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Copse   Listen
verb
Copse  v. t.  
1.
To trim or cut; said of small trees, brushwood, tufts of grass, etc.
2.
To plant and preserve, as a copse.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Copse" Quotes from Famous Books



... child of St. Allen. St. Allen is a parish on the high ground about four miles from Truro, and there, in the little hamlet of Treonike, or, as it is now called, Trefronick, on a lovely spring evening years and years ago, a small village boy wandered out to pick flowers in a little copse not far from ...
— Legend Land, Vol. 1 • Various

... the church of the Shaddock Grove is a small copse of bamboos, where, in returning from mass with her mother and Margaret, Virginia loved to rest herself, seated by the side of him whom she then called her brother. This was the spot ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... a smart, ache, tingle, Lizzie went her way; Knew not was it night or day; Sprang up the bank, tore thro' the furze, 450 Threaded copse and dingle, And heard her penny jingle Bouncing in her purse,— Its bounce was music to her ear. She ran and ran As if she feared some goblin man Dogged her with gibe or curse Or something worse: But not one goblin skurried after, Nor was she pricked by fear; 460 The kind heart made her windy-paced ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... finds were confined strictly to rags and pairless arms and sleeves, and finally he gave up, with everything accounted for but worthless. Discovering a high, grassy plot near the creek, screened from the woods by a thick copse of hazel bushes, he lay down to think matters over and promptly ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... their own deserts: Then from the plaintive mother's teat he took Her blind and shuddering puppies, naming each, 130 And naming those, his friends, for whom they were: Then crost the common into Darnley chase To show Sir Arthur's deer. In copse and fern Twinkled the innumerable ear and tail. Then, seated on a serpent-rooted beech, 135 He pointed out a pasturing colt, and said: "That was the four-year-old I sold the Squire." And there he told a long long-winded tale Of how the ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... varmin'. He talked about delishes froots, but then it was a wopper all, The holl on't 's mud an' prickly pears, with here an' there a chapparal; You see a feller peekin' out, an', fust you know, a lariat Is round your throat an' you a copse, 'fore you can say, "Wut air ye at?" You never see sech darned gret bugs (it may not be irrelevant To say I've seen a scarabaeus pilularius[A] big ez a year old elephant), The rigiment come up one day in time to stop a red bug From runnin' off with Cunnle Wright—'twuz ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... jumpy flight into a distant copse of young pines, then went on swiftly. In an hour he paused at the top of a last steep grade. Lake Champlain stretched her flat-frozen bosom to the north and south of him. The more level timbered areas of the opposite shore were broken ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... surrounded by a bulwark of familiar personalities; but partly, too, his love was all given to inanimate things; and as he drove out of the gate on one of these visits, the thought that the larches of the copse should be putting out their rosy buds, the rhododendrons thrusting out their gummy, spiky cases, the stream passing slowly through its deep pools, the bee-hive in the little birch avenue beginning to wake to life, and that he should ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... dogcart, but remained behind at the last moment to take care of Frida; for Frida, being a lady at heart, always shrank from the pollution of vulgar assemblies. As they walked together across the lush green fields, thick with campion and yellow-rattle, they came to a dense copse with a rustic gate, above which a threatening notice-board frowned them straight in the face, bearing the usual selfish and anti-social inscription, ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... characterized still by those graces which he thought he had recognized and certainly loved. Ah! he did not ask much. It would be so easy to God! Here out in this lonely lane where he rode beneath the branches, his reins loose on his horse's neck, his eyes, unseeing, roving over copse and meadow across to the eternal hills—a face, seen for an instant, smiling and gone again; a whisper in his ear, with that dear stammer of shyness; a touch on his knee of those rippling fingers that he had watched in the moonlight playing gently on the sluice-gate above the ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... grew more rural and secluded, and the chalk hills, with their sides broken up by frost and weathering, stood out white, and dotted with patches of heath and bracken. Here and there a dense copse could be seen, while in sheltered hollows—forming in the distance what looked like squares worked in tapestry patterns—was a huge fabric of green, looped and flowered, where the hops hung ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... for its reception by burning down the copse wood and hoeing between the roots and stumps. It is sown in the months of May and June, the ground being slightly opened, and again lightly drawn together over the seeds with a hoe. In August, when it shoots up, it is carefully weeded. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... draw our covers to-morrow," announced the lady, with a certain heavy satisfaction. "Smithers is confident that we'll be able to show him some sport; he swears he's seen a fox in the nut copse three times ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)

... the knotted, The stunted birk-shaw;[90] While the rough wind is blowing, And the drift of the snowing Is shaking, o'erthrowing, The copse ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... clatt'ring steeds; And on the monarch Agamemnon press'd, Still slaying, urging still the Greeks to arms. As when amid a densely timber'd wood Light the devouring flames, by eddying winds Hither and thither borne, fast falls the copse Prostrate beneath the fire's impetuous course; So thickly fell the flying Trojans' heads Beneath the might of Agamemnon's arm; And here and there, athwart the pass of war, Was many an empty car at random whirl'd By strong-neck'd steeds, of guiding ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... was going along the edge of the wood, when suddenly a large animal rushed out from a thick copse a short distance before me, planting itself in a threatening attitude as if determined to dispute my progress. It was scarcely twenty feet off, and I knew that in a moment its fangs might be fixed ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston

... said. "We will lose no time in searching the copse you speak of. You and I, together with two of my most trusty men, with axes to clear away the brush, will do. At present a thing of this sort had best be kept between ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... you know best," said Tom; and then they were through the yard, across another road, and down a steep ravine by the side of a little copse. "He's been through them firs, any way," said Tom. "To him, Gaylass!" Then up they went the other side of the ravine, and saw the body of the hounds almost a field before them at ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... for himself and family, to enable them to return to his usual place of dwelling. This man's case has been previously noticed. He happened to be sitting in front of his lodge last spring, in a copse of woods near the banks of Muddy Lake, at the instant when the Inspector of Customs of St. Mary's (Mr. Agnew) had broken through the ice with his dog-train, and had exhausted himself in vain efforts to extricate himself. A ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... me, that the earnest faces of my audience—who would NOT notice it, but were clearly preparing terrible anti-Socialist posers for me—began to fade away and my dream grew thin, and I awoke (as I thought) to find myself lying on a strip of wayside waste by an oak copse just outside ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... Sounds farewell to field and copse, And I sit before my frugal Meal of gravy-soup and chops: When (as Gray remarks) "the moping Owl doth to the moon complain," And the hour suggests eloping - Fly my thoughts to ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.

... have a talk with you, friends," he went on. "This is what it is. Ever since the early spring your cattle have been in my copse and garden every day. Everything is trampled down; the pigs have rooted up the meadow, are ruining everything in the kitchen garden, and all the undergrowth in the copse is destroyed. There is no getting on with your ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... measured step were governed by his ear: And seems to say—Ye meaner fowl, give place, I am all splendour, dignity, and grace! Not so the pheasant on his charms presumes, Though he too has a glory in his plumes. He, christian-like, retreats with modest mien To the close copse or far sequestered green, And shines without desiring to ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... echoed by his companions, and, quickening their pace, the party was presently out of sight. The lame peasant, who, as the reader will already have conjectured, was no other than Baltasar de Villabuena, rode on for some distance further, till he came to an extensive copse fringing the base of a mountain. Riding in amongst the trees, he threw away his pannier, previously taking from it a large horse pistol which had been concealed at the bottom. He then stripped the bandage from his leg, bestrode his mule, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... that is to say, on the northern slope of the valley towards its western end, there stood an old-fashioned Flemish farm-house called Goumont, or Hougoumont, with out-buildings and a garden, and with a copse of beach trees of about two acres in extent round it. This was strongly garrisoned by the allied troops; and, while it was in their possession, it was difficult for the enemy to press on and force the British right wing. ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... hill, filling the air with long-drawn sound. A cuckoo was calling on a tree near at hand, and the evening was charged with spring scents—scents of leaf and grass, of earth and rain. Below, in an oak copse across the road, a stream rushed; and from a distance came the familiar rattle and thud of ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the younger went down the terrace through a little copse to her ladyship's own area of experimentation. A gate of old Florentine scrolled iron opened suddenly upon a blaze of yellow in all the shades from the orange velvet of the wallflower through the shaded saffron of azalias ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... on Roslin's castled rock, It ruddied all the copse-wood glen; 'Twas seen from Dryden's groves of oak, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... and rear of the English, the action was less severe. The light infantry had been placed in houses; and colonel Howe, the better to support them, had taken post still farther to the left, behind a copse. As the right of the French attacked the English left, he sallied from this position, upon their flanks, and threw them into disorder. In this critical moment, Townshend advanced several platoons against their front, and completely ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... the course of the river for several miles. It runs through a wild pastoral valley, roughened by thickets of copse-wood, and bounded on either hand by a line of swelling, moory hills, with here and there a few irregular patches of corn, and here and there some little nest-like cottage peeping out from among the wood. The clouds, which during the morning had obscured the entire face of the heavens, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... true moral sense as a cat. Her quarrel with Archelaus was not that, in a wayside copse, with some girl, Jennifer or another, he was learning as fact what he had long known in theory; the chastity of a man, even of her beloved son, meant very little to her. Terrible things, far worse than the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... a bright day in March, with a gentle south-west wind. Sitting still in the copse and facing the sun it strikes warm. It has already mounted many degrees on its way to its summer height, and is regaining its power. The clouds are soft, rounded, and spring-like, and the white of the blackthorn is discernible here and there amidst the ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... Than to interpret, by the letter, A story of a cock and bull, Must have a most uncommon skull. It chanced, then, on a winter's day, But warm, and bright, and calm as May, The birds, conceiving a design To forestall sweet St. Valentine, In many an orchard, copse, and grove, Assembled on affairs of love, And, with much twitter and much chatter, Began to agitate the matter. At length a bullfinch, who could boast More years and wisdom than the most, Entreated, opening wide his beak, A moment's liberty to speak; And, silence ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... rock-born stream! Like the gleam Of a star so bright Kindly spirits High above the clouds Nourished him while youthful In the copse ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... unconsciously or silently, repeated the gestures which they saw the runners making. The Gars and Gudin reached the little wood together, but as they did so the latter stopped and darted behind a tree. About twenty Chouans, afraid to fire at a distance lest they should kill their leader, rushed from the copse and riddled the tree with balls. Hulot's men advanced at a run to save Gudin, who, being without arms, retreated from tree to tree, seizing his opportunity as the Chouans reloaded. His danger was soon over. Hulot and ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... War, he served in the Confederate Army; his entire property, the inheritance of several generations, was destroyed in the bombardment of Charleston. From 1865 till his death he resided at "Copse Hill," a small cottage home in the pine hills near Augusta, Georgia, "keeping the wolf from the door only by the point of his pen," dearly honored and loved by all who knew ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... on the glowing scarlet coats of the hunting men, and the hounds barked in every variety of note and leaped with delight in the morning air. It was the first run of the season, and the sportsmen were fast gathering at the appointed spot—a field flanked by a grove of trees called Poachers' Copse. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... stronger as the sun climbed higher, and forced the fire into them. At last, after half an hour's trouble, the flames got a hold, and began to spread out like a fan, whereupon I went round to the farther side of the pan to wait for the lions, standing well out in the open, as we stood at the copse to-day where you shot the woodcock. It was a rather risky thing to do, but I used to be so sure of my shooting in those days that I did not so much mind the risk. Scarcely had I got round when I heard the reeds parting before the onward rush of some animal. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... the parish-doctor. Strengthening herself by the utmost exercise of her resolution, the poor trembling creature shook him off, almost fiercely, and took to flight. Nor did she feel safe until she had set a mile or two of by-road between herself and the marketplace, and had crept into a copse, like a hunted animal, to hide and recover breath. Not until then for the first time did she venture to recall how she had looked over her shoulder before turning out of the town, and had seen the sign of the White ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... pretence of indifference. His nerves were shattered, his spirit broken. Retribution was dogging him hard. Vengeance was close at hand at last. Besides, what mattered it? He thought himself alone, absolutely alone. But in that fancy he was wrong, for in the solitary little copse of bushes of which mention has been made there lay hidden a man—an ancient sailor. His single eye gleamed as fiercely upon the bound, shackled prisoner as did ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... lay a copse of 'azels on the border of the track, And into this two 'ounds 'ad run them two was all the pack — [33] And now from these 'ere 'azels there came a fearsome 'owl, With a yappin' and a snappin' ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle

... air and space reminds one, on each coign of vantage, of some Umbrian picture. Every hedgerow is hoary with May-bloom and honeysuckle. The oaks hang out their golden-dusted tassels. Wayside shrines are decked with laburnum boughs and iris blossoms plucked from the copse-woods, where spires of purple and pink orchis variegate the thin, fine grass. The land waves far and wide with young corn, emerald green beneath the olive-trees, which take upon their under-foliage tints reflected from this verdure or red tones from the naked earth. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... some piece of open country that I am unable to identify, and for some reason or other determined to spend the night out of doors. There was a copse a hundred yards away from the road, and in the copse a couple of small shelters built, probably, for wood-pigeon shooting. The Major and Gertie took possession of one, and Frank of the other, after they had supped in ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... latterly a brook, which we followed for several miles, and finally found it flowing through General M——'s farm. The house is an old country dwelling, in good condition, standing beside the road, in a valley surrounded by a wide amphitheatre of high hills. There is a good deal of copse and forest on the estate, high hills of pasture land, old, cultivated fields, and all such pleasant matters. The General sat in an easy-chair in the common room of the family, looking better than when in Salem, with an air of quiet, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... clearing through the tunal. It lay beneath the stars, a narrow defile much overgrown, walled on either side by impenetrable wood. On went Sedley and his men, cautiously, silently, until they had wellnigh pierced the tunal, that was scarce wider, indeed, than an English copse. Before them, quiet as the tomb, rose the fortress—no sound save their stealthy movement and the stir of the life that was native to the woods, no sign of sentience other than their own. Back they went to the plateau and made report, then with Baldry and half of all ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... from the hunter's eyes The landscape like a torrent flies. At last an ancient wood they gain'd, By pruner's axe yet unprofaned. High o'er the rest, by nature rear'd, The oak's majestic boughs appear'd; Beneath, a copse of various hue In barbarous luxuriance grew. 90 No knife had curb'd the rambling sprays, No hand had wove the implicit maze. The flowering thorn, self-taught to wind, The hazel's stubborn stem entwined, And bramble twigs were wreathed ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... Tom, and I'll get the billhook. Then we'll go and cut a couple of good young hazel rods in the copse." ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... of the sisters' devotion to one another (when Cassandra went to school little Jane accompanied her, the sisters could not be parted), of the family party, of the old place, 'where there are hedgerows winding, with green shady footpaths within the copse; where the earliest primroses and hyacinths are found.' There is the wood-walk, with its rustic seats, leading to the meadows; the church-walk leading to the church, 'which is far from the hum of the village, and within sight ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... darted into a copse of young balsams where Baree had disappeared. Like a great entangling web her loose hair impeded her in the brush, and with an encouraging cry to Pierrot she stopped to gather it over her shoulder as he ran past her. She lost only a moment or two, and ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... against the sides of the boat, and sparkled and rippled all around them, its murmurs mingling with the rustle of leaves, the sighing of sleeping cattle, the manifold "inarticulate voices of the night," above which a nightingale in a copse hard by sang out ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... surrounded by trees. During the night it had been carried far down in the direction of Lake Winnipeg, and had got entangled in one of the clumps of wood with which some parts of that region were studded. The hut had been so completely thrust into the copse that it was quite encompassed by foliage, and nothing of the surrounding country was visible from the chimney-top. The only thing that remained obvious to old Liz was the fact that the hut still floated, and was held in position by ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne

... self-delusion, so as to identify the surrounding scenes with those of which I had just been reading. I would loiter about a brook that glided through the shadowy depths of the forest, picturing it to myself the haunt of Naiads. I would steal round some bushy copse that opened upon a glade, as if I expected to come suddenly upon Diana and her nymphs, or to behold Pan and his satyrs bounding, with whoop and halloo, through the woodland. I would throw myself, during the panting heats of a summer noon, under the shade of some wide-spreading tree, and muse ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... very plain you are one o' the real sort wi' nothing flash about you, therefore I am the more con-sarned on your account, and wonder to see the likes o' you sitting alongside the likes o' me at midnight in Dead Man's Copse—" ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... be mistaken, but methinks a diligent search in the copse near the stream might find ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... never-fading beauty smile. England, oh England! for the breeze That slowly stirs thy forest-trees! Thy ferny brooks, thy mossy fountains, Thy beechen woods, thy heathery mountains, Thy lawny uplands, where the shadow Of many a giant oak is sleeping; The tangled copse, the sunny meadow, Through which the summer rills run weeping. Oh, land of flowers! while sinking here Beneath the dog-star of the West, The music of the waves I hear That cradle thee upon their breast. Fresh o'er thy rippling corn-fields ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler

... great pains to worm our way through the copse, for it was a perfect thicket, and so full of thorny trees, such as acacias and aloes, that we got well ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... present to Kate, from some little lover, and she had planted with her own hands. There were the hedgerows where the brother and sister had so often gathered wild flowers together, and the green fields and shady paths where they had so often strayed. There was not a lane, or brook, or copse, or cottage near, with which some childish event was not entwined, and back it came upon the mind—as events of childhood do—nothing in itself: perhaps a word, a laugh, a look, some slight distress, a passing thought or fear: and yet more strongly and distinctly marked, and better remembered, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... look around, and, through the darkness, discovered a confused mass at a hundred paces before him on the left of the road. "There is a copse!" he exclaimed. "To take refuge there is to run the risk of being caught, if they are in search of me; but ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... entrance is always open; no roses, or anything else, are wreathed about it; several outhouses, built in the same style, give the building extent; and the group (in all probability, the dependency of some large old chateau in the distance) does not peep out of copse, or thicket, or a group of tall and beautiful trees, but stands comfortlessly between two individuals of the columns of long-trunked facsimile elms, which keep guard along the length of the ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... Greek farmer; they were the plants he 'tore up' for his bed, or signal-fire, his word for them including a farther sense of crushing or bruising into a heap. The Westmoreland shepherds now, alas! burn them remorselessly on the ground, (and a year since had nearly set the copse of Brantwood on fire just above the house.) The sense of {208} parched and fruitless existence is given to the heaths, with beautiful application of the context, in our English translation of Jeremiah ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... ever given to the Queen was one prepared for her by Monsieur, the King's brother, at Brunoy. That Prince did me the honour to admit me, and I followed her Majesty into the gardens, where she found in the first copse knights in full armour asleep at the foot of trees, on which hung their spears and shields. The absence of the beauties who had incited the nephews of Charlemagne and the gallants of that period to lofty deeds was supposed to occasion this ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... a leaf stir on the eglantine in the blue calm of an idle day? When the shadows of a copse move so slowly, that it seems they are trying to stop the passage of the hours, why should they suddenly stir? Why was there this crowd of men who, not far from his retreat, were gathering the ears of maize in which ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes

... impress'd, Whose keel to blest Ausonian shores had borne the Olympian guest. Then on that spot I made my home where Tiber's waters glide, And eat the yielding banks away with sandy-rolling tide. Here, where Rome stands, wild copse green grew; the busy forum now Was then a peaceful glen, disturb'd by wandering oxen's low. My fortress then was that same hill which pious Rome reveres Even now, and thinks on Janus when Janiculum she hears. Here I was king, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... dark-creviced elm, all appeared now as black and flat outlines upon the sky, wherein the white stars twinkled so vehemently that their flickering seemed like the flapping of wings. Within the woody pass, at a level anything lower than the horizon, all was dark as the grave. The copse-wood forming the sides of the bower interlaced its branches so densely, even at this season of the year, that the draught from the north-east flew along the channel with scarcely an interruption ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... the year, I hear the young lambs bleat, The clamouring birds i' the copse I hear, I hear the waving wheat, Together laid on a ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell

... three and four, to resume their lives, swept and garnished, stripped and clean. But at dawn, when the ashes of the world's gladness were ceasing to glow—it was a bleak dawn that made me shiver in my thin summer clothes—I came across a field to a little copse full of dim blue hyacinths. A queer sense of familiarity arrested my steps, and I stood puzzled. Then I was moved to go a dozen paces from the path, and at once a singularly misshapen tree hitched itself ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... is the meaning of the song That rings so clear and loud, Thou nightingale amid the copse— Thou lark above the cloud? What says the song, thou joyous thrush, Up in the walnut-tree? "I love my Love, because I know ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various

... a meadow into a veritable field of the cloth of gold, and there are few prettier sights in nature than an English hay field on a summer evening, with a copse perhaps at one side and a brook on the other; men with forks tossing the hay in the air to dry; women with wooden rakes arranging it in swathes ready for the great four-horse waggon, or collecting it in cocks for the night; while some way off the mowers are still at work, and we hear from ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... on a little way whilst he followed. A great bee buzzed past their heads and settled in the cup of a wild rose. In a copse beside them a thrush shot into the air a quiverful ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... Torquati were most conservative among all the great houses. From childhood up—and in years she was scarcely more than a child—all these had been very real to her. Pomona wandered through every orchard beside her beloved Vertumnus; Pan and his sylvan brood sported behind the foliage of every copse. She would as soon have thought of questioning their presence as of doubting her own being. Marcia believed; the average Roman patrician affected to believe and indulged in his polite, Hellenic doubts; the Carthaginian priest, while he believed, with all Marcia's fervour, in a theology ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... flickering and licking round the kris that spilt it—for it's the devil you have in you, my dear. But we know you—he and I—he and I. Ah! there you go," he muttered as the hounds broke into cry, and the riders swept round the edge of the copse towards the sound of a view-halloo. "There you go," he nodded after the Rajah; "but ride as you will, the East is in you, great man—its gold in your blood, its dust in your eyelids, its own stink in your nostril; and, ride as you will, you can ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the end of the squire's property, where the parish of Allington divides itself from that of Abbot's Guest in which the earl's house stands, and made his way back along the copse which skirted the field in which they had encountered the bull, into the high woods which were at the back of the park. Ah, yes; it had been well for him that he had not come out on horseback. That ride home along the high road and up to the Manor ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... had not been mistaken, for presently they found themselves in front of an immense field of horns, regularly planted and stretching far out of sight. It was a complete copse, low and close packed, but ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... of these woods more in use, we should banish our hoops of hazel, &c. for those of good copse-oak, which being made of the younger shoots, are exceeding tough and strong: One of them being of ground-oak, will outlast six of the best ash; but this our coopers love not to hear of, who work by the great for sale, and for others. The smaller trunchions ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... do come about the copse Leaping upon flowers' tops; Then I get upon a fly, She carries me above the ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... with three attendant serfs, left Aescendune early on a fine summer morning, and followed a byroad through the forest, until, after a few difficulties, arising from entanglement in copse or swamp, they reached the Foss Way. Wide and spacious, this grand old road ran through the dense forest in an almost unbroken line; huge trees overshadowed it on either side, and the growth of underwood was so dense ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... matters straight for himself, knowing that young men are very sensitive about being interfered with or helped when their pride has been wounded by any humiliating catastrophe. So she turned aside into a small copse through which was a short cut to the house, intending to go forward and be prepared to render any assistance ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... village known as Little Town stands about midway in the vale, and a road runs along each bank. The tents were pitched for the sports near the bed of the valley, on the east side of the Newlands Beck. On the west side, above the road, there was a thick copse of hazel, oak, and birch. From a clearing in this wood a thin column of pale blue smoke was rising through the still air. A hut in the shape of a cone stood a few yards from the road. It was thatched from the ground upward ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... high, Tossed his beamed frontlet to the sky; 45 A moment gazed adown the dale, A moment snuffed the tainted gale, A moment listened to the cry, That thickened as the chase drew nigh; Then, as the headmost foes appeared, 50 With one brave bound the copse he cleared, And, stretching forward free and far, Sought the wild heaths ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... worlds opened, and the doors thereof. Just you come to me for the Jungle Books some day, Innocent, and you'll see. Look here, I want lots and lots, and again lots more leaves. Where are they all? I don't see any more, but there must be any quantity. I brought in a whole copse, myself." ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards

... "tarrable sharp teeth." After a good deal of manoeuvring he managed to set the butt end of his crook on the handle of the gin, and forcing it down until the iron teeth relaxed their grip, the fox pulled his foot out, and darting away along the hedge side vanished into the adjoining copse. Away went Monk after him, in spite of his master's angry commands to him to come back, and fox and dog disappeared almost together among the trees. Sounds of yelping and of crashing through the undergrowth came back fainter and fainter, and then there was silence. Caleb waited at the spot full ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... that copse, dark and damp, The fire-flies, each bearing a flickering lamp! Like meteors, gleaming and streaming, they pass O'er hillside and meadow, and dew-laden grass, Contrasting with ripple on river and stream, ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... I think I may safely take a little rest: all is quiet here. Yet there are houses in the distance, and wherever there are houses now, there are enemies of law and order. Well, at least, here is a good thick copse for me to hide in in case anybody comes. What am I to do? I shall be hunted down at last. It's true that those last people gave me a good belly-full, and asked me no questions; but they looked at me very hard. One of these times ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris

... of rough stones and crags, A rude and natural causeway, interpos'd Between the water and a winding slope Of copse and thicket, leaves the eastern shore Of Grasmere safe in its own privacy. And there, myself and two beloved Friends, One calm September morning, ere the mist Had altogether yielded to the sun, Saunter'd on this retir'd and difficult way. —Ill suits ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth

... forest-trained red men, an example of self-denial and endurance, and in the midst of corruption made the public good his aim. Struck by a musket ball, as he fought opposite Monckton, he continued in the engagement, till, in attempting to rally a body of fugitive Canadians in a copse near St. John's gate, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... fugitives who had escaped us would certainly have borne witness against us. Safety could only be found in flight. I, however, seized the musket and hat of him I had first killed, and we then gained the copse, and after that the forest. The road was round about, and it was ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... that purpose. A small stream, Abraham's creek, flowed from the west through the little vale at the southern base of the ridge, the ascent of which was steep, though nowhere abrupt. At one point a broad, shallow, trough-like depression broke the surface, which was further interrupted by some low copse, outcropping stone, and two fences. On the summit the Federal lines were posted behind a stone wall, along a road coming west from the pike. Worn somewhat into the soil, this road served as a countersink and strengthened the position. Further west, there was a break ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... the hills bordering Yorkshire and Lancashire. The scenery of these hills is not grand—it is not romantic; it is scarcely striking. Long low moors, dark with heath, shut in little valleys, where a stream waters, here and there, a fringe of stunted copse. Mills and scattered cottages chase romance from these valleys; it is only higher up, deep in amongst the ridges of the moors, that Imagination can find rest for the sole of her foot: and even if she finds it there, she must be a solitude-loving ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... to-night, and something, The wind maybe, or the rain, Or the cry of a bird in the copse outside, Has brought back the past and its pain. And I feel, as I sit here thinking, That the hand of a dead old June Has reached out hold of my heart's loose strings, And is drawing ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... simultaneously dashed in one direction, and came pouring into the meadow over towards him, down went their heads, up went their curved tails, the clatter and rushing of hoofs, and the apparition of red coats, showed the hunters all going round the copse, while at the same moment, away with winged steps bounded her companion, flying headlong like the wind, so as to meet ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... woman into the house; set down in the hall the books he carried; left the house again; out through the gate, and so, whistling gaily along roads and lanes, came to the skirts of an outlying copse. By disused paths he twisted this way and that to approach, at length, a hut that once was cottage, whose dilapidated ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... Her swift feet flew To the somber shades of the tangled thicket. She hid in the copse like a wary cricket, And the fleetest hunters in vain pursue. Seeing unseen from her hiding place, She sees them fly on the hurried chase; She sees their fierce eyes glance and dart, As they pass and peer for a track or trace, And she trembles ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... it would have been, more in the light cavalry style, to ride full gallop, brandishing my sword, with my five little Chasseurs into the nearest copse! But I knew then that if it were occupied by the enemy their men would be lying down, one with the soil, using the trees and bushes as cover, till the last moment. Then not one of us would ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont

... plumes of the pointed dusky fir, Screen of a swelling patriot heart, The copse is all astir, And echoes ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand

... spared them. The redwood of the coast (Sequoia sempervirens) had the stronger hold upon existence, forming as it did large forests throughout a narrow belt about three hundred miles in length, and being so tenacious of life that every large stump sprouts into a copse. But it does not pass the bay of Monterey, nor cross the line of Oregon, although so grandly developed not far below it. The more remarkable Sequoia gigantea of the Sierra exists in numbers so limited that ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... in gallant style, his men quickening their pace at times to a run, in order to keep the alignment with the main body on the west bank. Perceiving on his extreme right, toward the lake, a fine grove or copse, Gooding threw out Sharpe with the 156th New York to examine the wood with a view of attempting to turn the left flank of the Confederate lines. These, as it proved, did not extend beyond the grove, but ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... runs nearest to the base of the campanile is not that by which Torcello is commonly approached. Another, somewhat broader, and overhung by alder copse, winds out of the main channel of the lagoon up to the very edge of the little meadow which was once the Piazza of the city, and there, stayed by a few grey stones which present some semblance of a quay, forms its ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... succeeded in safely conveying to Quebec the hide and horns of the mammoth stag of the forest. These he had concealed, accordingly, in a safe hiding-place, or cache, to be touched at on our return; and now as he emerged from the dark pine copse, with his ropy locks tasselling his flat skull, and a tattered blanket-coat fluttering in ribbons from his brown and brawny chest, his interest in the venture appeared in the careful manner in which he drew after him a long, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... in the mean time, had escorted the children to the larch-copse bordering on the lane which leads to the village. Now he crept stealthily back to the yard, and established ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... recite to you the phrase which governs his work: 'Thought, principle of evil and of good can only be prepared, subdued, directed by religion.' See?" he continued, suddenly taking his companion by the arm and forcing him to look into a transversal allee through the copse, "there he is, the doctor who holds the remedy for that malady of the soul as for all the others. Do not show yourself. They will have forgotten our presence. But, look, look!....Ah, what ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... superb; the moon was rising behind us; I looked at it over my left shoulder. Brigitte was watching the lines of the wooded hills as they began to outline themselves against the background of sky. As the light flooded the copse and threw its halo over sleeping nature, Brigitte's song became more gentle and more melancholy. Then she bent over, and, throwing her arms around ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... noon, we reached a slight elevation of the ground, scarcely to be called a hill, to the top of which we rode, that we might obtain a wider look-out over the country ahead of us. Near at hand was a stream, bordered by a thick copse of a height sufficient, when we dismounted, to conceal us and our horses. It was a spot well suited for an ambush. Scarcely had we gained the top of the hillock, when we saw in the far distance what appeared to us the leading files of a party of horsemen. Both the doctor and ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... an old woman come from a copse near the cottage, with a bundle of sticks on her back and a tin can in her hand: this was Dorothy. She saved them all the trouble and delicacy of asking questions, for there was not a more communicative creature breathing. She in the first place threw down her faggots, and offered her service ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... lips he had not wetted in its bed Before a youthful rustic, ambushed near, Sprang from a copse, backed Rabican, and fled With the good courser of the cavalier. Astolpho hears the noise and lifts his head, And, when he sees his mighty loss so clear, Satiate, although he had not drunk, upstarts, And after the young churl in ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... Spaniards sally out of the town after this to engage us, as I expect they did not much like the warm reception they had received. We set to work building up batteries and breastworks, some three hundred of us being sent to cut down a copse of peach-trees that was near to make gabions and fascines to form them with. When our fortifications were completed, which was in a very few days, we began bombarding the town, for which purpose we had brought ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence

... face propped in both hands, and her bosom pressed against the table! I began to speak of our yesterday's reading; she flushed, asked me whether I had given the parrot any hemp-seed before starting, began humming some little song aloud, and all at once was silent again. The copse ended on one side in a rather high and abrupt precipice; below coursed a winding stream, and beyond it, over an immense expanse, stretched the boundless prairies, rising like waves, spreading wide like a table-cloth, and ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... out one day in Arkansas, and it so happened I had not my rifle with me, nor indeed a weapon of any description, not even my jack-knife. As I came upon the skirts of a prairie, near a small copse, a buck started out, and dashed away as if much alarmed. I thought it was my sudden appearance which had alarmed him; I stopped my horse to look after him, and turning my eyes afterwards in the direction from whence it had started, I perceived, as I thought, on ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... left of the Rebel lines, Where a breastwork stands in a copse of pines, Before the Rebels their ranks can form, The Yankees have carried the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... fer me." Again, when I inquired my way of a tiny, ragged mite, he directed me to "go as straight as ever you can go, sir, across the cricket field; then take your first right; go straight through the copse, sir," he called after me. The copse? Perhaps I was thinking of the "cops" of New York. Then I understood that the urchin was speaking of a ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... this pale choked day. The peering sun Sees what has been done. The road under the trees has a border new Of purple hue Inside the border of bright thin grass: For all that has Been left by November of leaves is torn From hazel and thorn And the greater trees. Throughout the copse No dead leaf drops On grey grass, green moss, burnt-orange fern, At the wind's return: The leaflets out of the ash-tree shed Are thinly spread In the road, like little black fish, inlaid, As if they played. What hangs from the myriad branches down ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas

... front of me a long, low farm-house, the walls all pierced for musketry, and two small eight-pounders in battery at the gate. I looked back for my companions, but they were not up, not a man of them to be seen. 'No matter,' thought I 'they'll be here soon; meanwhile, I'll make for that little copse of brushwood;' for a small clump of low furze and broom was standing at a little distance in front of the farm. All this time, I ought to say, not a man of the enemy was to be seen, although I, from where I stood, could see the crenelated walls, and the guns, as they were pointed: at a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... little fool," the mocking voice cried, "the rind of the fine pine is full of prickles, and stings the lips when the taste is gone?—to be sure—crack common nuts like me and you are never wanting—hazels grow free in every copse. Prut, tut! your grand lover lies a-dying; so the students read out of this just now; and you such a simpleton as not to get a roll of napoleons out of him before he went to rot in Paris. I dare say he was poor as sparrows, if one knew the truth. ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... about half after four, in order to get a dip in the Red Sea, before resuming the march; and this intention I fulfilled; but just while throwing on the few clothes I had taken with me, I heard suddenly a loud strife of many tongues bursting forth, not in our encampment, but in a small copse or grove of palm trees, about two hundred yards distant. At once the thought rushed upon my mind, that the Mezzeni had overtaken us, and were meditating an attack, now that we were so near the place of their main ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous

... nightfall on the fourth day, when his sons returned from their fruitless labors. They entered the lodge and sat down. They were weary and hungry and their bodies were badly torn by the thorns and thick copse of the mountains. Their father spoke not a word to them as they entered; he did not even look at them; he seemed to be lost in deep contemplation; so the young men said nothing, and all were silent. At length the old man looked up and broke the silence, saying, ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews

... close of a most lovely spring day—and such a lovely one, to my fancy, has never beamed from the heavens since—I carelessly plucked a cowslip from a copse side, and gave it to Constance. 'Twas on that beautiful evening when she told me all her heart! as, seated on a mossy bank, she dissected, with downcast eyes, every part of the flower; chives, pointal, and petal, all were displayed; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various

... foot was heard crushing the dried twigs hard by, and then his form appeared shoving aside the bushes of a copse just near. As he issued into the open ground, the old soldier scrutinized his daughter and her companion, and speaking good-naturedly, he said, "Mabel, child, you are young and light of foot—look for a bird that I've shot that fell ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... through the cleft of its bosom, goes sweetly the water Penus! How by Penus the sward breaks into saffron and blue! How the long slope-floored beech-glades mount to the wind-wakened uplands, Where, through flame-berried ash, troop the hoofed Centaurs at morn! Nowhere greens a copse but the eye-beams of Artemis pierce it. Breathes no laurel her balm but Phoebus' fingers caress. Springs no bed of wild blossom but limbs of dryad have pressed it. Sparkle the nymphs, and the brooks chime with shy ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts

... ascent becoming steeper and steeper as we mounted upwards, often casting wistful looks at the beacon rock. Just before we gained the summit, smoke was seen curling up from the copse at a little ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... Above the house a pasture dotted with gray boulders extended up to a wood of firs, and out of this wood the small river which bore the name of the family came rushing down the field in a gully, went under the road, swept around to the right and along the edge of a birch copse just below the house. The little stream grew quieter there and widened into a mill pond. At the lower end was a broken dam and beside it a dismantled mill. Here was peace for Roger's soul. The next day at dawn he awakened, and through the window close by his bed he saw no tall confining ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... appearance of weird shapes in fantastic motion. The light of the lantern feebly glimmered in one direction, and the body-snatchers flitted about like restless ghouls preparing for a horrible banquet. We approached as quietly as possible, and, on emerging from the cover of a copse of hazel bushes, we made a general rush forward. The ghouls were too quick for us, however, and they ran away at a break-neck speed which we did not dare to imitate. They had the great advantage of knowing every foot of the ground, ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton

... at the last no solemn stole Shall on thy breast be laid; No mumbling priest shall speed thy soul, No charnel vault thee shade. But by the shadowed hazel copse, Aneath the greenwood tree, Where airs are soft and waters sing, Thou'lt ever sleep by me, My love, ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... gold: in purple, and azure and crimson, with a wealth of slowly falling leaves which soon would pass away, the poor perished glories of the fair golden year. The wild geese flying South sent their faint carol from the clouds—the swamp sparrow twittered, and the still copse was stirred by the silent croak of some wandering wild turkey, or the far forest made most musical with that sound which the master of Wharncliffe Lodge delighted in, the "belling ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... following the retreating figures of the two assassins, who disappeared behind the thick copse, as though it had been a vision from hell. It was not till fully an hour afterward that Du Bouchage, overpowered with fatigue and overwhelmed with terror, with his brain on fire, was able to summon sufficient strength to drag himself to his apartment, ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas

... made a crown of flowers; we had a merry day,— Beneath the hawthorn on the green they made me Queen of May; And we danced about the May-pole and in the hazel copse, Till Charles's Wain came out above the tall ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... rooms under the maids' rooms were empty.... In the evening, about six o'clock, we strolled down the avenue again, and Scamp, who never does bark except under strong excitement, again barked and growled at the copse. ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various

... Ben Aille's crest The west wind weaves its roof of gray, And all the glory of the day Blooms off from loch and copse and green hill-breast; So, when that craven council spoke retreat, The fateful shameful word They heard,—and scarcely heard! At Scotland's name how should the blood ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... of honour to have as little mutton as possible on these occasions, as the great treat is the complete change of fare. I only ventured to introduce it very much disguised as curry, or in pies. We were all up at daylight on Christmas morning, and off to the nearest little copse in one of the gullies, where a few shrubs and small trees and ferns grow, to gather boughs for the decoration of the washhouse. Marvels were done in the carpentering line to arrange tables around its walls. The ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... might, he was extremely glad when, after forcing his way through a sticky clayey path through a hazel copse, his eye fell on a wide reach of meadow land, the railroad making a hard line across it at one end, and in the midst, about half a mile off, the river meandering like a blue ribbon lying loosely across the green flat, the handsome buildings of ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... The upper story was divided about equally into two rooms. The east room, to which Mrs. Preston opened the door, was plainly furnished, yet in comparison with the room below it seemed almost luxurious. Two windows gave a clear view above the little oak copse, the lines of empty freight cars on the siding, and a mile of low meadow that lay between the cottage and the fringe of settlement along the lake. Through another window at the north the bleak prospect of Stoney Island Avenue could be ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... may be seen the solid walls, the array of towers, the high belfry, the iron gates, and the ponderous drawbridges of the Chateau de Lomervo; and many are the dependent buildings, courts, and gardens, surrounded by the thick copse wood that covers its domain, which extends over three neighbouring hills. Under the principal facade is a large lake, whose blue waves bathe the walls; an immense mirror, ever reflecting the numberless turrets, and the grotesque birds and beasts which decorate the extremity of every waterspout; ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... Bougainvillea flings curtains of roseate purple over wall and gateway. A dense thicket of frangipanni scents the air with the symbolic blossoms, shining like stars from grey-green boughs of sharp-cut leaves. A copse of splendid tree-ferns flanks the forest-like plantation known as "The Thousand Palms," and beneath dusky avenues of waringen (a variety of the banyan species, which strikes staff-like boughs into the earth and springs up again in caverns of foliage), herds of deer are ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... followed up the river as we rode, And rode till midnight when the college lights Began to glitter firefly-like in copse And linden alley: then we past an arch, Whereon a woman-statue rose with wings From four winged horses dark against the stars; And some inscription ran along the front, But deep in shadow: further on we gained A little street ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... man's sporting dream. He greatly wondered how some men could be E'er guilty of, such wanton cruelty, As to pursue, with horses and with hounds, Such harmless creature over all their grounds; Hunt him o'er swamps and fields, and mountain slopes, Through pebbly streams, or shady hazel copse, Till they have driven him at last to bay, Toward the close of some most sultry day. Wondered how any one, with tearless eye, Could mark his sufferings, and then watch him die. Oh, cruel man! when will thy thirst for blood Be turned to ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... driver pointed to the flames already bursting from that building. He had barely time to leave the house, covered only by his night shirt, and, by the counsel of the negro, to fly to the cover of a thick copse of briars and brambles, within fifty yards of the dwelling, when the Tories surrounded it. The very task of penetrating this copse, so as to screen himself from sight, effectually removed the thin garment which concealed his nakedness. ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... written in 1823—"an air that whizzed ... right across the diameter of my brain ... over the summit of Quantock at earliest dawn just between the nightingale that I stopt to hear in the copse at the foot of Quantock, and the first sky-lark that was a song-fountain, dashing up and sparkling to the ear's eye, ... out of sight, over the cornfields on the descent of the mountain on the other side—out of sight, tho' twice I beheld its mute shoot downward in the sunshine like a ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... hills of Rome, whose elevation was far more conspicuous in ancient times than it is now, presented a precipitous front of dark volcanic rock to the lake. Their slopes were covered with grass and with natural copse-wood, intermixed with tall ilex trees, or umbrella pines; while on their summits were little villages surrounded with Cyclopean walls perched there not only for security, but also for the healthier air, just as we see at the present day all over Italy. On the summit of the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... landscape, is not only found here, but in its proper place. In front, and immediately under the eye, is a smooth expanse of park-like enclosure, spotted with native elm, ash, &c. of the finest growth: on the right a skirting oak wood, with jutting points of grey rock; on the left a rising copse. Still forward are seen the aged groves of Bolton Park, the growth of centuries; and farther yet, the barren and rocky distances of Simonseat and Barden Fell contrasted with the warmth, fertility, and luxuriant foliage ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... too, is it, if the mood takes me, to wander off for a whole day in the country; to moon onwards entirely oblivious of time; to stop on a hill-top and survey a scene, to turn into a village church and sit long in the cool gloom; to seek out the heart of a copse, all carpeted with spring flowers, and to lie on a green bank, with the whisper of the leaves in one's ear; or to sit beside a stream, near a crystal pool, half-hidden in sedges, and to see hour by hour what goes on ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... again broke the trail. Next they came to a clearing, but the sight of a planter leaning against a fence, soon sent them back to the friendly shelter of the wood. Late in the afternoon they came to a large plantation on the border of which was a copse, in which they lay down and watched for the opportunity of communicating with some of the house slaves. At the expiration of about an hour, a lady, probably the mistress of the estate, passed within a few yards of them, accompanied by a troupe of merry children. They ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... of Richmond or of Windsor. Both iron road and level highway are shunned by the rural Pan, who chooses rather to foot it along the sheep track on the limitless downs or the thwart-leading footpath through copse and spinney, not without pleasant fellowship with feather and fir. Nor does it follow from all this that the god is unsocial. Albeit shy of the company of his more showy brother-deities, he loveth the more unpretentious humankind, ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame

... with the fighting portion of his headquarters, staved off the attack until the arrival of reinforcements from the 88th Brigade enabled it to be driven back in disorder. On November 30, 1917, during the German counter-attack from Fontaine Notre Dame to Tadpole Copse, in the Northern Sector of the Cambrai zone, the Germans forced their way into our foremost positions, and opened a gap between the 1/6th and 1/15th London Regiments. Local counter-attacks led by the two battalion commanders ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous

... following Crownwall's directions, the procession arrived at the copse in which he had concealed his small transportation machine. The machine, for spatial mobility, was equipped with the heavy and grossly inefficient anti-gravity field generator developed by Kowalsky. It occupied ten times the space of the temporal translation and coordination ...
— Upstarts • L. J. Stecher

... blown and radiant on the mountain summits around us, was yet nebulous and uncertain in the valleys into which we were plunging. Lights still glimmered in the cabins and few ranch buildings which began to indicate the thicker settlements. And the shadows were heaviest in a little copse, where a note from Judge Thompson in the coach was handed up to Yuba Bill, who at once slowly began to draw up his horses. The coach stopped finally near the junction of a small crossroad. At the same moment Miss Mullins slipped ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... degrading to find themselves laid out upon a bed of cinders and moss, hung up by the heels above it, and even planted therein; but if they have as much good sense as some believe, they may be aware that it is all for their good. At the end, in full sunshine, stands a little copse of Vanda teres, set as closely as their stiff branches will allow. Still we must get on. There are bits of wood hanging here so rotten that they scarcely hold together; faintest dots of green upon them assure the experienced that presently ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... like thine in special charge, Helps who for their own need are strong, And the sky doats on cheerful song. Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant O'er all that mass and minster vaunt; For men mis-hear thy call in Spring, As 't would accost some frivolous wing, Crying out of the hazel copse, Phe-be! And, in winter, Chic-a-dee-dee! I think old Caesar must have heard In northern Gaul my dauntless bird, And, echoed in some frosty wold, Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold. And I will write our annals new, And thank thee for a better ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... out of the village and into a thick pine-wood with a path scarcely broad enough for the cart. Of a sudden the silence into which we again fell was broken by piercing screams for "Help" coming from a copse on the right. Instantly the driver checked the horse, jumped to the ground, and drew a long ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... pronounced the benediction. The mariner arose, kissed the hand which he still held, made a hurried sign of salutation to all, leaped down the declivity on which they stood, and vanished among the shadows of a copse. ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... all was coolness and delicate shade. It resembled a large copse, about two acres in extent. In the heart of the tangle of small trees and undergrowth was a partially cleared space—perhaps the roots of the giant tree growing in the centre had killed off the smaller fry all around it. By the side of the tree sparkled a little, bubbling fountain, ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... and told him I was ready to follow him. He led me through several corridors and down a staircase; then, opening a door, we found ourselves in the park. Day was beginning to dawn. After many turnings and windings, we entered a copse or thicket, in the depths of which was the opening of a sort of grotto, where one of the robbers was standing sentry. They pushed me into this grotto. It was very dark, and I was groping about with extended arms, when somebody grasped my hand. I was on the point of crying out; but the hand that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... chateaux and cross-roads, but more often they would be Anglicized by our map makers. Thus we had "Moated Grange," "Bus House," "Shelley Farm," "Beggar's Rest," "Dead Dog Farm," "Sniper's Barn," "Captain's Post," "Maple Copse," the "White Chateau" and the "Red Chateau," "Dead Horse Corner," "White Horse Cellars" and so on, indefinitely. "Scottish Wood" was so named for the London Scottish who made a famous charge there in the early part of the war. Hallebast Corner was changed by the soldier to "Hell-blast" Corner, ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride

... most of the sports, and presently grew weary of watching. It was hot, too, and there was not much shade to be had in that big meadow; so he wandered a little apart, toward a copse beside a small stream, on the opposite side of which a thick forest rose stately and grand, and sitting down beside the merry brook, he clasped his hands round his knees and ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... same time I experienced a disagreeable sensation, like screwing up my back, and calculating how many bullets would be between my shoulders every moment. I was afraid to increase my pace until I got to a small copse, when I put the spurs in and galloped back to my men. I immediately went up to the nearest colonel, and said to him, 'Colonel, I have reconnoitred those fellows pretty closely—and I find there is no mistake who they are; you may get up and go at them.' And I assure you, ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle



Words linked to "Copse" :   undergrowth, brushwood, canebrake, underbrush, thicket, brake, spinney, flora, coppice



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