot air, its strings of patient hay-nibbling donkeys, which look as if they had just awakened out of a flour bin. Above, a green down stretches up to bright yellow furze-crofts far aloft. Behind a reedy marsh, covered with red cattle, paves the valley till it closes in; the steep sides of the hills are clothed in oak and ash covert, in which, three months ago, you could have shot more cocks in one day than you would in Berkshire in a year. Pleasant ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... the paper there, right on the bed," said Amy, in her reedy, colourless little voice, as Nina stopped suddenly. "Oo—oo, I thought Nina would die!" Nina began to cry again, but more quietly. "I guess I had better go—" Amy ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... herds Which pastured near and nearer to their death Round my day-lair; or underneath the stars I roamed for prey, savage, insatiable, Sniffing the paths for track of man and deer. Amid the beasts that were my fellows then, Met in deep jungle or by reedy jheel, A tigress, comeliest of the forest, set The males at war; her hide was lit with gold, Black-broidered like the veil Yasodhara Wore for me; hot the strife waged in that wood With tooth and claw, while underneath a neem The fair ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold

... They drove on in silence through the dusk. So they came to the point at which the coast road turns inward towards Lapton Huish, a lonely spot where the cliffs break away into low hills, and the highroad runs between a ridge of shingle on one side and on the other two reedy meres. The night was windless, and they heard no sound but a faint shivering of reed-beds, and the plash and withdrawal of languid waves lapping the miles of fine shingle with a faint hiss like that of grain ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young

... again accompanied the Indian chief on foot, in chase of moose. We caught sight of a large animal feeding in the open, but could not for a long time get near it. At last it moved off, and we followed till it approached a small pond with a reedy island towards one end of it. The moose plunged into the pond and swam towards the reeds, among which it disappeared. There was apparently no firm footing for it, and it must have remained almost ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston

... In reedy swamp and lonely marsh, Where all is shade and gloom, The Bittern stalks, and you may hear His ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous

... difficulty was to reach it, for the treacherous ground of the fens afforded no firm footing for an army; there was not water enough for boats, no station for archers, no space for a charge of the ponderous knights, amongst the reedy pools. William decided on constructing a causeway, and employed workmen to cut trenches to drain off the water, and raise the bank of stones and turf, under the superintendence of Ivo Taillebois. However, Hereward was on the alert, harassing them perpetually, breaking on them sometimes on ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... there were in it. Malcolm sat a little aside as usual, with his face towards the ladies, and the book open in his hand, waiting a sign to begin, but looking at the lake, which here was some fifty yards broad, reedy at the edge, dark and deep in the centre. All at once he sprang to his feet, dropping the book, ran down to the brink of the water, undoing his buckled belt and pulling off his coat as he ran, threw himself over the bordering reeds into ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

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

... no excitement until about five o'clock, when a moose and her calf are espied, well out of range. Each in his narrow cell, we sleep the sleep of the just and wake to find ourselves tied to the bank. The captain fears a storm is brooding on Great Slave Lake; so, tethered at the marge of the reedy lagoon, we wait all the forenoon. A corner of Great Slave Lake has to be traversed in order ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... by rail from Lower Roumania to the romantic and broken country surrounding Orsova are extremely interesting. The Danube-stretches of shimmering water among the reedy lowlands—where the only sign of life is a quaint craft painted with gaudy colors becalmed in some nook, or a guardhouse built on piles driven into the mud—are perhaps a trifle monotonous, but one has only to turn from them to the people ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... to hide in, as you know well, no caves, or hills, or mazy coombes, just a wide, flat, reedy place, broken by open woods. The only refuge for both now was the sea. 'Twas a wild run you two made, side by side, down that shore, keeping close within the gloom of the sand-hills, the coast-guards ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... 1913, the first breath of autumn swept over the tule sloughs and reedy lakes of the North-west, the wild fowl and shore birds of that vast region rose in clouds, and by stages began to journey toward {173} their winter quarters beneath Southern skies. If the older birds that had often taken the same trip thought anything about the subject, they ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... the hovel of a poor gaucho on the de la Rosa land, but the poor orphan, although the dirtiest, raggedest, most mischievous little beggar in the land, was an attractive child, intelligent, full of fun, and of an adventurous spirit. Half his days were spent miles from home, wading through the vast reedy and rushy marshes in the neighbourhood, hunting for birds' nests. Little Ambrose, with no child companion at home, where his life had been made too soft for him, was exceedingly happy with his wild companion, and they were often ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... Penn, where the last island in the channel of the lower Delaware now raises its flaming beacon, and the belated collier steers safely by Reedy Island light, lived the daughter of an old West India and coasting captain, who would permit his chronometers to be repaired and cleaned by nobody but Minuit. His cottage stood where now there is a broad and sandy street leading to a wooden pier and to bathing-houses on a pleasure beach. The few ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... all those interminable hours, Helen watched where she was traveling, and if she ever returned over that trail she would recognize it. The afternoon appeared far advanced when Dale and Roy led down into an immense basin where a reedy lake spread over the flats. They rode along its margin, splashing up to the knees of the horses. Cranes and herons flew on with lumbering motion; flocks of ducks winged swift flight from one side to the other. Beyond this depression ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

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

... that succeeds that of the rains, the hills are covered with a lofty, reedy grass, whose dead stalks now form a matted stubble among the trees, as was remarked on some patches of the lower lands that had escaped the conflagrations, which at this period are extending their ravages ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... went Hiawatha, And Nokomis to her labor, Toiling patient in the moonlight, Till the sun and moon changed places, Till the sky was red with sunrise, And Kayoshk, the hungry sea-gulls, Came back from the reedy islands, Clamorous for their morning banquet. Three whole days and nights alternate Old Nokomis and the sea-gulls Stripped the oily flesh of Nahma, Till the waves washed through the rib-bones, Till the sea-gulls came no longer, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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

... which they call posadas, and ask for bread to eat in the name of God, and straw to lie down in, they curse me, and say there is neither bread nor straw in Galicia; and sure enough, since I have been here I have seen neither, only something that they call broa, and a kind of reedy rubbish with which they litter the horses: all my bones are sore since I ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

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

... but he drank first, suspicious of the living water source. A hollow below the writhing petals was filling with straw-colored water from the fibrous, reedy interior. He raised it to his mouth and drank. The water was hot and tasted swampy. Sudden sharp pains around his mouth made him jerk the thing away. Tiny glistening white barbs projected from the petals pink-tipped now with his blood. Brion swung towards the Disan angrily—and ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... flint to a cutting edge, And shaped it with brutish craft; I broke a shank from the woodland dank, And fitted it, head to haft. Then I hid me close in the reedy tarn, Where the Mammoth came to drink— Through brawn and bone I drave the stone, And slew ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... "Knee-deep!" from reedy places Will sing the river frogs. The terrapins will sun themselves On all the jutting logs. The angler's cautious oar will leave A trail of drifting foam Along the shady currents Away ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill

... out for no great niceties of landing-place; could I but reach them they would make at least a drier bed than this of mine, and at that thought, turning over, I found all my muscles as stiff as iron, the sinews of my neck and forearms a mass of agonies and no more fit to swim me to those reedy swamps, which now, as pain and hunger began to tell, seemed to ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

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

... low along the sand like brambles, the boughs curiously twisted, the foliage compact, like thatch. The thicket stretched down from the top of one of the sandy knolls, spreading and growing taller as it went, until it reached the margin of the broad, reedy fen, through which the nearest of the little rivers soaked its way into the anchorage. The marsh was steaming in the strong sun, and the outline of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... you—can you come upstairs?" she asked. Her voice was strained, almost reedy, and her lips ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... why the hole 'id take in a grape-shot,' said an old fellow, just from behind my uncle, in a pensioner's cocked hat, leggings, and long old-world red frock-coat, speaking with a harsh reedy voice, and a grim sort ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... and the beauty of the horse provoked the boy's admiration: it was a dark muzzled brown, of that fine old-fashioned breed of English roadster which is now so seldom seen,—showy, bownecked, long-tailed, stumbling, reedy hybrids, born of bad barbs, ill-mated, having mainly supplied their place. This was, indeed, a horse of great power, immense girth of loin, high shoulder, broad hoof; and such a head! the ear, the frontal, the nostril! ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... out on the reefs was hushed to a soothing hum, and faintly, from the reedy little lake farther down on the southward slope came the quacking of wild ducks. To the north and south and west lay the open sea, and as far as the eye could reach was no sight ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... ago they left. Remains the gleam Of their late motion on the salt sea-meadow, As loveliest hues linger when the sun's gone And float in the heavens and die in reedy pools— So slowly, who shall say when ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... wastes, immix'd with reedy fens; Ye mossy streams, with sedge and rushes stor'd: Ye rugged cliffs, o'erhanging dreary glens, To you I ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... reedy marsh upon his right, where a windmill waved its lazy arms, a score of larks were singing. To his left the gulls mewed across the cliffs and the remoter sandbanks that thrust up their yellow ridges ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... 9.10 made half a mile north-north-east through the scrub; at 9.50 made one mile north by east through the scrub; at 10.5 made half a mile north-north-west which took us out of the scrub and to a fine reach of water; at 10.20 made half a mile north-north-east to where we crossed a small reedy creek near its junction with the river; at 10.35 made three-quarters of a mile north-north-east along the left side of the reach of water mentioned. I, accompanied by Fisherman, here made a deviation ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough

... arose, a legion of living creatures came out from wood and swamp and reedy isle to welcome him. Flamingoes, otters, herons white and grey, and even jaguars, then began to set about their daily work of fishing for breakfast. Rugged alligators, like animated trunks of fallen trees, crawled ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... Italian. There was a large party of Americans who had crossed on the same boat with Roger. Their voices rang out, their R's smacked of the Middle-West, Mommer and Popper seeing Europe, accompanied by a brace of coltish daughters, a reedy son with enormous spectacles, and the son's two college chums, who looked to be good at football. Farther along sat two Russians who never spoke, one an owlish young man with glassy eyes and damp hair raked smoothly back, his companion a woman much older than himself, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... right was a reedy point running out into the bay, and behind it, on a slight rise of ground, an antique house with tall white pillars. It was but dimly outlined in the gathering shadows; yet one could imagine its stately, formal aspect, its precise garden with beds of old-fashioned ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

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

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



Words linked to "Reedy" :   reed, thin, lean, noisy



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