"Briar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... carved chest at the southern end of the passage. The window behind us gives an extensive view of grey rain and grey sea. But I prefer to look at the smiling, freckled face that speaks so eloquently of sunny days. The wet, trailing fingers of the briar-rose climbing over the porch tap at the casement, the loose branch of the plane-tree creaks in the wind, the distant sea moans and murmurs; but I prefer to listen to my little friend's artless and occasionally "h-less" English, as she tells me how the Andersons ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... I sit smoking my faithful briar pipe, indulging in the fragrance of my tobacco as I look out on the campus from my many-paned window, and things are different with me from the way they were way back in Freshman year. I can see now how boyish in many ways I was then. ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... fellows. Over by the stables, strings of horses, all of the same color, were being curried and cleaned. A young lieutenant upon a bicycle spun silently past. An officer came from his front gate, his coat unbuttoned and a briar in his teeth. The walks and roads were flanked with lines of black-painted cannon-balls; inverted pieces of abandoned ordnance stood at corners. From a distance came the mellow ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... the thick of troubled and restless waters, of gray clouds and threatening storms. He discarded his paint-smeared blouse—he had worn one since his Paris days—and, getting quickly into white flannel and a river hat, he lit a briar pipe and went forth ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... Harley; and taking out a tin of tobacco from a cabinet beside him he began in leisurely manner to load a briar. "No doubt you have good ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... cleaning a favourite briar root; he scarce looked up from that engrossing task. 'Don't ast me what I think of him!' he said. 'There's a day comin', I pray Gawd, when I ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... I parted from my Dear The linnet sang from the briar-bush, The throstle from the dell; The stream too carolled full and clear, It was the spring-time of the year, And both the linnet and the thrush I love them well Since last I ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... flushed face bent over her work, to all appearances the most industrious of Cinderellas, while the pendulum of the old oak clock clicked noisily to and fro, and through the open door came a whiff of clean cool air, laden with the scent of flowers and sweet-briar, with the pungent aromatic odour of growing herbs, with the heavy sweetness ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a bishop was seen the other day passing the House of Commons smoking a briar pipe. We can only suppose that he did not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... were not black outright; and Dandie, at sight of this daintiness, put two and two together. It was a silk handkerchief, then they would be silken hose; they matched - then the whole outfit was a present of Clem's, a costly present, and not something to be worn through bog and briar, or on a late afternoon of Sunday. He whistled. "My denty May, either your heid's fair turned, or there's some ongoings!" he observed, and dismissed ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ram jumped o'er a wall, sir, His tail caught on a briar, It reached from Derby town, sir, ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... but rustic Mills had been busy lighting his briar and the distinguished Captain sat smiling to himself. I was horribly vexed and apologized for that intrusion, saying that the fellow was a future great sculptor and perfectly harmless; but he had been swallowing lots of night air which had got into ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... of the city, and there, stayed by a few grey stones which present some semblance of a quay, forms its boundary at one extremity. Hardly larger than an ordinary English farmyard, and roughly enclosed on each side by broken palings and hedges of honeysuckle and briar, the narrow field retires from the water's edge, traversed by a scarcely traceable footpath, for some forty or fifty paces, and then expanding into the form of a small square, with buildings on three sides of it, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... differed from the transports of stormy passion, as wildflowers in the fields from the brilliant flowers in garden beds. Interchange of glances, delicate and sweet as blue water-flowers on the surface of the stream; a look in either face, vanishing as swiftly as the scent of briar-rose; melancholy, tender as the velvet of moss—these were the blossoms of two rare natures, springing up out of a rich and fruitful soil on foundations of rock. Many a time Eve had seen revelations of the strength that lay ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... was; open-faced and guileless as the day. Farm-bred, raw-boned, slow of speech, clear of eye, no vices, no habits that pulled a man down, unless a fondness for his briar-root pipe might be so classed. But in the way Mackenzie smoked the pipe it was more in the nature of a sacrifice to his gods of romance than even ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... place the next day. In the mean time, he began to suspect there might be some fraud in the place, as it was shady, dark, and fit for echoes or other delusions. The next day, therefore, he takes him to an open plain, where there was neither bush nor briar; but there, notwithstanding all his precaution, he hears the same story, with this addition, that he should forthwith deliver Brabantius six thousand franks, and purchase three masses daily to be said for him, or else ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... was at the seal, when her eyes fell upon a briar-wood pipe that lay on the table beside a half-filled pouch of tobacco. In an instant she seemed to see a stubby brown hand reaching for it, the quick spurt of the match, the flare of light on an old weather-beaten face, then a deep-drawn breath of contentment as the Colonel settled back and ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... haggard eyes And hands that fence away the skies, On rock and briar stumbling, Is it fear of the storm's rumbling, Of the hissing cold rain, Or lightning's tragic pain Drives you so madly? See, see the patient moon; How she her course keeps Through cloudy shallows and across black deeps, Now gone, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... breath of the briar I bring, And wafted scents of mint and clover, Rain-distilled balms the hill-winds fling, Sweet-thoughted as a lover; Incense from lilied urns a-swaying, And the green smell of grass Where men ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... him on a twig of wild cherry, gathered up my boxes, and wandered along the faint path, back of the patch of brush where, I knew, Jonathan was cheerfully threading his line through tangles of twig, briar, and vine, compared with which the needle's eye is as a yawning barn door. Jonathan's attitude toward brush-fishing is something which I respect without understanding. Down one long field I went, where the brook ran in shallow gayety, and there, ahead, was the bend, a sudden curve of water, deepening ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... sighed, and, taking his short briar pipe from his mouth by the bowl, rapped three times upon the table with it. In a very short time a mug of ale and a paper cylinder of shag appeared on the table before ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... account of being the son of my Master's I received no hard treatment and did little or no work. Yet, I wore the same clothing as did the rest of the slaves: a shirt of lowell for summer and shirt and trousers for winter and no shoes. I could walk through a briar patch in my bare feet without sticking one in the bottom of my feet as they were so ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... Brunhilda, May is won By the kisses of the Sun. Siegfried like, the maid he takes In his arms and she awakes To the tender piping sound Of the birds—while all around In a magic fire ring Purple flames of Crocus spring. Now I fill my fragrant briar, Lo! it glows with gentle fire, Wafting scented wreaths of love To the little ...
— The Smoker's Year Book • Oliver Herford
... the day I paid them another visit, and finding a better post of observation under the shade of a sweet-briar bush, I saw at once they were orchard orioles, and that the young ones were climbing to the edge of the nest; I ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... folding gale The scented briar I pulled, Or for thy kindred bosom culled The lily of ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... ready quartered, pour a gallon of the liquor boiling hot upon them, and the remainder into a tub, with seven pecks of cowslip pips. Let them remain there all night; then put the liquor and the lemons to eight spoonfuls of new yeast, and a handful of sweet-briar. Stir all well together, and let it work for three or four days; then strain and tun it into a cask. Let it stand six months, and ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... group is allied, on the one hand, to that of Fearless Johnny who, passing the night in a haunted house, expelled the ghosts, or goblins, which had taken possession of it; on the other hand, to that of the Briar Rose, illustrated by Mr. Burne ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... in the darkness. Such an undertaking was by no means particularly difficult for a strong man, who knew the way, but suddenly he realized that he was played out and would never reach his destination that night. This irked his soul, unbearably, until he had recourse to his old briar pipe. In spite of the fact that his arm was beginning to hurt him badly he sat near the stove, where he had kindled a fire again, thinking hard. He was racking his brain to seek some motive that could have impelled any one he knew to play such a frightful ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... of the language keeps for us the freshness of the imagery—the sweet-briar and the hawthorn, the mavis and the oriole—which has so long become publica materies. It is not withered and hackneyed by time and tongues as, save when genius touches it, it is now. The dew is still on all of it; and, thanks to the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... a bright spring night, and Abercrombie Smith lay back in his arm-chair, his feet upon the fender, and his briar-root pipe between his lips. In a similar chair, and equally at his ease, there lounged on the other side of the fireplace his old school friend Jephro Hastie. Both men were in flannels, for they had spent their evening upon the river, but apart from their dress no one could look at their ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and with his usual serene disregard for the respectabilities proceeded to fill and light a huge briar pipe. ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... think that every one has had his share of it but me," was the reply. "All England hath paid his taxes with my patrimony: I was a sheep that left my wool on every briar." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the edge of the firs, in a coppice of heath and vine, Is an old moss-grown altar, shaded by briar and bloom, Denys, the priest, hath told me 'twas the lord Apollo's shrine In the days ere Christ came down from God to the Virgin's womb. I never go past but I doff my cap and avert ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... sheath or case seem'd to have several joints or settings together, marked by fghiklmno, it was arm'd moreover neer the top, with several crooks or forks (pqrst) on one side, and (pqrstu) on the other, each of which seem'd like so many Thorns growing on a briar, or rather like so many Cat's Claws; for the crooks themselves seem'd to be little sharp transparent points or claws, growing out of little protuberancies on the side of the sheath, which, by observing the Figure diligently, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... with Cornish heath, and the bogs with Orange-bell, and lovely they are to see; and growing among them is a tall heath six feet high, which they call there bruyere, or Broomheath, because they make brooms of it: and out of its roots the "briar-root" pipes are made. There are other heaths about that country, too, whose names I do not know; so that when you are there, you fancy yourself in the very home of the heaths: but you are not. They must have come from some land near where the Azores are now; ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... I had begun to fear. I owe you an apology, Sir Thomas," he went on with manly dignity, producing the briar, "I am entirely to blame. How the mistake arose I cannot imagine, but I find it ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... a "thing to see, not hear"—that brave, rash, resolute imp clinging like a terrier, or a crab, or a briar, on to the back of that gigantic ruffian, whom, if she had no strength to stop, she was ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... all our practice under their influence. The motives which it brings to bear on our evils will be powerless to smite them, unless these motives are made sovereign in us by many an hour of patient meditation and of submission to their sweet and strong constraint. One sometimes sees on a wild briar a graft which has been carefully inserted and bandaged up, but which has failed to strike, and so the strain of the briar goes on and no rosebuds come. Are there not some of us who profess to have received the engrafted word and whose daily experience has proved, by our own continual ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... quite believe you," said the other, a stolid Englishman with a briar pipe, "he struck me ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... Scotland, but in the popular songs of Provence (collected by Damase Arbaud) and in those of Metz (Puymaigre), and in both countries an incongruous sequel tells how the lover tried to murder his bride, and how she was too cunning, and drowned him. Another familiar feature is the bush and briar, or the two rose trees, which meet and plait over the graves of unhappy lovers, so that all passers-by see them, and say in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... knew that if he tried to get over the wall I should catch him, and that there was no other way out, as I had locked the gate. It was heavy running, and we both began to get weary. Then I caught my foot in a briar and fell. Immediately the young man rushed to the wall and began scrambling up it, but just as he was drawing his leg over the top I caught him by the heel. For a moment he struggled and kicked, then by sheer weight I brought him down at my feet, and an ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... dropped when shaken from his pocket by the jerk of his fall. He opened the single blade it contained at once, and went back to the hedge to cut a stick. As he walked along the hedge, he thought the briar was too prickly to cut, and the thorn was too hard, and the ash was too big, and the willow had no knob, and the elder smelt so strong, and the sapling oak was across the ditch, and out of reach, and the maple ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... the cord, and the cope, The dread of the devil and trust of the Pope; For to gather life's roses, unscathed by the briar, Is granted ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... where; Till bold, impressive, and sublime, Gleam'd all that's left by storms and time Of GOODRICH TOWERS. The mould'ring pile Tells noble truths,—but dies the while; O'er the steep path, through brake and briar, His batter'd turrets still aspire, In rude magnificence. 'Twas here LANCASTRIAN HENRY spread his cheer, When came the news that HAL was born, And MONMOUTH hail'd th' auspicious morn; A boy in sports, a prince in war, Wisdom and valour crown'd his car; Of France the terror, ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... noisette standards some of them are very fine, and the Chinese roses, and countless hybrids and varieties of all these, with many Bourbons; and your beautiful American yellow rose, and the Austrian briar and eglantine, and the Scotch, and white and dog roses, in their innumerable varieties, change admirably well with the others, and ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... free-and-easy place; when they had finished supper, Lionel Moore lit a cigarette, and his friend a briar-root pipe, without moving from the table; and Mangan's prayer was still that his companion should fix Sunday week for a visit to the little Surrey village where they had been boys together, and where ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... the lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night From his watch-tower in the skies Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow Through the sweet-briar, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine; While the cock with lively din Scatters the rear of darkness thin; And to the stack, or the barn door, Stoutly struts his dames before; Oft listening how the hounds and horn Cheerly rouse ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... sweet-briar, we would remember thee And the cinnamon rose that evermore enthralls each passing bee, You old, old-fashioned roses, a-growing wild ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... the South Carolina Regiment, the oldest branch of the 1st West India Regiment, was raised. Numerous royalists joined the British camp and were formed into various corps;[2] and the South Carolina Regiment is first mentioned as taking part in the action at Briar Creek on the 3rd of March, 1779,[3] the corps then being, according to Major-General Prevost's despatch, about 100 strong. The action at Briar Creek occurred ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... a "Case" right under his nose—in his own employ, in fact; but was not aware of the fact until Mitchell drew his attention to it. The Case went by the name of Alfred O'Briar—which hinted a mixed parentage. He was a small, nervous working-man, of no particular colour, and no decided character, apparently. If he had a soul above bricks, he never betrayed it. He was not popular on the jobs. There was something sly about ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... slopes the Alpine rhododendron was showing its crimson bunches of blossom. It is a pity that the Swiss call this plant "Alpenrose," since there is a true and exquisite Alpine rose (which we often found) with deep red flowers, dark-coloured foliage, and a rich, sweet-briar perfume. Lovely as these larger flowers of the higher Alps are, they are excelled in fascination by the delicate blue flowers of the Soldanellas, like little fringed foolscaps, by the brilliant little red and purple Alpine snap-dragon, and by the cushion-forming growths of saxifrages and ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... enough, of course, but a little. He was plannin' to take on more, but somehow it never seemed as if he could die, he so big and strong, and we put it off until he got so he couldn't pass the examination. When the insurance money come I took it to Jedge Briar, a mighty good friend of Jubal's and mine and the one that held the mortgage on the house, and I told him I wanted to pay off the mortgage with it, so's I'd have the house free and clear. But the Jedge advised me not to, said the mortgage ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... got to see the end of this," said Tom, and led the way by a side path to the Widow Taylor's cottage. This was a short cut, but Aleck would not take it, because of the briar bushes and the dust. As the boys were in their knockaround suits they ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... grove is there seen, But with tendrils of woodbine is bound; Not a beech's more beautiful green, But a sweet-briar entwines it around. Not my fields in the prime of the year, More charms than my cattle unfold; Not a brook that is limpid and clear, But it glitters ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... troublous times of the Revolutionary War it was the keep or stronghold of Jacob Van Tassel, a valiant Dutchman.... Years and years passed over the time honored little mansion. The honeysuckle and the sweet briar crept up its walls; the wren and the phoebe bird built under its eaves.... Such was the state of the Roost many years since, at the time when Diedrich Knickerbocker came into this neighborhood.... Mementoes of the sojourn of Diedrich Knickerbocker are still ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... spasms of cannon, and with my eye more or less singly fixed on the imaginary figure of my dear James Payn. I try to see him in bed; no go. I see him instead jumping up in his room in Waterloo Place (where ex hypothesi he is not), sitting on the table, drawing out a very black briar-root pipe, and beginning to talk to a slim and ill-dressed visitor in a voice that is good to hear and with a smile that is pleasant to see. (After a little more than half an hour, the voice that was ill to hear has ceased, the cannonade is over.) And I am thinking how I can get an answering ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... like a briar—I die where I grow; only, instead of your finding me, as you did the first time, on the first or second floor, you will have to look for me on the fifth or sixth, seeing that, by a very natural see-saw movement, as my ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... wistful-eyed laddie dreamed so many brave and laughing dreams. It was only a farm-house then, fallen from a more romantic history, and it had no attraction for Bobby. He merely sniffed at dead vines of clematis, sleeping briar bushes, and very live, bright hedges of holly, rounded a corner of its wall, and ran into a group of lusty children romping on the brae, below the very prettiest, thatch roofed and hill-sheltered hamlet within many a mile of Edinboro' town. The bairns were lunching from grimy, mittened hands, gypsy ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... a short man with grotesquely wide shoulders, wore a long flowing moustache, and a black coat, covered with dust, that reached to his knees. He held a smoking briar pipe in his hand, and with it beat time for a row of men sitting on a long stone under the store window and pounding on the sidewalk with their heels to make a chorus for the song. Sam's smile broadened into a grin as he looked at the singer, Freedom Smith, a buyer of butter and eggs, and past him ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... sun Nelly was out on the sea-braes, where the sprays of the briar-roses were swept in circles, streaming far and wide. She lingered in the hollow, and strayed to the utmost limit of her path. As she was returning, her eye fell on the folds of an object fluttering among the tedded grass. ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... And then in sickness! What, what is so refreshing as the perfume of sweet plants? We speak not of the glazed and costly things that come from foreign lands, but of the English nosegay—(how we love the homely word!)—the sweet briar, lavender, cowslip, violet, lily of the valley, or a sprig of meadow sweet, a branch of myrtle, a tuft of primroses, or handful of wild thyme! Such near the couch of sickness are worth a host of powdered ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... flash by me. She must flash to me, and stop there, burning. Oh, look, it is the month of the briar-rose. See how the hedges foam with pink blossom. And the fields, look, knee-deep in long grasses and daisies and buttercups. I am home again, thank Heaven. I am home. Home met me on the pier, my darling—the heart of home ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... maiden sold him me, And she was proud and cold; She'd briar pipes at two-and-three For them that squandered gold; She'd one that had a leather case. Item, a curly stem; And cheap pipes make her shrug her face, She had such ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... remembering as she did, how he took it, had its part in the freedom which he presently found for offering hospitality on his own account, not at his home, as he explained to them, his sister being away, but say a dinner at Briar Crest to which they might motor out pleasantly Saturday afternoon, returning by moonlight. He offered Briar Crest tentatively on the strength of the Lessings having once given a dinner there, and was relieved to find that he ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... the air was brimming and quivering with it: magic touched earth. For some moments, some thirty beats of a heron's wing, had the angels sung to men, had their songs gone earthward into that rosy glow, gliding past layers of faintly tinted cloud, like moths at dusk towards a briar-rose; in those few moments men would have known their language. Rodriguez reined in his horse in the heavy silence and waited. For what he waited he knew not: some unearthly answer perhaps to his questioning thoughts that had wandered far from earth, though no words came to him ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... t' flirt with the bride in a way thet was sassy an' bold. An' the notes that he took as he shivered an' shook Hed a sound like the jingle of gold. He sat on a briar an' laughed at the choir an' said thet ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... arches, the evident remnants of some outer fortification, rose against the hill-side; for the space of a few paces, these ruins bordered the path with their heavy buttresses, and projected into it, together with festoons of ivy and briar, a mass of shade which night changed into densest darkness. It looked then as if the passage was broken by an abyss. The gloomy character of this site was not, however, without some mitigating features; the path was strewn with fine, dry sand; rustic ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... was unmatched for strength, speed, and endurance. Models of this splendid race of horses are seldom to be found at the present time; but there are, perhaps, sporting men living who saw them in the celebrated Mambrino, Sweet Briar, and Sweet William. Those horses possessed compact bodies, capacious lungs, strong loins, large joints, and enormous masses of muscular tissue on the shoulder-blades and arms. They were good weight-carrying hunters as well as racers, and they could carry eight stones over a six miles ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... had with him only two hundred and fifty francs, he paid her the balance in United Cigar Stores coupons, some of which he chanced to have in his pocket-book, and which, he explained, was American war currency. He told me that he gave her almost enough to get a briar-pipe. At Boulogne he was arrested, as he had foreseen, was stripped, searched and his camera opened, but as nothing was found he was permitted to continue to London, where he went to the countess's hotel and received his films—and, I might add, his money and cigar coupons. Two hours later, ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... hunting, awoke them, and, withholding their usual nourishment, gave the signal "Come." The obedient little family followed her along the dark passage, and ventured, close at her heels, into the grass-patch in the middle of the briar-brake. Vulp was slightly more timid than his sisters were; even at that early age he showed signs of independence and distrust. While the other cubs played "follow-my-leader" with the dam, he hung back, hesitating and afraid. Even an unusual show of affection ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... voices. From the Island of Frogs we made for the Island of Birds, called Gannet Island, and sometimes Gannet Rock, whereon is a bright, intermittent light, which flashed fitfully across the Spray's deck as she coasted along under its light and shade. Thence shaping a course for Briar's Island, I came among vessels the following afternoon on the western fishing-grounds, and after speaking a fisherman at anchor, who gave me a wrong course, the Spray sailed directly over the southwest ledge through the worst tide-race ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air; the flower, which above all others yields the sweetest smell in the air, is the violet;[18] next to that is the musk rose, then the strawberry-leaves, dying with a most-excellent cordial smell; then sweet briar, then wall-flowers, which are very delightful to be set under a parlour, or lower chamber window; but those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three—that ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... second sister; "the sooner she comes, the sooner she'll go. Briar and Patty and I have put our heads together, and we mean to let her see what we think of her and her interfering ways. The idea of Aunt Sophia interfering between father and us! Now, I should like to know who is likely to understand ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... the Poocah seems to be to obtain a rider, and then he is in all his most malignant glory. Headlong he dashes through briar and brake, through flood and fall, over mountain, valley, moor, and river indiscriminately; up and down precipice is alike to him, provided he gratifies the malevolence that seems to inspire him. He bounds and flies over and beyond them, gratified by the distress, and ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... spying mine axe, must think to recognise me and gave the hue and cry; whereat I, incontinent, fled ere they could drop the portcullis—and divers rogues after me. Aha! then did I lead them a right merry dance by moor and moss, by briar and bog, and contrived to slay of them five in all. But as to Pertolepe, a malison on him! he is not yet to die, meseemeth. But, some day—aye, some day!" So saying he kissed the great axe and setting it by came to the table and fell to eating mightily while Giles sat ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... hedge with wild briar overtwined, And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind Upon their summer thrones; there too should be The frequent chequer of a youngling tree, That with a score of light green brethen shoots From the quaint mossiness of aged roots: Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters Babbling ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... know upland spirits too Who love the shadeless downs to climb; There, in the far-off fabled time, Men called them when the moon was new, And built them little huts of stone With briar and thistle over-grown. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... dale, Thorough bush, thorough briar, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, We'll have to follow everywhere, If Sara's laughter we would snare. I will go and lead the van, You may follow if you can. Sara's would be an awful plight To ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... said Charles pleasantly, refilling his foul old briar—"the great day when Fleet Street ran with blood and the pipe-smokers put up barricades in the Strand, and Piccadilly became a reeking shambles. Have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... Indian file, I at the chief's heels and Jennifer at mine. I followed the Catawba blindly; and being as yet little better than half a man in breath and muscle, was well-nigh spent before we crashed down through a tangled briar thicket into the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... men clambered up into the engineer's seat. Hemenway gave McLeod his longest and strongest cigar, and filled his own briar-wood pipe. The rain was now pattering gently on the roof of the cab. The engine hissed and sizzled patiently in the darkness. The fragrant smoke curled steadily from the glowing tip of the cigar; but the pipe went out ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... away Through grain and briar shoulder high, There are secrets hid in the heart of day, In the hush ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... spent one night in the dear Old Briar-patch. He is fine looking too, the biggest of all the Sparrow tribe, and HOW he can sing. The only thing I've got against him is the color of his coat. It always reminds me of Reddy Fox, and I don't like anything that reminds me of that fellow. ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... I don't mind it myself; I'm used to it. Born and bred in de briar patch, like Br'er Rabbit. I've been trying to place you for a long time; I think I must have ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... all looks as if it had grown by nature itself upon the well-dressed wearer. Be like him—be like her—so runs the third head of the etiquette-card. Be not slovenly and disorderly and unseemly in your livery. Let not your livery be always falling off, and catching on every bush and briar, and dropping into every pool and ditch. Hold yourselves in hand, the instruction goes on. Brace yourselves up. Have your temper, your tongue, your eyes, your ears, and all your members in control. And then you will escape many a rent and many a rag; many a seam ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... Chichester turned, and coming to the path followed it, walking neither fast nor slow, never once looking to where Barnabas strode behind, and heedless of briar or bramble that dragged at him as he passed. On they went, until the path lost itself in a grassy lane, until the lane ended in a five-barred gate. Now, having opened the gate, Mr. Chichester passed through into the high road, and then, for one moment he looked ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... by it) between the baby and the mother's breast. So much lower than the company he keeps, for his maudlin assumption of being higher, this pitiless rascal blights the summer road as he maunders on between the luxuriant hedges; where (to my thinking) even the wild convolvulus and rose and sweet-briar, are the worse for his going by, and need time to recover from the taint of him ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... grunt of satisfaction, carefully filling a briar-root pipe with some dark tobacco, which he produced from out of a little round brass box that he carried in his waistcoat pocket, telling me it was "the right sort," and proceeding to light it—"now, ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... morning. Captain GADSBY, in his shirt-sleeves, is bending over a complete set of Hussar's equipment, from saddle to picketing-rope, which is neatly spread over the floor of his study. He is smoking an unclean briar, and his forehead is puckered ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... leaping form of a deer, nor the uncouth shambling bulk of swamp bear that broke from the cover a moment later. Instead, there lurched into view a huge negro. The fugitive's clothing hung in shreds, witness of the cat's-briar claws; his face, from the same cause, was torn and bleeding. The breath wheezed loudly through the open mouth; the sweat ran in streams from the face; the eyes rolled whitely. There was terror in his expression. He carried a thick ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... the old man, who hated to see anybody or anything but himself have his way, had chained a heavy block to him to keep him from doing what nature had intended him to do—roam the woods and poke his long nose in every briar patch ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... neutralize the glaring tints, he pulled down the blinds of the two windows which looked on to a dull suburban roadway, and thus shut out the weak sunshine. Then he threw himself into an uncomfortable arm-chair and sought solace in his briar root. The future was dark, the present was disagreeable, and the past would not bear thinking about, so intimately did it deal with the murder of Pine, the threats of Silver, and the misery occasioned by the sacrifice of Agnes to the family fetish. It was in ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... is right off the beat, isn't it?" mused my acquaintance, as sheltered from the keen wind I began to load my briar. "Very inconvenient I've always thought it for a gentleman who gets about ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... a trace of her; but instead of growing tired of his search he only became the more anxious to find her. One day, as he was riding through a wood, he came upon a sweet-smelling hedge, all made of honeysuckle and sweet-briar, so high that he could not climb it, and so thick that he could not ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... my eye on the top of the high hawthorn hedge beside the Brighton road one evening as it was growing dusk, and on looking again there was a spray of briar in flower, two roses in full bloom and out of reach, and one spray of three growing buds. So it is ever with the June rose. It is found unexpectedly, and when you are not looking for it. It is a gift, not a discovery, or anything earned—a ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... on briar and weed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name. Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Snug and safe is that nest of ours, Hidden among the summer flowers. Chee, ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... non-committal as to his profession, with a clean-shaven face which bore the unmistakable stamp of good breeding and unlimited good-nature. He tilted his suit-case on end and sat down on it; then he filled his briar pipe, crossed his legs, and looked about to take stock of the situation. He gazed about curiously; but there was nothing of any special interest in sight, except, painfully conspicuous on the face of a grass terrace, the name of the village picked out in large letters ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... half mad when I think of leaving them. I must now tear myself from this mansion of comfort and affection, to wander with you in some rumbling old barouche 'over brake and through briar!' Well, patience! Another such upset to your friends of the Neva, and with 'victory perched like an eagle on their laurelled brows,' I may have some chance of wooing the Sobieskis to the banks of the Thames. At present, ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... and furrow, Down into the bulrush beds, 'Midst the reeds and osier heads, In the rushy soaking damps, Where the vapours pitch their camps, Follow me, follow me, For a midnight ramble! O! what a mighty fog, What a merry night O ho! Follow, follow, nigher, nigher - Over bank, and pond, and briar, Down into the croaking ditches, Rotten log, Spotted frog, Beetle bright With crawling light, What a joy O ho! Deep into the purple bog - What a joy O ho! Where like hosts of puckered witches All the shivering ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a pound can of Sir Walter Raleigh across the desk, selected a briar from a pipe rack and while he was packing in tobacco said, "Paul, do you know what day it ...
— Revolution • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... yellow fangs. They had long scraggy necks that could turn all the way round like the neck of a hen. Their arms were long and skinny and muscular, and at the end of each finger they had a spiked nail that was as hard as horn and as sharp as a briar. Their bodies were covered with a bristle of hair and fur and fluff, so that they looked like dogs in some parts and like cats in others, and in other parts again they looked like chickens. They had moustaches ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... thrice daily—well, call it six, then—do I make burnt offering. Now some use censers of clay, others employ censers of rare white earth finely carved and decked with silver and gold. My particular censer, as you see, is a plain, honest briar, a root dug from the banks of the blue Garonne, whose only glory is its grain and color. The original tint, if you remember, was like that of new-cut cedar, but use—I've been smoking this one only two ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... was once the case, grew thick and tangled. Furze, too, and heath covered the slopes, and in places vast quantities of fern. There had always been copses of fir and beech and nut-tree covers, and these increased and spread, while bramble, briar, and hawthorn ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... see her, but at length he caught sight of her some way off struggling with the undergrowth, her dainty head just peeping out over the tops of the ferns. So back he went once more and brought her out from the tangled mass of briar and brake into an open space where blue butterflies fluttered among the ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... money, some equal distribution of property, some annihilation of debts, some rebate of all taxes, and all clamoured against law and government." The disorder spread to Virginia. "In several counties the prisons and court houses and clerks' offices have been wilfully burnt. In Green Briar, the course of justice has been mutinously stopped and associations are entered into against the payment of taxes," wrote Madison to Jefferson ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... unreproved pleasures free; 40 To hear the Lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night, From his watch-towre in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to com in spight of sorrow, And at my window bid good morrow, Through the Sweet-Briar, or the Vine, Or the twisted Eglantine. While the Cock with lively din, Scatters the rear of darknes thin, 50 And to the stack, or the Barn dore, Stoutly struts his Dames before, Oft list'ning ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... and closed the French windows. Then, re-seating himself, he removed his old briar pipe from his lips, and, bending towards me in his ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... and the hurry of her heart. Then she looked about a moment confusedly, for she called to mind that in her nakedness she had neither knife, nor scissors, nor bodkin to let her blood withal. But even therewith close to hand she saw hanging down a stem of half-dead briar-rose with big thorns upon it; she hastily tore off a length thereof and scratched her left arm till the blood flowed, and stepped lightly first to stem and then to stern, and besmeared them therewith. Then she sat down on ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... fair, They loved each other well. That very day on her bier she lay He on his sword-point fell. They buried her by the northward spire, And him by the south kirk wall; And theretofore grew neither bush nor briar In the hallowed ground at all. But next spring from their coffins twain Two lilies fair upgrew— And by and by, o'er the roof-tree high, They twined and they bloomed the whole year through. How read you ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... their strange love's sake Rode Balen forth by lawn and lake, By moor and moss and briar and brake, And in his heart their sorrow spake Whose lips were dumb as death, and said Mute words of presage blind and vain As rain-stars blurred and marred by rain To wanderers on a moonless main Where night and ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and still, in Barford churchyard, careless of what became of their orphan child, as far as earthly manifestations of care or love went. And Clemence lay there too, bound down in her grassy bed by withes of the briar-rose, which Lois had trained over those three precious graves before leaving ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... expectation, went beyond belief, and soared above all the natural powers of description! she was nature itself! she was the most exquisite work of art! she was the very daisy, primrose, tube rose, sweet-briar, furze blossom, gilliflower, wall-flower, cauliflower and rosemary! in short she was a bouquet of Parnassus. Where expectation was raised so high, it was thought she would be injured by her appearance; but it was the audience who were ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... were outwitted as well as outrun. A few words will explain Martin's conduct. We arrive at causes by noting coincidences; yet, now and then, coincidences are deceitful. As we have all seen a hare tumble over a briar just as the gun went off, and so raise expectations, then dash them to earth by scudding away untouched, so the burgomaster's mule put her foot in a rabbit-hole at or about the time the crossbow bolt whizzed innocuous over her head: she fell and threw ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... them. In the meantime, D'Artagnan, who had dismounted with his usual agility, inhaled the fresh perfumed air with the delight a Parisian feels at the sight of green fields and fresh foliage, plucked a piece of honeysuckle with one hand, and of sweet-briar with the other. Porthos had laid hold of some peas which were twined round poles stuck into the ground, and ate, or rather browsed upon them, shells and all; and Planchet was busily engaged trying ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... heavy briar and proceeded to envelop himself in a cloud of smoke. He gasped out a great sigh of satisfaction, and his leathery eyelids half closed. Presently a gentle tap came at the glass door, which partitioned off the office from the store. Lablache called out a guttural ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... then set in to help him. I didn't know much, but I did the best I could. Sometimes he would write with a piece of charcoal or the p'int of a burnt stick on the fence or floor. We got a little paper at the country town, and I made some ink out of blackberry briar-root and a little copperas in it. It was black, but the copperas ate the paper after a while. I made Abe's first pen out of a turkey-buzzard feather. We had no geese them days. After he learned to write his name he was scrawlin' it everywhere. Sometimes ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... saw what a shabby old clay pipe Mr Gunson had got, and I thought a good noo clean briar-root one would be a nice present for him, and I ran off to get it, and bought a big strong one as wouldn't break. And then, as I was out, I thought I'd look in at some of the stores, and see if there wasn't something that would do ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... park, long preserved, than the recent haunt of naked savages. There were deer and quail in abundance, here and there an open field of grain. Long beards of pale green moss waved from the white oaks, wild flowers, golden red and pale blue, burst underfoot. There were hedges of sweet briar, acres of lupins, purple and yellow. Altogether the ideal estate of a nobleman; and Rezanov, who had liked nothing in California so well, gave his imagination rein and saw the counterpart of the castle of his ancestors rise in the ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... occasionally, but no one seemed inclined to talk, and a 'barley' was as far away as ever. If we went to the Institute they were to be seen lolling all over the sofas in the billiard-room, smoking cigarettes, when, as everyone knows, a briar pipe is the only thing that goes decently with a brass-bound cap, tilted at the right angle. They did not seem to make many friends, and their talk among themselves was of matters that most apprentices ignore. One night Jones heard them rotting about 'Great Circle sailing,' and 'ice to ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... Sunday,' she could not help sighing out as she looked anxiously along the lane ere turning in, and then said, 'My good lad, I don't want to get you to be telling tales, but it would set my heart at rest, and his poor brother's up there, if you could tell me he is not gone to Briar Alley.' ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on re-entering his office, did a very unusual thing. It has been said that he could no longer afford himself tobacco. But an old briar pipe lay on the chimney-piece among a litter of notes and memoranda that had escaped the afternoon's holocaust. He took it up wistfully, and, searching in a jar, at the end of the shelf, found a few crumbs of ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the same journal, Colonel W.F. Prideaux, also replying to a query of mine, wrote: "Before briar-root pipes came into common use clay pipes were of necessity smoked by all classes. When I matriculated at Oxford at the Easter of 1858 ... University men used to be rather particular about the pipes they smoked. The finest were made in France, and the favourite brand was 'Fiolet, Saint Omer.' I ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... SEPT. 2, Sweet Briar Farm.-Ernest spent Sunday with us, and I have just driven him to the station and seen him safely off. Things have prospered with us to such a degree that he has been extravagant enough to give me the use, for the summer, of a ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... evening was chill a fire glittered and sparkled and the deep blue curtains were drawn. Ronder was wearing brown kid slippers and a dark velvet smoking-jacket. As he lay back in the deep arm-chair, smoking an old and familiar briar, his chubby face was deeply contented. His eyes were almost closed; he was the very symbol of ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... the refuse scattered here and there. Three or four natives were lounging about the verandah. When Lawson asked for Brevald the old man's cracked voice called out to him, and he found him in the sitting-room smoking an old briar pipe. ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... and as it is most readily cultivated in pots, its fragrance may be conveyed to the parlour of the recluse, or the chamber of the valetudinarian; its perfume, though not so refreshing perhaps as that of the Sweet-Briar, is not apt to offend on continuance ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... small portion of the choir. The church, its transepts, north and south aisles, and chancel, are gone; and the dormitory, refectory, cloisters, &c. have scarcely left any trace of their gorgeous existence. The lonely ash and sturdy briar vegetate over the ashes of barons and prelates; and the unfeeling peasants intrude their rustic games on the holy place, ignorant of its former importance, and unconscious of the poetical feeling which its remains inspire. We quitted its interior to inspect a gateway situated at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... might do nothing against all them, for he was lacking of arms; but amidst all that he slew three, and five were left, who fell upon him and slew his palfrey, and took the knight and stripped him to the shirt, and bound him hand and foot, and cast him into a briar-bush: and the Lady they stripped, and took from her her palfrey. They beheld the Lady, and saw that she was full fair, and each one would have her. At the last, they accorded betwixt them hereto, that they should lie with her, and they had their will of her in her despite; ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... bar, not as an unhopeful man would do. The next moment he was laughing horribly. Emilia, to make sure of the thing she dreaded, forced the note, and would not be denied. What voice there was in her came to the summons. It issued, if I may so express it, ragged, as if it had torn through a briar-hedge: then there was a whimper of tones, and the effect was like the lamentation of a hardly-used urchin, lacking a certain music that there is in his undoubted heartfelt earnestness. No single note poised firmly for the instant, but swayed, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ll. 187-8. ere . . . eglantine. The sun, drying up the dew drop by drop from the sweet-briar is pictured as passing beads along a string, as the Roman Catholics do when they ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... such little gardens which have kept for us the Blue Primrose, the highly fragrant Summer Roses (including Rose de Meaux, and the red and copper Briar), countless beautiful varieties of Daffy-down-dillies, and all the host of sweet, various and hardy flowers which are now returning, like the Chippendale chairs, from the village ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... with these unpleasant thoughts, Grayson sat at his desk in the office of the ranch trying to unravel the riddle of a balance sheet which would not balance. Mixed with the blue of the smoke from his briar was the deeper azure of a spirited monologue ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the riding, highly-seated on the rail, And worthy of the wooden horse, the rascal that we ride; Let us see the mighty shoulders that will never, never fail. To lift him high, and plant him, on the crooked rail astride. The seven-sided pine rail, the pleasant bed of briar, The little touch of hickory law, with a dipping ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... down by an end window that overlooked the garden, and peered through the little panes to avoid the steady gaze that the woman fixed upon her. A sweet-briar bush grew against the window; and she caught bright glimpses of marigolds and asparagus laden with red berries, through the ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... mounds are so broad that they in places resemble covers rather than hedges, thickly grown with bramble and briar, hazel and hawthorn, above which the straight trunks of young oaks and Spanish chestnuts stand in crowded but careless ranks. The leaves which dropped in the preceding autumn from these trees still lie on the ground under the bushes, dry ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... out on the landing, and was thinking of the morning's work, and of some very dubious pages that he had blackened the night before. But when he had lit his disreputable briar, he remembered there was an unopened letter waiting for him on the table; he had recognized the vague, staggering script of Miss Deacon, his cousin. There was not much news; his father was "just the same as usual," there had been a good deal of ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... delighting and sanctifying the heart of man. "As far as possible;" that is, as far as is consistent with the fulfilment of the sentence of condemnation on the whole earth. Death must be upon the hills; and the cruelty of the tempests smite them, and the briar and thorn spring up upon them: but they so smite, as to bring their rocks into the fairest forms; and so spring, as to make the very desert blossom as the rose. Even among our own hills of Scotland and Cumberland, though often too barren to be perfectly beautiful, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... about the house gave perhaps half an acre of good garden ground; from the very edge of that, the grey rising ledges of granite and rank greensward between held their undisputed domain. There the wild roses planted themselves; there many a flourishing sweet-briar flaunted in native gracefulness, or climbed up and hung about an old cedar as if like a wilful child determined that only itself should be seen. Nature grew them and nature trained them; and sweet wreaths, fluttering in the wind, gently warned the passer-by that nature alone had to do there. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... begin his flight, And, singing, startle the dull night, From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the sweet-briar or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine; While the cock, with lively din, Scatters the rear of darkness thin, And to the stack, or the barn-door, Stoutly struts his dames before: Oft listening how the hounds and horn Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, From the side of some hoar hill, Through ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... sheepishly at first, but by-and-by we'd quote Gordon freely in turn when we were alone in camp. 'Those are grand lines about Burke and Wills, the explorers, aren't they, Jack?' he'd say, after chewing his cud, or rather the stem of his briar, for a long while without a word. (He had his pipe in his mouth as often as any of us, but somehow I fancied he didn't enjoy it: an empty pipe or a stick would have suited him just as well, it seemed to me.) 'Those are ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... of her face. Susan herself felt how well her self-command was obeyed by every little muscle, and said to herself in her Spartan manner, "I can bear it without either wincing or blenching." She went home early, at a tearing, passionate pace, trampling and breaking through all obstacles of briar or bush. Willie was moping in her absence—hanging listlessly on the farm-yard gate to watch for her. When he saw her, he set up one of his strange, inarticulate cries, of which she was now learning the meaning, and came towards ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... prickly briar, It prickles my throat so sore— If I get out o' the prickly briar, I'll never ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... face of pride on Sylvia, and then looked past her shoulder with a startled expression into the eyes of one of the fire-fighters, a tall, lean, stooping man, blackened and briar-torn like the rest. "Why, Cousin Austin!" she cried with vehement surprise, "what in the world—" In spite of his grime, she gave him a hearty, astonished, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... tramped, over bush and bog and briar; the dogs running before and scenting round among the bushes. All day, no luck. Night came on, and still no luck; so they "camped out," and started fresh again ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch Turn, and return, indenting with the way: Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch. Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay. For misery is trodden on by many, And being low, never ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... rose above the general din, calling "Fair lemons and oranges, oranges and citrons!" "Cherries, sweet cherries, ripe and red!" "New flounders and great plaice; buy my dish of great eels!" "Rosemary and sweet briar; who'll buy my lavender?" "Fresh cheese and cream!" "Lily-white vinegar!" "Dainty sausages!" which calls, being frequently intoned to staves of melody, fell with pleasant sounds upon the ear. [These hawkers so seriously interfered ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... of it," said Trefusis. "There never was such a mark as that on a road. It may be a very bad attempt at a briar, but briars don't straggle into the middle of roads frequented as that one seems to be—judging by those overdone ruts." He put the etching away, showing no disposition to look further into the portfolio, and remarked, "The only art that ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... the words of the young girls making a great stir in the trees. (They find the bush.) Here's the briar on my left, Martin; I'll go in first, I'm the big one, and ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... scene. Instead of fiery oratory and pipes of peace—the stone calumets of old—the vigorous arguments, the outbursts of passion, and close calls from threatened violence, here was a gathering of commonplace men smoking briar-roots, with treaty tobacco instead of "weed," and whose chiefs replied to Mr. Laird's explanations and offers in a few brief and sensible statements, varied by vigorous appeals to the common sense and judgment, ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... the steepy linn That hems our little garden in, Low in its dark and narrow glen You scarce the rivulet might ken, So thick the tangled greenwood grew, So feeble thrilled the streamlet through: Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen Through bush and briar, no longer green, An angry brook, it sweeps the glade, Brawls over rock and wild cascade, And foaming brown, with doubled speed, Hurries its waters to ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott |
