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Woodman   /wˈʊdmən/   Listen
Woodman

noun
(pl. woodmen)  (Written also woodsman)
1.
Someone who lives in the woods.  Synonym: woodsman.
2.
Makes things out of wood.  Synonyms: woodsman, woodworker.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Woodman" Quotes from Famous Books



... the express desire of His Holiness the Pope—down to his arrest of Wilson, the notorious canary-trainer, which removed a plague-spot from the East-End of London. Close on the heels of these two famous cases came the tragedy of Woodman's Lee, and the very obscure circumstances which surrounded the death of Captain Peter Carey. No record of the doings of Mr. Sherlock Holmes would be complete which did not include some account ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... stopped by torrents that tumbled from the neighbouring cliffs, or in danger of slipping down the precipices of an immense height. He was alone in the midst of a gloomy forest, where human industry had never penetrated, nor the woodman's axe been heard since the moment of its creation; to add to his distress, the setting sun disappeared in the west, and the shades of night gathered gradually round, accompanied with the roar of savage beasts. Sophron found himself beset with terrors, but his soul was ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... happened to be in town for a few days; and Mr. Willis and his new wife; and Mrs. Embury whose volume of verse, "Love's Token Flowers," was just out and being warmly praised; and George P. Morris, Willis's partner in the Mirror, whose "Woodman, Spare that Tree!" and "We were Boys Together," had (touching a human chord) ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... experiment on him, and that we may see the better what he is. He has brought him there to improve his arts, to reduce his conventional savageness, to re-refine his coarse refinements, not to make a wild-man of him. This is the Poet of the Woods; but he is a woodman, he carries an axe on his shoulder. He will wake a continental forest with it and subdue it, and fill it ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... cannot we be married secretly? Old Father John out at the chapel on the moor could marry us; he is so old and so blind, he would never recognise me if I went bare-headed and bare-footed like a gipsy girl; and thou must go dressed as a woodman, with muddy shoes, and an axe over thine arm. Then we can dwell together as we are doing now, and no one will suspect that the Earl of Mar's daughter is married to her tame pet dove, which sits on her shoulder, ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... told it me, Poor old Leoni!—Angels rest his soul! He was a woodman, and could fell and saw With lusty arm. You know that huge round beam Which props the hanging wall of the old chapel? Beneath that tree, while yet it was a tree He found a baby wrapt in mosses, lined With thistle-beards, and such small locks of wool As hang on brambles. ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge

... Leak in the Dike Phoebe Cary Casablanca Felicia Hemans Tubal Cain Charles Mackay The Inchcape Rock Robert Southey My Boyhood on the Prairie Hamlin Garland Woodman, Spare That Tree George P. Morris The American Boy ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... are refreshed. Here you have a view of all the upper falls, but these seem tame after witnessing the savage impetuosity of the rapids below. You ascend another ladder of one hundred feet, and you arrive at a path pointed out to you by the broad chips of the woodman's axe. Follow the chips and you will arrive four or five hundred feet above both the bridge and the level of the upper fall. This scene is splendid. The black perpendicular rocks on the other side; the succession of falls; the rapids roaring below; the forest trees ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... of time elapsed is meant to be marked by this circumstance. MUSGRAVE. PORSON. Thus we find in [Greek: M] of the Odyssey, l. 439, the time of day expressed by the rising of the judges; in [Greek: D] of the Iliad, l. 86, by the dining of the woodman. When we recollect that the ancients had not the inventions that we have whereby to measure their time, we shall cease to consider the circumlocution as absurd or ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... toil, and it is a somewhat different thing as practised here, to what the English woodman has to do. A bushman's work is severe and energetic, altogether in contrast with the lazy stop-and-rest methods of too many labourers at home. It is a fierce but steady and continuous onslaught upon the woods. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... where they fell they died, and for every man who died Eric and Skallagrim won a pace towards the point of rock. Whitefire flamed so swift and swept so wide that it seemed to Swanhild, watching, as though three swords were aloft at once, and the axe of Skallagrim thundered down like the axe of a woodman against a tree, and those groaned on whom it fell as groans a falling tree. Now the shields of these twain were hewn through and through, and cast away, and their blood ran from many wounds. Still, their life was whole in them and they plied axe and ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... peeled from the felled tree, and often the woodman accepts the bark in part payment for his labor; he then sells the bark to the tanner or agents who go about the country collecting bark. It is generally very nicely cleaned. I would here like to correct a mistake which tanners ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various

... both his hands, rose aloft to the king's left shoulder, circled round his head, descended with the sway of some terrific engine, and the bar of iron rolled on the ground in two pieces, as a woodman would sever a sapling with ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... Alder brought forth berries bright, And freely gave to all who chose to take: Each Summer, Poplar added to his height, And wore his robe with loftier, prouder shake, One day the woodman, axe on shoulder, came, And laid our soaring Poplar 'mongst the dead, Stripped off his robe, and sent him—O the shame!— To prop the gable of a ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... from its parent tree Lopped clean away, the woodman stripped it bare Of boughs and leaves, now fashioned, as ye see, And cased in brass by cunning craftsman's care, For fathers of the Latin realm to bear." So they, amid their chiefest, Sire with Sire, Confirm the league. These o'er the flames prepare To slay the victims, and, as rites ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... English nobles on his return in 1195. Matthew Paris tells the story, sub anno (it is an addition of his to Ralph Disset), Hist. Major, ed. Luard, ii. 413-6, how a lion and a serpent and a Venetian named Vitalis were saved from a pit by a woodman, Vitalis promising him half his fortune, fifty talents. The lion brings his benefactor a leveret, the serpent "gemmam pretiosam," probably "the precious jewel in his head" to which Shakespeare alludes (As You Like It, ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs

... Naples. Here he wrote the fragments of "Marenghi" and "The Woodman and the Nightingale", which he afterwards threw aside. At this time, Shelley suffered greatly in health. He put himself under the care of a medical man, who promised great things, and made him endure severe bodily pain, without any good ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley

... Say, Woodman April! all in green, Say, Robin April! hast thou seen In all thy travel round the earth Ever a morn of calmer birth? But Morning's eye alone serene Can gaze across yon village-green To where the trooping British run Through Lexington. Good men in fustian, stand ye still; ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... There is a furious stamping of feet, and a mighty uproar from every mouth, in the midst of which his Excellency inflicts several very sufficient whacks on the head of the unhappy Short. Having thus avenged himself by manual force, as befits a woodman and a mariner, he vindicates the insulted majesty of the governor by committing his antagonist to prison. This done, Sir William removes his periwig, wipes away the sweat of the encounter, and gradually composes himself, giving vent, to a few ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... tree and the fruit good, Very old and thick the wood. Woodman, is your courage stout? Beware! the root is wrapped about Your mother's heart, your father's bones; And, like the mandrake, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... histories of long imprisonment in places which seem inimical to life. There are two accounts of their being found in trees, which are extremely curious, and the more so, because the one corroborates the other. In the beginning of November, 1821, a woodman, engaged in splitting timber for rail-posts, in the woods close by the lake at Haining, a seat of Mr. Pringle's, in Selkirkshire, discovered, in the centre of a large wild-cherry tree, a living bat, of a bright scarlet colour, which, as soon as it was relieved from its entombment, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... returning from market; and the driver being a kind man, and seeing such a very pretty girl trudging along the road with bare feet, most good-naturedly gave her a seat. He said he lived on the confines of the forest, where his old father was a woodman, and, if she liked, he would take her so far on her road. All roads were the same to little Betsinda, so she ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to follow their example. It was done without a repetition of the order. Joe was the hindmost of all, but after lying a few minutes in silence, he crept softly forward, trembling all the while. When he reached the side of Boone, the aged woodman did not chide him, but simply pointed his finger towards a small decayed log a few paces distant. Joe looked but a moment, and then pulling his hat over his eyes, laid down flat on his face, in silence and submission. An Indian was seated on the log, and very composedly ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... answered the woodman. "When I were on my way home—dinner time. 'Cause I met the missis here, and I made bold to tell her what I'd noticed. That there owd brig!—lor' bless yer, gentlemen! it were black rotten i' the middle, theer ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher

... (Physiologische Psychologie, p. 652) tells us of an insane woodman who saw logs of wood on all hands in front of ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... has often been said, and what I suppose is well known, that Minnesota has an abundance of excellent timber. Unlike the gorgeous forests in New Hampshire, which behind high cliffs and mountain fastnesses defy the woodman, the timber of Minnesota grows in the valleys of her great rivers and upon the banks of their numerous tributaries. It is thus easily shipped to a distant market; while the great body of the land, not encumbered with it, but naked, is ready for ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... was called "A Tour Round my Garden," and some of the little stones in it—like the Tulip Rebecca, and the Discomfited Florists—were very amusing indeed; and some were sad and pretty, like the Yellow Roses; and there were delicious bits, like the Enriched Woodman and the Connoisseur Deceived; but there was no "stuff" in ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... of a verb, naming the person or thing directly receiving the action of the verb: "Woodman, ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... thunder; the shots; the shouts; men hoarsely calling to each other; women and children screaming their delight; the barking of dogs; the neighing of horses; the "crashes" of breaking branches; and the "chuck" of the woodman's axe, all mingled together. ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... scene recalling Kabylia, in the Atlas mountains, but unlike anything except itself. All was still, except for the roar of the tiny river and the occasional sound of timber sliding from some mountain slope into the valley below. The timber is thus transported in these parts, the woodman cutting the planks on some convenient ledge of rock, then letting it find its way to the bottom as best it can. All day long you see the trunk-cutters at work on their airy perches, now bright stairs of gold-green turf, ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... their faces tell To hear the song of woodman Snell, Among the festive crew; And, soon, their old and honest frere, Elated by the good Yule cheer, In untaught notes, but full and clear, Thus told ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper

... since the land had dwindled to a couple of thousand acres, much of it on the moss. But there were still two or three poor coverts along the upper edge of the park, where the old Irish keeper and woodman, Tim Murphy, cherished and counted the few score pheasants that provided a little modest November sport. And Helbeck, tying the pony to a tree, went up now with Laura to walk round the woods, showing in all his comments and ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... first to the house of a woodman in the forest, whose wife was a servant of my mother's. They are good, trustworthy people, and can see if all is safe before I approach the convent. If there is danger, I can send word by them to the Mother ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens

... I could not undo Were the gates of the Paradise shut Behind me: I deemed it was just. I left Koby crouched in the dust, Some yards from the woodman's hut. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Seasons. Furio Piccirilli, Sculptor The Pacific-Detail from the Fountain of Energy. A. Stirling Calder, Sculptor The Alaskan-Detail from Nations of the West. Frederick C. R. Roth, Sculptor The Feast of Sacrifice. Albert Jaegers, Sculptor Youth - From the Fountain of Youth. Edith Woodman Burroughs, Sculptor Truth - Detail from the Fountain of the Rising Sun. Adolph A. Weinman, Sculptor The Star. A. Stirling Calder, Sculptor The Triton - Detail of the Fountains of the Rising and the Setting ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... fell as the axe of a skilful woodman falls at the root of a young tree and brings it down at a single blow. Men alone can comprehend the rage that a woman excites in the soul of a man when, after showing her his strength, his power, his wisdom, his superiority, the capricious creature bends her head and ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... third a sorel, the fourth a soare, the fifth a buck of the first head, not bearing the name of a buck till he be five years old: and from henceforth his age is commonly known by his head or horns. Howbeit this notice of his years is not so certain but that the best woodman may now and then be deceived in that account: for in some grounds a buck of the first head will be as well headed as another in a high rowtie soil will be in the fourth. It is also much to be marvelled at that, whereas they ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... Admeasurement of Trees in Dean Forest; viz., A, an Oak near the Woodman's in Shutcastle; B, "Jack of the Yat," an Oak Tree on the Coleford and Mitcheldean Road; C, a large Oak in Sallow Vallets; D, an Oak which appears to be formed of two Oaks grown together, on the Lodge Hill, 300 yards west of ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... of the scene-painter's art. We had a backcloth, to be sure, and an artificial waterfall (which flooded the cellars, by-the-by), but for everything else we were indebted to Sir George Grey and pure nature. The live bush, the wounds of the woodman's axe concealed by heaps of vari-coloured mosses, bloomed and rustled under the limelight as I suppose it never bloomed and rustled elsewhere in the history of the theatre, and the stage was ankle-deep in withered leaves; ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray

... summoning him to return to his allegiance, brought back the information that he had halted on the same side of the river as themselves, and could be assaulted with advantage. Colonel Caswell was not only a good woodman, but also a man of superior ability, and believing he had misled the enemy, marched his column to the east side of the stream, removed the planks from the bridge, and placed his men behind trees and such embankments as could be thrown up during ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... ship: apart from which claims of rank, he was striking enough by mere personal appearance to have commanded the homage of very particular attention from any judicious spectator. His figure was short, broad, and prodigiously muscular; his limbs, though stunted, appearing knotty and (in woodman's language) gnarled; at the same time that the trunk of his body was lusty—and, for a seaman, somewhat unwieldy. In age he seemed nearer to seventy than sixty; but still manifested an unusual strength hardened to the temper of steel by constant exposure to the elements and by a life of activity. ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... the old man staggered and sank into a chair, as an old oak, cut by the woodman's axe, ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... dawned on the citizens themselves. Jehovah turns the hearts of kings and peoples as the rivers of water, and He stirred up these hostile nations when His people were in need of chastisement; He could wield their power as the axe which assails a tree is wielded by the woodman; He could call the mightiest conqueror to serve His secret purposes, as a man calls a dog to his foot.[17] They did not know that they were being thus used. They had their own designs, and their hatred and cruelty towards God's people were real enough. They were even, after doing God's ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... in years and yet he had already learned the secrets of the toil necessary to meet the needs of life. He swung a woodman's axe with any man. He could plow and plant a field, make its crop, harvest and store its fruits and cook them for the table. He could run, jump, wrestle, swim and fight when manhood called. He knew the language of the winds ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... his day by going for the wood (on which Madame Vauthier levied a handsome tribute), spoke to the young lad while waiting until the woodman had sawed enough for him to carry upstairs. It was easy to see that the sudden cold was causing anxiety to Monsieur Bernard's grandson, and that the sight of the wood, as well as that of the threatening sky, warned him that they ought to be making their ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... village possesses, its true paradise, in comparison with which all elaborately and wilfully wealth-constructed parks and gardens are paltry imitations. Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago. The poet's, commonly, is not a logger's path, but a woodman's. The logger and pioneer have preceded him, like John the Baptist; eaten the wild honey, it may be, but the locusts also; banished decaying wood and the spongy mosses which feed on it, and built hearths and humanized Nature ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... him once was a liar always. And then he was amenable to flattery, and few that are so are proof against the leading-strings of their flatterers. All this was well understood of Sir Peregrine by those about him. His gardener, his groom, and his woodman all knew his foibles. They all loved him, respected him, and worked for him faithfully; but each of them had his own way in ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... standing before them the man they had freed. And he bowed to Rodriguez like one that had never bowed before. I do not mean that he bowed with awkwardness, like imitative men unused to politeness, but he bowed as the oak bows to the woodman; he stood straight, looking Rodriguez in the eyes, then he bowed as though he had let his spirit break, which allowed him to bow to never a man before. Thus, if my pen has been able dimly to tell of it, thus bowed the man in the old leathern jacket. And Rodriguez bowed to ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... apparently coeval with himself. Long practice had taught them perfectly how to accommodate themselves to their master's failing. The saddle-horse adapted his movements with vigilant dexterity to the rolling and pitching aloft. On more than one occasion the woodman was found lying in the road by the side or under the feet of his faithful and motionless team. Poor old Jack! thou hast "gone under," deeper than that, at last, leaving behind thee the savor of an honest name, slightly modified ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... I cut myself, and there's the stumbling ledge, With quartz "outcrop" that lay atop, now leveled to its edge, And mounds of moss-grown stumps beside the woodman's rotting chips, And gashes in the hillside, that gape with dumb red lips. And yet above the shattered wreck and ruin, curling higher— Ah yes!—still lifts the smoke that ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... would appear to have been turning over the mowed grass. He often bore a whip in his sturdy hand, so that you would have sworn that he had that instant been unyoking the wearied oxen. A pruning-knife being given him, he was a woodman, and the pruner of the vine. {Now} he was carrying a ladder, {and} you would suppose he was going to gather fruit. {Sometimes} he was a soldier, with a sword, {and sometimes} a fisherman, taking up the rod; in fact, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... steps have trod thy border! Here On thy green bank, the woodman of the swamp Has laid his axe, the reaper of the hill His sickle, as they stooped to taste thy stream. The sportsman, tired with wandering in the still September noon, has bathed his heated brow In thy cool current. Shouting boys, let loose For a wild ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... in my fellow men as in my fellow trees and flowers. 'The beauty of Nature,' Emerson again, 'must always seem unreal and mocking until the landscape has human figures, that are as good as itself.' And 'tis well, if they are but half as good. To me, the discovery of a woodman in the wadi were as pleasing as the discovery of a woodchuck or a woodswallow or a woodbine. For in the soul of the woodman is a song, I muse, as sweet as the rhythmic strains of the goldfinch, if it could be evoked. But the soul plodding up the hill under its heavy overshadowing burden, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... in fact, a fitting close of our voyage. For what were we doing? It was the last stage of the woodman's labour. It was the gathering of a wild herd of the houses and churches and ships and bridges that grow in the forests, and bringing them into the fold of human service. I wonder how often the ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... sparkling breadth of white, which seemed to glance my eyes away, and outside the humps of laden trees, bowing their backs like a woodman, I contrived to get along, half-sliding and half-walking, in places where a plain-shodden man must have sunk, and waited freezing till the thaw should come to him. For although there had been such violent frost, every night, upon ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... in which he has stamped himself into the very grain of the language; you would think he must have worn the words next his skin, and slept with them. Yet it is not as a sayer of particular good things that Athelred is most to be regarded, rather as the stalwart woodman of thought. I have pulled on a light cord often enough, while he has been wielding the broad-axe; and, between us, on this unequal division, many a specious fallacy has fallen. I have known him to battle the same question night after night for years, keeping it in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... we'll vex those scoundrel-boys, And that prim shrew shall, envying, hear our joys. - Tobacco's glorious fume all day we'll share, With beef and brandy kill all kinds of care; We'll beer and biscuit on our table heap, And rail at rascals, till we fall asleep." Such was their life; but when the woodman died, His grieving kin for Roger's smiles applied - In vain; he shut, with stern rebuke, the door, And dying, built a refuge for the poor, With this restriction, That no Cuff should share One meal, or shelter ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe

... they were doing good work together, and he was too true a knight and too true a gentleman to be jealous of Mother o' Pearl, so they raced neck-and-neck through the dawn; with the noisy clatter of water-mill wheels, or the distant sound of a woodman's ax, or the tolling bell of a convent clock, the only sound on the air save the beat ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... for an old oak that had been rather recklessly harboring mistletoe and many squirrels, until it was thought probable that, like our first parents, it might have a fall. It was a plea more eloquent than "O Woodman, spare that tree." A reprieve for a year was granted; and I thought, as I cast my vote on the side of mercy, that the jury that could not be won by such a young woman as that was hopelessly dead at the top and more hollow at the heart ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... the habits and lairs of all the feathered and furry inhabitants of the woods. Shows how to trail wild animals; how to identify birds and beasts by their tracks, calls, etc. Tells how to forecast the weather, and in fact treats on every phase of nature with which a Boy Scout or any woodman or lover of nature should be familiar. The authorship guarantees its authenticity and reliability. Indispensable to "Boy Scouts" and others. Printed from large clear type ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... upright remnant stands, With such undeviating and even force He severs it away: no needless care, Lest storms should overset the leaning pile Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight. Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcern'd The cheerful haunts of man; to wield the axe And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear, from, morn to eve, his solitary task. Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears And tail ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... when The woodman winding westward up the glen At wintry dawn, when o'er the sheep-track's maze The viewless snow mist weaves a glistening haze, Sees full before him, gliding without tread, An image with a glory round its head; This shade he worships for its golden hues, And makes (not knowing) ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... close-grained, firm and durable. The rooms of a few wealthy men were hung with heavy tapestries. The ceilings usually exposed to view the great summer-tree and cross rafters, sometimes rough-hewn and still showing the marks of the woodman's axe. But little decoration was seen overhead, even in the form of chandeliers; sometimes a candle beam bore a score of candles, or in some fine houses, such as the Storer mansion in Boston, great ornamental globes of ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... their situation. Thereupon the honest fellow promised to serve the king faithfully, and sent immediately for his brothers four: William, who took charge of Boscobel House, not far removed; Humphrey, who was miller at Whiteladies; Richard, who lived at Hobbal Grange; and John, who was a woodman, and dwelt hard by. When they had all arrived, Lord Derby showed them the king's majesty, and besought them for God's sake, for their loyalty's sake, and as they valued all that was high and sacred, to keep him safe, and forthwith ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... sights were mellowed, and all sounds subdued, The hills seemed farther, and the streams sang low; As in a dream, the distant woodman hewed His winter log, with ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... would, God knows, in a poor woodman's hut Have spent my peaceful days, and shared my crust With her who would have cheer'd me, rather far Than on this throne; but being what I am, I'll be ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... to him that the dead man was listening, or that unknown shapes or essences might be disturbed by his voice and rush out from the thicket upon him. Such fears he had—wordless fears, such as men never repeat and soon forget. Rough, dull, hardy woodman as he was, he felt now as a child feels in the dark, afraid of he ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... done with the squire's antiquities. He has an old woodman, an old shepherd, an old justice's clerk, and almost all his farmers are old. He seems to have an antipathy to almost every thing that is not old. Young men are his aversion; they are such coxcombs, he says, nowadays. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... was more than two hours before the fog lifted sufficiently to enable us to proceed. We went on our way some three miles when a drenching shower came on, and we took shelter in the cavernous interior of an enormous, half-ruined oak-tree. Natural decay and the pickaxes of the woodman seeking fuel for his camp-fire had hollowed out a comfortable retreat from the storm. Surrounding the tree was a bed of wild strawberries, which helped to beguile the time. When at length the clouds cleared away, ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... half-past eight, please. It's water-tight—I had the thatch tended this year—and it's got its own well—good water. It's in the park, by the side of the London road, so you won't be too lonely. Now, your work. Woodman, road-maker, joiner, keeper, forester, gardener—that's what I want." Anthony's brain reeled. "That's what I am myself. Listen. I've inherited this estate, which has been let go for over a hundred years. There isn't a foot ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... remember you had the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman to help you conquer those enemies," suggested the Wizard. "Just now, my dear, there is not a single warrior ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... making shingle in winter. The Biscuit Brook came in here from the west,—a fine, rapid trout stream six or eight miles in length, with plenty of deer in the mountains about its head. On its banks we found the house of an old woodman, to whom we had been directed for information about the section we ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... scarecrow who's stuffed with straw, and the other a woodman made out of tin. They haven't any appetites inside of 'em, you see; so they never ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum

... from the winding banks of the river flowing past it, was the abode of the ancient Saxon monarchs; and a legend is related by William of Malmesbury of a woodman named Wulwin, who being stricken with blindness, and having visited eighty-seven churches and vainly implored their tutelary saints for relief, was at last restored to sight by the touch of Edward the Confessor, who further enhanced the boon by making him keeper ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... in this Canadian axe!' he remarked, as he stood leaning on the handle and looking down. 'It differs essentially from the common woodman's axe at home.' ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... the Prince had not time to wait and see you! He is so very fond of going out into the forest with the woodman. Once he took me to see the tallest tree in all our woods cut down with just such an axe as that—only it was not red. Have you ever seen a high tree ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... clung to the uppermost bulwarks. And now, loud above the roar of the sea, was suddenly heard a sharp, splintering sound, as of a Norway woodman felling a pine in the forest. It was brave Jarl, who foremost of all had snatched from its rack against the mainmast, the ax, always ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... are very careful of their timber; and, rambling through a forest near Tonsberg, belonging to the Count, I have stopped to admire the appearance of some of the cottages inhabited by a woodman's family—a man employed to cut down the wood necessary for the household and the estate. A little lawn was cleared, on which several lofty trees were left which nature had grouped, whilst the encircling firs sported with wild grace. ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... cannot shake off, and, singularly enough, one of these fancies is connected with this old hut, and as often as I decide to remove it something tells me not to; and once I actually dreamed that a dead woman's hand clutched me by the arm and bade me leave it alone. A case of "Woodman spare ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... tree, the day is past and gone, The woodman's axe lies free, and the reaper's task ...
— The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... For this purpose I had to consort with queer folk. Shalah, who had become my second shadow, found here and there little Indian camps, from which he chose young men as messengers. In one place I would get a settler with a canoe, in another a woodman with a fast horse; and in a third some lad who prided himself on his legs. The rare country taverns were a help, for most of their owners were in the secret. The Tidewater is a flat forest region, so we ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... to be remembered as the Pointers for another reason. It is the hour-hand of the woodman's clock. It goes once around the North Star in about twenty-four hours, the same way as the sun, and for the same reason—that it is the earth that is going ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... had gone freely about, and the company—Hobbe Adamson, Hobbe of the Leghes, William the Arrowsmith, Jack the Woodman, Jack the Hind, John the Slater, Roger the Baxter, with many others, together with divers widows of those who owed service to their lord, clad in their holiday costume—black hoods and brown jackets and petticoats—were all intent upon their pastimes, well charged with fun and frolic. Their ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... small size, which attracted attention, and put the public into a state of much embarrassment. There were three of these strange pictures that year,—an illustration of Tennyson, "She only said, 'My life is dreary,'" the "Return of the Dove to the Ark," and the "Woodman's Daughter." I distinctly remember the exact sensation with which my young eyes saw these works; so distinctly that I now positively feel those early sensations over again in thinking about them. All was so fresh, so new! This ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... inward amusement, yet fully understanding the woodman's love for a perfect weapon. As an ordinary man would lift a child's airgun, the giant tossed the rifle to a firing position, snuggled the butt against his shoulder, and leaned his gray-bearded cheek ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... sprung from their charred stumps, and rear their straight trunks and green-crowned heads hundreds of feet above the surrounding foliage. These stately trees have grown and flourished like Solomon's Temple with no sound of woodman's axe to mar the quiet solemnity of this primeval forest. One stands in awe in the presence of these wonderful sequoias, the greatest of trees, and we converse in low tones, as if standing in the presence of spirits of ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson

... an hour of daylight to find my way out of the forest. When I get to the top of this hill I shall probably be better able to judge what direction to take." He trudged on as before, now and then stopping to take breath, and then once more going on bravely. At length the sound of a woodman's ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston

... had, at a somewhat later hour, pathetically and poetically invoked the House, in its collective unity, as a "Woodman," to "spare that tree" of the Constitution, and to "touch not a single bough," because, among other reasons, "in youth it sheltered" him; and furthermore, because "the time" was "most inopportune;" and, after Mr. Rollins, of Missouri, had made ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... birds'-nesting. 'Take a turtle's nest, sweet boy,' said Gaston, 'to my lady Jehane; say it is first-fruits of the year, and win a silver piece. Beware of an old lady with a jaw like a flat-iron.' The second he gave to a woodman tying billets for the Castle ovens; the third a maid put in her placket, and he taught her the fourth by heart in a manner quite his own and very much to her taste. With the fifth he was most adroit. He demanded an interview with the duenna, whose name was Dame Gudule. She accorded. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... hold of the railings. She came over to my side. Up the road I heard in the distance the crunching of heavy wheels. A wagon was passing through the lodge gates. John, the woodman, was walking with unaccustomed briskness by the horses' heads, cracking his whip as he came. I looked into the girl's ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... which her spirit left this darksome house of clay seemed mercifully natural. They had noticed, so early as the autumn of '19, that she was decaying; yet had the roots of life stricken so strongly into earth as to defy that Woodman who pins his faith to shaking blasts at first, but when he finds that windfalls will not serve his turn, and that although leaves decay, and branches are swept away, and the very bark is stripped off, the tree dies not, takes heart of grace, and lays about him with his Axe. Then one ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... happy and free in the beautiful Bush. Rich and gurgling came the note of the magpies, the jovial Kookooburras saluted the sun with rollicking laughter, the crickets chirruped, frogs croaked in chorus, or solemnly "popped" in deep vibrating tones, like the ring of a woodman's axe. Every now and then came the shriek of the plover, or the shrill cry of the peeweet; and gayer and more lively than all the others was the merry clattering of the big bush wagtail ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... range of mountains, a region of legend and romance, since the coming of the white man given over to the ravage and desolation that follow the free-ranging of cattle and horses, the vaquero, and the abusive use of fire and ax by the woodman.] ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... Woodman Burroughs' "Youth." What a delight a permanent reproduction of that fountain would be if placed against the side of one of the green hills out at Golden Gate Park - say near the Children's Playground - with a pool at its base. It is only by ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James

... upon the cherry that blooms by the fence, down by the woodman's cottage, And wondered if an untimely snow ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore

... favourite flower-garden by a private door, and strolled towards a small Gothic temple overshadowed by wide-spreading oaks, which, sheltered by the surrounding hills, had numbered more than a century of unscathed and undiminished beauty, and had as yet escaped the rude pruning of the woodman's axe. The morning habit of the noble Constance fitted tightly to the throat, where it was terminated by a full ruff of starched muslin, and the waist was encircled by a wide band of black crape, from ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... busy Brownie hid all the Crinkle salads, and so saved them; and most of us have found the Crinkleroot and eaten it since. But how many of us have found the Mecha-meck? I know only one man who has. We call him the Wise Woodman. He found and dug out the one from which I made the picture. It was two and a half feet long and weighed fifteen pounds—fifteen pounds of good food. Think of it! Above it and growing out of its hiding place was a long trailing vine that ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... oaten pipe of hers is mute Or thrown away; but with a flute Her loneliness she cheers; This flute, made of a hemlock stalk, At evening in his homeward walk The Quantock woodman hears. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... it well," replied Eudora: "Dione told it to me when I was quite a child; and I could never after see a tree torn by the lightning, or carried away by the flood, or felled by the woodman, without a shrinking and shivering feeling, lest some gentle, fair-haired Dryad had perished ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... be thrown out. 'The anchors are broken,' exclaimed Godard. The balloon beat the ground with its head, like a kite when it falls down. It was horrible. On we went towards Nienburg, at the rate of ten leagues an hour. Three large trees were cut through by the car, as clean as if by a woodman's hatchet. One small anchor still remained to us. We threw it down, and it carried away the roof of a house. If the balloon had dragged us through the town we should, inevitably, have been cut to pieces. But fortunately it rose a little ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne

... seems to be hereditary. Robert saw a daughter whose mother was polymastic, and Woodman saw a mother and eldest daughter who each had three nipples. Lousier mentions a woman wanting a mamma who transmitted this vice of conformation to her daughter. Handyside says he knew two brothers in both of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... fruit, YOU DO WELL TO FEAR DEATH. Keep good friends with the doctor, so that you may have no difficulty in getting him day or night, but remember that he is useless when the woodman aims a blow ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... intending only a slight stroll, he had already rambled half way to his beloved. It was a delicious afternoon: the heat of the sun had long abated; the air was sweet and just beginning to stir; not a sound was heard, except the last blow of the woodman's axe, or the occasional note of some joyous bird waking from its siesta. Ferdinand passed the gate; he entered the winding road, the road that Henrietta Temple had so admired; a beautiful green lane with banks of flowers ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... received a Summons to appear at a Lodge to be held the next day, at Masons Hall, London. Accordingly I went, and about Noone were admitted into the Fellowship of Free Masons, Sir. William Wilson, Knight, Capt. Richard Borthwick, Mr. Will. Woodman, Mr. Wm. Grey, M. Samuell ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... a sudden blast of wind howled. It was like a monster voice. Blake rose to his feet and rolled upon the fire the big night log he had dragged in, and to this he added, with the woodman's craft of long experience, lengths of green timber, so arranged that they would hold fire until morning. Then he went into his silk service tent and buried ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... the splendour to which we are all growing accustomed, and of which, alas! we are also growing rather wearied, but they are most of them extremely comfortable and cosy; and The Woodman at Carysford was no exception to the rule. Stafford looked round the low-pitched room, with its old-fashioned furniture, its white dinner-cloth gleaming softly in the sunset and the fire-light, and sighed with a nod ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... which has been taken up by the roots, and is hurrying aloft, to be elaborated into sap, and leaf, and flower, and fruit, and fresh tissue for the very stem up which it originally climbed, and therefore it is that the woodman cuts the Water-vine through first at the top of the piece which he wants, and not at the bottom, for so rapid is the ascent of the sap that if he cut the stem below, the water would have all fled upwards before he could cut it off above. Meanwhile, the old story ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... child," Naake's Slavonic Fairy Tales, p. 226. This child is carved out of a tree-root by a woodman, who brings him home to his wife. They delight in having a child at last. The child eats all the food in the house; his father and mother; a girl with a wheelbarrow full of clover; a peasant, his hay-laden cart, and his cart-horses; a man and ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous

... had broken or misplaced The wooden handle of his axe, This loss could not be well replaced. So master woodman humbly prayed From all the trees a single branch, And promised to go elsewhere when he made Again his livelihood, And he would touch nor oak nor pine. The trees which were all very good Furnished for him new arms, And soon commenced all their alarms, ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park

... flash 100 Of gleaming arms, the slayer and the slain. While morning lasted, and the light of day Increased, so long the weapons on both sides Flew in thick vollies, and the people fell. But, what time his repast the woodman spreads 105 In some umbrageous vale, his sinewy arms Wearied with hewing many a lofty tree, And his wants satisfied, he feels at length The pinch of appetite to pleasant food,[8] Then was it, that encouraging aloud 110 ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... lady-of-all-work and Pro-parsoness—with all her might'; then seeing, or thinking she saw, a puzzled look, she added, 'I don't know if you discovered, Northmoor, that our Vicar, Mr. Woodman, has no wife, and Adela has supplied the lack to the parish, having a soul for country poor, whereas they are too tame for me. I care about my neighbours, of course, after a sort, but the jolly city sparrows of the slums for me! ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... be lost in a dense thicket, and Paul was soon on his way to find her, in the guise of a woodman. He had sighted Ruth, over a clump of bushes, and was making his way to her, when he heard her scream. This was not in the play and he ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope

... excursion, and William Sullivan was included in the number who were going to try their fortune on the hunting-grounds beyond the river and the pine forests. He was bold, active, and expert in the use of his rifle and woodman's hatchet, and hitherto had always hailed the approach of this season with peculiar enjoyment, and no fears respecting the not unusual attacks of the Indians, who frequently waylaid such parties in other and not very ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... were mellowed and all sounds subdued, The hills seemed further and the stream sang low, As in a dream the distant woodman hewed His winter log with many ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... doubtless saved valuable specimens. One of the finest in the collection, a specimen of the persimmon tree, some two feet in diameter, has been ruined by the seasoning process. On one side there is a huge crack, extending from the top to the bottom of the log, which looks as though some amateur woodman had attempted to split it with an ax and had made a poor job of it. The great shrinking of the sap-wood of the persimmon tree makes the wood of but trifling value commercially. It also has a discouraging effect upon collectors, as it is next to impossible to cure a specimen, so that all but this ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... first, for young Robin very soon became quite a woodman, learning fast to sound his horn, to shoot and hit his mark, and to find his way through the great wilderness of open ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn

... power to endure the severest cold, and with the faculty of providing for their wants at a time when it would seem that there was not sustenance enough among the hidden stores of the season to keep them from starvation. The woodman, however insensible he may be to the charms of all such objects, is gladdened and encouraged in his toils by the sight of these sprightly creatures, some of which, like the Jay and the Woodpecker, are adorned with the most beautiful plumage, and are all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... "'Woodman,' as the Terrestrial poem goes," the tree remarked, "'spare that tree! Touch not a single bough! In youth it sheltered me and ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith

... least lovely of all. Corn and colza, pasture and plough, succeed each other on the characterless plain in wearying repetition, and, save by some gaunt gray tower, with its peal of pathetic bells, or some figure coming athwart the fields, made picturesque by a gleaner's bundle or a woodman's fagot, there is no change, no variety, no beauty anywhere; and he who has dwelt upon the mountains or amid the forests feels oppressed as by imprisonment with the tedium and the endlessness of that vast and dreary level. But it is green and very fertile, and it has wide horizons ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... summer and heaven; but such lives are the exception. The true destiny of the sons and daughters of earth is to grow within the garden of life as a sapling rather than as a sickly weed, developing timber rather than pith, and yielding finally to death, the sharp-axed old woodman, as the tree falls, to pass onward to new opportunities of power and service. The tree does not decay where it stands, nor does it often fall because its core is honeycombed by disease. It is cut down in the meridian of its strength, because somewhere on distant ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... letters in forming Henderson of his arrival and of his having been joined on the way by Page Portwood of Rowan. On his arrival at Otter Creek, Cocke found Boone and his men, and on relating his adventures, "came in for his share of applause." Boone at once despatched the master woodman, Michael Stoner, with pack-horses to assist Henderson's party, which he met on April 18th at their encampment "in the Eye of the Rich Land." Along with "Excellent Beef in plenty," Stoner brought the story of Boone's determined ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... the copse inhabited by the Balaninus: the evergreen oak and the pubescent oak, which would become fine trees if the woodman would give them time, and the kermes oak, a mere scrubby bush. The first species, which is the most abundant of the three, is that preferred by the Balaninus. The acorn is firm, elongated, and of moderate ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... either in the depths of the forests or under the trees on the banks of the Mercy, was the presence of man revealed. The explorers could not discover one suspicious trace. It was evident that the woodman's axe had never touched these trees, that the pioneer's knife had never severed the creepers hanging from one trunk to another in the midst of tangled brushwood and long grass. If castaways had landed on the island, they could not ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... outer air. When Vittoria awoke she had the fancy that she had taken one long dive downward in a well; and on touching the bottom found her head above the surface. While her surprise was wearing off, she beheld the woodman's little girl at her feet holding up one end of her cloak, and peeping underneath, overcome by amazement at the flashing richness of the dress of the heroine Camilla. Entering into the state of her mind spontaneously, Vittoria sought to induce the child to kiss her; but quite ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... agree with you about the woods," she said. "It vexes me always to see a beautiful young tree, that should be straight and strong, turned into a twisted dwarf, in the shade of the overgrowth and the overcrowding. The woodman will be ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... like a bribe buck, each a haunch: I will keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow of this walk, and my horns I bequeath your husbands. Am I a woodman, ha? Speak I like Herne the hunter? 25 Why, now is Cupid a child of conscience; he makes restitution. As I am a ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... is come with me (sweet hart.) Fal. Diuide me like a brib'd-Bucke, each a Haunch: I will keepe my sides to my selfe, my shoulders for the fellow of this walke; and my hornes I bequeath your husbands. Am I a Woodman, ha? Speake I like Herne the Hunter? Why, now is Cupid a child of conscience, he makes restitution. As I am ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... Woods! that listen to the night-birds' singing, 5 Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined, Save when your own imperious branches swinging, Have made a solemn music of the wind! Where, like a man beloved of God, Through glooms, which never woodman trod, 10 How oft, pursuing fancies holy, My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound, Inspired, beyond the guess of folly, By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound! O ye loud Waves! and O ye Forests high! 15 And O ye Clouds that far above me soared! Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge



Words linked to "Woodman" :   cabinetmaker, journeyman, woodworker, joiner, furniture maker, carpenter, craftsman, splicer, artificer, artisan, rustic, carver, woodcarver



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